Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Election Day

The quality of the following correspondence should be self explanatory. See if you can spot the problem.

Hi Mr._____

I wanted to let you know that the Senator did not vote for this legislation, HR 3808, rather it passed by unanimous consent. This means that no one objected to the bill but individual records of each Senator’s position were not kept. Thankyou for writing in.

Sincerely,
Derek Khanna (on behalf of Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts)


Hello Derek,

Thank you for responding. I am aware that The Senate's was a voice vote, and for the purpose of clarification, when you wrote, "no one objected to the bill", were you saying that Mr. Brown voiced no objection to what is, in my view, a very objectionable bill? If so, saying Senator Brown did not "vote" for the legislation would seem to be technically true, but, rather something else in reality. Please advise.

Regards,

Edwardo

From Derek Khanna:

No one objected to the legislation. A large amount of legislation is done on the floor, often without physical quorum, through a unanimous consent vote. This means that unless someone objects it passes. Senator Brown did not object. He did not vote for or against the legislation.

I understand your concern for the legislation, it was vetoed by President Obama.

From me:

It was "pocket vetoed" by the President, which is a qualitatively different act, and I now have, for all intents and purposes, my answer. I am disappointed that Senator Brown did not voice a strenuous objection to a bill whose intent was an end run around proper legal process.

I made the same query concerning HR 3808 to Senator John Kerry's office and have yet to receive a reply. On that basis, and that alone, so far, the office of Senator Brown has the edge on his Democrat colleague. Finally, a vote where no one can be said to have either voted for or against a piece of legislation that ultimately passes is evidence of a deeply, not to say fatally flawed, system. I know what I won't be doing next Tuesday.

7 comments:

DED said...

If I'm interpreting the language of the bill correctly (I do not presume to be fluent in legalese, though it would be nice if bills were written in plain English), if signed into law, a notary public's authorization in one state must be respected in all states. Is that correct?

Edwardo said...

Yes, that's it. And I'm sure you can figure out what entities think that's a swell idea, and, equally, you can suss out why such legislation is an abomination.

DED said...

Yes, I can see how that power could be abused. One would think that such a bill would be rendered unconstitutional by the 10th amendment (at the very least).

Without knowing the history of the bill, nor its author, I don't know if the intent was sinister or not. As for members of Congress being unfazed by the bill, I'm inclined to think that most of them were clueless as notaries have no legal authority and thus appear innocuous to them. Any sinister intentions would likely be within a minority.

I just read that some states already allow notaries from one state to notarize in others.

So Obama did the right thing by vetoing it.

Edwardo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Edwardo said...

The intent of the bill was to assist securitizers of mortgage backed securities, aka banks- who presently are staring, from point blank range, at the big barrel of a gun named mortgageocalypse- avoid their just desserts.

DED said...

It's a sneaky bill. Aderholt apparently received plenty of money from employees of a bank in Argentina (See "money and influence" section of this link) and the National Association of Realtors.

Unrelated to this, he sponsored a bill demanding that NASA spend the budgeted money on the canceled Constellation program anyway. There were a few aerospace companies listed as being big contributors to his campaign.

Career Donations

Edwardo said...

That's your legislative body. On both sides of the aisle it is peopled by grifters and stooges for the remnants of the FIRE economy.

In the meantime, we have a "credible threat"-according to who- that involves packages sent from Yemen to Chicago to attack places of worship.

The only problems I see with this B-grade movie script are, why, after identifying these dangerous, dangerous packages, did they allow them on the plane? And then there is just the head shaking aspect associated with the very idea that anyone would even think, let alone try, to send some bomb from Yemen to Chicago. It's interesting how "the "terrorists" invariably appear to be the sort of people who define bizarre, let alone incompetent?