George Bush nominated Harriet Miers to fill Sandra Day O’Connor’s spot on the Supreme Court. Whereas I was cautiously optimistic about the Roberts’ nomination, I am less optimistic based on what little I know about Miers. It’s not that I think Miers necessarily has some kind of rabid judicial philosophy with which I disagree. It’s that the only thing that apparently distinguishes her legal career was that she latched on tightly to George Bush. Take away accomplishments related to her association with Bush, and I think you have a fairly run-of-the-mill to above average legal career. Certainly nothing that makes her stand out as a natural choice for the Supreme Court.

Now, if Bush had done this for someone not associated with him, I’d be a little excited. Getting a practicing civil litigator on the bench might add a dose of reality-based thinking to the Court. But, as it stands, it looks like another example of Bush favoring cronyism over competence. “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.”

I’d look for a fervent pro-executive branch streak for the next 3 years; a pretty knee-jerk pro-corporate streak for 10 years, and then she’ll drift to the left once she hits 70.

All of this is based on about 20 minutes of reading and reflection. On top of that, I’ve been running a fever for the past couple of days making my brain more addled than usual. So this bit of rumination is worth exactly what you paid for it.

Mr. Furious has an inspired rant on the topic of the odious bankruptcy “reform” bill that finally passed Congress last April. (The thing had died more deaths than Rasputin). In particular, his wrath is directed at those relatively few Democrats who voted for the bill, creating a figleaf of bipartisanship, most notably Joe Biden (D-MBNA).

…no one had the victims of Hurricane Katrina in mind…”

Bullshit. For the NY Times to pull a Bush “no one cold of imagined this…” is absolutely, fucking outrageous.

Perhaps they didn’t know what the name of the hurricane would be, but plenty of people had exactly this kind of scenario in mind when tring to stop this odious piece of corporate shit legislation. Natural disasters and a whole host of other unfortunate situations beyond the contol of people in financial straits are now meaningless, and those folks are shit out of luck.

Hurricane swept away your life? Tough. Guard or Reserve family decimated by the breadwinner being deployed in Iraq for nineteen months? Thanks for your sacrifice, get lost. Giant medical bills because you left a goddamn leg in Fallujah? Too fucking bad. You had cancer and had to stop working? Cry me a river. Someone stole your identity from a negligent credit company and ruined your life? Hope you can work that out…

Go check it out. Excellent stuff.

I’m a collection attorney, not notably all warm and fuzzy on the subject of how people got into debt in the first place. My primary concern is more practical. Maybe the difference is the sorts of debts I pursue, but it is very, very rare that someone I’m chasing has any significant income or assets but gets off the hook by filing Chapter 7. I wonder if the folks pushing this law have actually run the numbers to figure out if they’ll make any more money because of it. Or maybe it was some higher-up with no clue how things look on the ground who just takes as a matter of faith that if you make more people pay into a Chapter 13 plan, you’ll collect more on your particular debt. As a theoretical matter, it certainly sounds logical. But, just from my perspective, it doesn’t seem like there is any more money to wring out of these folks. You’ll probably be forcing more people into the social safety net, such as it is. Not to mention, the failure rate of Chapter 13s are pretty significant as it is. That is only going to increase. So, you’ll have a lot of time and money wasted getting these Chapter 13s started only to have the bankruptcy dismissed with no discharge, putting the debtors and creditors back in the same position as before the bankruptcy was filed.

I also tend to think that the bankruptcy law will make the next recession tougher to shake off. Your typical small business owner has to sign personal guarantees for any credit extended to his business. Recession comes. Business goes under. Business owner is on the hook for the business debts. Now, instead of being able to get a fresh start after a few months through a Chapter 7, he’ll have the anvil of a Chapter 13 hanging around his neck for 5 years. There are probably going to be a lot of entrepreneurial types alongside the genuine deadbeats in Chapter 13 plans.

Anyway, Mr. Furious is much more entertaining on the subject.

I’m not sure why I’m bothering since the news will be covering this story pretty heavily in a few minutes, I suppose, but the AP is reporting as of a minute ago that DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe. A Texas grand jury handed down the indictment. New House Majority Leader, please.

Update Sure enough, DeLay has stepped down from his post as majority leader — at least temporarily — and the newspapers are all over it. As usual, Knight Ridder does a good job. (Knight Ridder’s Iraq coverage has been second-to-none, in my opinion). These paragraphs do a nice job of describing the state of the national Republican Party just about now:

It also costs the nation’s governing party its steel hand in the House — he’s nicknamed the “hammer” for his legendary ability to press legislation through — at a time when the party’s agenda has stalled and its leaders appear to be struggling.

President Bush is suffering from record-low popularity, dragged down by anxiety about the Iraq war, anger about gasoline prices, and complaints about the government response to Hurricane Katrina. At the same time, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee faces an initial inquiry from the Securities and Exchange Commission about his sale of stock in a family corporation shortly before it revealed disappointing earnings and lost value.

And conservatives are threatening rebellion against Bush and Congressional leaders over their open-checkbook response to the hurricane.

Per recommendation of John Cole over at Balloon Juice, I took the OK Cupid Politics Test with the following results:

You are a Social Liberal (78% permissive) and an… Economic Conservative (81% permissive) You are best described as a: Libertarian Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating

Nothing like a little grave digging to help eliminate a tax that is applied only to substantial amounts of wealth. Time has a story entitled, Looking for a Corpse to Make a Case: Senators look for a wealthy casualty of Katrina as evidence against the estate tax.

Federal troops aren’t the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions’ legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had an idea to revitalize their cause, which he left on Apolinsky’s voice mail: “[Arizona Sen.] Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with.”

If legislative ambulance chasing looks like a desperate measure, for the backers of repealing the estate tax, these are desperate times. Just three weeks ago, their long-sought goal of repeal seemed within reach, but Katrina dashed their hopes when Republican leaders put off an expected vote.

. . .
Only a tiny percentage of people are affected by the estate tax—in 2001 only 534 Alabamans were subject to it. And for Hill backers of repeal, that’s only part of the problem. Last year, the tax brought in $24.8 billion to the federal government. With Katrina’s cost soaring, estate tax opponents need to find a way to make up the potential lost income.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of Red-Ink Republicans among the majority party in D.C. Bush II has done a good job of outstripping the jaw-dropping deficits left behind by Reagan and Bush I. The fiscal conservatives in Washington, if any are left, have been awfully quiet since the Clinton years. I guess bloated spending is just one of the many attractive features of one-party rule.

In any case, I always like to single out repeal of the estate tax has a remarkably stupid (or greedy, depending on your perspective) way of reducing government revenue. First, only a remarkably small segment of the American population pay much in the way of the estate tax. It doesn’t even start to kick in until you get over (I believe) $2 million dollars left to heirs. And I’ve never seen any justification for reducing taxes on great wealth left to heirs before reducing taxes on a laborer’s income. Both have legitimate claims to the money, but the laborer has a much, much stronger claim to the money he worked for at the end of the week than the heir has to the money somebody else worked for at the end of that other person’s life. Given that we cannot eliminate all taxes, I’d say we shouldn’t even begin looking at reducing or eliminating the estate tax until we’ve figured out how to eliminate the income tax.

I just thought I’d mention that I got a chance to listen to some of Judge Roberts confirmation hearings on C-Span radio on the way into work this morning. Not really a comprehensive way to form an opinion, but I think I like the guy. I get the impression that he knows the law, loves it, and respects it.

I’m probably not going to describe this correctly on the fly, but as a student of history, I’m somewhat in awe of the development of the common law and how deep and powerful it has been in the development of our democratic republic. So many other ostensible democracies seem to fail, in my mind, because of the lack of a common law system to fill in the gaps, shore up the weaknesses, grease the wheels, and many other supportive metaphors besides. His responses indicated to me that he probably shares this view.

I think our political ideologies may differ, but that might not matter so much because we’re both comfortable letting the well-worn ruts in the common law be our guide. It’s easy for me to say this since I don’t have a great personal stake in hot-button issues like abortion and the death penalty. Of more concern to me is what Roberts response would be to the current executive assertion of authority in the War on Terror(ism/ists)(tm). Apparently he joined in an opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that is troubling in its scope and in its grant of a blank check to the executive in alleging without much independent review that an individual is, in fact, an enemy combatant.

So, maybe my impression of him is too cursory, maybe he is just too slick for me to form an accurate impression, maybe he’ll change his colors once he gets a lifetime appointment, but for now, I think I like the guy.

Dan Froomkin has an interesting column in the Washington Post. Suddenly, in the mainstream media, Mr. Bush is no longer the “commanding, decisive, jovial president you’ve been hearing about for years.” According to Time, Newsweek and others,

it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don’t emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies — the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department — has failed a big test.

In the course of his media analysis, Mr. Froomkin shares this tidbit from a Mike Allen’s Time article:

Allen has an exclusive look at the administration’s “three-part comeback plan.”

Part one: “Spend freely, and worry about the tab and the consequences later.”

Part two: “Don’t look back.”

Part three: “Develop a new set of goals to announce after Katrina fades. Advisers are proceeding with plans to gin up base-conservative voters for next year’s congressional midterm elections with a platform that probably will be focused around tax reform.”

As with any three step plan, this reminds me of the South Park Underpants Gnomes who have a 3-part business plan:
1. Collect underpants.
2. ???
3. Profit.

The Palladium-Item has an editorial about the upcoming Supreme Court appointments. In that editorial, they had this whopper that makes one wonder if they read their own paper:

A lot is at stake; but a nation was repeatedly reminded and seemed to recognize that during the last presidential election, when Bush won re-election and rather handily.

I will grant them that the ’04 election was not quite as close as the ’00 election. But to say Bush won the ’04 election “rather handily” is simply ridiculous. He won by about 118,000 votes in Ohio. A margin of victory under 2%. That’s “skin of your teeth” territory where I come from. The rest of the editorial isn’t notably illuminating or objectionable, but that line threw me for a loop. Trying to rewrite history or simply ignorant, I don’t know.

Regular readers will know my opinion of repealing the estate tax:

It shows what slick marketing and a pile of cash can do for you. The Mars, Campbell, and Gallo family fortunes have been used to lobby for repeal of the estate tax, which nobody but the richest of the rich paid much of for the past century. Political marketing consultant Frank Luntz advised Republicans to rebrand the estate tax as a “death tax”. And, presto!, the rubes were suckered into voting against their economic self interest to the great benefit of the genetic lottery winners who stand to inherit the immense fortunes created by their great grandfathers. Other than simple ignorance, it baffles me why a middle-class citizen would think it is a good idea to run up gargantuan debts funded by their Social Security investments so that we can repeal a tax that has a substantial impact only on the very largest fortunes and that does a bit to inhibit the creation of an American aristocracy. Nobody has ever given me a good explanation why, if we are committed to reducing taxes, we should start with the estate tax rather than reducing payroll taxes or income taxes. Even if an heir has a moral claim on the fruits of daddy’s labor, certainly it cannot be a greater moral claim than an individual has on the fruits of his own labor.

Well, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bill Frist’s priorities are boggling and, frankly, offensive.

Despite Katrina, Frist Will Call Vote on Estate Tax Repeal

Senate Finance Committee members were informed this morning that Sen. Bill Frist will move forward with a vote to permanently repeal the estate tax next week, likely on Tuesday.

. . .

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has “found that the estate tax encourages wealthy individuals to donate considerably more to charity, since estate tax liability is reduced through donations made both during life and at death.” If there were no estate tax in 2000, for example, “charitable donations would have been between $13 billion to $25 billion lower than they actually were.”

I guess Indiana is just a boring kind of state. To the east of us, you have Ohio Governor Taft getting convicted on ethics charges tangentially related to several hundred billion dollars in losses by the Ohio Bureau of Worker’s Compensation. Now, to the south of us, in a scandal of which I know nothing, Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher issues a blanket pardon for everyone but himself with respect to a scandal involving illegal hiring of state workers. Apparently he’s going to take the Fifth in front of a Grand Jury on Tuesday.

What do we have? Toll roads, time zones, and RVs at fish fries. Oh my.