Your observation of democratic socialism and loopy thinking brings to mind UT Professors Galbrath's book that identifies
the problem as the market, which has not been honestly informing us, and replacing with it with gov't., resulting in the same, just rewarding different favorites. I'm sure the outcomes will not reward efficiencies or effort that actuates into meaningful growth. This will have an impact on social mobility to the negative for decades if not permanently. This may be an outcome that Prof. Galbraith prefers if he is of the same mind as his Stalinist antecedent.
Your argument for our Constitution makes for a candidacy of a Bob Barr type, though less dogmatic, in 2012 if Obama reinforces the statism that has bloomed under the guidance and acquiescence of the current Administration and Congress. Is it advisable for the incoming Administration to tweak, prod and reward individuals and companies to invest, save or focus effort on some demonstrably positive economic actions? The answer is yes if makes for efficiencies, stability, growth and rewards the efforts of those that do endeavor. This latest and possibly largest intervention by the gov't. in our economy was touted as a transitory not permanent. Let us pray that Prof. Galbraith and his fellow wise men do not have or get the ear of our new president for if they do all of the evils they have decried will surely be practiced by them once they control the pie.
David O. Farrell
THE LAST WORD
George F. Will
TARP and ADD
Congress has made bureaucrats into legislators; or perhaps it has made Hank Paulson into the fourth branch of government.
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It is futile, but not pointless, to note that the federal government's blizzard of bail-outs is unconstitutional. At least that would be the correct judgment were the policy brought before the Supreme Court to be judged with reference to the doctrine of "nondelegation."
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That doctrine, a necessary concomitant of the Constitution's separation of powers, usually concerns improper delegation of legislative powers to the executive branch. Robert Levy, chairman of Washington's libertarian Cato Institute, notes that although the court has condoned some forms of delegation, it has stipulated that Congress "shall lay down ... an intelligible principle to which the person or body authorized ... is directed to conform." Can anyone discern the principle implicit—it certainly is not explicit—in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that authorizes disbursement of perhaps $1 trillion in bailouts? The original purpose of the exercise, to move "toxic" mortgage assets from the books of financial institutions, is no longer controlling.
Improper delegation is inherent in unlimited government, under which hyperkinetic legislators, for whom Attention-Deficit Disorder is an occupational hazard, are jacks of all trades and masters of none. Their expertise is inadequate to their pretensions of omnicompetence. Their desire to intrude government into every nook and cranny of life requires that their attentions be spread thin. So the "laws" they pass are often little more than endorsements of vague aspirations. If a law is a substantive rule that regulates private conduct or directs the operations of government, many laws are effectively written by the executive branch, exercising vast discretion in administration and rulemaking.
In 1989, the Supreme Court said: "Congress simply cannot do its job absent an ability to delegate power under broad general directives." Leaving aside whether that means Congress's understanding of "its job" is radically inflated, how broad is TARP's "general directive"? Is it simply to "make everything nice again"?
John Locke's "Second Treatise of Civil Government" (1690), which deeply influenced America's Founders, says: "The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others." And: "The power of the legislative ... being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands."
But that is essentially what TARP has done. It has made Treasury Department bureaucrats into legislators; or perhaps it has made Secretary Hank Paulson the fourth branch of government. Under TARP, policy derives not from John Maynard Keynes but from the song "Dry Bones":
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