Page 2 of
2 Bankrupt approach to judgement
day By Julian
Delasantellis
comes to actually
agreeing to accept less money from the borrowers,
the mortgage servicers have run absolutely true to
form and said no.
Mealy mouthed
provisions All last week, this provision’s
principle proponent in the US Senate, Senator
Richard Durbin of Illinois, tried and failed to
get it tacked into the bill. After being assured
that the inclusion of the expanded bankruptcy
judge authority would engender a Republican
filibuster on the entire bill that the Democrats
could not, or more likely would not, break, Durbin
withdrew the proposal on Thursday. Since the
remainder of the bill’s more mealy mouthed
provisions are gaining acceptance by wide margins, the
bill is now expected to
easily pass the entire Senate.
The
Republican Party’s opposition to the inclusion of
the bankruptcy court provision was implacable,
intense and totally unified - even among the 20
GOP Senators facing the voters this November, who,
one might have thought, might not have relished
then possibility of going back to the voters
tagged with the reputation of blocking a well
publicized initiative to aid American homeowners.
The Democrats in the majority, continuing
the strategy they have followed since retaking the
Congress in 2006 of never having met a fight that
they wouldn’t back down from, also ran absolutely
true to form - away.
Why did the
conservatives in the Republican Party stand firm
against the provision, why did they "not hearken
unto their judges, but they went a whoring after
other gods?" Well, that explanation is easy. Just
because America is experiencing its worst
financial crisis since the Great Depression, you
shouldn’t think that things are actually changing
all that much. Still, the giant vacuum cleaner
sucking the country’s wealth from its lowest to
highest classes continues its relentless service
to the nation’s economic elite.
The banks
are owed money, and they desire to forgive as
little of it as they absolutely have to - and they
don’t want some judge telling them that they have
to. The terrorist Hans Gruber (Alan Rickmann)
bastardized and mangled a passage from the Roman
historian Plutarch in Die Hard when he said
that "When Alexander saw the breadth of his
domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to
conquer." When, in the middle of this decade,
George W Bush and his conservatives saw the
breadth of their domain, they knew that there was
one but one more world to conquer - the power and
influence of the United States judiciary.
They had the Presidency, by 2004 they had
occupied it for 24 of the past 36 years. White
House political guru Karl Rove was predicting that
they would continue to do so, this was to be a
political realignment not seen for the Republicans
since Mark Hanna captured the White House for
William McKinley in 1896. As for the Congress,
they would continue to control that as well (or
thought they would); they believed that the innate
corruption of the legislative body’s campaign
fundraising procedures would keep their
well-funded corporate friendly incumbents in place
for many years. In local state houses and
legislatures, they also felt themselves well
placed as helmsmen on the rudders of power.
Where they realized that their power was
lacking was in the Constitution’s third co-equal
branch of government, the judiciary, especially
the federal judiciary. Even in controlling the
executive branch for as long as they had, many of
the judges that had found their way onto the
courts, for life terms, no less, turned out to be
frustratingly liberal (or, in reality, centrist -
they just seemed liberal as the Republicans tacked
hard to the right). Two of the US Supreme Court’s
most reliable liberal associate justices, John
Paul Stevens and David Souter, had, in fact, been
appointed by Republican Presidents, Stevens by
Gerald Ford in 1975, Souter by George H W Bush in
1990.
Cranky judges not
wanted For the corporate plutocracy, what
was the value of their purchases of the executive
and legislative branches to serve the interests of
the economic elite if all their hard work could be
negated by some cranky old coot of a judge who had
the old-fashioned idea that his mandate was to
interpret the law in the public interest?
And the irritating thing about the federal
judiciary was how unreachable, in essence, how
non-bribable it was. Many state judges are
elected, and so they have to be re-elected - that
means they have to raise campaign funds for TV and
radio ads and the like. Once they come hat in hand
to the plutocracy for money - bingo, they were
captured like a trout on a fishing line; they
might wiggle and thrash about for a while, but,
essentially, they were had.
But federal
judges don’t need to seek re-election, so they
don’t need campaign cash. They are free to rule
according to the dictates of their conscience.
What a horrible concept for the plutocracy.
It was immediately following the 2004
election that a perfidious new foe entered the
pantheon of American malevolence, an entire,
self-contained domestic version of the Axis of
Evil, threatening the peace and security of all
God-fearing Americans. Some on the evangelical
Christian right, namely, star televangelist Pat
Robertson, even said that this group was worse
than al-Qaeda. It was America’s judges.
The foot soldiers of evangelical religious
conservatism were thrown big chunks of red meat in
this cause, in that the judges were now receiving
the blame for such outrages as gay marriage,
liberalized abortion, and, of course, the brutal
judicial murder of (already brain dead) Terry
Schiavo, the young Florida woman whose removal
from life support in early 2005 rallied religious
fundamentalists for weeks.
For the real
powers in the Republican Party, the economic
conservatives representing the interests of the
nation’s corporate and moneyed elite, they were
mighty peeved at the judiciary for issues such as
allowing big court damage awards for findings of
unsafe products or other corporate malfeasance.
With the corporations liable in court for huge
damage penalties, called punitive damages, their
concern for the bottom line meant that they had to
fix or withdraw the dangerous products. Much more
acceptable to them would be just eating lesser
penalties as a cost of doing business, and then
leaving the hazardous products on the market.
One tactic of the war against the judges
was legislation to restrict the amount of these
damage awards, especially as regards to medical
malpractice. Another was a set of initiatives
generally falling under the category of what is
called "court curbing".
"Court curbing"
refers to a philosophy that, if applied to the
criminal justice system, would be a defendant’s
dream. Don’t like what you think will be the
result of a court dispute you are now contesting?
There’s an easy solution to that; just get up and
unilaterally say that the court, in actuality, has
no authority, responsibility, or jurisdiction over
you in the matter.
In the current
environment, conservatives in the US Congress
have, (at least before losing the House and Senate
in 2006, and thus losing the ability to control
the legislative agenda) advanced court curbing
measures denying judicial responsibility in such
areas as gun control (so the court cannot uphold
the generally accepted interpretation of the US
Federal Constitution’s Second Amendment limiting
private gun ownership), school prayer (which the
courts consistently ban) abortion, and, of course,
the issue that makes even the most scarlet of
rednecks turn a brighter vermilion, gay marriage.
The opposition to the expanded
jurisdiction proposals for the bankruptcy court
falls into this tradition. As with George W Bush
in Iraq, this is more a pre-emptive strike - the
Republicans are not taking away a right the court
currently has; they’re moving to deny the court a
right that it someday could have.
Perhaps,
if the Republicans lose another three or four
Congressional elections, if they still are in the
minority in the middle of the next decade, they
may finally experience the
light-bulb-over-the-head moment wherein they
realize that it might be a good idea to support
the presence they have managed to place in the
judiciary to restrict the power of the legislative
branch, instead of, as they currently attempt,
using their fading power in the legislature to
restrict the mandate and power of the judiciary.
Of course, it is important to note that,
even if the Democrats had been able to get the
expanded bankruptcy court authority into the bill,
this would not have been the "solution" of the
subprime crisis. It would have done little or
nothing to support the values of the subprime
mortgage bonds now wasting away in the portfolios
of the world financial system - that part of the
problem requires a separate solution. For that,
either some very wealthy actors such as sovereign
wealth funds have to come in and recapitalize the
banks, (see Selling the US by the
Dollar, Asia Times Online, November 27,
2007) or the government and/or the Federal Reserve
has to buy and clean out the subprime securities
from the bank’s portfolios. (see And the band played on,
Asia Times Online, March 6, 2008). But maybe that
would have given a break to hundreds of thousands
of American subprime borrowers now facing the
prospect of being bled dry by America’s powerful
financial Leviathans.
Most importantly, it
would have done something, very much in contrast
to what the final bill will accomplish - nothing.
No matter what the hype and puffery that will
accompany its eventual passage and signing, this,
like Hope Now, Project Lifeline, and all the other
supposed subprime rescues that have emanated from
out of Washington DC this past year, will have
only one real effect - the pitiless crushing of
the hopes of the subprime borrowers that will
follow upon the realization that, in contrast to
what they just heard on TV, they still will not be
able to save their homes.
It is surprising
that the ideologues of Republican fundamentalist
conservatism have failed to take note of these
passages from the Old Testament’s Book of Psalms,
perhaps the earliest recorded warning against the
building all those 10,000-square-foot McMansions
now sitting empty all across the once fruited
American plain.
Do not be overawed when a man grows
rich, when the splendor of his house
increases; for he will take nothing with him
when he dies, his splendor will not descend
with him. Though while he lived he counted
himself blessed - and men praise you when you
prosper - he will join the generation of his
fathers, who will never see the light of
life. A man who has riches without
understanding is like the beasts that
perish.
If the conservatives who
blocked the bankruptcy court initiative actually
do return to adherence of genuine biblical
principles, they might notice Jesus’ warning in
the Book of Matthew that "It is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich
man to enter into the kingdom of God." Thus, maybe
they’ll have some legislative success with their
counterproposal, an emergency research program to
recombine DNA so as to massively shrink the size
of dromedaries.
Julian
Delasantellis is a management consultant,
private investor and educator in international
business in the US state of Washington. He can be
reached at juliandelasantellis@yahoo.com.
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