Tag Archives: law

An Iron Curtain Descends on Seattle

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Seattle’s newly elected mayor, Socialist Katie Wilson, has announced that she

will not allow private grocery stores to close….

She also wants city government-run grocery stores to operate. Shades of the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain that was erected—physically on the boundary between then-East and West Berlin and functionally in its travel document issuance and withholding—to keep people from leaving that communist paradise. Not being allowed to close a store is the same as saying to the store’s operator that “you’re not allowed to leave.”

Those government stores also are reminiscent of the USSR’s government establishments and its nominally independent icon of Soviet socialism, GUM, best known for its ubiquitous presence around the nation and its equally ubiquitous empty shelves, except for those with access exclusively for the Soviet elite.

It’s likely that Federal courts (and it will likely end up in front of the Supreme Court) will not allow any bar to a private entity deciding to close an outlet or to cease operation altogether. However, the uncertainty that will occur and build over the years until that final judgment will wreak havoc on Seattle’s economy and its unemployment rate.

Seattle voters have done this to themselves. They’re the ones who elected the woman. They’re welcome to their enforced stay in the meantime.

Suing Government Officials

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As part of the Reopen Government Act passed by the Senate, then by the House, and signed into law by the President, Senate Republicans had slipped in a provision allowing Senators to sue…the government…over having had their cell phone records secretly collected by Federal government Special Counsel Jack Smith, who was pretending to investigate the January 6 Capitol Hill riot participants.

Notably, the bill explicitly strips federal officials of qualified immunity—a legal doctrine that has long shielded government agents from personal liability even in cases of egregious constitutional violations.

Aside from the fact that a successful suit by a Senator would result in us taxpayers paying the judgement rather than the government officials who did the deed, it would exclude House members, and worse, us average Americans from that capacity.

There’s an alternative to that that would be more far-reaching than just rescinding the Senate’s amendment.

Contrast this with the fate of the Bivens Act of 2024, a modest bill that would have amended America’s premier civil-rights statute. Under Section 1983 of the US Code, Americans can sue state and local officials for constitutional violations, but federal officials are virtually untouchable. The Bivens Act would change that, while still keeping qualified immunity as a defense. The bill sought to codify a cause of action that the Supreme Court has steadily eroded over the past two decades. It died in committee without a vote.

The House needs to revisit the Bivens Act and include it in their rescission bill.

And go a step further.

Qualified immunity for government officials is a highly useful judicial doctrine (not statute) which protects those persons from a plethora of frivolous suits. But the bar is too high, allowing some constitutionally miscreanting officials to skate on otherwise egregious behavior. An additional move that would mitigate this would be to change the onus from requiring the plaintiff to prove why qualified immunity should not apply in his case to requiring the defendant to prove why it should. And an additional step, which would mitigate all those suits that would turn on that proof: the loser of the case over whether qualified immunity should apply, must pay the winner all legal costs involved.

Mamdani’s Nod in the General Direction of Stability

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The newly elected Mayor of New York City, the Socialist Zohran Mamdani, has indicated he’s taking the City’s crime problem seriously with his claim that he would like to retain Jessica Tisch, the city’s Police Commissioner.

I have questions, though.

With what authority would Tisch have actually to deal with crime and to pursue the criminals that commit them? Would she have free rein, or would he try to keep her hemmed in? He is, after all, on record calling to defund the nation’s largest police force and accusing it of racism. He was speaking from his heart then; is he now speaking merely politically, or has he evolved his views?

Assume he’s serious, even if merely arguendo. A couple follow-on questions arise. What will he do regarding both city prosecutors who decline to prosecute the criminals and that subset of them who also attempt to prosecute the victims for their heinous efforts to defend themselves?

In those few cases where the suspect actually faces trial, what will he do about city judges who insist on turning those suspects loose on no bail, and what will he do about the ordnances and State laws (over the latter which he has little influence) that mandate many of those no-bail releases?

Monetary Misconception

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Judy Shelton, a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, has this one. She wants the Federal government to issue a gold-backed bond would strike a blow for sound money.

Mr Trump has criticized currency manipulation in global trade relations. Challenging other nations to emulate the US [gold-backed bond] by guaranteeing some portion of their sovereign debt in gold would demonstrate America’s vision for stable money as the proper foundation for fair trade.

This is naïve. “Other countries” will continue to manipulate their currencies, just as they do now; this move only would add a new tool for manipulation—varying the value of the metal backing their own debt instrument(s).

Governments have been debasing their metal backed currencies ever since money was invented, doing so by shaving coins minted in the metal; by replacing some of the money-backing metal with other, cheaper metals; outright announcing a differing, lower values for a unit of the metal.

The most infamous recent example of the latter was during our own Great Depression when then-President Franklin Roosevelt (D) seized all privately held gold and then promptly devalued the gold in US dollar terms.

All currency is fiat currency, whether it’s minted in the metal or it’s printed on paper formally backed by the metal (at a rate the issuing government has announced for the time being), or it’s printed on paper and allowed to float in the markets for goods and services—and currencies. That currency has the value, in legal terms, that government says it has from time to time.

Backing a bond with a precious metal has no material meaning. What makes a money sound is the stability of the issuing government; the economy it oversees with a light hand; and that government’s ability to protect its people from invasion, whether physical, economic, or political. Nothing else does.

Personal Responsibility

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This is a core tenet of our federal republican democracy—the concept that us American citizens are the ones primarily—and most often solely—responsible for the outcomes of our decisions and our actions. This is a tenet that applies just as firmly in our fundamentally capitalist economy to our businesses. In particular, for this post, it applies to our banks, large, small, and in between.

Or, it should apply. Dangerously, our banks, particularly our small and mid-sized banks, would be relieved of that responsibility under legislation that Tennessee Republican Senator Bill Hagerty, who should know better, and Maryland’s Progressive-Democrat Senator Angela Alsobrooks, who is merely acting on her party’s big and bigger government bent, are proposing. That legislation would raise the FDIC’s deposit guarantee from $250,000 per depositor’s account to $10 million.

The editors of The Wall Street Journal have the right of it on this one.

The truth is that a higher insurance limit will increase moral hazard and make the banking system less sound, which will hurt all Americans.

Because

It would also encourage more risk-taking since banks will have to worry less about runs.

Massachusetts’ Progressive-Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren as recently as 2023:

We have to do this because these banks are under-regulated, and if we lift the cap, we are requiring—or relying even more heavily on the regulators to do their jobs.

Here is the monarchist Party’s purpose revealed and now pushed by Alsobrooks: an ever more intrusive and controlling central government.

The proposed legislation is an idea whose time never will be, and the proposed legislation needs to be scotched in committee, if not before.