Proscription, regulation, XCOR, and other mail

Mail 695 Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Durbin to Bank of America Customers: ‘Get the Heck Out of That Bank’ – ABC News

Just what we need, politicians orchestrating a run on a bank.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/10/durbin-to-bank-of-america-customers-get-the-heck-out-of-that-bank/

Do these idiots not understand that this could plunge the US into a Depression!

Jim Crawford

Note that Senator Durbin was involved in the regulation that caused BoA to impose this fee:

Summary of the Durbin Interchange Amendment

As Modified for the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act Conference

• The Durbin amendment would bring reasonable regulation to the $20 billion per year debit

interchange fee system. Interchange fees are received by the card-issuing bank in a debit card

transaction. However, Visa and MasterCard, which control 80% of the debit market, set the

debit interchange fee rates that apply to all banks within their networks. Every bank gets the

same interchange fee rate, regardless of how efficiently a bank conducts debit transactions.

Visa and MasterCard do not allow banks to compete with one another or negotiate with

merchants over interchange rates, and there is no constraint on Visa and MasterCard’s ability

to fix the rates at unreasonable levels. This system is effectively an unregulated $20 billion per

year transfer of wealth from merchants and their customers to card-issuing banks.

• The amendment will require that for transactions involving debit cards issued by banks with

assets over $10 billion, any interchange fee charged on the transaction must be reasonable and

proportional to the cost incurred in processing the transaction. Visa and MasterCard currently

charge debit interchange fees of around 1-2% of the transaction amount. These fees are far

higher than the actual cost of processing debit transactions, and they mean that small

businesses and merchants always get shortchanged when they accept a debit card for a sale.

• The amendment will permit card-issuing banks to receive debit interchange fee adjustments to

cover reasonably necessary fraud prevention costs. However, as opposed to the current

interchange system where banks receive a guaranteed level of interchange revenue no matter

how effectively they deal with fraud, the amendment will require banks to demonstrate that

they have met fraud-prevention standards and taken effective steps to reduce fraud in order to

receive an issuer-specific interchange adjustment that will cover their necessary costs.

http://www.fmi.org/docs/interchange/Summary_of_Durbin_Amendment.pdf

I will note that the best way to make the US economy grow would be to suspend for five years all Federal Regulations on commerce. Let the states deal with it. You could provide that the suspension will take place in 180 days, and the Congress has those 180 days to reinstate any regulations it sees fit, but one at a time, not en masse. They would probably keep the US Department of Agriculture meat inspections and some programs like that rather than leaving such matters to the states. Some programs would never even be considered, like bunny inspectors. Give them 180 days to restore the necessary and all the others go. The result would be an economic miracle, but of course that will never happen.

National Space Prize

Dr. Pournelle,

Your idea has merit, which means it will never be considered by our government. I wish I weren’t so cynical, but I am.

There could be an added fiscal benefit: non-essential NASA facilities could be sold off to the private space industry. I know that wouldn’t make a dimple in the national deficit, but it’s still cash inflow. And the private space industry would get some good facilities here and there.

Thanks!

Martin L. Shoemaker

civil defense

There is an excellent video on pjtv talking about our vulnerability to biological attack. A movie was made this year, Contagion, that while being a movie, still made good points on some of the gaps in the system. The Hudson Institute fellow that was interviewed talked about the great strides we have made in the last ten years to handle an outbreak. However, he kept mentioning the "government" as the planner and executioner. It occurs to me that the old civil defense organizations would be far better at handling the local problems of an outbreak. One of the problems brought out in the movie and confirmed in the video was distribution of the vaccine and the problem of getting first responders to show up when it gets really bad. In both cases, the old CD organization would probably circumvent those problems. As you have said, they get titles and uniforms and get to strut around, and then one day they become heroes and you can have as many of them as you need.

Just another reason vector to reform CD.

Phil

To reform CD we will first have to abolish FEMA. FEMA is a very good example of how not to organize for disasters. It does not encourage local volunteers, and it tries to manage everything from far away. Abolish FEMA and restore Civil Defense, including commissioning locals to take command on declaration of an emergency. Work with local authorities. Make it clear that the first responsibility is local because Washington just can’t do it all.

I would not call retired majors and commanders working to build a local civil defense organization as strutting.

Bleephead Rock and Absentia Proscription

Dear Jerry Pournelle:

Regarding the (excuse my language) "Niggerhead Rock" story… evidently

it’s a bigger deal for some than for others. That is in the nature of

slurs. Imagine, if you please, your least favorite American politician

leasing a ranch with the name "<Bleep>head" painted on a rock; where

bleep = a violent slur against your own personal ethnic group. (I can

think of a few for mine, I don’t know any for yours, and I don’t care

to find out, though I’m sure they exist.) Wouldn’t you object? Even if

it happens that the slur also has a non-insulting meaning?

Call it PC if you wish, or plain good manners. In general it is prudent

to not insult random strangers gratuitously; or, at least, not

strangers who count. When people who didn’t count start to count, then

suddenly some words reveal meanings previously ignored in polite

company. Perry may or may not be a racist, but he’s definitely a jerk.

Regarding proscription lists: The trouble with terrorism is that it

exists in the grey area between criminality and statecraft. Indeed,

merely by existing, the terrorist demonstrates the continuity between

the two. But states have privileges and citizens have rights; what then

does the terrorist have? Do we try to arrest and try them like

criminals, or blow them up from afar like warriors? I propose a

compromise; that proscription for treason be (partially, badly)

tempered by this expedient; trials in absentia. I don’t like it either,

but it’s better than just taking the President’s word for it.

Sincerely,

Nathaniel Hellerstein

My apologies. I tried to reformat this, but it was too much work.

How in the world could it be anything but manners? Voters generally do not want presidents who act like swine. But manners are both local and temporal. What was mannerly in 1983 for the son of a rancher who leased a hunting lodge is one thing; that was a time when there were Niggerhead rocks in many places across the South, and I know of at least one in Springfield Ohio that existed in 1950; I do not know when it was renamed, but I assume that it was long ago. In 1983 Rick Perry told his father that the rock was inappropriate, and they painted over it.

In 2011 it is artificially conventional to assume that the very hint of the existence of the word nigger is so offensive that everyone ought to be shielded from seeing or hearing it. Joseph Conrad’s novel The Nigger of the Narcissus was published in the US under the title The Children of the Sea, not because the title under which it was written was considered offensive, but because the publisher didn’t think anyone would buy a novel about black people; today the name would have to be changed for other reasons. Mark Twain’s greatest work has to be bowdlerized. This in a time when black rap artists routinely use every offensive word known to humanity in a deliberate attempt to shock; but it is racist to notice that. As to what is ‘racist’, the ‘right’ to define that is of the very essence of modern politics, and has little to do with rationality.

Oddly enough I still believe in rational discourse.

The whole situation is absurd. Governments cannot and should not attempt to remove all traces of verbal insult from a society. It is certainly bad manners to inflict insult on people, but it is equally bad manners to assume offense where none is intended and often is not even felt. When I grew up, it was polite to say “Negro”. It was a term I used because it was not supposed to be offended, but on one occasion it seemed to be.

“I just thought I ought to be offended,” said one black friend back in my undergraduate days when I still used many of the verbalisms I had grown up with in a legally segregated society. This was in a party in Iowa City hosted by a black barber at which Count Basie was the guest of honor. Basie laughed his head off at the time, and oddly enough my friend was mildly rebuked for his manners while Basie was handing me a beer. That probably did more to raise my sensitivities than any sensitivity training ever could.

The Niggerhead Camp rock, long ago painted over, is a manufactured incident intended to give those who want to feel offended an excuse for doing so. That is not good manners, and I do not think it is good politics. I suspect that dredging this up does no one any good at all. And I will repeat that assuming offense where none is intended and little is felt is neither good manners nor good citizenship.

I agree with you on trials in absentia; they need not be in open court, and they might be military tribunals as were the trials of the World War II saboteurs that resulted in their execution; that would be a lot better than proscription lists.

XCOR ballistic people-mover.

<http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/new-space-venture-could-bring-every-city-on-earth-within-two-hours-travel-20111103-ncx>

—

Roland Dobbins

DCX was a scale model of SSX, which was designed to be savable, reusable, and to launch from any azimuth and any latitude. DCX was something of a proof of concept.

Proscriptions

The rationale you stated seems a bit incomplete. From what I can surmise (as a random guy on the internet), the criteria for inclusion on the proscription list (assuming there is a list and these things aren’t decided ad hoc) are as follows:

1) an active participant,

2) in a country/organization we are at war/AUMF with,

3) in a location inaccessible to US personnel (without killing people and breaking things),

4) sheltered by a government unwilling or unable to affect capture.

High value targets only need apply, as the cost of a Predator is well into the seven figures. Had Al-Awlaki been so gracious as to hop on board a commercial aircraft, presumably he would have been arrested, shipped off to Club Gitmo, and tried (eventually) under military tribunal. Samir Khan may or may not have qualified as an HVT himself (underwear bomb manufacturer), but getting two for the price of one can be considered as a "happy coincidence" if you believe in that sort of thing.

Kenneth Anderson has a series of posts on the drone attacks at volokh.com.

Lee Stillman

Arrested on what charge?

So far as I know there was no indictment. Makes more sense just to kill him than to charge him in court.

His correspondence with Hassan may or may not be grounds for arrest and trial for treason, but that hasn’t been shown.

His companion so far as I know was only a publisher. He made speeches.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

Charges? We don’t need no steenking charges!

Seriously, I doubt there would really be much of any law enforcement procedures followed. CIA: we want him. Airport security: okay, there he is. No cameras, no lawyers, no Miranda warning, no phone call.

Lee Stillman

I believe that the technical name for that kind of government is “police state.” It is hardly what the Philadelphia Constitution had in mind.

Hit lists and Prizes

Dr. Pournelle;

The proscription list that you describe probably is an artifact of the cooperation between the Judge Advocate Generals office, the UCMJ, and the Office of the President / Commander-in-chief bureaucracy. The poor sap executing the order is sure to have a chain of command that has assured him that the order is legal, and one would assume the order was vetted by the chain of command and JAG, so you would have to look to some secret presidential order or ( more likely) a bureaucratic determination based on some method such as was used to excuse water-boarding by the previous administration.

On a different note, I would like to comment on your idea of offering prizes to get the best bang for the buck. I don’t think you have taken it far enough. Why not offer prizes for trimming government excesses? Write it up so that anyone who can show why a law is unconstitutional gets ten percent of the savings caused by rescinding that law. Even if a law is constitutional, if it can be shown to have effects contrary to the spirit of the original law – and it gets removed – then some monetary reward or compensation would be offered. All of the above would be run through the congress, not the courts. As the congress is creating the mess – they should clean it up. There is no reason a committee couldn’t recommend to the whole assembly that a law be rescinded, after convincing arguments have been presented.

Mr. B.

Proscription worries

Dr Pournelle

Your worries over the proscription of two American al-Qaeda members seems to me to be valid but perhaps academic. I am not certain, but I think it may be a fruitless quibble.

It is clear that there is no language in the Constitution which authorizes proscription. It is explicit that Congress may not exercise such power. I cannot imagine the judiciary has such power, but perhaps that says more about my imagination than it does about the judiciary.

What we are left with is that the power is inherent in the Executive; that is to say, it is extra-constitutional.

Clearly such powers exist. President Lincoln used them to quell the rebellion. There is no language in the Constitution that authorized the President to raise troops against a rebellion, suppress the writ of habeus corpus, or order the army and navy to make war on some of the several States. There is no language in the Constitution by which the President may proclame slaves emancipated and deprive citizens of their property without a hearing. But it was done.

I am reminded of my reaction to Justice Souter’s concurrence in the judgment of Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993). A federal judge, Walter Nixon, had been convicted of perjury. He refused to resign his office. The House impeached him. The Senate referred the matter to a committee for findings of facts and then, upon hearing the report of the committee, removed Nixon from office. Nixon petitioned the Supreme Court on the grounds that he had not been ‘tried’ by the Senate. Souter, in his concurrence wrote

If the Senate were to act in a manner seriously threatening the integrity of its results, convicting, say, upon a coin toss, or upon a summary determination that an officer of the United States was simply " ‘a bad guy,’ " . . . judicial interference might well be appropriate.

(Full decision and concurrences at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-740.ZS.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-740.ZS.html .)

My Constitutional Law professor asked us what we thought of this. I said Souter was an idiot. He asked why I thought so. I said that if things were so bad that US Senators would decide the fate of men by tossing a coin, then the Republic was already lost and, thus, ‘judicial interference’ was a farce.

While I appreciate your concern, I do not fear for the life of the Republic because President Obama or officers acting for him ordered a missile strike on two Americans whose allegiance to al-Qaeda outweighed their allegiance to the United States.

Were you instead to talk about the flagrant misuse of federal power to raid the Gibson guitar factory while letting alone Gibson’s Democrat-contributing competitors, I would readily join with you.

Live long and prosper.

h lynn keith

I hope you are correct. My own suspicion is that the Gibson raid is not actually unrelated to the use of missiles against enemies of the people, but that may be because I have an over active imagination. Once you abandon the notion of prescribed powers where do you stop?

Russian proscription.

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8802732/PIC-AND-PUB-PLS-Leaked-document-reveals-plans-to-eliminate-Russias-enemies-overseas.html>

Russia ‘gave agents licence to kill’ enemies of the state

The Russian secret service authorised the "elimination" of individuals living overseas who were judged to be enemies of the state and ordered the creation of special units to conduct such operations, according to a document passed to The Daily Telegraph.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent 10:23PM BST 02 Oct 2011

The directive refers specifically to the European Union and western Europe and appears to be signed by the head of counter-intelligence of the FSB, the successor to the KGB.

It is dated March 19, 2003 – four years before the killing of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London. It sets a provisional deadline of May 1 2004 for the new units’ work to begin….."

Bills of Attorney

Just a minor quibble with your excellent post on state actions against individuals; the UK has not completely given up on bills of attainder in modern times. A good example can be found here: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/legislation/scotland/ssi2006/20060512.htm A news story on that legislation can be found here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1536449/A-grim-legal-first-killed-this-firm.html

Cheers,

James

James Spiller

Now that is interesting.

Scott Adams on Taxes, the Wealthy and a Return to the Ocean – WSJ.com

Jerry,

Driving the rich to sea?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204138204576601000374936460.html

I seem to recall a certain Sci Fi author who wrote a series of stories premised on the idea that the wealthy would escape to space.

Jim Crawford

Thanks