I have often told landlord clients over the years that I would sooner burn property to the ground rather than lease it out, since I have seen the many terrible ways that leasing property can go very bad for a landlord: tenants who don’t pay; tenants who wreck the property; tenants who operate criminal enterprises out of rented property; tenants who are dangerously mentally ill; tenants who are stalkers, etc. Most of my landlord clients are middle class, and the rented property represents a huge chunk of their net worth, often with a mortgage on it and high property taxes, both of which, along with insurance and utilities, must be paid whether the tenant is paying or not. I have also represent tenants, and there are bad landlords out there, but most of what I see are honest landlords who are paying a high financial price, including my fees and costs, for renting to dishonest individuals.
The upshot of the politicians stealing the property of landlords for the past year and a half, will be fewer landlords after this is over and higher rents. A saying among Muslims is that Allah keeps strict books. Certainly dishonesty is a disastrous policy, whether practiced by individuals or nations, and we shall be reaping the bad fruit of the Covid debacle for decades to come.
CRIMINAL PENALTIES Under 18 U.S.C. 3559, 3571; 42 U.S.C. 271; and 42 CFR 70.18, a person violating this Order
may be subject to a fine of no more than $100,000 or one year in jail, or both, if the violation
does not result in a death, or a fine of no more than $250,000 or one year in jail, or both if the
violation results in a death, or as otherwise provided by law. An organization violating this Order
may be subject to a fine of no more than $200,000 per event if the violation does not result in a
death or $500,000 per event if the violation results in a death or as otherwise provided by law.
The U.S. Department of Justice may initiate criminal proceedings as appropriate seeking
imposition of these criminal penalties.
Since when have general police powers been conferred on the CDC? If we had a serious judiciary, anyone prosecuted under this ordinance would see their case dismissed and the costs of their defense assessed on the US Attorney’s office.
@Art, I agree, but even if that happens you know they’ll never talk about it publicly.
Also, not only does the CDC not have police powers (which would only allow enforcement of the law), they do not have any authority I can find which allows them to create any such rules or edicts. CONGRESS intentionally did not extend the moratorium, that alone gives fuel to defense lawyers showing that the policy was intended to expired.
Appellate courts have already ruled they don’t have that power, however the stupid “Supreme” court set that aside and said that since it would be ending in a few weeks it didn’t matter (more or less). All of bureaucrats should be held PERSONALLY responsible for expressly unconstitutional and unlawful acts.
Even in the decision to vacate it was made clear that the CDC does not have the authority to do this. The very first sentence in the decision is:
“I agree with the District Court and the applicants that
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded
its existing statutory authority by issuing a nationwide
eviction moratorium.”
and it ends with:
“In my view, clear and specific
congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be
necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July
31.”
So even though a slim 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court didn’t want to take the case, it was still made clear that the CDC was acting unconstitutionally. They were just told basically “OK you can’t do this, but instead of punishing you we’re just letting you off with a warning this time. But don’t do it again!”
In response of course the CDC immediately did it again, and in defending the move Biden repeatedly said that few people thought it was constitutional, but said it didn’t matter because it would take time for the move to be explicitly ruled to be illegal and during that time the moratorium would continue.
Rule of law has been effectively dead for at least 12 years, but now it’s barely even a polite fiction.
This is simple lawlessness. It makes the rump Roman Republic’s “Bread and Circuses” look like good public policy. We know how that ended: The Imperium.
The Federal government transferred to businesses and individuals over $7 trillion [your poor children and grandchildren will PAY] in China virus lockout hush monies in various loan programs and helicopter drops. Was that intended for tenants to use for things besides rents?
Silly me. I thought no US citizen could be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process. See Bill of Rights – Fifth Amendment.
Is the next step a taking of rental properties under the guise of eminent domain? At this point, nothing would surprise me. What scares me is the fact that, if such an idiotic notion can even occur to me, how long until one of the actual idiots in government think of it on their own?
How is this not an unconstitutional taking without compensation? Questionable at best that they can prevent evictions (impairment of contracts, anyone?), but to do it without just compensation is simple tyranny. Pay the rent Uncle Sam! Someone should file an eviction, and include Biden/US Gov’t as a co-defendant for damages.
@Southcoast, They won’t even need eminent domain (ED). Once the landowners fold on the property (because they can’t collect rent, or evict and sell it) then the government groups will come in and swoop it up for less than they would have to pay if they seized it through ED.
“Transfer of wealth” is how the Left phrases theft of property.
A few weeks ago, I was righteously banned-for-life for unloading [extremist content!] on the abject dishonesty and stupidity at a so-called econ prof’s blog.
Apparently, “income inequality” is the economics academics’ climate change [the world has been ending in six months for the past 30 years] hoax and the transgender crisis.
If they had their way, they would abolish zoning and make you pay [your taxes] for millions of ‘affordable housing’ units in your backyard.
A few weeks ago, I was righteously banned-for-life for unloading [extremist content!] on the abject dishonesty and stupidity at a so-called econ prof’s blog.
Is that Cowen / Tabarrok? I’ve been banned for reasons obscure. I think it was because I regularly skewered the open borders nuisance who posts under the name ‘Hazel Meade’. A critic of Cowen / Tabarrok noted that neither shows much evidence of libertarian dispositions, but they do show evidence of cosmopolitanism – a dream of a borderless world. Scott Sumner is another one of similar kidney (and an irrational hatred of Donald Trump).
I don’t believe in impeachment as retaliation; I really don’t. And I’m not a lawyer. If this is a deliberate unconstitutional overreach of power, not some little thing or debatable point, why shouldn’t we be calling for impeachment? From everything I’ve read about the move, it seems clear that this merits at least an impeachment inquiry.
If this is a deliberate unconstitutional overreach of power, not some little thing or debatable point, why shouldn’t we be calling for impeachment?
Because the Democrats control the House. I really think the two farcical impeachments by the Democrats against Trump have made impeachment something to shy away from. It also doesn’t help that the end product would be President Harris.
I don’t see how it follows at all that the dems using impeachment as a weapon means that we should shy away from using it in cases of blatant disregard for the law. The dems have made it clear that they’re going to use impeachment whenever they can regardless of what we do.
I do agree that it isn’t worth considering when it isn’t something which would be practical.
Art,
Was it Orwell who coined the phrase, “something so stupid only an intellectual could believe it?”
The higher education apocalypse advances apace.
Some moronic [there are dozens] commenter at MR would answer my factual commentary with a very brief reference to my being a Nazi or racist. But, that was OK.
It was TC. I can’t blame him. If he left me there, they’d likely have cancelled him.
Sometimes, I simply cannot stifle myself. My middle name must be “Indelicate.”
If those two clowns are ‘libertarians,’ I need to rethink the definition.
BTW. It all was related to a couple hundred moronic comments [redundant] on a TC posted something-or-other about the word “bullshit.” Happy happenstance. He didn’t say why. He banned me for good.
It’s all good.
I don’t see how it follows at all that the dems using impeachment as a weapon means that we should shy away from using it in cases of blatant disregard for the law.
Depends upon the law being violated and whether it is worth the turmoil in the nation. The use of impeachment by the Democrats as a blatantly political tool probably ensures a series of futile impeachments in the future, or, even worse, an impeachment of a President and a Vice President in order to switch party control of the White House. This all has the feel of the multiple consulships of Marius which set the stage for the ending of the Roman Repulic.
What I don’t understand is how us refraining from using impeachment in cases where it is warranted prevents the left from doing that sort of thing in the future, once they have the opportunity. It looks like to me that all we would be doing is giving even more power to abuse impeachment.
That is, I see two scenarios:
1.) We use impeachment only in situations where we have a good chance of getting it through and where there are actual legal justifications for it. The left, when they are in power, use it as a political tool, barely even attempting to give any justification for it. Result: The left does whatever it wants when it is in power, but we get rid of some corrupt politicians and perhaps cause politicians on the left to be afraid of completely disregarding the law.
2.) We refrain from using impeachment except in the most dire of situations, out of fear of further damaging the institution or causing turmoil in the nation. The left, when they are in power, use it as a political tool, barely even attempting to give any justification for it. Result: the left gains political power not only through the impeachments they carry through, but also by making us too afraid to impeach politicians who deserve it. This probably makes the left even more emboldened then they already are, since there will be no consequences for anything but the worst of their actions regardless of who is in power.
Impeachment requires a supermajority. What the Democrats told us in 1998 (with the assistance of the usual Vichy sorts in the Senate Republican caucus) was that there was no circumstance in which they would concede that one of their own was guilty of an impeachable offense. Absent a Republican supermajority in the Senate (and there has been nothing of the kind since 1879), there will be no impeachment of a Democratic president. I suppose the character of the Democratic Party could change over the next several generations and we have a situation analogous to that in 1974, when the majority of the Republican Senate caucus was ready to convict Richard Nixon. That would be in the Keynesian long run, when we’re all dead.
Note, the impeachments filed contra Donald Trump were complete humbug. The academy is such a latrine that they located three law professors to argue in favor of it (and the ever charitable Jonathan Turley saw his integrity attacked for critiquing the first of these). The Chief Justice was complicit in the first of these and the Republican Senator who he gagged on the floor should have told him to get stuffed and uttered the name ‘Eric Ciaramella’. As for the 2d, it was a disgusting propaganda exercise, and the careers of every complicit Republican should be at an end for it, including and especially the Senate Majority Leader.
The Constitution was written by men of honor. They’re not very numerous in our public life today. Clarence Thomas, perhaps. I’d have thought the military contained some, but I no longer have any confidence in the flag ranks at all.
Appellate courts have already ruled they don’t have that power, however the stupid “Supreme” court set that aside and said that since it would be ending in a few weeks it didn’t matter (more or less).
John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh have proved perfectly worthless the last 9 months.
Impeachment requires a supermajority.
Impeachment in the House is easy if a party has a majority. Conviction in the Senate is hard, even with a super majority, since herding Senators makes herding cats look simple in comparison.
Don, I think it was right to impeach Clinton, even though the result would have put Gore in the Oval Office and probably won him the 2000 race. There’s got to be a point where, oh, let’s call it “grave matter and deliberation” mandates the Constitutional response. To me, the line falls somewhere around Obama’s appointments to the NLRB. Indefensible by any fair reading of the Constitution, and creating a huge imbalance of power. I haven’t seen any argument that the CDC move is Constitutional. Is it big enough to merit throwing down the gauntlet? I don’t know, but it looks big enough that we should at least be talking about it.
Don, I think it was right to impeach Clinton, even though the result would have put Gore in the Oval Office and probably won him the 2000 race.
There was never a prayer of conviction in the Senate Pinky. It was a futile gesture that almost cost the Republicans the 2000 election, along with a fair amount of hubris on the part of Bush the Lesser who thought he could run for President without revealing his arrest for a DUI.
It was a futile gesture that almost cost the Republicans the 2000 election, along with a fair amount of hubris on the part of Bush the Lesser who thought he could run for President without revealing his arrest for a DUI.
Would have been unimportant if it hadn’t been dumped in the news just prior to election day. Not sure it mattered even then. What’s interesting about that is that Bush admitted he had a drinking problem prior to 1987 and he made an implicit admission of having used street drugs prior to 1975 (RM Kaus riffled through the campaign flack statements on this point and wagered the drug in question was LSD).
I tend to doubt the impeachment fracas in 1998 affected the 2000 election. However, the Democrats anomalously gained a few seats in the 1998 midterms. The 2d wind economy had something to do with that, but the impeachment was fodder for the Democratic PR machine, which included the broadcast networks at that point.
Now that you mention the 2000 election, what’s interesting about it is that George W Bush, son of the former president, led in every poll for the Republican nomination for more than two years. Of the four other men who ran against him in the primaries and caucuses, one had worked in a command structure but never as an executive, two had minimal executive experience from brief tours as subcabinet officers, one was a lawyer-turned-legislator, and one had worked strictly in business. Three of the candidates one might gather were running more to rally a constituency than actually obtain the office. No clue why the corps of elite office-holders in the Republican Party couldn’t do better than this. Gore had very modest opposition from a retired member of Congress. Leaving aside those contests where an unchallenged Democratic incumbent was running for re-election, it was the least competitive Democratic nomination contest of the last century. And did you ever get the impression that the highly competitive Mr. Bush went into politics to pwn his dad, or that Albert Gore Jr went into politics to please his parents? It was the Daddy Issues election.
One other thing about the 2000 election. After the embarrassing hanging chads episode, our idiot political class seemed to do everything possible to make elections less secure and orderly over the succeeding 20 years.
Would have been unimportant if it hadn’t been dumped in the news just prior to election day.
Precisely why it should have been revealed in the primaries. It mattered. Bush underperformed the final polls, something you rarely see for a Republican in a presidential race.
http://www.ncpp.org/?q=node/20
Don, that’s my point. I’m strictly making a Rorschach argument here. It was right to take every possible step to impeach Clinton, and it’s arguably right to take every possible step to impeach Biden. In this case, the principled argument may well undercut the pragmatic argument: taking every possible step is as unlikely to put Harris in charge as it previously was to put Gore in charge.
We the people don’t count for squat as they steal elections [November 2020, January 2021].
Ergo, impeachment is off the table.
When [not if] they cross the line, we the people have 430 million guns and a trillion+ bullets.