Thursday, December 26, 2013
Tom Tancredo and the Lord
The Lord is my shepherd.
Psalm 23
He’ll probably be calling on the Lord again. When he needs to change his mind he lets the Lord do it for him. It all came to mind when the Denver Post reported that it had invited Tom Tancredo and the three other Republicans hoping to become Colorado’s next governor to participate in a debate. Tom Tancredo declined. When asked about his refusal to debate he explained that he wants to “reduce the number of self-inflicted wounds” that would come back to haunt the winner of the primary when the general election takes place. He said: “I will have to pass on the debate opportunity. We made a decision some time ago to forgo these venues in order to reduce the number of self-inflicted wounds that emanate out of these encounters.” Those who are disappointed needn’t be. They know that when Tom Tancredo makes a decision he later regrets he simply calls on the Lord who then decides what he should do. In this election year the Lord will not only have to help him reconsider his decision not to debate but help him explain what to the outsider seems like a need to change positions he espoused as recently as four years ago. I think the Lord can be counted on.
Many Coloradans remember when Tom was a member of Colorado’s Congressional delegation, serving as the congressman from the 6th Congressional District. He first ran in 1998 and when he was running he was a staunch supporter of limiting members of Congress to three consecutive terms. At that time he said: “We want to reinvigorate the electoral process by introducing people into the system who think of government services as a temporary endeavor, not as a career.”
In May 2001, after he had been elected to a second term Tom was interviewed by The Rocky Mountain News and asked about his pledge to serve no more than three terms. He said: “I have no plans to break the pledge. It’s my intent to serve out my three terms if I’m reelected, and that’s it. . . . When conquering heroes were brought back to Rome after a successful campaign, there was always a large crowd yelling his [sic] name or throwing rose petals. But by Roman law, a slave had to stand behind him in the chariot while holding the laurel wreath over his head, and had to keep saying to the general: ‘All fame is fleeting.’ Term limits is like that guy standing behind you.”
On September 26, 2002 he told the same newspaper he’d spoken with fifteen months earlier that the Lord had intervened to absolve him of his pledge. He said that his actions could be characterized as breaking a pledge but he explained that whether he would run for a fourth term was going to be decided by God and that by putting it in God’s hands he hoped he was doing what God wanted. It took the Lord less than eight months to decide what Tom should do. In April 2002 he (Tom-not the Lord) announced that he was no longer bound by his pledge to serve no more than three terms and he went on to serve a total of five terms.
In 2010 Tom ran for governor as a candidate of the American Constitution Party. The Lord will probably be called on to absolve him of the need to adhere to the platforms of that party. Among other things, the party platform calls for abolishing the Food and Drug Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Departments of Education and Energy and the Federal Election Commission. The platform calls for replacing the entire federal tax system with a new system that is “based on the original design of our founding fathers.” It calls for an end to government promotion of “safe sex.” With respect to guns and the second amendment it says: “The only acceptable gun control is one’s ability to hit the target with the first shot, every time!”
Citizens contemplating whether or not to support Mr. Tancredo will want to know whether he still subscribes to those positions. Although as governor he would not have the power to effect all of these changes, it would be good to know whether, as governor, he would urge Colorado’s congressional delegation to pursue these goals. He may be also be asked in a debate whether having favored the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service he also would support eliminating the Colorado Department of Revenue.
In commenting on Tom’s abandoning the Republican party and joining the American Constitution Party in 2010, Doug Campbell who had been its perennial candidate for governor said: “Tom did not make this decision to come over to our party on the spur of the moment. He’s been heading our direction for quite a while.” As 2014 unfolds I am confident Tom will call on the Lord to help him explain how he now relates to the party to which he belonged until recently. He will probably also ask the Lord to help him decide whether he should reconsider his decision not to debate his adversaries. He’ll want the Lord’s help with those matters so he doesn’t appear to be wishy-washy. That’s a big challenge but my guess is the Lord’s up to it. Time will tell.
Friday, December 20, 2013
JPMorgan Chase and Penance and Fines
And whatten penance wul ye drie for that, young Edward, oh young Edward?
— Edward, A Scottish Ballad
One has to feel sorry for JPMorgan Chase. Several months ago it thought it had not only paid a sufficient amount in fines to make up for its bad behavior but it had also engaged in a form of penance for some of the bad things it had done. Little did it know.
The penance was reformation of its practices with respect to payday loans. Before the reforms, JPMorgan Chase (and many other institutions dealing with payday lenders) permitted% payday lenders to automatically withdraw repayment amounts from the borrowers’ bank accounts and agreed to prevent borrowers from closing their accounts or issuing stop payment orders so long as the payday lender was not fully repaid. As a result a borrower who did not have enough money in the bank to repay the lender the amount due on a given date was charged an insufficient fund fee by the bank each time the lender submitted a request for payment in many cases generating hundreds of dollars in fees imposed on the borrowers. That practice came to an end in May 2013. The fines it paid, in addition to its act of penance were described by Kevin McCoy of USA Today.
Between June 2010 and November 2012 JPMorgan Chase paid more than $3 billion in fines and settlements that related to, among other things, overcharging active-duty service members on their mortgages, misleading investors about a collateralized debt obligation it marketed, rigging at least 93 municipal bond transactions in 31 states, and countless other misdeeds. In August 2012 alone it paid a fine of $1.2 billion to resolve a lawsuit that alleged it and other institutions conspired to set the price of credit and debit card interchange fees. In January 2013 and February 2012 it paid $1.8 billion to settle claims that it and other financial institutions improperly carried out home foreclosures after the housing crisis. Not only did it pay large fines. Jamie Dimon, its unfailingly cheerful, beautifully coiffed CEO, took a pay cut which, including deferred compensation, reduced his daily salary from $63,013 to $31,506. Sadly, those events were not to be the end of its troubles. Indeed, as it turns out they were merely the tip of the iceberg.
In July 2013 it paid $410 million for alleged bidding manipulation of California and Midwest electricity markets. In September 2013 it paid $389 million for unfair billing practices, in September it paid $920 million for actions of the “London Whale” disaster, and in October 2013 another $100 million with respect to the same fiasco. Then came the really big news. On November 19, 2013 it was reported that JPMorgan Chase was going to pay $13 billion to settle what in non-legal terms would be described as a whole bunch of claims that had to do with the mortgage crisis of a few years back. Included in the $13 billion is $4 billion for consumer relief, $6 billion to pay to investors and the remaining $3 billion is a fine. December 13 it was announced that the bank was entering into a $2 billion deferred prosecution agreement with the government because of its role in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. According to the settlement the bank ignored signs that suggested Bernie Madoff was conducting a Ponzi scheme and cheating his investors.
The payment of almost $20 billion in fines would be enough to spoil the holidays for almost anyone. Happily for the bank, there was a silver lining to its financial cloud. Although $13 billion is a lot of money, Marianne Lake, the Chief Financial Officer of the bank explained that taxpayers will help the bank pay the fine. She explained that of the $13 billion, $7 billion is tax deductible. In addition to that bit of cheery news, no one has to plead guilty to anything bad in connection with the Madoff fine. Although the bank is agreeing to a deferred prosecution no one such as Jamie Dimon, is going to jail. There will, of course, be some public shame for the bank, kind of like being placed in the stocks in a public square. The court filing in which the settlement is finalized will list in detail all the criminal acts committed by the bank for which it will not be punished. There is not a criminal anywhere in the world who would not happily accept a public recital of the crimes committed instead of entering a formal plea of guilty with the attendant risk of going to jail. A bit of embarrassment beats a bit of time in jail every time. Just ask Jamie Dimon or other officers at JPMorgan Chase.
Thursday, December 12, 2013
The Invisible Gun
The power of the visible is the invisible.
— Marianne Moore, He “digesteth Harde Yron”
It was exciting-the news about banning invisible guns. Of course they are only invisible when they’re going through machines meant to detect them. They are not invisible if they are used to shoot people. But what made it especially exciting was that the news came just as we all thought Congress was not going to do anything between now and the end of the year. It was probably silly of us to think that since everyone knows people in Congress were elected to do something even though the folks elected sometimes have trouble deciding what it is.
Thus it was that no sooner did the Senate get back to Washington after its Thanksgiving vacation, with citizens hoping it would do something constructive during the last few days it was in Washington, than it became known that it intended to take advantage of procedural rules in order to postpone the inevitable. Republican senators acted to slow down the approval of 76 nominations made by the president. Because of the change in the senate procedural rules that eliminate the filibuster the nominees are guaranteed eventual approval. By stalling the approval Republican senators give the impression that they are being busy even though all they are in fact doing is delaying the inevitable. They were not, however, completely inactive. They extended one significant piece of legislation. It pertained to guns.
As followers of such things know, everyone with a computer and a half way decent 3_D printer can make a perfectly useable gun. The gun can be made entirely out of plastic thus enabling its owner to go around carrying the owner’s 2d amendment friend without fear of detection, secure in the knowledge that no matter what problems are encountered, the invisible friend will help its owner ward off evil.
To prove that they were not incapable of taking any significant action, the Senate followed the lead of the House and extended for 10 years the Undetectable Firearms Act that was passed in 1988 as a very small part of 18 USC Sec. 922. The Act banned the sale or possession of firearms that, to use layman’s terms, do not look like guns, and, in addition, do not contain enough metal to be detectable by walk through metal detectors or x-ray machines used at airports. (How much metal is required is established by something called a “security exemplar” that the statute says will be fabricated at the direction of the Attorney General and “constructed of . . . 3.7 ounces of material type 17-4 PH stainless steel in a shape resembling a handgun.”)
Some readers are probably wondering how such a draconian piece of legislation could be enacted in the face of what must surely have been opposition from the NRA. The answer is that there was no opposition to the extension of the act by the NRA. That’s because the Act says it is OK to make an invisible gun so long as the manufacturer includes as part of the invisible gun, a metal strip so that it is not invisible if it goes through an ex-ray machine or a metal detector with the metal strip attached. What the law doesn’t prohibit, however, is designing the gun so the metal strip can be removed when the gun goes through a metal detector. By removing the metal strip the gun is once again invisible. (Going so easily from visible to invisible is the sort of thing that would have appealed to people who wrote fairy tales many years ago.)
Senator Charles Schumer doesn’t like for people to walk around carrying lethal weapons that no one can see and nothing can detect. For that reason he wanted the act to require that 3_D printed guns include metal components that could not be removed. His thinking was that if the metal could not be removed then the gun would no longer be invisible. The Senator could not persuade his colleagues and that provision was not included in the extension of the Act.
In a statement before Senator Schumer’s amendment was voted on the NRA said: “We would like to make our position clear. The NRA strongly opposes ANY expansion of the Undetectable Firearms Act . . .. The NRA has been working for months to thwart expansion of the UFA by Senator Chuck Schumer and others.” The NRA’s opposition to making invisible guns visible finds support in the 2d Amendment to the United States Constitution as understood by enough members of the U.S. Supreme Court to make their understanding the law of the land. There is nothing in that amendment that suggests that citizens should not be permitted to arm themselves with invisible guns. Of course if someone were to shoot down an airplane with an invisible gun, one can be fairly confident Congress would reexamine the question to show how seriously it takes tragedies like the Newtown School shooting or our hypothetical downing of an airplane. It would not, of course, make any changes to the law. That’s because of the NRA and the 2d Amendment, the one misguided and the other misunderstood.