House of Eratosthenes

Talk show host from a whole other region of the country Neal Boortz, whom we follow frequently here, a former lawyer, says it’s going nowhere. I hope not.

Anyone not following this needs to wake the hell up. Your elected representatives just caught wind of a valid contract between two private and freely-acting entities being exercised, decided it would make fine political cover for them, and voted to tax the exchanged money away after-the-fact. The precedent would be that you can still pay for goods and services, and get paid for them, but you’d better make sure this payment would be popular with a bunch of total strangers you’ll never actually meet…or else expect the money to be taken away. If you call that a free market, I see no reason for you to continue voting at all and you probably don’t want to anyway. Just open a jar of paste, grab a spoon, and watch teevee. You’ve done enough damage.

Yesterday’s vote in the House was completely expected. Overwhelmingly, your representatives in Washington voted huge taxes on bonuses for AIG employees. Nancy Pelosi said, “We want our money back and we want our money back now for the taxpayers.” Funny .. after recently passing a bill with more than 8,000 earmarks worth over $400 billion, the hollow-eyed hippy from Haight-Ashbury and her flying monkeys are suddenly worried about the taxpayers.

First point. It is not “their” money. The money, whether you like it or not, belongs to the people to whom they were paid. Those bonuses were paid pursuant to a valid contract and are not the rightful and legal property of the payees. Let’s us also remember that the amount paid in those bonuses was less than one-tenth of one percent of the bailout money received by AIG. Remember, though … politicians believe that ever penny you earn actually belongs to the government. In the official language of Washington any money from your paycheck that these political hacks allow you to keep is a “tax expenditure.” You earned it … but if you’re allowed to keep it they treat it as a government expenditure. To the Democrat mind, and in the mind of all too many Republicans, all wealth is owned by government. Produced by the people, but owned by government.

Second point. This is absolutely unconstitutional. Con su permisio I’ll explain.

So the House succeeded in passing a 90% tax on bonuses given to employees of AIG and any company receiving at least $5 billion in bailout money. But only with those evil rich employees whose family income is above $250,000 a year will have to pay this 90% tax.

You just cannot like what you’re seeing here. These politicians are targeting specific individuals out there who have received some money that the politicians, for political purposes, just do not want them to have. So they pass a law allowing the government to seize that money. Can you imagine where this goes from here? How about Ann Coulter? She delights in writing books that just irritate the ever-luvin’ puddin’ out of Democrats and liberals. Let’s say that one of Nancy Pelosi’s flying monkeys reports to the Princess that Coulter made $1.5 million from her last book. This money was legally paid to Coulter pursuant to a contract. Sound familiar? But Pelosi feels that Coulter has made this money by promoting divisiveness in the population, so she decides that punishment is in order. She then has her minions pass a bill establishing a 90% tax on the royalties from all books and writings that promote political dissention and defame public servants in the Congress of the United States. Come on now, you tell me the big huge difference between a confiscatory tax on legally earned bonuses and one on legally received book royalties.

This is going nowhere folks. It will never make it through the Senate. If the members of the House had any appreciation at all for the Constitution it wouldn’t have gone this far. And why, pray tell, would that be? That would be because of one pesky little clause found in our (once) supreme law of the land.

Article 1, Section 9, Clause 5 – United States Constitution

“No bill of Attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed.”

Do you know what that means? The key is the word “attainder.” Let’s go to Websters: It’s a 15th century word meaning “extinction of the civil rights and capacities of a person upon sentence of death or outlawry usually after a conviction of treason.” A definition, this one from the Catholic Encyclopedia, describes “bill of attainder” thusly: “A bill of attainder may be defined to be an Act of Parliament for putting a man to death or for otherwise punishing him without trial in the usual form. Thus by a legislative act a man is put in the same position as if he had been convicted after a regular trial.”

Well, in this case the Congress isn’t trying to put anyone to death … they’re just trying to steal some money. They are trying to deprive some individuals of property that is rightfully and lawfully theirs without accusing them of a crime and without the benefit of any trial … except, that is, for this trial that has been taking place in the media for the last week. Well, there’s that pesky little Constitution again. A man cannot be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process, and in our country due process means a trial before a jury of one’s peers. Barney Frank et al are trying to take these people’s money through legislative action without a trial. I would truly hope there isn’t a federal judge in this country that wouldn’t smack this idiocy down at the earliest opportunity.

This isn’t about whether or not those people deserved those bonuses. Perhaps not. But the bonuses were paid pursuant to a legally enforceable contract. The property is there’s. Now we have politicians who are trying to take it away just because they’re unhappy and embarrassed because they didn’t take care of this little problem before the bailout money was paid.

On to the Senate. Let’s hope someone over there has read the Constitution.

Score. I was talking about Bills of Attainder already…sadly, not in these parts…Neal hadn’t said anything about ’em just yet. Neither had any other legal professional.

See, to my way of thinking, a Bill of Attainder is a legislative body acting as a judicial one. By which I mean, saying “that guy, over there, needs to be punished” and not “this deed shall henceforth be punished.” In America, applying a code to a person is a task requiring judicial authority, and nothing outside of judicial authority shall make that possible. It’s a separation-of-powers issue. And it’s been completely trampled-on here. The associated trampling of basic rights is palpable; your elected leaders get to say you’re not entitled to money you earned? Nevermind what kind of rhetoric they can stir up against the contract that was honored. Just nevermind that. This isn’t how free people live.

If you want to argue that, then let’s hold a vote on your last…oh…five paychecks. No wait, make it twenty. See if a majority among us like the fact that you got ’em. See if it made any of us cranky. If the point still doesn’t sink in — well then, you’re beyond hope. Back to the paste and the spoon.

If the senate does pass the bill, you can be sure that when it goes to court, it”’ go before a judge who thinks it is all hunky dory.

(Maybe I’m too cynical… nahhhh)
- pdwalker | 03/21/2009 @ 00:02

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