LawTalkers - Pepper sprayed for public safety.

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- - Pepper sprayed for public safety. (http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=863)

Re: Pepper sprayed for public safety.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 473773)

He can close the facility, but how does he transfer the inmates?

It's difficult, but Wonk's right that he can do it. He's commander in chief and the chief executive. He can move them to the brink at Levinworth and start putting them on trial and there is nothing Congress can do to stop him.

But it would cost him tremendous political capital, and cause him to spend massive effort to counteract the various means Congress has of retaliating. He can go to the people and declare that whatever unpopular cut they try to impose is really the work of an evil and vindictive Congress because he was just doing what is right. But that would be very, very hard.

I'm sorry, but Wonk is certainly right that the administration has failed to make the difficult but clear moral stand on this issue. It's tremendously disappointing.

Unlike Romney, the Bush administration and many Rs, however, I think they know they aren't doing the right thing and have decided it would be too hard and too politically harmful, costing their ability to do other good things. That makes them craven, which is not good, but is marginally better than morally bankrupt, maybe.

And Hank, I can see the Hennepin County jail from my office window. You have my permission to put them there.

Re: Breaking the Ultimate Fourth Wall

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 473788)

I love stuff like this. That it's even being discussed compels endless consideration of the fictional nature of our mediums of exchange: http://seekingalpha.com/article/9324...-conflagration

(It also somewhat validates a theory of mine: The best near term fix for the world's economy is tsunami of defaults and jubilees... An acceleration of what's been happening in many corners, and is inevitable in almost all others.)

This is nonsense:

Quote:

Paul argued that given the fact that the Fed had simply created the money to buy the bonds from thin air, no-one would be hurt by this selective default. Moreover, he reckoned that this would likely neuter the Fed and make it less likely to manipulate the money supply in the future -- if it could no longer rely on the treasury honoring its debt, there would be no point in buying more of it.

The Fed isn't buying federal debt as an investment. It's buying it to increase the money supply, which it can still do whether any debt it buys gets cancelled.

The primary effect would be to make it harder for the Fed to unwind any expansionary monetary policy it undertakes, because it wouldn't be able to resell the bonds. But even that may not be that big of a deal as the Fed knows how to do reverse repos.

The secondary effect would probably be to amplify the effect of any Fed quantitative easing. The only known road to hyperinflation is monetizing debt in this way. I don't know if that means the Fed wouldn't do it anymore, or if it means it would just need to do significantly smaller amounts to get the same effect (assuming, of course, that the change in policy made any federal debt purchased by the fed automatically expire).

The obsurdity of that author's view, and of Paul's, is that he sees some sort of important value in the size of the money supply. There is none. Its size is arbitrary (and is under even the strictest of gold standards too, see Diocletian) and merely a tool for facilitating economic activity.

By the way, it's truly funny that an article spouting Rothbardian nonsense about money is accusing anyone else of "monetary quackery."

There is nothing "market-based" about the government declaring gold (or any fancy modern basket of assets) to be money, and there never was.

And yet more fascinating is that the article explicitly admits that what they propose is to make the world vastly poorer all in the name of their ideological purity. Great.

ETA: By the way, if you love this stuff, spend your time at the Von Mises institute website and zerohedge and whatever. But you should know that this is very fringe stuff, and is not taken even remotely seriously by economists as a whole and hasn't been since the interwar years.

Re: Breaking the Ultimate Fourth Wall

Quote:

(It also somewhat validates a theory of mine: The best near term fix for the world's economy is tsunami of defaults and jubilees... An acceleration of what's been happening in many corners, and is inevitable in almost all others.)

Dui bu qi, from those ashes a dragon would arise, not an eagle.

Re: Pepper sprayed for public safety.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 473780)

Right. I'm the troll because I point to your bullshit, but the rest of the board is ashamed of what I expose. You on the other hand are genuine since, well since everyone here agrees you aren't a troll?

Still happy to have an actual conversation about Guantanamo, any time you want to actually respond to what I'm saying.

Re: Pepper sprayed for public safety.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 473793)

I believe this is incorrect. Congress has used its appropriations power to block this. The President can't spend money to do these things.

Re: Pepper sprayed for public safety.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 473797)

I believe this is incorrect. Congress has used its appropriations power to block this. The President can't spend money to do these things.

And what happens if he does it anyway?

Re: Pepper sprayed for public safety.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 473801)

And what happens if he does it anyway?

I don't know. The analogy that comes to mind is the Boland Amendment, by which Congress prevented the Reagan Administration from funding the contras.

Re: Pepper sprayed for public safety.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 473773)

He can close the facility, but how does he transfer the inmates?

I am pretty confidnt that if he announced he was closing the facility, the Red Crescent or Amnesty International would have a plane there within 24 hours. And what's more, I am confident that if the US court system was opened up t the detainees, they would successfully be able to sue for transport home or to another safe haven.

For that matter, Obama could simply ignore Congress, on the basis that it is a breach of their Constitutional authority to assert the right to remove foreign nationals thousands of miles from their homes and just leave them there.

Re: Pepper sprayed for public safety.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 473779)

See Wonk? This is trolling.

Okay, I see your point. On the other hnd, I don't mind, because I want the NSA and the White House to see this accusation on the internet as muc as possible, every fucking day, until we do the right thing.

Think of it as my own version of Never Forget.

Re: Breaking the Ultimate Fourth Wall

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 473788)

This is why I have always kind of liked Ron Paul. I would never vote for the man, but I don't feel he is morally bankrupt, selfish, and dishonest the way I feel about Romney and Ryan (and, unfortunately, a little bit more these days Obama as well). He questions. He prods. He challenges those who say "you can't do that; it woul be a disaster."

He's crazy, but kind of fun.

Re: Pepper sprayed for public safety.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 473797)

I believe this is incorrect. Congress has used its appropriations power to block this. The President can't spend money to do these things.

The Congress also appropriated discretionary fund for the military. They can't tell him he can not use money that has already been appropriated for discretionary spending. That would be a usurping of Executive power.

Also, as I noted above, I am fairly certain that the United States doesn't have the authority to kidnap people from their homelands, transport them thousands of miles away and leave them there to rot. As Chief Executive, Obama would be required to follow international law absent a declaration of war on the world, or a bare assertion of military power.

Re: Pepper sprayed for public safety.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 473801)

And what happens if he does it anyway?

What happens is it winds up in the courts and, ultimately, the Supremes weigh in.

Re: Pepper sprayed for public safety.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 473802)

I don't know. The analogy that comes to mind is the Boland Amendment, by which Congress prevented the Reagan Administration from funding the contras.

Right. That's what comes to mind to me too.

I can't remember if there was any litigation over that, but surely it's a political question.

I guess they can try to impeach him over it. I don't suspect they would make a serious attempt to do so, though (i.e., they'd have someone marginal put up a resolution but not push to pass it). It's better politics for them to keep screaming about scare tactics than to give him a forum in which he's being prosecuted from which to mount a defense from the moral high ground. Maybe I underestimate their outrage though.

Anyway, I guess I'm with you in that I really don't seriously expect them to have done anything differently. But I'm also with Wonk in that I think I probably should.

Re: Pepper sprayed for public safety.

Quote:

Originally Posted by taxwonk (Post 473807)

What happens is it winds up in the courts and, ultimately, the Supremes weigh in.

Does it? Doesn't it sound like a political question?

Re: Breaking the Ultimate Fourth Wall

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 473794)

This is nonsense:

The Fed isn't buying federal debt as an investment. It's buying it to increase the money supply, which it can still do whether any debt it buys gets cancelled.

The primary effect would be to make it harder for the Fed to unwind any expansionary monetary policy it undertakes, because it wouldn't be able to resell the bonds. But even that may not be that big of a deal as the Fed knows how to do reverse repos.

The secondary effect would probably be to amplify the effect of any Fed quantitative easing. The only known road to hyperinflation is monetizing debt in this way. I don't know if that means the Fed wouldn't do it anymore, or if it means it would just need to do significantly smaller amounts to get the same effect (assuming, of course, that the change in policy made any federal debt purchased by the fed automatically expire).

The obsurdity of that author's view, and of Paul's, is that he sees some sort of important value in the size of the money supply. There is none. Its size is arbitrary (and is under even the strictest of gold standards too, see Diocletian) and merely a tool for facilitating economic activity.

By the way, it's truly funny that an article spouting Rothbardian nonsense about money is accusing anyone else of "monetary quackery."

There is nothing "market-based" about the government declaring gold (or any fancy modern basket of assets) to be money, and there never was.

And yet more fascinating is that the article explicitly admits that what they propose is to make the world vastly poorer all in the name of their ideological purity. Great.

ETA: By the way, if you love this stuff, spend your time at the Von Mises institute website and zerohedge and whatever. But you should know that this is very fringe stuff, and is not taken even remotely seriously by economists as a whole and hasn't been since the interwar years.

Lighten up, Francis. For fuck's sake... It's just an intellectual exercise. And by the way, you did notice the author didn't think the idea was wise to put into actual practice. I cited a more qualified author arguing against my position, and you chose, oddly, to rail at his article.

I love these kinds of discussions finding their way to broader audiences because they highlight fragilities in the system and widen the sphere of deviance in regard to acceptably discussed options. It's amusing stuff. You have to admit, a world in which the concrete baselines are continually shifted and consensus defied is entertaining to observe. One would have to be an ogre, or a tremendous dullard, to not find the current flailing nature of things, as scary as it might be for many, pretty fascinating. Why you're getting mad about an article discussing a radical fix I have no idea. I figured you'd agree with the author's conclusion The Policy Could Never be Implemented.