Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on the rising concern over compelled speech on our campuses and our streets.
Here is the column:
“Silence is violence” has everything that you want in a slogan: Alliteration. Brevity. Simplicity. It also can be chilling for some in the academic and free-speech communities.
On one level, it conveys a powerful message that people of good faith should not remain silent about great injustices. However, it can have a more menacing meaning to “prove the negative” – demanding that people prove they are not racist.
In a prior column, I warned of the thin line between speech codes and speech commands, as people move from compelling silence to compelling speech: “Once all the offending statues are down, and all the offending professors are culled, the appetite for collective suppression will become a demand for collective expression.”
The line between punishing speech and compelling speech is easily crossed when free speech itself is viewed as a threat. It is not just the many cases of journalists, academics and others fired for expressing dissenting views. Even expressing support in the wrong way can be a terminal offense, like declaring “all lives matter” rather than “Black Lives Matter,” as in the firing of University of Massachusetts-Lowell Dean of Nursing Leslie Neal-Boylan or Vermont principal Tiffany Riley. While most of us support Black Lives Matter, it has become an official position of many schools — and variations are not tolerated. The concern is not only the establishment of orthodox values but the forced recitation of those values.
We are now seeing that fear realized.
This week, a mob surrounded diners outside several Washington restaurants, shouting “White silence is violence!” and demanding that diners raise a fist to support Black Lives Matter. Various diners dutifully complied as protesters screamed inches from their faces. One did not — Lauren Victor, who later said she has marched in protests for weeks but refused to be bullied. The mob surrounded her, and Washington Post reporter Fredrick Kunkle identified a freelance journalist as one of the people yelling at Victor and demanding: “What was in you, you couldn’t do this?”
It is the very mantra of orthodoxy: Failing to utter certain words, prayers or pledges is deemed a confession of complicity or guilt.
That demand for public affirmation was on display again Thursday when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and his wife were threatened by a mob after leaving the final event of the Republican National Convention. The couple was ordered to “Say Her Name,” referring to Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician shot by police in Louisville, Ky. Notably, some media suggested the mob did not know who Paul was; they just demanded that he say the name if he wanted to pass.
Forced speech can occur in a variety of direct and indirect ways. The University of Southern Maine’s president, Glenn Cummings, proclaimed “we must never tire of declaring that Black Lives Matter” and asked students and faculty to add their names to a public anti-racism pledge. After objections, the school said it would keep the list non-public. The concern was that some faculty and students may not support Black Lives Matters as an organization, or have other disagreements with the pledge — yet, failure to be on the list would indicate they are racist, or at least not sufficiently anti-racist.
The University of California issued a “guidance document” requiring students to reject racism, sexism, xenophobia and all hateful or intolerant speech, including a mandate that students stop others from referring to the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus.” While the use of those terms is controversial, it also is heavily laden with political meaning for people on both sides of the debate over the pandemic.
Syracuse University moved more directly not just to bar but to require some forms of speech. Professor Keith Alford, the university’s diversity and inclusion officer, declared students would be punished for simply witnessing “bias-motivated” incidents and “acts of hate.” That was a response to a student group’s demand for expulsion of “individuals who witnessed the event or were present, but did not take part.”
The transition from speech codes to commands is based on the same notion of “speech as harm.” Just as speech is deemed harmful (and thus subject to regulation), silence is now deemed harmful. UC Berkeley Law Professor Savala Trepczynski, executive director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, wrote that “White silence is incredibly powerful … It’s not neutral. It acts like a weapon.” It is certainly not unreasonable to call out others for not supporting important causes. Indeed, I have criticized faculty for remaining silent as colleagues were attacked or fired for voicing dissent about systemic racism, police abuse or other subjects. However, once both speech and silence are deemed as equally harmful, individuals are subject to public demonstrations of faith and fealty.
Even being insufficiently alert can result in demands for termination. Nearly 2,000 people signed a petition to fire Marymount Manhattan theater arts associate professor Patricia Simon after she appeared to fall asleep briefly during an anti-racist meeting held on Zoom. Student Caitlin Gagnon started a petition which accused Simon of “ignoring … racist and sizeist actions and words of the vocal coaches under her jurisdiction.” The message seems clear: You cannot be woke if you are not awake.
The concern over speech codes becoming speech commands would have been viewed as utterly absurd just a few years ago. Now, even calls for civility in dialogue have been denounced as racist dog whistles. Trinity College professor Johnny Williams condemned those who call for civility as “uphold[ing] white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalist power.” When MSNBC host Joe Scarborough criticized those confronting people at restaurants and called for civility, University of Mississippi Professor James Thomas denounced civility and declared: “Don’t just interrupt a senator’s meal, y’all. Put your whole damn fingers in their salads.”
It is the ultimate expression of entitlement: People either must conform to your values or face public condemnation and threats. Your salad is no more inviolate than your speech. In a world where silence is violence and civility is complicity, there is little room for true free speech.
(music)
We don’t need no education!
We don’t need no thought control!
All in all it’s just another dick Cheney in the road!
“Success breeds success.”
– Mia Hamm
__________
Bleeding heart liberalism and corresponding failure breed failure.
Antithetical, anti-American and unconstitutional affirmative action, quotas, alms and public assistance constitute communist social engineering and redistribution of wealth which confiscate success from superior entities and fallaciously provide an empowering and false sense of security to inferior entities who have lost the battle of history.
Contrived, fabricated and ersatz success will be their downfall; their inadequacies revealed.
Empathy and charity are religious and moral concerns and exist in separation from the state.
Covetousness and deviancy are not virtues or concerns of rational constitutional governance.
Were that the parasitic entities compelled to persist of their own devices, they would be commensurately deferential and obsequious; achieving their own distinct form of success.
That which is axiomatic is natural, factual and righteous as:
“Survival of the fittest.”
– Herbert Spencer
Coddling, Acquiescing, Affirmative Action and Generational Welfare Teach All the Wrong Lessons.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Don’t Feed The Bears
“A Fed Bear is a Dead Bear”
“Keeping areas free…and letting bears find natural foods is in everyone’s best interest. If you see a bear,…enjoy the sighting,…be sure to not offer it any food.”
“When bears lose their fear of humans, they could approach people in search of food or may defend the food sources or territory they associate with people, which can make them dangerous.”
“When this happens, the bear cannot be relocated and has to be destroyed. A fed bear is a dead bear.”
– Missouri Department of Conservation
TREASON
Never has there been a more absurd statement regarding the Constitution. The Constitution is not “optional.” American rights and freedoms are not qualified by the Constitution are are, therefore, absolute and inviolable. Americans are the new Sovereign and government is the subject of that Sovereign. Americans are free, not subservient subjects. Fascism from militant minorities is not the solution. Fascism is the problem – it is illegal and unconstitutional. Americans may discriminate and be as racist as they choose to be (presumably, parents, pastors and priests exhort against such behavior). Were it true that the Constitution precludes freedom of speech, thought, opinion and discrimination regarding any and all subjects, including that of race, the American Founders would have been compelled to throw themselves in prison; or worse. It doesn’t.
Americans enjoy freedom of speech, thought, belief, religion, opinion, discrimination, assembly, disassembly, propagation, press, privacy and every other conceivable, God-given and natural right, freedom, privilege and immunity per the Constitution and Bill of Rights, with emphasis on the 9th Amendment. Government exists to facilitate freedom through the provision of security and infrastructure – government must impose statutes and laws precluding bodily injury and property damage. The Constitution does not preclude or deny opinion. States cannot deny constitutional rights. Government cannot “claim or exercise dominion over private property.”
“You can’t handle the truth.”
– Colonel Jessup
You communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs) can’t grasp the scope and breadth of American freedom.
Under the Constitution,
people must adapt to the outcomes of freedom.
Freedom does not adapt to people; dictatorship does.
___________________________________________
1st Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
_______________________________________________
9th Amendment
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Obamagate:
Watergate on steroids with infinity as an exponent.
“Authoritarian Nightmare”: John Dean Helped Bring Down Nixon over Watergate. He Says Trump Is Worse
The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer:
https://theauthoritarians.org/Downloads/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
I got a chuckle out of the Australian academic who referred to Altemeyer as ‘the clown prince of political psychology’. His thesis back in 1996 was flagrantly silly, but it didn’t keep him from getting published by a university press
You trot out that line whenever Altemeyer’s name is mentioned. What follows is a response to one of your comments — back when you called yourself “Teaching Spastics to Dance.”
https://jonathanturley.org/2016/10/03/duterte-human-rights-is-the-antithesis-of-government/comment-page-2/#comment-1554504
“Ken Rogers says:October 3, 2016 at 9:25 PM
@Teaching Spastics to Dance, October 3, 2016 at 6:34 pm
“The Canadian psychologist Dr. Robert Altemeyer
“Called by one Australian social psychologist, ‘The Clown Prince of political psychology’.”
That’s awfully interesting. Did he also say something about your being the Clown Prince of Truculent Trolls? 🙂”
And who is “the Australian academic” to whom you’re referring, oh absurd one.
Many university press publications are memoirs of one sort of the other or the sort of coffee-table book heavy on pretty pictures and light on scholarship. That’s not necessarily bad – John Drury Clark’s Ignition! (Rutgers) is at the once a valuable historical resource (much of the history of liquid rocket fuel chemistry being undocumented at the time apart from Clark’s book, so Ignition!would have been a thinner book had it not been for Clark’s memory and network of retired colleagues), a minor literary classic and a valuable reminder of George Santayana’s “Those who forget history are damned to repeat it” (which some who toiled in the gardens of liquid rocket fuel chemistry did, repeating egregious technical errors at great expense to those who paid the bills).
But the main advantage of university presses is they can tap their parent institutions for funds in lean times, so the Almighty Dollar doesn’t dictate everythingthey print.
“Thomas Drake
@Thomas_Drake1
·
Aug 30
New book by @JohnWDean must read. My civic awakening took place as young teenager growing up w/ #Watergate & hearing him testify about cancer on Presidency w/ Nixon. We now face a date w/ fate of the nation in our hands as We the People. Stakes REALLY high…”
https://twitter.com/JohnWDean/status/1298635401238687745
See various parties not named John Dean on his role in the Watergate scandal. He contended in his memoir that he’d abjured any involvement in Gordon Liddy’s Operation Gemstone scheme in January 1972 and was on vacation when Liddy’s crew was arrested at the Watergate. He plea bargained for a slap on the wrist for activities obstructing justice. He was quite specific in his memoir that neither he nor Charles Colson knew why Liddy’s crew had burgled the Watergate and the Jeb Magruder wouldn’t tell them anything. Well, Gordon Liddy (partially corroborated by others) has said that prior to 17 June 1972, Dean had been pestering them to get hold of compromising information about one Maureen Biener, whom Dean was fixing to marry. They’d burgled the place as a favor to Dean. Liddy’s been telling the world for decades that Dean’s been lying his tuchus off all this time.
Given that the organs of the security state were willing to spy on the political opposition for the benefit of the Democratic Party, willing to manufacture criminal charges against Gen. Flynn at Obama’s behest, and that the IRS was willing to obstruct the activities of TEA party operations for the benefit of the Democratic Party (activities of which sort they refused to do for Richard Nixon), I don’t want to ever hear one more word about Watergate. Tool.
“This is absurd x ?” wrote: “I don’t want to ever hear one more word about Watergate. Tool.”
Said like the perfect little authoritarian.
All items of TIA’s ignorant version of history in the last paragraph never happened and independent sources have verified it..
Thomas Drake’s tweet about Dean’s book:
https://twitter.com/Thomas_Drake1/status/1300008773319307265
Read Drake’s speech from many years ago:
“What Country Do We Want to Keep?
https://consortiumnews.com/2011/11/27/what-country-do-we-want-to-keep/
Anonymous;
When admitted liar and convicted felon John Dean is your paradigm, you really need a vacation — from your bong.
Take it up with Thomas Drake, mespblo:
https://twitter.com/Thomas_Drake1/status/1300008773319307265
“Thomas Drake
@Thomas_Drake1
New book by @JohnWDean must read. My civic awakening took place as young teenager growing up w/ #Watergate & hearing him testify about cancer on Presidency w/ Nixon. We now face a date w/ fate of the nation in our hands as We the People. Stakes REALLY high…”
https://consortiumnews.com/2011/11/27/what-country-do-we-want-to-keep/
falsus in unus falsus in omnibus
John Dean rat snitch and loser
The Obama Coup D’etat in America is the most egregious abuse of power and the most prodigious scandal in American political history.
The co-conspirators are:
Kevin Clinesmith, Bill Taylor, Eric Ciaramella, Rosenstein, Mueller/Team, Andrew Weissmann,
James Comey, Christopher Wray, McCabe, Strozk, Page, Laycock, Kadzic,
Sally Yates, James Baker, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Priestap, Kortan, Campbell,
Sir Richard Dearlove, Christopher Steele, Simpson, Joseph Mifsud,
Alexander Downer, Stefan “The Walrus” Halper, Azra Turk, Kerry, Hillary,
Huma, Mills, Brennan, Gina Haspel, Clapper, Lerner, Farkas, Power, Lynch,
Rice, Jarrett, Holder, Brazile, Sessions (patsy), Nadler, Schiff, Pelosi, Obama,
Joe Biden, James E. Boasberg et al.
Your severe, simplistic, and repetitive, “Orange man bad” syndrome is duly noted.
In other news, John Dean wants to sell books to people with Orange man bad syndrome, like you.
BTW, Dean only helped to bring Nixon down in order to save his own ass. Which is why he only served four months in prison for his role in Watergate.
Reportedly Peter Strzok is now doing the same thing at the behest of John Durham. So you’ve got that to look forward to in the near future.
Try to find a new Pony, and some new tricks.
Another post from Rhodes where his imaginings about the future – Trump will win, Durham’s gonna have Biden frog marched to court any day now – double as both his security blanket and his also imagined winning argument.
Turley’s Column Describes A Dangerously Divided Country
If America Was A Major Corporation, This Would Be Time To Replace The CEO
This column describes an America none of us would have recognized before 2017. These levels of polarization are ‘not’ sustainable. A change of leadership, at the top, would seem like a no-brainer at this point. Only a blithering idiot would say we need 4 more years of this.
“Only a blithering idiot would say we need 4 more years of this.”
I hate to have to be the one to break it down for you like this. But the US is not a major corporation, and the president is not responsible for every stupid thing that US citizens might happen to say during his tenure. Turley’s column, which you appear not to have read, glanced at, or considered it’s context, goes to great lengths to indicate that this is a phenomenon that began on college campuses and has begun to infect society at large. I encourage you to go back and read the column, and note who the victims of these speech codes are and who are the one’s wielding them like weapons. It’s not the president and his partisans who are to blame for this. The disgusting PC culture began to metastisize on Obama’s watch.
“I hate to have to be the one to break it down for you like this. But the US is not a major corporation, and the president is not responsible for every stupid thing that US citizens might happen to say during his tenure.”
LOL, exactly.
Jay, this president is saying more stupid things than anyone else.
I agree that the president has said some intemperate things, whether he has compiled a greater number than other people is a question I’ll leave to people who have the time and energy to compile such statistics. Nevertheless, this particular post was about political correct speech codes and the president wisely refuses to be constrained by those, whatever you or I may think about the other things he says.
Here you go Jay, just trying to hwlp out:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/
By the way, this does not yet include yesterday’s whopper about how he brought National Guard to Kenosha (actually the Democratic Governor of Wisconsin did that).
“If America Was A Major Corporation, This Would Be Time To Replace The CEO”
Do you actually think that a “Major Corporation” would replace the current CEO, with a new CEO, that has Dementia?!
Have you been drinking lots of Pelosi/DNC flavored Kool-aid? Because only a blithering idiot would come to that conclusion.
Love trump’s mini stroke admission yesterday!
Plus i think it’s today MELANIA AND ME comes out. Couldn’t be more psyched to see the most detailed account yet of how the first thing the trump administration (after popping off about draining the swamp) did was to steal $80 million from its inauguration fund. And how there are 3 separate investigations going on over it.
i know you’re just as psyched to read it, Rhodesy.
How is that sniffing of Raid working for ya, Bug? Maybe it’s time you get your hair done in San Francisco like your lying POS 80 year old part-time NAPA resident, Nancy “Let them eat Ice Cream” Pee-low-see
Aha…, so you’re curious about the details of how floptop ripped off his inauguration fund too! I knew it
I’m not a Witch. Send them to the Gallow, execute them their Witches. How far we’ve come yet not far at all. Narrow minded children have no clue from where they come. Piss poor education on display!
The Department of Education recently gave a grant of $3.1 million for ‘student support’. Apparently there are still Obama termites in that agency. This needs to be looked into. Evergreen is notorious for its day without white people when whites were ordered off campus and black students roamed about with clubs in hand. This is plainly and simply a corrupt, racist institution that should be driven out of operation, not supported by the federal government.
The simplest way to counteract the termites in the Department of Education is to break it up. Assign the statistical collection and assessments to the Labor Department, incorporate a regulatory agency (free standing or an affiliate of the Federal Trade Commission) to supervise vendor-consumer relations in higher education (including disclosure rules), incorporate a resolutions agency to wind-down the general run of student grants and loans programs), and shut the rest of the department down, terminating all of its programs. There will be no federal grants from that quarter.
Absurd: the biggest termite at Education is Betsy DeVos who attempted to distribute pandemic relief funds to private schools in violation of wording that guided those funds. She’s now been overruled by Federal courts.
What we really need to rectify “higher education” and its deep abuses and harms to our society, is betsy’s younger brother Eric Prince. He may have better ideas of what to do.
Maybe one day he will step up to the plate and get it done
Absurd: the biggest termite at Education
She’s over the target. The federal courts have no credibility.
The American version of Mao’s Red Guard have escalated their assaults with the tacit and not so tacit approval of the Dumocratic Party. These tactics will re-elect Donal Trump. Congrats. Seems like Totalitarian Karma.
I’ve often wondered how things like the Salem Witch Trials and the Inquisition could have possibly happened.
This is how.
I still don’t understand the mentality, but here it is, developing right before our eyes.
h
the inquisition was really about avoiding mob rule; people had to go before the inquisition if they were accused of heresy. saints teresa of avila and john of the cross went before the inquisition, as did many conversos, who were accused of not actually converting. in the 350 yrs the inquisition was around, only about 300 people were put to death of all those who appeared before the inquisition.
It’s called “moral panic.” McCarthyism and the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic of the ’80’s and ’90’s are other examples. These things are matters of faith and are not susceptible be being cured by facts or logic. The “Triggernometry” podcast episode featuring the young scholar and writer Coleman Hughes should be required viewing for anyone claiming to have an interest in the subject.
The number of unarmed black men killed by police in 2019 is between 9 and 14, depending on who’s doing the counting. If you take out the number who were fleeing from police or resisting arrest the number goes down to 2. Hardly genocidal, and far less than the 7000 or so that die in black-on-black violence each year; less also than the number of innocent victims of Antifa and BLM violence that has flared up since the George Floyd fentanyl overdose.
Bottom line: an unarmed, law-abiding black man is more likely to be killed by bees than he is by cops in the US. This conclusion should be obvious to any rational person who can be bothered to consider the evidence. But moral panics are for the ignorant and the irrational.
about satanic ritual abuse, maybe there were some flawed prosecutions ,but make no mistake child abuse is and always has been a plague and worthy of constant vigilance & prosecution
about McCarthyism, there were plenty of communist agents around at the time, these were not phantoms.
there was a dimension of that which was anti-Russian paranoia– which was and still is a problem
small things and excuse me quibbling. excellent point Jay nonetheless
And to think all of those dictatorial manifestos are being paid for by the US Taxpayers.
I’ve always respected Dr. T and am glad he is trying to shine light on these issues.. And for years, I have tried to speak logically as he does about the impending trajectory the left has set us on. But now that the future so many of us predicted, driven by the orthodoxy and intolerance of the Left, Liberals, and Democrats has come to roost. Too many smart people acquiesced to the small progressive lies and now we have the greatest one of all foisted upon us. Democrats (yes – that’s the banner this insanity lies under) are for the destruction of the US and for the destruction of civil society. Democrats (yes them again) want to tear down all that the good people of the US love. Democrats need to pay a significant price. We knew where this was heading. It is time to denounce the democrats that have brought us to this.
SBG, correction. I’m a life long Democrat and I don;t want any of that to happen and neither does our Presidential candidate, nor is any of it in our platform (you don’t have a platform this year, so it’s whatever Trump pulls from his a.s that you support).
I don;t want any of that to happen and neither does our Presidential candidate,
What your presidential candidate wants is a mid-afternoon snack and a nap.
“SBG, correction. I’m a life long Democrat and I don;t want any of that to happen and neither does our Presidential candidate, nor is any of it in our platform (you don’t have a platform this year, so it’s whatever Trump pulls from his a.s that you support).”
You have really not been paying attention. I am, or was, also a lifelong democrat. But no more. The insane Kavanaugh witch hunt was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me, for others, it was the impeachment debacle, or the riots, or etc., etc., etc.. The democratic party has just gone clean off the rails, and has lost it’s soul. They’ve nominated a senile rapist to be the president, because, get this, he’s more electable than any of the other nimrods who were running. The poor guy can’t even keep up with a teleprompter any more.
The republican party is the big tent now.
It was a long while ago, back when Bush I and II, were primarily concerned with wrapping themselves in the flag, Jesse Jackson or some similarly situated democrat said that on the question of patriotism, between democrats and republicans, it was a tie. And back then, he was right. But no more, it’s not that democrats hate trump so much, it’s that they hate the US. I’ve been a lifelong democrat and I don’t like trump. But I tell you this, I’d walk barefoot over ten miles of broken glass to vote for the man right now.
Meanwhile, the only judges to vote to uphold the panel’s decision on the Flynn ruling were the 2 in the panel who voted for Flynn.
“A federal judge can scrutinize the Justice Department’s decision to drop the criminal case against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled Monday, allowing the legal saga to continue.
The divided decision from the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit gives U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan the go ahead to question prosecutors’ unusual move to dismiss Flynn’s case ahead of sentencing. The retired general twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts before Trump took office in 2017.
In an 8-to-2 ruling, the court denied Flynn’s request, backed by the Justice Department, to shutdown Sullivan’s planned review and appointment of a retired federal judge to argue against the government’s position…..”
WaPo, 15 minutes ago
Well Mr Flynn will continue his battle for justice and this is today now just one of a hundred important headlines.
We will see how it all turns out in the end. I sure hope if the government ever brings and drops a case against me, the judge does the NORMAL THING and approves the dismissal
For now Sullivan is running a blatantly biased show trial, and a funny looking ridiculous one that doesn’t even have a prosecutor pushing it. When have we ever seen this kind of travesty?
I would give 3:2 odds Flynn will see a dismissal after the Sullivan shenanigans run their course.
For now you have a moment of “I told you so” to enjoy. But it will not be the final word. Good luck to whomever will pretend to be the prosecutor now.
Kurtz, if you have already pled guilty twice and your case is dropped by the AG because you’re a crony of the President, no part of it will be “normal”.
He was coerced. The habitual bad habits of DOJ in how they prosecute cases and bully defendants day after day, finally bites them in the rear.
DOJ regularly intimidates defendants by threatening to lock up their relatives on bogus charges. This is a bipartisan bad habit
We can try and tell the defendants to not worry about it, but they do. Finally, they got caught doing this to Flynn and he’s outed them for it. Scoundrels!
Mr. Kurtz, Flynn himself attested before the court under penalty of perjury that he was not coerced. He admitted to the judge himself that he wasn’t so that little theory is out the window.
Court of Appeals ruled against Flynn. I haven’t read their opinion, 60 pages, but assume that it is the usual legal rubbish put out by Obama judges. Might change my mind when I read it, but I doubt it. The issues were clear enough that it took 60 pages to hide them.
The federal judiciary has become a public disgrace.
No, what it was is the fact that the DOJ had no rational defense of why they thought dismissing the charges was justified. Judge Sullivan was correct all along. Turley has been strangely silent about this lately.
The judge is not supposed to be a prosecutor. When prosecution and defense call it quits there is no controversy before the court, no case, and the judge can go to chambers and eat his bucket of chicken for lunch undisturbed by arguments he doesn’t understand.
“The extraordinary legal battle has raised unsettled questions about the power of the courts to check the executive branch. Federal rules require prosecutors to get permission from the presiding judge — or “leave of court” — to drop charges against a criminal defendant. Legal experts and former judges, however, disagree about the limits of Sullivan’s authority, and in practice, judges typically defer to prosecutors.
But there is nothing typical about this case…..”
We agree there is nothing typical about Sullivan’s handling of Flynn’s case. Nor the FBI outrage that lead to it in the first place.
Let Sullivan scratch this scab of an aborted prosecution, but don’t be surprised if you don’t like the smell of the pus which oozes out on review.
Young, the judge is well within his right to determine why they drop the charges before making a ruling. Especially after Flynn pleaded guilty twice. The court of appeals just asserted that judge Sullivan has that right. The DOJ will have to explain in detail why it is dropping the charges. After that Sullivan can arrive at his decision whether or not to sentence Flynn or dismiss his case. Like the judges asked. What’s the government so worried about what Sullivan will find? It may turn out Barr did Trump a favor or not. Who knows. Now Sullivan and everyone else can find out.
Further litigation is an oppressive burden and punishment meted out to an innocent defendant.
“Further litigation is an oppressive burden and punishment meted out to an innocent defendant.“
He’s not innocent, he’s already plead guilty twice. Punishment is meted out to the guilty.
pled guilty because they threatened his son. pled guilty because they changed the 302s; at first they said he hadn’t lied, then changed the 302 to say he had lied-never produced the original 302 or other exculpatory evidence.
NaN, Flynn attested under penalty of perjury that he was not coerced in any way. That excuse no longer holds water.
Just like all those Old Bolsheviks who pled guilty when put on trial during the years of Stalin’s purges.
Exactly… and as you say the 97% conviction rates.
Well the PRC still has the feds beat, since they are a little over 99% still.
kind of makes you wonder, what went wrong in the ones where they didn’t get a conviction, however few!
Young, the judge is well within his right to determine why they drop the charges before making a ruling.
It’s a ministerial function. He isn’t.
He is well within his power to inquire about the reasoning, especially when Flynn already pleaded guilty twice under penalty of perjury. He either perjured himself or he’s guilty. That question needs to be addressed before the judge can decide whether to dismiss or sentence Flynn.
If, after being coerced by the DOJ into the first pleas, Flynn perjured himself–
then so did the other ten thousand or so prisoners who’ve plead guilty and sworn in colloquies that nobody coerced them
DOJ coercion of criminal defendants is notorious and it used to be liberals were troubled by such things. Now, liberals are guys like Turley and they have been run out of the Democrat leadership positions entirely, and the only time frauds like the ACLU raise the specter of such a problem is when it suits the DNC agenda
I had a famed criminal defense lawyer for a professor in law school. I won’t say his name, he would not want to be associated with my voice as a Trumper,. But he really gave us an earful one day about how the DOJ coerces people left and right in their pleas.
Also I have actually been to some sentencings in federal court, where i had a dog in the game. Now I am a civil lawyer not a criminal defense guy but some things have dragged me in nonetheless. The sentencing colloquys seemed so well organized and down pat. Kind of like a drama with lines they all knew well.
Pretty impressive if you were ignorant of what the background was, but iif you knew went into it behind the scenes, um, well, not so pretty then.
Overall I think the AUSAs in my neck of the woods are pretty well ethical, but they all have a lot of pressure to deliver the results and often the methods are precisely the sort of thing they don’t want people to know how it works. This is why they have these colloquies with everybody swearing up and down there was no coercion when everybody knows darn well in certain instances, that there was.
The bottom line is when you are coerced, the colloquy does not really provide a viable potential avenue for a future prosecution. Wjy? No jury will convict. Show me ONE case where a perjury charge was even brought based on a sentencing colloquy like this. No, no jury would convict Flynn of perjury when his family has been threatened with bogus charges. everybody knows that. He will never be charged with perjury for some bogus colloquy answers and when this farce runs its course he will be clear of the charges. That will be the delayed outcome but it will be the outcome. Watch for it.
The more you clever chaps talk about this case, the less clever you seem
PS. Springs to mind, another memorable case of a totally screwed up plea process. Totally different than Flynn but it shows how messy things can get and the unexpected long term consequences of judicial incompetence. James Earl Ray. hey guys, don’t look to hard it it, your brain may spring a leak you can’t plug with manure.
You don’t want to know how the sausage is made, do you Mr Kurtz?
EXACTLY!!!!! i even thought of this. we’re on same wavelength
Mr. Kurtz, Flynn attested under penalty of perjury before Sullivan himself that he was not coerced. This is a military man who was trained to recognize coercion. He freely stated he was not coerced. That silly theory is no longer valid.
97% conviction rates in the federal courts don’t just drop out of the sky.
If the DOJ does explain in detail why they are dropping the case the Democrats won’t like it one bit. This might be an instance for wishing for a crap sandwich and getting it with a side of spinach.
Young, that may not be the case if the DOJ was trying so hard to avoid that in the first place. It may show the DOJ was being disingenuous or AG Barr was doing Trump a favor.
Yes, Judge Sullivan does have the right to determine the reason for dropping the charges. If he didn’t then the prosecution wouldn’t need leave of court to dismiss, which is what the law says. This is just like a plea bargain: just because the prosecution and defense arrive at a plea deal, the judge still has to approve it, and judges refuse to do so all of the time.
OK Svelaz. Sullivan can prosecute the case if he likes, since the government team went home.
Gee, how is that justice, if the judge gets to judge the case and be the prosecutors, too?
That’s the sort of thing you Democrats crave isnt it Svelaz. So long as your side gets to be in the driver’s seat.
Well, just realize. every new stunt you guys pull, may one day a stunt pulled on you in reverse
“Well, just realize. every new stunt you guys pull, may one day a stunt pulled on you in reverse”
Indeed, get ready for refusing to “advise and consent” a SC appointment, political conventions in the WH, the AG personally intervening in cases involving presidential cronies, Presidents using congressionaly allocated funds for bribing foreign governments to help on his campaign, doing end runs around clear congressional intent in funding through their congressional power of the purse, Presidents ignoring Congressioanl subpoenas, the Senate refusing to hear witnesses in an impeachment hearing for the 2nd,time ever, the President insulting allied leaders and kissing dictator ass all day, and the President lying and acting indecently for his entire term.
I hope you’re ready for that.
Darn, if I remember a president said, I have a phone and a pen, now who would that be? Well I’ll be, I looked around and saw that the chickens have come home to roost. An how about that wonderful man Mr. Harry Reid and his disuse of the filibuster, that also hatched a chicken.
The DOJ has been very flexible lately. Perhaps it’s time for them to use the new rules to investigate and prosecute Sullivan for something. Spy on him and something will turn up. Same with a few Obama judges. They like it like this; they should get it good and hard.
Mr. Kurtz, the law states judge Sullivan IS entitled to scrutinize the DOJ’s decision. This was just asserted by the full appeals court. 8-2 for Sullivan.
As a judge Sullivan has full discretion on how he decides on whether Flynn’s case goes. A dismissal or a sentence. He can’t just rubber stamp anything the DOJ asks. He wouldn’t be much of a judge if he did.
The DOJ has produced contradictory evidence for its request to dismiss and there’s the problem of perjury which Flynn arrested under penalty of perjury twice that he was guilty. This raises a lot of questions which judge Sullivan has every right to address. This only shows that Sullivan is a very good judge and knows exactly what he’s doing.
He’s a judge Kurtz, and judges have a lot of discretion on what goes on in their courtroom. Flynn tried to usurp that by having another court go over Sullivan and directly force him to dismiss when the law clearly allows Sullivan to do what he is trying to do. There’s nothing sinister about what he is doing.
The government seems more worried about what they will have to expose in order to justify their dismissal and it seems they might not have a solid reason to do so. Thereby pointing out that AG Barr may have sought to help trumps “buddy” as a personal favor.
Kurtz, Sullivan is not prosecuting anything. He’s just seeking more information in order to either grant the motion to dismiss or sentence Flynn. Flynn changing his plea exposes him to perjury charges which he will have to answer for. He doesn’t get to get off Scott free after pleading guilty twice under penalty of perjury.
Yes article III have become tyrants instead of protectors of individual rights. It’s very sad and pathetic what our country has come to now but we will fight back
You’re a lawyer but apparently have no understanding of “the leave of the court” in the interests of preserving legal impartiality. That was a key purpose of the rule:
“Abstract
The conventional view of Rule 48(a) dismissals distinguishes between two types of motions to dismiss: (1) those where dismissal would benefit the defendant, and (2) those where dismissal might give the Government a tactical advantage against the defendant, perhaps because prosecutors seek to dismiss the case and then file new charges. In United States v. Flynn, the Department of Justice argues that Rule 48(a)’s “leave of court” requirement applies exclusively to the latter category of motions to dismiss; where the dismissal accrues to the benefit of the defendant, judicial meddling is unwarranted and improper. In support, the Government relies on forty-year-old dicta in the sole U.S. Supreme Court case interpreting Rule 48(a), Rinaldi v. United States. There, the Court stated that the “leave of court” language was added to Rule 48(a) “without explanation,” but “apparently” this verbiage had as its “principal object . . . to protect a defendant against prosecutorial harassment.”
But the Government’s position—and the U.S. Supreme Court language upon which it is based—is simply wrong. In fact, the “principal object” of Rule 48(a)’s “leave of court” requirement was not to protect the interests of individual defendants, but rather to guard against dubious dismissals of criminal cases that would benefit powerful and well-connected defendants. In other words, it was drafted and enacted precisely to deal with the situation that has arisen in United States v. Flynn: its purpose was to empower the Judiciary to limit dismissal in cases where the district court suspects that some impropriety prompted the Executive’s decision to abandon a case.
To be clear, there may be good reason for the district court to grant the Government’s motion to dismiss in United States v. Flynn. But the fiction that Rule 48(a) exists solely, or even chiefly, to protect defendants against prosecutorial mischief should be abandoned. This brief Essay recounts Rule 48’s forgotten history.”
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3599674
I do have an idea about the rule and paper you have before cited, yes there is such a rule, and we can see how arguably your interpretation has been adopted in this moment.
However, it could have easily gone the other way, and that is what I as a lawyer perhaps understand that you refuse to believe.
Now, it’s hardly over. Biased Judge Sullivan will try and drag this “lawfare” out past January 2021. Even if he does and Trump loses and another AG comes online, the case is tainted with reversible error from top to bottom. Good luck getting the win against Flynn in the end.
And in the meantime the credibility of article III judges has been reduced nationwide by one Judge Sullivan and 6 partisans above him.
The credibility of the courts to not ignore possible priveleged intervention has been upheld by this ruling. Nothing about the case was “normal”, including 2 guilty pleas and an intervention on behalf of a presidential crony by the AG. Of course it should be reviewed.
PS 8 judges.
Well you get your way. Mark this day and check back a year from now and see if it worked out the way you hoped.
Interesting how 50 years of “free speech” grand parents demonstrated for and opened campuses to all views are now being reversed to silence certain views
MOST OF US DO NOT SUPPORT BLM
most of us do not support crimes of riot, looting, arson, and assaults on police officers that are ALWAYS the fruit of mass BLM and ANTIFA protests.
IF YOU SUPPORT BLM YOU ARE A FOOL
even many decent black people no longer are supporting BLM sick as they are of chaos and anarchy.
BLM IS A RACKETEERING OPERATION WITH A PREDICATE OF PROTECTION AND INTIMIDATION AND MONEY LAUNDERING/
IT MUST BE PROSECUTED. scratch the scab and a pus of financial fraud will ooze out, I guarantee it, and a whole lot more
BLM got a million dollar grant from the Ford Foundation for a reason.
https://twitter.com/CassandraRules/status/1300365110922424320?s=20
punch a nazi was applauded on twitter a few years ago, when richard spencer got blasted in the middle of a tv interview on the street.
will twitter also applaud “punch a white person>?”
this is organized crime and violence and voter intimidation. it must be prosecuted
voters are free to call prosecuter offices and ask if they have plans to prosecute crimes against white people or is that ok now because BLM and ANTIFA are intimidating public officials and they are the ones behind this rash of violence. I fully encourage everyone to do so. If 100,000 citizens made the call today, we might see some action
While most of us support Black Lives Matter
‘Us’. That’s cute.
And you shouldn’t. ‘Black Lives Matter’ is code for black impunity.
The next phase of BLM are taking the intimidation marches and riot and crime that ALWAYS follows them into the small towns and suburbs.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-30/black-lives-matter-in-small-town-pennsylvania
We knew this was coming and we better be ready. Call your local police and ask them what anti-riot measures are planned if BLM and ANTIFA come to a neighborhood near you.
If your local sheriff has none, then YOU MUST VOTE THEM OUT.
Take the temperature of this NOW and makes notes and organize local political efforts accordingly. Get to work. God helps those who help themselves.
BLM IS A RACKETEERING INFLUENCE CORRUPT ORGANIZATION. IT MUST BE PROSECUTED! DONT ALLOW THEM TO KEEP INTIMIDATING BUSINESS & VOTERS WITH RIOTS!
55 shot, 10 killed, in Chicago over the weekend.
Not a peep from Democrats, media, or BLM/Antifa.
Black lives really don’t matter.
BLM is scouting the suburbs and small towns with their network of fake charities. There is a wave of “door to door candy sales” happening in the Midwest
You know they are coming’. Call your sheriffs and ask what their anti-riot contingency plans are, or if they even have them
if they don’t respond properly, VOTE THEM OUT
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-30/black-lives-matter-in-small-town-pennsylvania
Good warning. Thanks.
Anyone, including and most importantly NBA players, that are supporting BLM ,criticizing and promoting defunding police need to leave their protected space and security and “walk in my shoes” for a week with police in their cities, all shifts, following officers into all situations. Before one can criticize, one must understand first hand issues that cause actions and reactions. Once they have seen 55 shootings, deaths, been directly involved in violent response to cops doing their jobs, then NBA players and others have a right to demonstrate.
At the same time, white politicians should also spend the same amount of time in the poor black community that they represent to see first hand the violence that occurs and how that impacts inner city black lives. One can not make laws and policies just reading someone elses reports.
Young– I looked at the web pages of CBS, ABC and NBC. There were plenty of articles lambasting President Trump and even one justifying the looting of Miracle Mile in Chicago as proving the need for reparations but not a mention in any of them of the 55 people shot and 10 people killed in Chicago over the weekend. Meanwhile, everyone is crying crocodile tears over Breonna Taylor, always described as an Emergency Medical Technician, but never described as a woman living with a drug dealer who first opened fire on the police when they tried allegedly to execute a no-knock search warrant. There are plenty of truly innocent black people– even children– murdered in Chicago on any given weekend. Why not riot over those black lives and go to where the gangsters live and protest? But wait, that would take real courage and unlike the elected officials, they might fight back.
Of course, Wimpy Mayor Wheeler and Joe Biden are blaming President Trump for the rioting all across the country. He foments racism they say. Once again I wonder what racism? Last night I watched television for about three hours and every commercial but one had at least one black person in it. The racism is just palpable. Poor blacks have only had one two term black President, there are a number of black members of Congress, and many state and local officials everywhere. Blacks get special treatment by college admissions committees nationwide. Blacks get special investments from the government and many other benefits. Could it be that people like me can’t stand Black Lives Matter because the people who are in it are selfish, mean-spirited, ignorant jerks, coddled by elected officials who kiss their blood stained hands?
That describes the situation perfectly.
For clarity, when you say most of you support Black Lives Matter, are you saying you support a marxist segregationist group that thinks that white people are the root of all evil, need to be shamed, and “pay,” Professor Turley, or do you support the notion that black lives matter in support of equality even though every time I have turned on the TV for the last 12 years or so I get the impression that ONLY black lives matter… ? Care to eleborate in your next column? You have a right to free speech so yoi don’t have to prove the negative today…
A. Cady — I noticed that too. He has made similar statements in other posts. I don’t mind nor do I give them any credence. I assume they are small Indulgences dropped into the cup to stay out of purgatory. His principal points are usually excellent and thought provoking. A book on human genetics I read recently had similar short remarks in hopes of warding against evil. That is what we are come to and, thankfully, the professor usually fights against it.
agreed turley is an excellent professor of law and a real lawyer and a decent liberal. he makes these civil remarks to try and stay above the fray
but the fray will become hotter and hotter and law abiding people must pick sides. there is no other choice at hand
the emptiness of Enlightenment bromides echoes louder and louder like a voice speaking to itself in a canyon
fantasies of a liberal secular state with a set of fair rules fades in the face of organized force funded by global financial interests which have endless supply of billions to fund riots by the lumpenproletariat. this will not end until a positive set of values based on real human needs, things like family, work, and patriotism, take the place of negative liberties which do NOTHING to constrain the forces of organized evil
The US is a failed state in the making. If it will be more than an empty shell it must protect human life and dignity for the majority and not just operate to squeeze them between the richest and poorest strata working in concert. The “Silent Majority” must be respected by the government or it will eventually disintegrate.
This is not prophecy it is merely a prediction of a possibility that seems to be gaining traction.
Kurtz– Unfortunately I agree with you.
The US can go by the wayside if it comes to that. Sad but the sack of Rome was not the end of human life nor culture nor even civilization. Life went on for normal people after Visigoths left town and it was mostly the rich and corrupt Senatorial caste that found itself in a bad place. The socalled Dark ages were not so nearly dark for regular peasants as historians would have us believe. In fact after the collapse of the Empire in the West, the feudal order which emerged may have been a genuine improvement for normal people.
Indeed consider that Catholic historian and apologist Hillaire Belloc claims, that in the Eastern Empire, Byzantium, which did not collapse, the crisis of debt peonage which had diseased the Empire in the West, before the collapse, just got worse over time. He credits the desire of common people to escape usurious debts with part of the reason why Islam caught on so fast in some places which fell very quickly to the Arabs, beyond Asia minor, that the Byzantines were able to hold for a few centuries more. Islam for all its many faults, has a vigorous doctrine against usury, that is to say, debts which accrue compound interest. Curiously, under the comparatively stronger leadership of the Pope in the West during the feudal tims, Catholics maintained a taboo against it as well. At least until the Reformation. but that’s another story. Point is, the powers of finance and the systems of debt which circulate in a nation, are important even if they are unseen. Relief for debtors, goes all the way back to Moses and before him, Hammurabi. Maybe we need to take a look at that and take a look at the paymasters of BLM and ask is there some intersection which factors into this struggle in a subtle way that is nonetheless, critical to understanding the whole of it.
Good decent people who love law and order will eventually prevail. But, they must come together with unity and purpose and plan and execute decisive and sustained action against not only the lawless mercanries on the streets, but eventually, the globalist financiers who put them there. Make no mistake, this is a battle between nationalism and globalism to the core. Or one might call it populism versus elitism. Or one might call it, industrial capitalism, versus finance capitalism. But these battles operate under that larger conflict.
We will have our own nation one way or another. By our lawful processes such as exist in place now, or, if the state eventually fails, then by new laws created the same way all laws were created in the first place. Which is, by good people uniting in strength and purpose against savages outside the gates of the city. This is politics and it always was and always will be.
I think your comment about the Fall of Rome is correct in part and wrong in part. It is carefully analyzed in “The Fall of Rome, And the End of Civilization” by Bryan Ward-Perkins. In some areas the Fall wasn’t too very bad, and sometimes even an improvement, but for the broad expanse of European Civilization it was a disaster. Roman Britain, for example, was highly developed and Ward-Perkins says the Fall of Rome sank it even lower and harsher than it had been before the Roman conquest. In Roman Africa conditions clearly worsened. Trade dwindled and manufactures dwindled and literacy and letters suffered greatly.
But early in the process Gibbon notes that those parts of Italy recovered by Belisarius under Justinian began to long for a return of barbarian government because the accretion of taxes and bureaucrats under true Roman government became intolerable. I am reminded of that passage when I see Democrats in action these days.
In some of these riot zones antifa fascists and BLM fascists are demanding the end of the police. I think a lot of us are thinking it might be a good idea for them to go to the donut shops so the issues can be settled. Recently in Beverly Hills during a confrontation between antifa and those opposed, the opposition began to announce to antifa that “once the police are gone you will have to deal with us.” Cheering words.
What a f…king drama queen. Humans from virtually any other period across our long history would give their left nut to be us now, and that includes since the US was created. You don’t know trouble, you don’t know slavery, you don’t know hard times, and you certainly don’t know tyranny. Suck it up, You don’t sound like a man, you sound like a whiny teenager who wants to play army.
You dont know me and I dont know you. We just talk here 5 days a week. You can hear whatever pleases you to hear. But, Im going to try and take your remarks seriously even though you’re insulting me. The insults slide off my back.
if I were to dress up your point in civil talk, perhaps you mean to say that we live in a time of material plenty. I concede that
perhaps you mean that there is material and technological progress. I concede that.
Material and technical progress are perhaps your primary values. I am sure you have some notions of social justice as well.
I have my own values and while I enjoy material abundance and technological progress too, I do not idolize it. I also have my own ideas of social justice.
I suspect that you are very comfortable with our system of capitalism. This is typical for Democrat supporters who feel they are benefiting from it.
I have benefited from it too. But I see the suffering of people who have lost jobs to free trade, de-industrialization, and financial shenanigans from Wall Street. I feel their pain, and I identify with them, since I live and work among them. Even if I am indeed quite fortunate.
Now, let me suggest that our system of consumer finance, at the very least, requires a workover . This is what my remarks about usury and debt peonage were referring to. Allow economist Michael Hudson to explain. He is no Republican and comes from a Trotskyite household, but had a long and successful career in government economics before he became a professor. His CV is too long and impressive for me to list. I know our friend Absurd does not like him but maybe you will. His work on the history of debt is of importance at this juncture, to understand where we are and how we can go in a better direction with more economic equality and less exploitation of the working and middle class by global financial interests
Here, i will even give you a link from NPR, “marketplace” show, which may fit your bluish tastes
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/04/02/covid-19-debt-jubilee-forgiveness-easing/
Oh and please recall that when Eric Holder had a chance to prosecute major Wall Street bankers with dirt on their hands from the financial crisis, all he did was round up a couple hundred of the lowest level mortgage brokers and lock them up. That was the fakest and lamest Democrat administration response to Wall Street mischief in American history. At this point it’s up to you to explain, don’t bother talking to me, if I am as ignorant as you presume then your words are wasted. Explain it to yourself.
Fine Kurtz, but your previously held opinion that we are facing an armegeddon with slavery sure to follow has devolved into a need for better consumer financing. Say what?
By the way, we not only enjoy material wealth, but better health including longevity, safer streets and a safer globe, as much information as you can possibly want – you have a world reference desk in your pocket with everything from sugar beet production for last year in Poland to videos of the John Coltrane Quartet that you can pull up in a kayak in the swamp – and no fewer freedoms than we have enjoyed previously that have any signifigance. There has not been a World War in 75 years. What exactly makes you think doomsday and a revolution are coming?.
When I say debt peonage., I contend that many people are already there.
How is it that banks can borrow from the Fed at under 1% and then charge `15%-20% nationwide for credit cards?
Because we used to have anti-usury laws. Well, they were cancelled by your vaunted federal judiciary back in the 70s.
Just one example. But an obvious one. A lot of young people don’t understand credit and the math of compound interest and they totally screw themselves as the cc applications start rolling in when they are about 19. This is a shameful situation.
The 2007 mortgage crisis was a shameful incident of mass consumer and taxpayer exploitation. Your man Obama and his AG Holder did nothing to punish those who made it possible and profited from it. a couple hundred low level brokers went to jail, that was nothing.
It’s obvious that Democrats dont care about regular working people which is why it’s all this BLM riot and distraction which is financed by a guy who hates Trump because of free trade which has nothing to do with BLM, illegal immigrants pity party, gay trans whatever, all that stuff. There are bread and butter issues and the Democrat national leadership could care less about them. It’s all fake drama to cover the economic problems. Looting by little guys to cover looting by big ones. That’s reality and easily understood by voters who are going to get the message. Maybe you will too or maybe the world is just peachy for you. Good for you.
Because we used to have anti-usury laws. Well, they were cancelled by your vaunted federal judiciary back in the 70s.
The statutory provision on criminal usury in New York debars nominal interest rates in excess of 25% per annum. We’re nowhere near there. No clue how you got the idea that the provision had been annulled by the federal courts.
NB, the Federal Reserve publishes data on consumer credit. Service rates commercial banks charge on credit cards settle around 15% because that’s what the traffic will bear. The service rate charged by banks on car loans is at this time typically around 5% while that charged by finance companies is around 6%. That on miscellaneous personal loans extended by commercial banks. is running around 9.5%.
How is it that banks can borrow from the Fed at under 1% and then charge `15%-20% nationwide for credit cards?
Again, that’s what the traffic will bear. The the Federal Reserve data on household finance. The bite from debt service and from the sum of debt service accounts for 9.7% and 15% of household income respectively. That’s near a 40-year low.
About 12% of commercial bank liabilities in this country are attributable to borrowings other than customer deposits. The interest rate paid on customer deposits is minimal because that’s what the traffick will bear.
I was not talking about loan sharking statutes, which always connect a high interest loan with some other criminal conduct
the case was First of Omaha Service Corp., 439 U.S. 299 (1978), a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that state anti-usury laws regulating interest rates cannot be enforced against nationally chartered banks based in other states
Perhaps you have never heard of it. it was news at the time and is one of the bedrock decisions under the current regulatory regime allowing banks to charge whatever
there is a history and existing patchwork of other state civil laws limiting interest but they are all drastically limited in effect by this
as to my rhetorical question, i realize the market will bear that much. the market will bear all sorts of things. the point is the big banks are on easy street permanently for a whole variety of more complicated reasons. I just took a simple snapshot to make a point.
I could make these points all day long but I’ll just make one more. During the run on money markets back in 07 or whenever, the FDIC issued an emergency rule that they would boost the coverage from 100k an account to 250k. then they also added in money markets which were previously not covered.
well that may have been a good idea under the circumstances but it was ultra vires action by the agency making up stuff and doing a 180 degree turn of law literally overnight because banks asked them to, simple as that. again maybe they were wise to ask, but Congress was supine, it was all decided by bankers and bureaucrats.
this is the power they have and it bears on all things including stupidity like BLM
here’s BOA pulling out a billion from its coffers to donate to black crony organizations. hey big money to pikers like me but for them, no problem the shareholders will never miss it and anyways what’s another billion compared to what the Fed was lending them every day during the crisis
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/business/bank-of-america-billion-dollar-donation/index.html
would that any other sector of americans had the sort of fast response that banking institutions get. or the unending boundless cheap credit from their lender of first resort. our system is fantastically unfair… and they take these privileges and pass out the free money to the likes of BLM and their constellation of cronies
Kurtz, I don’t think you understand the bread and butter issues or you wouldn’t support Trump. By the way, his treasury secretary Minuchin (sp?) made a bundle in the bubble burst. That’s why he’s rich.
wait did you say “safer streets?” well, the Clinton “super predator” mass lockup helped– but the current situation of riot and civil law and order breakdown is NOT “safer”
Take a look at the news today, another rash of murders in flyover. “safer?” wow, man really out of touch
as for a safer globe, not according to Lee Ellsworth. Or some others. Trump has ratcheted down some of the flash points with Russia, thank GOD, but, plenty of trouble remains. The PRC is rattling sabers in South China sea, hopefully Trump will remain firm there without letting it go hot. Hot war with PRC should definitely be avoided.
meanwhile, NOBODY can handle the insane Turkey problem in Europe. After flooding Europe with refugees, they are up to pushing them across into Greece again. Worse yet, they are trying to start a war with Greece in the Mediterranean now, as if threatening to kill Americans if Trump didn’t pull them out of northern syria was not bad enough…Thank God at least France is on operations with Greece, supporting a true NATO ally and not this moustachioed scoundrel.. Erdogan is a cancer. Either candidate is going to have hands full with this cretin. Let the CIA get busy on that one instead of helping drag feet and undermine the POTUS
well, the Clinton “super predator” mass lockup helped
There was no such thing. The state legislatures took discretion away from judges to impose token sentences while local governments hired more cops.
they claim there was a such a thing and it swept young black fellows off the street. amazingly, violent crime went down for a time, or so we are told
I am also that there is absolutely no correlation, though I wonder. probably racissssss of me to wonder, I know
There was an increased willingness to walk beats, arrest people, and imprison people. That’s a good thing. Federal legislation had squat to do with it. Gov. Cuomo’s initiatives in prison construction date from 1983, ‘broken windows’ was developed prior to 1990, and Giuliani was sworn in as Mayor of New York with a broken windows program in 1994.
Its funny how sometimes Democrats come up with good ideas, and then the rest of the Democrat leadership cancels them.
Elizabeth Warren, whom I deeply dislike, came up with a great idea during the financial crisis 2007 or so.
Empower the federal bankruptcy courts to “cram down” mortgage collateral interests in BK like they do in corporate reorganizations.
This was simple genius. It was wholly feasible. It would have punished bad lenders who willingly took fraudulent loan apps and let them feel some sting.
Instead the Democrat leadership sidelined and silenced this idea. Why? Because Wall Street said NO WAY.
Wall Street, not all of it but much of it. is in a decades long process of privatizing the profits, and socializing the losses.
That is not “industrial capitalism” in the productive sense, that is just financialism, ie, financial chicanery at the expense of the people, for benefit of biggest fianacial interests
Who by the way, own and finance, by and large, the Democrat party.
So Liz lost the primary because she is not charismatic. But you can be sure, Wall Street prefered Biden to Liz. For this reason alone.
Republican voters need to become more sophisticated about economics. “Culture wars” conflicts matter at times, but not at all times. Values have context. Sometimes the big money moves are what really counts. In America, they’re what is usually driving most big choices. From day one back in 1776
Again, the transactions on which the TARP program and the Maiden Lane deals lost money were the rescue of AIG and on aspects of the Auto industry rescue. The banks paid their loans back with interest, in important cases doing so early. The two aspects in which the TARP program ‘socialized losses’ were as follows: (1) the interests charged the banks under the TARP program had no risk premium (IIRC, it was shy of ordinary commercial – industrial rates at the time); (2) The Treasury pumped money into the mortgage maws, maintaining the value of their securities. This benefited anyone who’d bought mortgaga-backed securities, not just banks. About 10% of the asset portfolio of commercial banks consisted of Fannie and Freddie mortgage backed securities at the time and the price of these was running at about 22% below par in the fall of 2008.
That all can be true and my point stands nonetheless. The banks have the bureaucratic levers of the state at their command and the King Midas power of the Fed at their disposal
We do not.
I also continue to wonder, not only how it is just that banks like BOA send a billion to assorted black causes, which are not their business, but the “black owned banks” phenomenon has such support from so many quarters including federal programs
https://www.thesimpledollar.com/banking/how-to-support-black-owned-financial-institutions-in-2020/
one never hears of “Jap owned banks” nor “Jewish owned banks” nor “mexican owned banks” and so forth. I wonder how it is that we are supposed to grieve for and continuously “patronize” a small number of lending houses simply because they are black. I look at things like this and I understand, they are the way they are because big banks want these things to persist, and their opinions count and mine does not.
That all can be true and my point stands nonetheless.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Cram-downs would have been a great idea. So would letting middle class Americans file Chapter 7 again as opposed to making them suffer thru Chapter 13s.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I have read Aleksandr Dugin, a Russian who is defamed widely in the US as “Putin’s Rasputin” which is silly and false but gives you an idea of how disliked he is by the powers that be.,.
he said, we move towards the future and new political forms and alliances and theories, but we must look to the past for inspiration.
Strangely, I find in the works of Michael Hudson, some inspiration on the topic of “de-industrialization.” Hudson, can explain it from different angles, but here is an interesting angle he took in 2015, ironically, at a Chicom sponsored forum in the PRC.
How is global finance operating to hollow out industry in America? this has been my question since Ross Perot predicted the disaster that would ensue after NAFTA.
Hudson gives some clues to what’s happened and where we might go.
https://michael-hudson.com/2015/10/the-paradox-of-financialized-industrialization/
Readers who reflexively dislike Marx will not enjoy this one. But the question is, again, where are we now and how are the powers of global finance aligned against us small people on the ground out here in flyover. Because, with respect to the Democrats and their cheerleaders, I do not identify with their power bases in the coastal megacities nor their financiers in the top tenth of the top 1% nor care too much about them.
We can use the power of laws to curtail the wrongs being done to us and rectify our system for a more just future. It WONT HAPPEN IF ALL ANYBODY TALKS ABOUT IS BLM AND THE USUAL ASSORTMENT OF CAUSES DU JOUR. The interests of the American workers must be foremost and not all these false idols.
All the talking about BLM here is by you and fellow travelers. The interests of American workers have and continue to be championed by the Democratic party, from minimum wages to universal health care to protecting SS and Medicare – both Democratic inventions resisted by the GOP – to not giving ever more tax cuts to rich people that blow a hole in the budget we all have to fix, trying to continue unemployment funds during the virus, and resisting various attacks on safety net programs by Trump and the GOP. It is incoherent to say you favor workers and the support Trump.
protecting medicare? How will it be protected if everbody has it? it will be distinction without a difference.
quality of care for some will go down. some people would have better access. access across the board might not get better,. that’s a crapshoot. but worth talking about. i havent heard much genuine debate about it along the Democrat spectrum,
But there’s some smaller things that are worth doing that get little or no time
expanding medicaid upwards so that more people can work and not get thrown off the program would be a good reform but I didn’t hear anybody talking about it. it was all bigger promises and no regards of how feasible or not.
Raising minimum wages rarely works, it can be done at state level if it’s such a swell idea.
if Democrats wanted to do something useful for organized labor they could push back against Right to Work laws. Nah, too much trouble I guess. Why bother. So long as they can count on labor bosses to deliver Dem votes, the interests of workers who are not organized, barely matters.
We all know and understand the main thrust of Democrat “policy” about workers is this. Get back the free trade with PRC China, so that the big profits can start up for the big American importers again, who depend on that quasi slave labor in China! let the American workers compete with the ones locked up in China. That’s Democrat labor policy in a nutshell. One big fat screwjob for the American workers 2 decades long.
And Republicans were on board too, shamefully, until the great Donald J Trump took the helm!
Kurtz, surely you are kidding about right to work laws. Democrats have fought these forever and they are favored by the GOP. Expanding Medicaid is a regular Democratic platform item. Raising the minimum wage has been accomplished by Democrats at the state level but too many are run by the GOP which always opposes it. NAFTA was primarily run thorigh Congress by the GOP with plenty of Democratic opposition and the TPP was mainly opposed by Democrats, both either supported or in the case of the TPP, designed by Democratic presidents. Free trade has been consistently a GOP position and the TPP was predicted to be supported in Congress manily by them. Since Trump, the GOP no longer has any principles and that includes free trade. I am in favor of most free trade as I think ultimately it benefits us all in the long run, but that doesn’t mean without reservation. China needed and needs push back on intellectual property theft and we should oppose dumping by all countries, but Trump has been neither competent or smart in those dealings.
” The interests of American workers have and continue to be championed by the Democratic party”
The democrat party that hates America, destroys neighborhoods, desires illegal immigration and wants the American worker to pay for the illegal’s health insurance and education thinks of the interests of the American worker? You must be smoking something. Democrats are interested in power, sending our jobs and IP over to China and presenting large plastic reset buttons to Putin.
I agree Michael Hudson is THE premier US economist of our time. His economics are grounded in the 19th century AMERICAN SYSTEM of Henry Clay, Lincoln and man others, culminating in JFK’s economic policies. This is not the ersatz economics of Adam Smith’s British Imperialism.
Thanks Sarastro If you read this article it forms an incredible overlap with Belloc’s view on usury and how it related to the spread of Islam, even though Belloc was a Catholic apologist and Hudson is a secular jew. But, the idea of economic justice is important and history and cross cultural studies of law, show important insights!
https://michael-hudson.com/2020/03/debt-and-power/
economic effects of public policy are always important for government to make wise decisions
for example.
how do we weight quarantines for public health in an epidemic, versus the known likely negative effects of quarantine in lowering economic activity?
its false to say “lives will be lost!” as a mandate for either choice, because lives are lost EITHER WAY. we want less lives lost on the net, yes?
isnt that good for all of us? so the choice is not easy and economics must come into play
how do we weigh the “right to protest” and apparently riot and do arson, versus the rights of business owners not to have their shops looted and burned?
dont we want more good for a greater number on the whole, rather than just worrying about a narrow section of the whole and their unconstrained rage?
one could go on and on like this and at every turn it seems like Democrat party leadership always embraces a careless policy recommendation that panders to a narrow sliver of their base at the expense of Americans as a whole
I wish you and Michael Scheuer were Trump advisors.
I suspect you’d disagree with Scheuer’s non-intervention philosophy, but outside that, maybe good relations.
Trump seems overall too friendly with banking interests, but IMO Biden like Obama just bend over and asks if it’s spread wide enough.
Oh, I am fine with Professor Turley, and he has his right to his own thoughts. I come here because I enjoy the fact he usually makes a good analysis and leave mostly his personaly feelings out of the law. I am just recently getting bombarded by left wing porn and this notion that the group “Black Lives Matter,” and “black lives matter,” as a notion istelf are the same and interchangable. They are not. They are very different and painting one on and in the streets is misleading at the very best and such public displays should be stomped out unless we are committed to the equal representations of such notions and groups,