Tag: law

Three strikes for corporations

Karl Denninger has an idea for forcing corporations to abide by the law:

Our current “justice system”, in short simply makes fraud a business model that has costs dramatically smaller than what the offenders can steal through their misconduct. Judge Rakoff is exactly correct in refusing to endorse this model, as despite the claims that this is an “effective” model for discipline of wrong-doing we have decades of experience with it now and all it has produces is serial re-offenders.

Were this a violent criminal context we would have protests on the courthouse steps demanding “three strikes” and similar laws, and we’d get them, exactly as we did years ago.

It is well beyond the time that we should have a “three strkes” rule for corporate misconduct and put a stop to the “neither admit or deny” negotiated settlement.

If individuals can be locked up for life on the basis of three felonies, then obviously it makes a great deal of sense to shut down a corporation after it commits three felonies as well. Corporations only exist by the action of the state and they are terminated by a subsequent action of the state on a regular basis.

While regulators could theoretically keep corporations under control, the historical fact is that they are rapidly captured by the very corporations they are meant to police and transformed into an insurance policy. Imagine how often banks would be robbed if each time someone robbed a bank, they were forced to pay a fine equal to about five percent of what they stole and told not to do it again… or they would pay another similar fine.

The present system of fraud and theft legalized after the fact isn’t good for the nation or the economy, and it isn’t even beneficial for the corporations in the long run. Veal may make for a nice meal, but if you eat all the calves, you’re not going to be eating beef for very long.

Teaching lawyers to lie

Granted it sounds rather like teaching fish to swim:

The University of Illinois acknowledged Monday that its law school reported and/or published inaccurate admissions data in six of the last 10 years. The university, in a prepared statement, said it had determined that Paul Pless, the law school’s former assistant dean for admissions and financial aid, who resigned last week, was solely responsible for the inaccuracies. It also found that the law school lacked adequate controls to prevent, deter and detect such actions, a situation that it said it is taking steps to correct….

The university’s investigation determined that the college reported and or published inaccurate LSAT and GPA data for the class of 2008 and for the classes of 2010 through 2014.

And they’re just heartsick about this ever so embarrassing rogue employee, gosh darn it! The truth is that ALL law schools blatantly lie about the employment prospects of their graduates. All of them. Every single one. And it would almost certainly be a major benefit to the economy and the nation if they were all shut down tomorrow.

Overruling the family court judge

Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the most effective way for men to overturn the ludicrously evil child custody system is to utilize violence to render moot the unjust dictates of the family courts:

A gunman who shot dead eight people in an upmarket beauty salon in California is said to have gone on the rampage after losing a custody battle over his son. Scott Dekraai, who is the former husband of one of the stylists, is said to have shot a total of nine hairdressers and customers at Salon Meritage, a beauty salon just blocks from the Pacific Ocean in the upscale seaside resort of Seal Beach.

His ex-wife, Michelle, is also reportedly among those who were killed. The 42-year-old, who used to work in the military, had allegedly threatened violence after losing a court case against Michelle – who was using the name Huff – over the custody of their seven-year-old son, Dominic.

The problem is twofold. First, the family court system is totally unjust. Second, there is simply no other recourse for the man who has been forcibly robbed of his children by the unholy alliance of ex-wife and family court. I have zero sympathy for any woman who would utilize the force of the law to deprive a man of his children, no matter how unhappy the marriage. In fact, one can quite reasonably argue that it is in the interest of women to demand a more equitable family court system; this should become more apparent when “winning” a child custody case amounts to a potential death lottery.

The ironic thing is that society tends to applaud a man who do anything and pay any price to get back his child. There are movies entirely based on this premise. So, why should it surprise anyone that increasing numbers of men are willing to resort to breaking the very law that took their children away from them? Throughout the West, the Muslims have shown the way: threaten sufficient violence in a credible manner and the law will be modified according to your will.

Breaking the law

In related news, bank robbers also reported they were worried about state plans to enforce the laws against bank robberies:

Effective Saturday, many of South Florida’s “No guns allowed” signs are gone. That’s thanks to a new state law imposing fines of up to $5,000 on county and municipal officials, and even threatening them with removal from office, if they enforce firearms and ammunition restrictions other than those spelled out by state statute.

The state legislation has been on the books since 1987. But because it did not contain any penalties until now, many local governments passed their own, more restrictive laws.

Now, do you suppose that the Federal Reserve and various federal agencies might be just a little more disposed to enforcing the various laws and regulations they are supposed to enforce if said laws and regulations came with penalties attached for not enforcing them?

So much for the Revolution

I know the American courts are as insane as they are totalitarian, but this disrespect for both the law and historical precedent is truly astonishing:

Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

Translation: America is demonstrably less free than medieval England. I tend to doubt that this was what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they revolted against the King’s rule.

A semblance of sanity

IP addresses are not people. And in related news, routers will not be permitted to vote in the 2012 election:

A possible landmark ruling in one of the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the US may spell the end of the ‘pay-up-or-else-schemes’ that have targeted over 100,000 Internet users in the last year. District Court Judge Harold Baker has denied a copyright holder the right to subpoena the ISPs of alleged copyright infringers, because an IP-address does not equal a person.

I’ve never understood the idea that an Internet connection can reasonably be pinned to a single individual. Even if there is only one computer connected to the local area network, who is to say that a different individual was not on the machine? But, given the 40-year war on common sense being waged by the U.S. judicial system, I suppose any semblance of sanity is to be celebrated.

Marriage and the state

Conservatives once welcomed the state getting involved with marriage, despite the fact that it had very little previous involvement with the institution. The result? Instead of strengthening marriage, in less than 150 years, we will have seen marriage devolve from a religious sacrament between a man and a woman to a state contract of indefinite term that can be created by anyone between anyone:

The ACLU of Nevada is challenging Nevada law on who may perform marriages. Currently, the law allows clergy, judges, “commissioners of civil marriages,” and the deputy commissioner to perform marriages. This, it seems is not enough to satisfy the five individuals (shouldn’t that be an even number?) suing Clark County and the state. They would prefer the state allowed any person, regardless of religious affiliation, to be given the authority to solemnize a marriage. More exactly, they believe they have a constitutional right to this policy.

It is long past time for religious individuals to begin pushing for the separation of marriage and state-marriage. I haven’t thought about this long enough to have a solution in mind, but the need is clearly there. And it should be an object lesson to conservatives: Trust not in the State!

Inventing executive powers

The Obama administration exposes its fascist side:

The Obama administration’s Justice Department has asserted that the FBI can obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process or court oversight, according to a document obtained by McClatchy. That assertion was revealed — perhaps inadvertently — by the department in its response to a McClatchy request for a copy of a secret Justice Department memo.

It’s amazing how even the simple act of obtaining a warrant is too much work for the executive branch to bother with anymore. Can there be any doubt that they expect to eventually discover the power to try and sentence “criminals” without any any formal legal process or court oversight?

One also notes that this appears to be a rather belated discovery of this executive power, considering that international telephone calls weren’t just invented yesterday.

Dynamic government, mutating law

It’s ultimately a fool’s game to put any trust in a government program because the law, especially when created and enforced by an interventionist government, is necessarily dynamic. That means that you can’t count on the rules which presently influence your decisions remaining static since the rulemakers will change them any time they believe it will benefit them to do so:

People’s retirement savings are a convenient source of revenue for governments that don’t want to reduce spending or make privatizations. As most pension schemes in Europe are organised by the state, European ministers of finance have a facilitated access to the savings accumulated there, and it is only logical that they try to get a hold of this money for their own ends. In recent weeks I have noted five such attempts: Three situations concern private personal savings; two others refer to national funds.

The most striking example is Hungary, where last month the government made the citizens an offer they could not refuse. They could either remit their individual retirement savings to the state, or lose the right to the basic state pension (but still have an obligation to pay contributions for it). In this extortionate way, the government wants to gain control over $14bn of individual retirement savings.

The Bulgarian government has come up with a similar idea. $300m of private early retirement savings was supposed to be transferred to the state pension scheme. The government gave way after trade unions protested and finally only about 20% of the original plans were implemented.

A slightly less drastic situation is developing in Poland. The government wants to transfer of 1/3 of future contributions from individual retirement accounts to the state-run social security system. Since this system does not back its liabilities with stocks or even bonds, the money taken away from the savers will go directly to the state treasury and savers will lose about $2.3bn a year. The Polish government is more generous than the Hungarian one, but only because it wants to seize just 1/3 of the future savings and also allows the citizens to keep the money accumulated so far.

The fourth example is Ireland. In 2001, the National Pension Reserve Fund was brought into existence for the purpose of supporting pensions of the Irish people in the years 2025-2050. The scheme was also supposed to provide for the pensions of some public sector employees (mainly university staff). However, in March 2009, the Irish government earmarked €4bn from this fund for rescuing banks. In November 2010, the remaining savings of €2.5bn was seized to support the bailout of the rest of the country.

The final example is France. In November, the French parliament decided to earmark €33bn from the national reserve pension fund FRR to reduce the short-term pension scheme deficit. In this way, the retirement savings intended for the years 2020-2040 will be used earlier, that is in the years 2011-2024, and the government will spend the saved up resources on other purposes.

How many more places does this have to happen before Americans begin to realize that the same thing is absolutely going to happen with their local, state, and federal pensions, as well as their entitlement programs. The fact that government officials often refer to pensions and entitlements as “sacred obligations” doesn’t mean that they won’t eliminate the payouts or grab the funds, in fact, the need to place a legally meaningless adjective in front of the noun underlines the fact that they do not consider the legal obligations to bind them in any way.

Dogs are not people

Tucker Carlson goes flying wildly off the rails:

“I’m a Christian, I’ve made mistakes myself, I believe fervently in second chances,” Carlson said. “But Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did in a heartless and cruel way. And I think, personally, he should’ve been executed for that. He wasn’t, but the idea that the President of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs?”

Killing dogs is not called “homicide” for a reason. It’s not murder anymore than killing a cow for its beef is murder. Now, I love dogs considerably more than most people do – Spacebunny laughs at how I carry the Viszla puppy around the house with me and he watched the entire Vikings game on my lap – but I didn’t even think Vick merited the legal punishment he received.

(That being said, Vick probably needed the slap to the head that the bankruptcy and jail sentence provided him.)

Now, I would no sooner want to be around a person who mistreats a dog than one who is prone to defecating in public. But if Vick deserves execution for killing his own dogs, then the people at the Humane Society are clearly worse than the Nazis and Soviets combined. And should the police investigate every suspicious canine death? Tucker clearly needs to take control his emotions on the subject; he is normally sharper than this.