Meanwhile, another DOJ move from Barr
Meanwhile while we are pre-occupied with corvid-19 comes this news from Rolling Stone:
The Trump Department of Justice has asked Congress to craft legislation allowing chief judges to indefinitely hold people without trial and suspend other constitutionally-protected rights during coronavirus and other emergencies, according to a report by Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan.
…
The DOJ has requested Congress allow any chief judge of a district court to pause court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation,” according to draft language obtained by Politico. This would be applicable to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil processes and proceedings.” They justify this by saying currently judges can pause judicial proceedings in an emergency but that new legislation would allow them to apply it “in a consistent manner.”
…
Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told Politico the measure was “terrifying,” saying, “Not only would it be a violation of [habeas corpus], but it says ‘affecting pre-arrest.’ So that means you could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over. I find it absolutely terrifying. Especially in a time of emergency, we should be very careful about granting new powers to the government.”
My daughter posted this on Facebook a couple of days ago. An awful proposal which is unlikely to get past Congress.
We all need to thank Rand Paul for putting the Democrats in charge of the Senate.
So, which is the worst idea? Allowing Barr to do whatever he likes or giving Mnuchin half a trillion dollars to give out?
Barr and Trump’s power grab.
If it wasn’t for the Democrats there would be absolutely no oversight. None. Let that sink in for a minute.
This is our Reichstag’s Fire Moment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
Worked out really well for the Germans.
When are Bob and Donald going to take DNA tests??? I know why they won’t.
Michael
Barr is much the worst.
Mnuchins half Trillion is only money.
I hate it when liberals show that they are just like conservative: what they really care about when it comes down to it is money. Civil rights, or human rights are just for talking about.
Coc,
?????
I just posed a question as to whether the money or civil rights is worse.
I’m a liberal and I see it as a close call, but both are horrible. Now that the stimulus has passed the Senate we are seeing that the money is really going to be unsupervised as the regulators of it will have almost no power to regulate.
As in,
“The emergency coronavirus legislation that the Senate agreed to on Tuesday can only be described as an outrage. It is not an economic rescue package, but a sentence of unprecedented economic inequality and corporate control over our politics that will resonate for a generation.
It represents a transfer of wealth and power to the super rich from the rest of us, with the support of both political parties ― a damning statement about the condition of American democracy.
Final text of the bill has not been released, but according to a legislative draft, the new law would establish a $4.5 trillion corporate bailout fund overseen by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, with few substantive constraints. The bill permits bailed out companies to lay off up to 10% of their workforce over the next six months, with no restrictions thereafter. Mnuchin would have authority to waive any upside for the public in its new investments, and the bill’s restrictions on stock buybacks at bailed-out firms are too temporary to be significant. Bailed out companies could even pay dividends to their shareholders.
Bailout money will flow to the shareholders of large corporations, otherwise known as rich people. The oversight terms that Democrats secured are purely cosmetic, replicating the toothless provisions of the 2008 bank bailout that enabled watchdogs to report abuse but not actually prevent or rectify it.
“If you give vast amounts of public money to a single person with no real accountability, you won’t like what happens next,” Damon Silvers, the deputy chair of the oversight panel for the bank bailout, wrote on Tuesday.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/senate-democrats-donald-trump-coronavirus-bill_n_5e7b77a6c5b62a1870d62d83
We need the House to stop this monstrosity. How is it possible that the Senate passed this bill with almost nothing to deal with the medical emergency we will all shortly find us in?
Shameful.
“orking people, by contrast, do not have time to wait. The coronavirus layoffs have already begun, and when official numbers begin rolling in on Thursday, they will be shocking. Democrats and Republicans have essentially decided to hold a pittance of relief for the people hit hardest hostage to the most reckless and, at the moment, unnecessary corporate welfare program ever conceived.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) boasted that the package is “a wartime level of investment into our nation.” But nothing about the legislation resembles the way a nation prepares for an ambitious military operation. The legislation provides nothing of substance to address the coronavirus pandemic itself. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has already said the package will do next to nothing to assuage the disaster unfolding in his state. It mobilizes no new resources, organizes no production, improves no medical supply delivery and trains no new nurses. Instead, it moves an enormous amount of money around and puts the Trump administration in charge of its movement.
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We are about to replay this nightmare with a more frightening cast of demons. The small business relief the Senate has agreed to authorize on Wednesday will be too little to stem the tide of failures, and will arrive too late to help too many firms that will go under, while the biggest companies in America feast on the fruits of the bailout.
“We will be lucky if most small businesses see any assistance in less than two months,” law professors Adam Levitin and Satyam Khanna wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday. “That is time they — and their employees — do not have.” As with the bank bailouts, big companies will grow larger and more profitable and demand further control over the way what we still call a democracy is organized.
But these horrors will only be realized if the House of Representatives approves this monstrosity. The House voted down the first bank bailout bill in 2008. It could do so again, and demand instead a simple relief bill for people who really need it ― working families ― and emergency measures to actually fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Democrats control the House. They can pass any bill they like and dare Senate Republicans and the president to oppose a serious bill for a serious problem.
Or they can rubber-stamp the Senate bill and help Donald Trump foreclose on the next generation of American democracy.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/senate-democrats-donald-trump-coronavirus-bill_n_5e7b77a6c5b62a1870d62d83
EMichael
I don’t see why the ?????
I agree with you about the coronavirus bill the Senate just passed.
But giving the government the power to put people in jail for no real reason is going to be much worse in human terms. We can always figure ways to deal with money problems, especially if we still have a democracy (doubtful at this point.)
There is another horror story hidden in the Senate package (and the House readiness to sign on to it: a payroll tax holiday (that is strangely not being mentioned in any of the high end news sources that i see.
A payroll tax holiday is a stupid way to boost the economy. Most of the money will go to people who already have more than they need, Very little of it will go to low wage workers, and none of it will go to those unemployed.
Better to RAISE the payroll tax about one percent or so. Those who are still working can pay a little extra to keep SS solvent so they can still collect benefits when they need them… as they will,
And if because of widespread unemployment even a small tax increase won’t be enough to pay current benefits the government should LEND money to SS, to be paid back when the economy recovers and payroll tax receipts return to normal.
But not a word in the press about this, Not even from the “supporters of Social Security.”