Below is my column in the Washington Post (Sunday) on our recent victory in the Sister Wives case. The column looks at the most significant aspect of the case — the rejection of morality codes that once controlled across the country in prohibiting everything from homosexuality to adultery to fornication. These morality laws were upheld in the decision in Reynolds in 1876 in a polygamy case out of Utah. The Brown decision returned us to the same question involving the same issue in the same state. Some 136 years later however the answer from this federal court was very different. We are a different country today and, despite what one hears from politicians like Rick Santorum, I believe that we are a better country today.
There does seem to be confusion about the ruling with some saying that polygamy is still not legal after the opinion. That is simply wrong. Polygamy is not the same a bigamy. One is the crime defined under cohabitation statutes of living as a plural family or with a person married to another person. The other is the crime of having two or more marriage licenses. The latter has nothing to do with the structure of your family and has almost exclusively involved people who hold themselves out (falsely) as monogamous. We always argued that the state could prosecute people who obtained more than one marriage license. Bigamy has not been an offense committed by polygamists who traditionally have one official marriage license and multiple spiritual licenses. Indeed, the law targeted polygamy with the cohabitation provision precisely because there is a difference between the two. The state fought for years to preserve this law because it reached beyond simple bigamy. Before this opinion, it was a crime for polygamists to live, as do the Browns, in a plural family. After the opinion, it is legal. This is precisely what occurred in Lawrence v. Texas where homosexual unions were a crime but then became legal when the Texas law was struck down. This decision legalizes tens of thousands of polygamous families who will no longer been viewed as criminal enterprises. They will be allowed to be open plural families. They are now legal relationships. Legality of polygamy is entirely different from recognition of plural marriages just as the legality of homosexual relations is different from the recognition of same-sex marriage.
There is also a lack of knowledge about the existence of such laws outside of Utah. This law does exist outside of Utah. Indeed, the very same language is found in the Canadian cohabitation law. I was called as a legal expert in the recent challenge to that law. However, the Canadian Supreme Court in British Columbia upheld the law. Putting these distinctions aside, the thrust of this article is how this decision is part of a larger trend toward the repeal or the striking down of morality codes, including the rejection of a cohabitation law in Virginia this year.
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The decision this month by a federal court striking down the criminalization of polygamy in Utah was met with a mix of rejoicing and rage. What was an emancipating decision for thousands of plural families was denounced as the final descent into a moral abyss by others.
Former senator Rick Santorum was among the social conservatives trying to claim the moral high ground. He tweeted on Sunday: “Some times I hate it when what I predict comes true” — referring to his 2003 claim that legalizing “consensual sex within your home” would lead to the legalization of polygamy and “undermine the fabric of our society.” (On Wednesday, with no apparent sense of self-contradiction, he expressed outrage over the removal of a Nativity scene at a South Carolina military base, tweeting: “Our Constitution protects free exercise of religion. No govt entity/official has the right to limit that.”)It’s true that the Utah ruling is one of the latest examples of a national trend away from laws that impose a moral code. There is a difference, however, between the demise of morality laws and the demise of morality. This distinction appears to escape social conservatives nostalgic for a time when the government dictated whom you could live with or sleep with. But the rejection of moral codes is no more a rejection of morality than the rejection of speech codes is a rejection of free speech. Our morality laws are falling, and we are a better nation for it.
In the Utah case, I was the lead counsel for the Browns, the polygamous family featured in the TLC reality program “Sister Wives.” They are members of the Apostolic United Brethren Church, and they have one marriage license and three “spiritual” marriages among them. After the first episode of “Sister Wives” aired, state prosecutors threatened to bring charges under a Utah law that made it a crime when a married person “purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person.” The Browns were under investigation for two years and were publicly called felons before they took prosecutors to court in a challenge to the constitutionality of the law.
The case was never about the recognition of multiple marriages or the acceptance of the religious values underlying this plural family. It was about the right of consenting adults to make decisions for themselves and their families. Judge Clark Waddoups, a conservative George W. Bush appointee,ruled that the criminalization of cohabitation clearly violated the due process clause and the free exercise clause of the United States Constitution.
In doing so, he departed from the prevailing precedent: the Supreme Court’s opinion inReynolds v. United States , which upheld a ban on polygamy in 1879. Waddoups wrote that courts today are “less inclined to allow majoritarian coercion of unpopular or disliked minority groups, especially when blatant racism . . . religious prejudice, or some other constitutionally suspect motivation, can be discovered behind such legislation.”
Indeed, in Reynolds, religious and racial prejudice were vividly on display. The court unleashed a tirade of indignation and condemnation, stating, “Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people.” Just a few years later, the Supreme Court also upheld the criminalization of mixed-race relations in Pace v. Alabama .
The idea that polygamy was a “barbarous practice” and contrary to democratic principles drove the demand in the late 1880s and ’90s that Utah outlaw it as a condition of statehood. And in Mormon Church v. United States (1890), the Supreme Court labeled polygamy as “abhorrent to the sentiments and feelings of the civilized world.”
The stigma attached to polygamy continued to distort legal analysis into this century. As recently as 2006, Utah Justice Ronald Nehring began his opinion in a ruling upholding the criminalization of polygamy by lamenting, “No matter how widely known the natural wonders of Utah may become, no matter the extent that our citizens earn acclaim for their achievements, in the public mind Utah will forever be shackled to the practice of polygamy.” Nehring frankly admitted that this hostility “has been present in my consciousness, and I suspect has been a brooding presence . . . in the minds of my colleagues, from the moment we opened the parties’ briefs.” Rather than overcome that prejudice, Nehring not only yielded to it but warned any Utah judge of the peril of being the first to recognize the rights of polygamists: “I have not been alone in speculating what the consequences might be were the highest court in the State of Utah the first in the nation to proclaim that polygamy enjoys constitutional protection.”
Well, it wasn’t. A federal judge in Utah assumed that burden. Gov. Gary Herbert objected to the court making “decisions on social issues.” (He has not yet announced an appeal.) Waddoups, however, was not dictating a decision on a social issue but rather saying that governments could not impose a single version of morality. He limited prosecution under Utah’s anti-polygamy law to cases of bigamy, where someone acquires more than one marriage license — which is an offense more common to monogamous couples, who care about state recognition, than polygamists, who care about spiritual recognition.
Across the country, the era of morality codes is coming to an inglorious end. This year, the Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act barring the federal recognition of same-sex marriage. And this week, the New Mexico Supreme Court and another federal judge in Utah struck down the ban on same-sex marriage in those states — bringing the number to 18 states (plus the District of Columbia) where same-sex couples can marry. Meanwhile, Virginia recently repealed its 1877 cohabitation law and Colorado replealed a criminal adultery law from the 1850s — both relics of a time when states used their criminal codes to force citizens to comply with the religious values of their neighbors.
Most states have wisely turned away from absurd laws criminalizing masturbation and fornication. Obscenity laws have also been curtailed by the Supreme Court in deference to the First Amendment.
Still rightly on the books are laws against bestiality, which involves an obvious lack of consent as well as manifest harm. Likewise, incest bans are based on claims of medical, not moral, harm.
Once any crimes or abuses are stripped away in cases like the Browns’, what remains is religious animus. Yet, polygamy is widely practiced around the world by millions of families and was condoned by every major religion — from Judaism to Christianity to Islam — at one time. While plural families are called polygamists in our popular lexicon, “polygamy” actually refers to a broad array of plural relationships, from polygyny (one husband and multiple wives, like the Browns) to polyandry (a single wife and multiple husbands) to polyamory (couples who reject the exclusivity of sexual relations). The vast majority of these families are based on consenting relations among adults without abusive or criminal histories.
Critics often ignore these other plural relationships (and even polygynists like the Browns) in favor of a stereotype of “compound polygamists,” living in remote walled communities where women appear captive and molestation flourishes. It is Warren Jeffs, not Kody Brown, whom critics want to invoke in debating decriminalization — a sinister figure in a secluded compound where women wear prairie outfits and hairdos from the 19th century.
Obviously, there will always be abusers like Jeffs among polygamists — just as there are abusers among monogamists. However, it is no more persuasive to criminalize all plural relationships because of a small number of abusive individuals than it would be logical to outlaw monogamy based on the convicted spouse- and child-abusers in conventional marriages.
One of the great ironies about the focus on compound polygamists is the circular logic of criminalization. The government first declared polygamists felons and then pointed to their hiding as evidence of their guilt. But decriminalization will allow these families to be plural, open and law-abiding as they reintegrate into society.
In truth, 19th-century Americans were no more moral than we are today. It simply appeared that way with the imposition of official morals, including (as Santorum recalls so fondly) being told whom we could love in our own homes. It is not a single moral voice that is heard today but a chorus of voices. Each speaks to its own values but joins around a common article of faith: the belief that morality is better left to parents than to politicians.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and lead counsel in the “Sister Wives” polygamy case.
Washington Post (Sunday) December 22, 2013
I understand the Constitution just fine, David. For example, I understand that it is a living document as interpreted by the flow of jurisprudence over time. If you have a problem with that, I refer you to . . . the Constitution.
“Article III
Section 1. The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.
Section 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;–to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;–to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;–to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;–to Controversies between two or more States;–between a State and Citizens of another State;–between Citizens of different States;–between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.”
And Federalist No. 78, Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), the Judiciary Act of 1789, Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 171 (1796), Judiciary Act of 1801, the huge volume of cases heard between 1788 and 1803 that exercised judicial review. Judicial review was in fact a popular topic at the Constitutional Convention. The vast majority were for it. As much as a fan as I am of Jefferson, he was not perfect. In fact, his actions attempting to void judicial appointments authorized by the Judiciary Act of 1801 that precipitated Marbury were a shameful low-point in his Presidency. He was trying to unilaterally thwart a lawful act of Congress that was clarifying the functions of the judiciary.
Marbury wasn’t a whole cloth creation and its critics would have you believe. It merely recognized and formalized a practice that had been ongoing in the courts since the ratification and had been well considered before ratification.
You can try to rewrite history or re-litigate Marbury all you like.
It’s a fool’s errand.
The Constitution is a living document.
The courts have the power of judicial review.
But if you think otherwise? Maybe you and Benson can get together and try to sell people on the idea that the courts really have no power of review. See how that works out for you.
Gene H wrote: “I refer you to . . . the Constitution. … And Federalist No. 78, Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), the Judiciary Act of 1789, Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 171 (1796), Judiciary Act of 1801, the huge volume of cases heard between 1788 and 1803 that exercised judicial review. Judicial review was in fact a popular topic at the Constitutional Convention.”
Very strange that you refer to arguments and a judicial case which relied upon an original interpretation of the Constitution to invalidate law passed by Congress. You basically just shot yourself in the foot by confusing the concept of Judicial Review with the concept of the Constitution as a living document. Do you really think that an originalist like Justice Scalia does not believe in Judicial Review? What you proved here is that the Constitution is not a living document that can be reinterpreted by whoever is in power, but rather that it has important meaning which limits the power of Congress.
When our government was just 3 years old, these same arguments were made to attempt to secure funding for pet projects, but soundly rejected by intelligent leaders such as James Madison. Consider his following argument on the House floor about a Cod Fishery Bill and the inapplicability of using the General Welfare clause to secure funding:
“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands; they may a point teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare. The language held in various discussions of this house is a proof that the doctrine in question was never entertained by this body. Arguments, wherever the subject would permit, have constantly been drawn from the peculiar nature of this government, as limited to certain enumerated powers, instead of extending, like other governments, to all cases not particularly excepted.”
http://www.constitution.org/je/je4_cong_deb_12.htm
How obvious it is that Congress has breached these original intentions of our founding fathers. Today, Congress has taken upon themselves education, provision for the poor, and road regulations, issues which James Madison clearly articulates here as being unconstitutional for Congress. The “living Constitution” advocates don’t care about what these engineers of our government were trying to create. As long as they get their wealth and power, they use whatever crazy doctrines they can to get it.
Like I said, your opinion.
However, I didn’t say they were hard to read. I said their logic was sometimes convoluted and contorted to arrive a decision he wanted rather than what sound legal theory would dictate. He regularly engages in outcome determinism. Because like some people here, he sometimes let’s his theories (desires) inform the evidence instead of the evidence informing his theories. I work from evidence to theory. Because that’s how it’s supposed to be done. That’s why even though I disapprove of the ACA on policy grounds, I still know the decision is sound as a matter of logic and legal reasoning. If I engaged in outcome determinism, I’d twist away and attempt to make a legal argument that comes to the conclusion it is unconstitutional so I could get what I want which isn’t the ACA.
I did stipulate that he sometimes gets things right and that he is sometimes brilliant in doing so, but when he really wants something as a matter of political preference? He’ll tie himself into a knot logically speaking to reach the conclusion he wants over where proper application of fundamentals would take him. He’s not stupid, but he is frequently wrong.
That you think he is brilliant?
Well, some people think Carrot Top is brilliant too.
Gene H. – Was not the ADA, determined to be a tax therefore Constitutional. How would the double taxation concept deal with this. I remember that concept being pounded into my brain even going back to elementary school. I don’t know really what it is called but it is reminding me of double jeopardy. The government can prosecute the same crime twice, as long as the penalties are different. OJ Simpson case.
You are entitled to that, David.
Doesn’t mean you are.
Bron,
Sorry, but if you’re looking for shills on the Court, you first need to look at both the wives of Scaila and Thomas and their relationship to the lobbying world.
Again, you are making a political division. I am looking at the quality of their work product.
Thanks for playing though.
David,
I’m pretty sure I’ll take my analysis over yours. That you can’t follow along is your failing. Neither of those cases change the ruling of McCulloch. Under Helvering and Butler, the GWC is still limited by general Constitutionality. That Butler held that Taxing and Spending Clause applies to the GWC for needs deemed appropriate by the Congress not specifically enumerated in the the Constitution doesn’t mean that those acts must not comply with the Constitution otherwise.
Really. Do you just enjoy being wrong?
Gene H wrote: “Neither of those cases change the ruling of McCulloch. Under Helvering and Butler, the GWC is still limited by general Constitutionality. That Butler held that Taxing and Spending Clause applies to the GWC for needs deemed appropriate by the Congress not specifically enumerated in the the Constitution doesn’t mean that those acts must not comply with the Constitution otherwise.”
You really do not understand the Constitution at all. It is quite remarkable.
The Constitution enumerates what rights Congress has. Congress cannot do what the Constitution does not specifically grant it a right to do. You are arguing just the opposite, that Congress can do whatever it wants as long as it does not contradict the Constitution.
In Helvering, which defended the constitutionality of the new Social Security law, it most certainly did do to the General Welfare clause exactly what Madison and Jefferson both said should NOT be done. The Court shifted over the Hamilton viewpoint.
From the Syllabus:
3. Congress may spend money in aid of the “general welfare.”
4. In drawing the line between what is “general” welfare, and what is particular, the determination of Congress must be respected by the courts, unless it be plainly arbitrary.
5. The concept of “general welfare” is not static, but adapts itself to the crises and necessities of the times.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/socsec/spring01/readings/301us619.htm
This completely contradicts both the quote you offered from Jefferson, and the quote of Madison offered by me and Bron.
The phrase “general Welfare” is part of a single long sentence with a lot of semi-colons. Both Madison and Jefferson say that the phrase only pertains to the enumerations that follow it in the sentence. The SCOTUS in these two cases less than 100 years ago changed that understanding, paving the way for Congress to create laws which violate the expressed text of the Constitution of the United States. Only through vague wranglings of the Constitution being a “living document” (what is that, some kind of magic or voodoo or religious thing?) can such misconstructions occur. Read Madison for the proof.
Hey David2527 – So when the Judiciary ruled that Government, specifically the IRS and it’s Agency, the Treasury, in We The People vs US, that they did not have to answer specific questions pertaining to taxation, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the Case, as specified under Article 1, the Right to Redress of Grievances, it’s because the Judiciary has the “right” to modify the living Constitution based upon and interpreted by the flow of jurisprudence over time? That is what Gene H. said.
Gene H. doesn’t think the judicial branch is very powerful. I see it very differently. Each abrogation of the Constitution, the Judiciary allows to occur, usurps the rights of the Citizens. Surely, Congress can try to legislate a new law, but eventually the law will be challenged and the Judiciary will once against be giving the task of determining it’s constitutionality. To me that is the ultimate power and why I believe Jefferson was dissatisfied with the Constitution. It would be interesting to see just how many Solicitors and Attorneys were involved in our founding documents since they seem to be attracted to power.
I see it, as the enforcement of the law is actually more important than the law itself. If government usurps a right and the judiciary fails to stop them through their enforcement, the right is defeated. If there is a law and it isn’t enforced, the law is basically moot.
The abrogation of the Right to Redress of Grievances is a perfect example. Thirteen individuals, have nullified the ability of the Citizens to obtain Redress of Grievances. The Citizens are no longer even allowed to have our questions answered anymore by those who administer and enforce our laws. The ruling was made by one Judge, three Judges heard the Appeal and did not overturn and the 9 member SCOTUS refused to hear it.
Gene H:
Shill: to act as a spokesperson or promoter
I am right, I said nothing about their logic or legal ability. I am sure it is good for their way of looking at things.
Bron: I think Congress and the Presidents (including Clinton) have long been captured by money interests. I also think they aren’t stupid, or at least they are told how to vote and what to pass by people that aren’t stupid.
I presume what is in the law is what the rich WANT in the law. That is how they got Clinton to repeal Glass-Steagal; it is what the banks wanted. Now we may have a Volcker rule, and I haven’t got the time (or perhaps the legal expertise) to read it, but I find cynicism in such cases is often the right approach, I presume it will have holes in it large enough for trucks full of money to pass unimpeded.
The politicians will not pass a law that their corporate campaign donors do not want passed, and although the corporations can be at war, I don’t think they will approve a law that truly constrains anything they want to do.
IMO, there was no failure of oversight, the rule you quote was not a mistake. The corporate overlords do not make mistakes dealing with billions of dollars. They hire very smart people, literally the best money can buy.
Tony C wrote: “The politicians will not pass a law that their corporate campaign donors do not want passed, and although the corporations can be at war, I don’t think they will approve a law that truly constrains anything they want to do.”
Something just doesn’t pass the smell test here. Most government laws curb corporate liberty. For example, laws like you can’t pollute the environment. Do you really believe the corporations want these EPA laws made that cost them more money?
Skip/DavidM:
you might find this essay interesting:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/12/31/obama-to-americans-you-dont-deserve-to-be-free/
“The radical, uncompromised, laissez-faire capitalism that Obama pretends was in place in 2008 is exactly what morality demands. Because, as Ayn Rand wrote in 1961: “No man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others. . . . To claim the right to initiate the use of physical force against another man–the right to compel his agreement by the threat of physical destruction–is to evict oneself automatically from the realm of rights, of morality and of the intellect.”
Obama and his fellow statists have indeed evicted themselves from that realm.”
Bron, that Forbes article was very good and it points out, as we have seen on this thread, that you can fool most of the people most of the time. Isn’t democracy a wonderful thing. Knowing that at sometime in the history of a nation, the Citizens will once against be placed into civil or social unrest and economic deprivation, by the ruling oligarchy, as the inherent contraindication of the system, finally succumb to the effects of the excesses of the legalization of the initiation of force and coercion. Economists call it the economic cycle, but I think it should be called the political cycle. Let’s blame it on the free market, even those that hasn’t existed since the beginning of the 20th century.
And when I point out to the average person, that our money since 1933, is no longer even free market derived, they look at me with confusing.
“regulate the value there of and of foreign coin” mean???? lol, actually pretty sad.
Seriously, reading some of Scalia’s opinions is like watching a circus contortionist.
Gene H wrote: “Seriously, reading some of Scalia’s opinions is like watching a circus contortionist.”
That only happens to those whose world view is out of sync with reality. Scalia reads rather easily and smoothly for me. He is nearly always completely brilliant.
See Bron, your division is purely political. Mine is based on their work product. I have no great love for either Sotomayor or Kagan’s work as legal scholars. That I find the politics of the Gang of Five (and particularly Scalia) repugnant is simply gravy on top of the entree that is their questionable legal scholarship. To be clear: this is the worst SCOTUS in history. However, it isn’t because of the quality of the logic and legal reasoning of Ginsberg and Breyer.
David,
What I said was quite clear to anyone who understands political science correctly.
DavidM:
“I put Thomas WAY AHEAD of Ginsberg and Breyer.”
Those 2 are shills along with Sotomajor and Kagan.
Bron,
You expect perfection from complex systems. You’ll never get it. At least we have mechanisms to correct error. But Congress needs to use them when the courts fail instead of capitulating to their money masters who wanted the bad decisions to begin with (or are simply taking advantage of fortuitously poor legal reasoning). Citizens United and Buckley? Could be gone in six months if Congress got of their fat bribed lazy asses and decided to work in the best interests of everyone instead of just the best interests of their largest campaign contributors.
So yeah. You were talking about Congress. You just didn’t realize it.
The people are in the process of taking care of the congress.
When I said “What has happened in the last 125 years is a monkey fuk of our Constitution by little minds with an agenda of tyranny.”
Again, David, you’re entitled to your opinion.
You’re entitled to be completely wrong too.
Gene H wrote: “You’re entitled to be completely wrong too.”
I am also entitled to be partially right or completely right!
Thanks for your vote of confidence.
Gene H:
I wasnt talking about the congress but about the stupid, anti-liberty decisions by the courts.
Tony C:
“You probably know that executive compensation has skyrocketed over the past 20 years. In 1991, the average CEO took in $2.6 million in total compensation. By 2011, that number had risen to $9 million. What you probably don’t know is that this rise occurred in spite of changes in the tax code meant to stop it.
In 1993, Bill Clinton signed into law his first budget, which created section 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code. The provision stated that companies could only deduct the first $1 million of compensation for their top five (later top four after changes by Bush’s SEC) executives from their corporate taxes. The idea was to discourage companies from paying in excess of $1 million, as any additional compensation would be taxed. So why didn’t it work?
According to a new paper from Temple University’s Steven Balsam published by the Economic Policy Institute, the big flaw in 162(m) was its broad exemption of “performance-based” pay. The $1 million cap only applied to traditional salaries, bonuses and grants of company stock. Stock options (that is, stock grants that take time to vest and are meant to provide a performance incentive to workers) and other performance incentives are considered performance-based pay and are deductible even in excess of $1 million. So, unsurprisingly, businesses starting paying executives more in the form of stock options, such that fully 55 percent of deductible executive pay was “performance pay” between 2007 and 2010.
Interestingly, this increase didn’t come at the expense of traditional compensation. Balsam found that non-deductible executive pay actually increased between 2007 and 2010, in spite of both the tax code limitation and the recession. As he put it, “seemingly tax-sophisticated corporations seem not to care about the restrictions on deductions.” The people who should care, he argues, are taxpayers. While section 162(m) hasn’t cut down on executive pay at all, it has reduced tax revenue by pushing corporations to reduce profits to pay their executives, which in turn reduces the amount of profits subject to the corporate income tax. He estimates that the rule lost at least $7 billion in 2010 alone and that more than half of that figure is due to the exemption of performance-based pay.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/16/bill-clinton-tried-to-limit-executive-pay-heres-why-it-didnt-work/
This is what happens when you have government fuking with markets.
Bron,
If you haven’t figured out how the “representative” part of “representative democracy” works by now? Sorry for you.
“As explained by Jame Madison and Thomas Jefferson through posts made in this thread, the General Welfare Clause does not stand alone.”
Which is exactly what the Court in McCulloch said, David.
You’d know that if you could understand what you read. But you don’t. So you didn’t.
Seriously, when you play at understanding the law? All you do is make a fool of yourself by doing stuff like that: reading something and then thinking it means the exact opposite.
Madison thought the GWC should have limits. It does have limits according to McCulloch. The GWC is limited by the rest of the Constitution.
Duh.
Gene H wrote: “Madison thought the GWC should have limits. It does have limits according to McCulloch. The GWC is limited by the rest of the Constitution.”
McCulloch v. Maryland was in 1819. I was talking about more than a hundred years later in “United States v. Butler” and “Helvering v. Davis.” Please try to keep up. It’s like you start arguing one point of view, then switch your view in light of reading evidence from early years in this country, but now you have forgotten what you originally argued for. You are all over the place. The only thing you are consistent in is denigrating the people you love to hate.