Timely Objections Blog

The First Amendment of Brandon Raub

By R Tamara de Silva

August 22, 2012

 

       The point of demarcation between political expression and dangerous dissent is being discerned in much the same manner the Romans augured the future by looking at the entrails of birds.  Enter social media, which has been flexing its muscles on the topic even managing to draw the somnolent Media to bring national attention to the odd arrest and detention of a 26 year old former combat Marine, Brandon J. Raub.  Brandon, who had served his country in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2005-2011, was taken from his home by this same government in the form of the FBI, Secret Service and police agents for what looks to the outside world as his expression of his First Amendment right to criticize his government and his President. Is he the first known victim of the National Defense Authorization Act or Virginia's involuntary commitment statute? 

       One of my favorite people at the University of Chicago was the late Allan Bloom.  He once suggested that the First Amendment was a grand waste- no longer needed in America.  He said this because he observed that most people simply have nothing to say.  Most people may have opinions about many things but they are merely repeating what someone told them seeming to be incapable of forming a worthwhile thought on their own.  He was right in that as he went on to say, peoples' opinions are about as distinct and undifferentiated as the individual Kleenex are in a tissue box. 

       Social media bears this ought.  Except Brandon Raub was not using his Facebook account to post the perfunctory braggadocio or a travel itinerary.  Or the equally common antipode of the plea of a starving third world child- a picture of a full plate of food with an introduction about how good it is.  Brandon's posts were not so excruciatingly dull, as to be entirely devoted to self aggrandizement or the scatological- but they have all the marks of seditiousness in a Soviet Russia or Hussein's Iraq.  But in America, Brandon, like many Americans was expressing his discontent at the state of his country and its government.  Like many other of his countrymen, intellectually engaged in matters of governance, Brandon Raub used Facebook for what is inarguably its highest use-a gargantuan virtual public square.   Used this way, Facebook is not an ode to the elevation of the miniscule and mundane but a truly interesting and potentially important phenomenon.  Important because it is perhaps also a guardian of liberty in every way the Fourth Estate has been. 

       Opinions expressed in a public square can be diverse and some may even be out there.  However, were the American Revolutionaries alive today and speaking of sedition as they did then, they would not be called Patriots as history has called them-they would today be called terrorists.    This country was the birthplace of sedition and the refuge of many people the Crown considered way too "out there"-a remote place across a vast ocean fitting for the lunatic fringe. 

       The concerns of many about young Brandon are that free speech must be protected especially when what rights we were given by the Constitution have come under an onslaught of multiple new assaults like the monitoring of online computer searches, indefinite detention, indefinite detention without any due process of law [Mr. Eric Holder's invention of something called "Executive due process," which provides for a kind of due process and judgment but with no lawyer, no court of law and no trial] regular warrantless taping and tapping of all cellphone calls, the tracking and sale of customer information via credit card use, and the Department of Homeland Security's tracking of social media and all use of the internet,  tracking of all online activity, tracking of all financial transactions, the National Defense Authorization Act ("NDAA"), etc.-with all this, the willingness to still speak at all is a singularly brave but crucial act.  The law has not kept up with technology and most people are unaware of what their rights are in its wake.  The First Amendment safeguards that one act, speech, which may be one of the few gossamer threads that yet binds together our fragile and aging civil liberties. 

       Admittedly, some of Raub's postings were outside of mainstream thought in that he cited conspiracy theories related to 9/11 being an inside job and appeared to post a threat when he wrote that he would, "Sharpen up my axe; I'm here to sever heads"-repeating the words of a song called, "Bring Me Down."[1] 

       Were his posting lyrics to this song tantamount to a national security threat?  After the Colorado shootings and the shootings at Virginia Tech, many would argue it makes sense to preemptively lock people up for communications that are even ambiguously threatening.   The problem with this line of thought is that it is a slippery slope and it vests a dangerous amount of discretion in the hands of the government that can easily be abused.   It is also profoundly un-American. 

       When faced with any crisis or a 24 hour news-media human interest story, we seem to think it best to make more laws and invest the government with even more authority to "fix it" -never fully understanding that powers so eagerly bestowed can be abused and turned against their bestower.  As Benjamin Franklin famously wrote and anyone with even a cursory reading of history will understand, "those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty not safety."

       One nation that has effectively used the pretext of danger to the state to imprison all who would criticize it is the Soviet Union.  All societies have normative values and at times some of them are pretextual-designed to mask much baser values.  Security is a value of the Soviet system used to hide the interests of its leaders from Nikita Krushchev to Vladimir Putin, to control the population and public opinion.  Putin's record of repressive psychiatry and the imprisonment of anyone who would insult his distastefully enormous opinion of himself belies any claim that he has divested himself fully of Khrushchev's repressive regime.  Police psychiatry allows for the routine imprisonment of dissidents in mental health institutions effectively silencing all dissidents and protestors from Garry Kasparov and Andrei Sakharov to current human rights lawyers.   Before we magnanimously proffer up parts of the First Amendment on the altar of security, we should imagine living in any one of the many parts of the world where the expression of dissent is met with death, a Soviet labor camp or more typically imprisonment in an asylum.  America must never strive to be a Soviet Union.

       There is little evidence if any, to suggest that Brandon Raub is being detained or was taken into custody for violation of the NDAA.   By all appearances Brandon Raub was involuntarily taken into custody and detained under Virginia's civil commitment law.[2]  Most states have some variant of this law by which on the word of someone in the mental health profession, or a doctor, a nurse or even a social worker, a person can be locked up if they are deemed either a threat to themselves or others.  The standard of proof the person wishing to have someone else locked up under must meet is the presence of "clear and convincing evidence" at an hearing before a magistrate at which the accused is not provided an opportunity to have an independent mental health expert rebut or evaluate the evidence offered.  

       The problems with this are numerous.  Judges and lawyers are ill equipped to evaluate mental illness.   The concept of mental illness itself is a bit like ether, "[M]ental disorder is such a vacuous phrase that the law should consider dispensing with it as an independent criterion for intervention and instead simply identify as precisely as possible the types of mental dysfunction it wants to treat specially."[3]  Social workers and mental health professionals may have no basis by which to discern the difference between sincere political protest and the condition of "dangerousness to society."   Unfortunately for those involuntarily committed by other people, the clear and convincing standard is not difficult to overcome because it is not objective when applied to cases of civil commitment. 

       The Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders ("DSM") is used to categorize mental disorders but its categorizations are constantly being revised and subject to debate within the mental health field.   The authors of the DSM themselves warn against using the DSM for legal proceedings because of the danger that the diagnostic descriptions contained within it will be misunderstood and misused.   Of course, I do not mean to presume that the social worker or health care person calling for involuntary commitment has read the DSM.

       The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution prohibit the government from taking from taking away a person's "life, liberty or property" without due process of law.   Civil commitment hearings perform an end run around due process-taking away liberty without the protections given to a criminal defendant.

       This all begs the question what was it about Brandon Raub's Facebook posts that the FBI and Secret Service considered a threat?   Several of Brandon's posts expressed concern about an elite ruling class, the Federal Reserve, and the enormity of the Federal government.  He must be insane for being critical of the government in the following post written on his Facebook wall on November 11, 2011,

The Truth 
by Brandon J Raub on Friday, November 11, 2011 at 10:00 am

America has lost itself. We have lost who we truly are. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This is the land of Thomas Jefferson.

This is the land of Benjamin Franklin.

This is the land of Fredrick Douglas.

This is the land of Smedley Butler.

This is the land John F. Kennedy.

This is the land of Martin Luther King.

This is the land where the cowboy wins. This is the land where you can start from the bottom and get to the top. This is the land where regardless of you race and ethnicity you can succeed and build a better life for you and your family. This is the land where every race coexists peacefully. This is the land where justice wins. This is the land where liberty dwells. This is the land where freedom reigns. This is the land where we help the poor, and people help each other. This is land where people beat racism.

The Federal Reserve is wrong. They have designed a system based off of greed and fear. They designed a system to crush the middle class between taxes and inflation. This is wrong, and it is unjust. It is wrong.

We have allowed ourselves to be deceived and seduced by the powers of the printing press. It is not a good system. It discourages saving: the foundation for all stable economic activity. The Federal Reserve is artificially manipulating interest rates and creating phony economic data.

This thing has deceived our entire nation.

They created it in 1913. They also created the income tax in 1913. They encouraged the growth of debt so they can tax you on it. There is interest on the debt. Your government is in bed with these people. They want to enslave you to the government so that they can control every aspect of your lives. It is an empire based on lies. They operate of greed and fear.

There is a better way. It's called freedom. Freedom is called a lot of things. But there is a true meaning. It means very simply that you have the right to do whatever you want as long as you are not infringing on the freedoms of other people.

I firmly believe that God set America apart from the other nations of the world. He saved a place where people could come to to escape bad systems of goverment. This system we have created works. It really works.

There is evil going on all around the world. The United States was meant to lead the charge against injustice, but through our example not our force. People do not respond to having liberty and freedom forced on them.

Men and Women follow courage. They follow leadership, and courage. Our example has paved the way for people all around the world to change their forms of government.

Force is not the way because liberty is a powerful concept. The idea that men can govern themselves is the basis for every just form of government.

We can govern ourselves. We do not need to be governed by men who want to install a one world banking system. These men have machine hearts. Machine and unnatural hearts.

They have blocked out the possibility of a better world. They fear human progress. They have monopolies on everything.

This life can be free and beautiful. There are enough resources on this earth to support the world's population. There are enough resources on this earth to feed everyone. There is enough land for everyone to own their own land and farm, and produce their own energy.

These people have been hiding technology. There are ways to create power easily. There is technology that can provide free cheap power for everyone. There are farming techniques that can feed the entire world.

The Bill of Rights is being systematically dismantled. Men have spilled their blood for those rights.

Your sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters, and Americas best young men and women are losing their limbs. They are losing their lives. They are losing the hearts. They do not know why they are fighting. They are killing. And they do not know why.

They have done some extraordinary acts. Their deeds go before them. But these wars are lies. They are lies. They deceived our entire nation with terrorism. They have gotten us to hand them our rights. Our Rights! Men died for those rights!

September Eleventh was an inside job. They blew up a third building in broad daylight. Building 7.

Your leaders betrayed you.

You elected an aristocracy. They are beholden to special interests. They were brainwashed through the Council on Foreign Relations. Your leaders are planning to merge the United States into a one world banking system. They want to put computer chips in you.

These men have evil hearts. They have tricked you into supporting corporate fascism. We gave them the keys to our country. We were not vigilant with our republic.

There is hope. BUT WE MUST TAKE OUR REPUBLIC BACK.[4]

 

 

       President Andrew Jackson was also critical of the central bank and would most certainly be detained as a lunatic or worse were he alive today by both political parties and the pundit class,   

"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves."

 

 

       The Department of Homeland Security would consider Brandon a potential terrorist as they would also consider most of the people that express views critical of the government as potential terrorists.   According to a study by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism entitled, "Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970-2008," funded by the Department of Homeland Security, terrorists are likely people, "reverent of individual liberty...suspicious of centralized federal authority or anti-government," including people who are extremely conservative or extremely liberal.[5] 

       Do not depend on some judge or lawyer to protect your First Amendment rights.  Too often I have observed judges and lawyers slavishly reciting precedence and statute with the Constitution being but a tertiary concern.  Law review articles about involuntary civil commitment regurgitate a parade of judicial affronts on due process.   Given this way or reasoning, which is the absence of reasoning but mere recitation of the past as authority binding on the future, un-Constitutional decisions have a theoretically infinite half-life.  We need to pay attention to Brandon Raub's fate just as much as John Bradford observed the fate of fellow going to the scaffold from the Tower of London and remarked, "there but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford."  The scaffold is still there and the tower remains claiming many inhabitants who thought they would certainly never reside there.@

R. Tamara de Silva

Chicago, Illinois

August 22, 2012

 

R. Tamara de Silva is a securities lawyer and independent trader

 

Oligarchy and Its Discontents-What Money Buys

By R Tamara de Silva

August 20, 2012

 

            "The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The      pessimist fears it is true."

                                                J. Robert Oppenheimer

 

 

       Last week it was announced that the United States Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission would not seek any criminal charges against Goldman Sachs or for that matter the executives of MF Global including its CEO, former United States Senator Jon Corzine.  This likely surprised many people who still read the news, but actually infuriated no more than three people among them... and they were probably on the verge of becoming unhinged anyway.  Most people realize that while economists look for optimized states whose existence is perfectly beyond dispute within their own models...optimized models of the actual economy and democracy for that matter, exist only in the Great Books... and many other books.  In point of fact, the discontents of oligarchy are numerous.  While economists may not spend much time successfully modeling the real world-perhaps in part because there are no repercussions for their being in error, catastrophic events happen in the real world and are not modeled or anticipated by any economist.   Recent events like the decision to give Jon Corzine and MF Global a pass are legitimate examples of the role of money in politics and in the law. 

       Henry Adams sort of foresaw the events of last week.  Henry Adams had a privileged perch from which to view the dilemmas of American democracy as he was the great grandson of the second American President John Adams and grandson of our sixth President, John Quincy Adams.  There are certain scathing critiques of politics that have always attracted me to Henry Adams-in the same way I was drawn as child to the diatribes of Cato the Elder.  For example, he regularly wrote about the mortal danger to American democracy manifested by the role of money, especially corporate influence and how its tendency to corrupt the political system, would be the country's ultimate undoing.  In writing about the corruption of the Erie Railroad for the Westminster Review in 1870, he described corporate influence growing to the point of being unchecked,

 

          "swaying power such as has never in the world's history been trusted in the hands of mere private citizens,...after having created a system of quiet but irresistible corruption-will ultimately succeed in directing government itself. Under the American form of society, there is now no authority capable of effective resistance."

 

       He was also disturbed by the party system of politics in America and saw it to be willing to sacrifice principle for accommodation.   This theme comes out in his book, Democracy.  In Democracy the idealistic and hyper-principled heroine, Madeleine Lee is courted by the far more practical and ambitious Senator Silas P. Ratcliffe.  Madeleine decides not to marry Ratcliffe though it seems that he gets the better of her in almost all their arguments about politics.  Ratcliffe has aspirations to the White House and argues that moral authority comes from his political party the party with which he will on principle never disagree, "that great results can only be accomplished by great parties, I have uniformly yielded my own personal opinions where they have failed to obtain general assent."  

       Many of the books exchanges between Madeleine and Ratcliffe find Madeleine losing the argument.  She prefers to remain single and reject Ratcliffe and Washington at the end of the novel as she is determined to return to her philanthropic works saying, "The bitterest part of this horrid story...is that nine out of ten of our countrymen would say I had made a mistake."  And they still would.   I confess I see myself in Madeleine but one who must stay, without leaving, just out of an insatiable curiosity to observe all that will happen.

 

Citizens United v. FEC and the Judiciary

       Money has always played a role in politics.  Any discussion of the role of money in politics, judicial elections or law enforcement in 2012 has to consider the United States Supreme Court's January 2010 decision in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission in which the Court ruled that political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment.  Citizens United allows corporations and unions to spend money to support or denounce candidates in elections through ads.  This is a titan of a case, perhaps unrivalled in its potential to alter the face of representative government in the United States because of the way that most people who vote decide on a candidate-they watch or listen to broadcast media advertisements.   However, Citizens United did not alter much of the McCain-Feingold campaign law, which still regulates corporate donations to political parties and candidates.  Nor does the case affect political action committees or PACs, which can contribute directly to candidates.

       Perhaps the greatest impact of the Citizens United decision will be in the election of state judges.  Judicial independence at one time meant independence from the Crown.  Since then the term judicial independence has come to mean the expectation (however well grounded or not) that when dealing with the justice system, a person can expect a member of the judiciary free from the appearance of personal, monetary or political bias in the outcome of the case.  This mirrors the all important principle stated in Article 40 of the Magna Carta, "To no one will we sell, to one will we refuse or delay right of justice."    

       More money spent on judicial elections, it is feared, will give rise to the impression that justice is for sale very much reminiscent of John Grisham's book, "The Appeal," wherein a billionaire CEO buys himself a state supreme court justice who rules in favor of his company on an appeal.  Grisham's book is eerily like the true story of Supreme Court of West Virginia Justice Brent Benjamin who ruled in favor of the $3,000,000 campaign donor, Don Blankenship, the CEO of A.T. Massey Coal in a case involving a $50,000,000 verdict.  The United States Supreme Court ruled that Justice Benjamin ought to have recused himself in the case Caperton v. Massey.

       There is however one place where Citizens United may have a salutary effect on the judicial system.  In Chicago's Cook County, Illinois the slating of judges is militantly political and based not on merit per se but on a candidate's payment of $25,000 to one of the members of the Judicial Slating Committee of the Cook County Democratic Party.  Judges that are slated, almost invariably win.  Citizens United cannot but have a salutary effect here because it is difficult to imagine a worse system for picking judges anywhere.

 

The Imperial Presidency and Money

       James Madison was a staunch advocate for the separation of powers between all three branches of government.  The authors of a recent book, "The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic," by sitting Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner and an Adrian Vermeule from Harvard Law argue that the separation of powers is a relic of the past and largely beside the point.  Without getting into questions of judicial activism and the phenomenon of hyper-opinionated sitting justices, they are actually right from an anthropological perspective.   They are right in so far that the Executive Branch has become, with the passage of the Administrative Procedure Act and sweeping acts of legislation such as Dodd-Frank and now the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the most powerful branch of government.  The Executive has created so many branches, departments and agencies under its purview, most with rule-making ability-that its power has become tantamount to that of an imperial monarchy.

       However, Justice Posner because he seems only to view the world through the lense of a relentlessly pragmatic cost-benefit, economic analysis, draws at times predictable but disturbingly simplistic conclusions.   In their book, Justice Posner and Dr. Vermeule acknowledge the relative impotence of the other branches to keep up with or check the Executive and go on to assert that this does not much matter because Presidents are checked by elections, "liberal legalism's essential failing is that it overestimates the need for the separation of powers and even the rule of law."  

       In other words, just because Presidents are above the law, it does not matter because they will be checked by the rule of politics-they will be voted out.  This is startling simplistic and weak logic because it assumes an efficient marketplace, with equal participants and perfectly symmetrical information.  It also allows for the interpretation of the Constitution based upon a pragmatic economic analysis completely at  war with the absolute first principles and "inalienable rights" held sacred by the Founding Fathers and all the state legislators that ratified the Constitution. 

            This is also where money comes in.

       In his run for President in 2008, President Obama spend over $730 million and is expected by Reuters to raise $1 billion for 2012.  Spending for the 2012 election for all parties and candidates could, according to one estimate, top $9.8 billion in large part because of spending by super PACs.   Yet almost 25% of super PAC money comes from just five donors, Harold Simmons (pro-Romney) , Sheldon Adelson (pro-Romney), Peter Theil (pro-Ron Paul), Bob Perry (pro-Romney now) and Jeffrey Katzenberg (pro-Obama).[1]

       If money affects voting and elections, then according to Posner's logic, the people who will actually exercise the rule of politics and check the Executive Branch are to be these handful of businessmen and others like them.   According to the Center for Responsive Data, 3.7% of the contributors to super PACs account for 80% of the money raised-46 donors have given in excess of $67,000,000.[2]

 

Money and Prosecutions

       In the case of MF Global and Jon Corzine, Jon Corzine has been one of President Obama's elite bundlers in 2011 and 2012.  He campaigned heavily for President Obama when he was governor of New Jersey and has held private fundraisers for President Obama in his home even after MF Global went bankrupt and $1.6 billion of customer funds went missing in October 2011.  It was announced last week that he is unlikely to face any criminal charges.

       Contrast this to the Department of Justice's handling of the same violation of the Federal rule requiring the segregation of customer funds in the matter of Peregrine Financial Group.  $215 million of customer funds were discovered to be missing from customer segregated accounts in July 2012 at Peregrine Financial Group.  Russell Wasendorf Sr was arrested and criminally charged later that month.   Same act-missing customer funds-but far disparate prosecution. 

       Remember that in the futures industry, the key difference between futures commissions merchants ("FCMs") like Peregrine and MF Global and securities brokerages is that FCMs, unlike securities brokers, are required by law to keep their customer funds segregated from the FCM's own funds.   It is in this way that FCMs have been able, with comparatively few exceptions, to ensure that customer deposits are completely protected from all losses an FCM may incur due to its own proprietary trading.   Before MF Global, the requirement that FCMs segregate customer funds completely from their own funds largely prevented FCM customers from losing money due to an FCM bankruptcy

       In my first article on MF Global, I suggested that the $1.2 billion missing from customer segregated funds may have been incurred due to over-leveraged positions in European sovereign debt that coincidentally took a dramatic turn for the worse (as they did in fact as yield curves doubled rapidly in some issues) during the last weeks of October, and that funds were transferred to cover margin in customer funds held in European debt.   There is a scenario that nothing illegal would have occurred because CFTC Rule 1.25 had been amended to permit the investment of customer segregated funds in foreign sovereign debt.  Keep in mind that this rule was amended by Jon Corzine's lobbying of Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC") Chairman Gary Gensler, who is a friend and colleague of Jon Corzine.

        An alternate illegal scenario is that MF Global may have engaged in some late stage embezzlement of customer funds that were supposed to be segregated from MF Global's accounts and never commingled with any other funds.[3] One way this may have occurred is if the funds were transferred out of customer segregated funds for a legal purpose but without the customers' meaningful consent or, more likely, with an intent to deceive the customer.  

       If MF Global transferred customer funds out of segregated accounts as a loan to MF Global to cover margin calls in existing positions in sovereign debt, (perfectly legal)[4], it may however, be fraud and intent to deceive on its part if MF Global knew it could not repay the money.  This fraud may have occurred if MF Global knew (and it would be interesting to argue how it did not) that it sought to legally borrow from customer funds, knowing that it was de facto insolvent and could not replace the money.   

       During Senate and House hearings on MF Global, Terrance Duffy, the CEO of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange contradicted Corzine's testimony and stated that the CME's investigation of the MF Global matter revealed the existence of emails between MF Global's assistant treasurer and Jon Corzine.  These emails where contrary to what Corzine told Congress and suggested that Corzine had in fact authorized the transfer of customer funds out of customer accounts-the funds that went missing.   We also know that while Jon Corzine claimed he knew nothing about the financials at MF Global, he was peddling them to Interactive Brokers as he was trying to broker a last minute sale of MF Global to Interactive Brokers--in other words, he had to have been extremely familiar with MF Global's financials during the exact time period he claims to Congress to know nothing of what was happening.

       We still do not know everything that really happened at MF Global because the Department of Justice has not yet decided to grant any immunity to the one person who would be their chief witness in the matter, the Assistant Treasurer.  The Assistant Treasurer is represented by Reid H. Weingarten, who is as luck would have it, is one of United States Attorney General Eric Holder's best friends.   Some could say they agreed to let the clock run out on this one. 

       From a purely economic cost benefit analysis, Jon Corzine's raising in excess of $500,000 for President Obama in 2012 alone was the smartest money he ever spent and appears to have bought him justice in the sense of a reprieve from the CEO of Peregrine's fate.

      What about Mr. Adelson?  The billionaire casino magnate is being investigated for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, money-laundering and bribery.  Perhaps contributing by some accounts close to $100 million towards Mr. Romney's election would ensure a stop to the pesky Federal investigators.  If so, this would be money entirely worth spending.

       This brings us to the last bit of news from last week that Goldman Sachs would not be investigated for criminal wrong-doing in connection with mortgage crisis and certain deals like ABACUS. 

       This Justice Department  and SEC have gotten many investment banks to execute settlement agreements with them including Goldman and Citigroup-essentially selling "get out of jail cards." Are these settlement agreements, as the Judge Rakoff and Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil have asked, merely considered the "cost of doing business" or some part of a transaction tax on offending financial titans?[5]   

       If it were in the public's interest to prevent fraud upon the market, then fines should be significant enough to actually deter illegal conduct.  If not, prosecutions should be endured and convictions gotten.    The historic role of punishment in the criminal justice system has not been just punishment, but deterrence.  Having Citigroup or GS pay $285 million is pin money to banks with quarterly revenue in the billions of dollars-the "cost of doing business" is not a deterrent to anyone but more like the cost of a municipal parking sticker to the average Joe.

       What is problematic about bank settlements is that smaller market participants cannot afford to pay for "get out of jail cards" and because the costs of prosecuting anyone other than an investment bank are less, smaller participants are actually prosecuted and do get jail time.   Peter Boyer and Government Accountability President Peter Schweizer have written about how justice is for sale in Mr. Eric Holder's Department of Justice pointing to the fact that despite President Obama's claims to represent the 99%, Department of Justice "criminal prosecutions are at 20 year lows for corporate securities and bank fraud." [6]  Given the correlation between campaign contributions (admittedly protected speech) and selective prosecutions, the 20 year low in bank fraud prosecutions is unlikely to change  with either political party.

       Consider the money.  Goldman Sachs employees were the second largest single contributor to President Obama in 2008 contributing $1,013,091.[7]   Goldman's employees are the largest single contributor to Mr. Romney in the 2012 election cycle having donated $636,080 by the end of the last quarter.[8]   Goldman Sachs is also one of the largest clients of Mr. Eric Holder's lawyer firm Covington & Burling.

       Money has always played a part in politics and it is rational for everyone with a stake in the political process to participate.  But not all participation is equal-not even close.  The odds of one vote ever making a difference in a Presidential election are between 1 in 10 million and 1 in 100 million-depending upon the state in which you live.  Voting only matters in the aggregate but money seems to matter more in terms of affecting action after election.    Above all, justice must never be for sale because as Cato the Elder and many others have pointed out throughout history the selling of justice, like the selling of indulgences, is an attribute of a decaying and dying political system.

       What is disconcerting is that mere principles, be they the adherence to ideas like freedom and individual liberty or the idea that you are secure in the sanctity of your own home, are always bound to be under-represented in the electoral process and as such destined to play the underdogs.   At one point in Democracy, Madeleine asks the impressive Ratcliffe, "Surely...something can be done to check corruption.  Are we for ever to be at the mercy of thieves and ruffians?  Is respectable government impossible in democracy?"  Ratcliffe's reply is haunting, "No representative government...can long be much better or much worse than the society it represents.  Purify society and you purify the government.  But try to purify the government artificially and you only aggravate failure. @

R. Tamara de Silva

Chicago, Illinois

August 20, 2012

 

R. Tamara de Silva is a securities lawyer and independent trader

 

Today a divided Supreme Court held that the individual mandate within the Affordable Care Act ("ACA") is Constitutional (567 U. S. ____ (2012))[1] . The 193 page opinion contains an excellent discourse on the Commerce Clause, state rights, un-enumerated rights and what are supposed to be the limits of the Federal government's power, making the jist of the ruling all the more extraordinary, if not ironic. The decision is remarkable because it is the first time in our history that it has been held that the United States Constitution permits a financial penalty for non-performance of an economic act to be treated as a tax. According to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, "The Affordable Care Act's requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably by characterized as a tax...Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness." As of this writing I cannot think of another example where the non-performance of an act results in the levying of a Federal tax. Federal tax is generally levied on such things as income, investment income and the consumption of certain goods like alcohol, gasoline guzzling cars, telephones, duck stamps, et. al.

In writing about President Obama's healthcare law earlier in the year, I pointed out that the Supreme Court would rule upon the Constitutionality of the ACA based upon three criteria, the Commerce Clause, the Taxing Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clauses within the United States Constitution.[2] Like most others, I dismissed the possibility that the Supreme Court would utilize the Taxing Clause to uphold the individual mandate of the ACA because the mandate is a penalty or punishment rather than a tax, and the purpose of taxes has historically always been to raise revenue - not to be punitive. Apparently I was completely in error.

Commerce Clause Preserved

The Supreme Court's decision was always to be of monumental importance to either keeping the Government's powers under the Commerce Clause checked, or allowing them to be let upon the nation, unfettered, limitless and absolute. The Supreme Court correctly stated that were the ACA to be upheld under the Commerce Clause it, "would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority." The Framers knew the difference between regulating commerce and using the power of the Commerce Clause to coerce commerce and every act that may in the aggregate of all people performing it, have any impact on commerce. Had the Supreme Court upheld the ACA under the Commerce Clause, Congress would be able to regulate absolutely everything in America under its ability to regulate commerce.

Chief Justice John Marshall wrote almost two hundred years ago in Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), that Congress' power under the Commerce Clause is the power, "to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed. This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations, other than are prescribed in the Constitution." [3] Congress has long had the power to regulate insurance and as such and to some degree, health insurance. [4] Chief Justice Roberts rejected the Government's argument for the individual mandate based on congressional use of the Commerce Clause because he stated that Congress had a power to regulate commerce not to create it. In all five Justices rejected the argument that the individual mandate of the ACA would pass Constitutional muster under the Commerce Clause, Chief Justice Roberts, Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito.

The ACA was meant to help the over 50 million or so Americans without health-care coverage, and to ensure that those with health insurance coverage do not lose it. Much of the most politically broad based support for healthcare reform is based on legitimate concerns over runaway health-care costs. Many opponents of the ACA, while acknowledging problems with the current health care system have suggested alternatives to a national health care plan but their solutions place them squared against two of the most powerful lobbied interests in Washington, insurance companies and tort lawyers. Advocates for private sector solutions like opening up the health care market to allow individuals to purchase insurance across state lines and to select only the type of coverage they need, argue that these two solutions alone would automatically make health care more affordable to a majority of Americans by driving insurance premiums down. It is difficult to argue that medical tort reform, curtailing frivolous medical malpractice suits, and the curbing of medical drug class action suits (plaintiffs for which are shamelessly solicited on every channel during every day of prime time television) would not help the entire medical industry-though who will take on the tort bar?

Those who do not have health insurance and use the emergency room or public hospitals when sick (what are called "cost-shifters") shift an immense economic cost on those who have health insurance and the insurance industry as a whole. Ironically what today's Supreme Court ruling does not address, because it is not addressed in the ACA, is that fact that the largest cost-shifters, illegal aliens (who account of $8.1 billion in health care costs) and low-income persons (who are already covered by Medicaid, at the cost of $15 billion per annum) will be exempt from the mandated health care regime of ACA. The most important feature in the over 2,700 page ACA is its individual mandate because this was always intended to shift some of the costs of health care to the healthy and the voluntarily uninsured -requiring that these groups, and ironically not the costliest cost-shifters, purchase private insurance.

Mandate as a Tax But Not a Penalty?

The purpose of taxation is to raise revenue. The purpose of penalties is to punish and deter unwanted behavior-sometimes, as in the case of the individual mandate, with the promise of criminal prosecution. The two have historically been distinct though with some overlap. For example, there are legal penalties for speeding (below what rises to the charge of reckless driving), streaking, violating the copyright laws or removing stickers from mattresses. Some of these penalties carry fines but the purpose of these fines is not to raise revenue so much as it is to deter conduct. In essence, no where even in the labyrinth of the IRS Code are streaking or removing mattress labels "taxable events."

Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor agreed with the Government's argument that the individual mandate within the ACA constitutes a tax on people who do not buy health insurance and is permissive under Congress' taxing power. Here is where the logic of Justice Roberts' opinion gets tougher to follow.

How can the individual mandate, which imposes a financial penalty upon anyone who does not purchase health insurance after 2014, and is not exempt from doing so, be called anything other than a penalty? Chief Justice Roberts states that what the mandate is called (Congressional Democrats and the White House have referred to the mandate as a penalty and not a tax-ACA itself refers to the mandate as a penalty) is not determinative of what it is. His opinion states that the individual mandate is distinguishable from a penalty because, "the mandate is not a legal command to buy insurance,"-it is a requirement that people who do not purchase insurance pay the IRS a fine. If this seems like a distinction without a discernable difference-you would not be alone in thinking so. Chief Justice Roberts argues that the failure of an individual to purchase health insurance would not, while subjecting that person to an IRS fine, be unlawful. If this is true, I do not advise passing this along as a defense if the fine is not paid...

Congress may have stumbled upon a new way to mandate every type of behavior the Court correctly forewarned against it using the Commerce Clause to mandate, by use of the Taxing Clause. Losing the distinction between penalties and taxes may prove a slippery and dangerous slope-one that institutionally empowers the lawmaker and makes mincemeat of the ability of the hapless individual to any longer avoid doing any number of things-such as not purchasing any number of items that she simply does not want. Thinking through the potential abuses for Court's reasoning in this instance is disturbing. There is more to the Court's opinion deserving of analysis but the use of the Taxing Clause to uphold the ACA's individual mandate, is a legal and historical first.

Ultimately, like so many things that happen in American life and political discourse, the jury of public opinion will come down on the Court's decision as it does on so much else-along deepening political battle lines between current iterations of liberalism and progressivism. Not everything must be about politics but perhaps it must when the country seems deeply divided within itself about the role of its government. Divided between those who want the government merely to assure equal opportunity to all and those who seek a far more idealized realization of fairness, and even a greater equality of outcomes. What we are lacking is a jury fixed merely on preserving the freedoms and institutions of the Constitution.@

R. Tamara de Silva

June 28, 2012
Chicago, Illinois

R. Tamara de Silva is an independent trader and lawyer

Footnotes:
1. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf
2. http://www.timelyobjections.com/2012/03/difficult-legal-issues-in-the-healthcare-case-before-the-supreme-court.html
3. Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803). at pp. 196
4. Think of ERISA, CORBRA, HIPAA, et. al.

It not typical in the course of oral arguments for a Federal Judge to assign the Department of Justice and the Attorney General a homework assignment. Yesterday, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard oral arguments involving the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("ACA" or "Obamacare") when something extraordinary happened. The Court was hearing oral arguments on an appeal by the Physicians Hospitals of America and Texas Spine & Joint Hospital, Lts, for the dismissal of an action they had filed for declaratory and injunctive relief against Kathleen Sebelius, as Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services to prevent enforcement of Section 6001 of the ACA. During the Appellee's arguments, Judge Jerry Smith, interrupted the Department of Justice's lawyer, Dana Lydia Kaersvang to ask her whether the Department of Justice, an arm of the Executive Branch, agreed with statements made by President Obama that seemed to indicate that the Executive Branch did not believe the Judicial Branch had the power to overturn laws it found violated the Constitution.

"Judge Smith: Does the Department of Justice recognize that federal courts have the authority in appropriate circumstances to strike federal statutes because of one or more constitutional infirmities?
Ms. Kaersvang: Yes, your honor. Of course, there would need to be a severability analysis, but yes.
Judge Smith: I'm referring to statements by the president in the past few days to the effect...that it is somehow inappropriate for what he termed "unelected" judges to strike acts of Congress that have enjoyed -- he was referring, of course, to Obamacare -- what he termed broad consensus in majorities in both houses of Congress.
That has troubled a number of people who have read it as somehow a challenge to the federal courts or to their authority or to the appropriateness of the concept of judicial review. And that's not a small matter. So I want to be sure that you're telling us that the attorney general and the Department of Justice do recognize the authority of the federal courts through unelected judges to strike acts of Congress or portions thereof in appropriate cases.
Ms. Kaersvang: Marbury v. Madison is the law, your honor, but it would not make sense in this circumstance to strike down this statute, because there's no...
Judge Smith: I would like to have from you by noon on Thursday...a letter stating what is the position of the attorney general and the Department of Justice, in regard to the recent statements by the president, stating specifically and in detail in reference to those statements what the authority is of the federal courts in this regard in terms of judicial review. That letter needs to be at least three pages single spaced, no less, and it needs to be specific. It needs to make specific reference to the president's statements and again to the position of the attorney general and the Department of Justice." [1]

On Monday President Obama stated that, "I am confident the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress." The President's statement is false in that he discounts over two hundred years of the Federal Court exercising its power of judicial review to do just that.

The Judicial Branch's power of judicial review arises out of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), wherein Chief Justice John Marshall established the United States Supreme Court's power of judicial review. In this case, Justice Marshall pointed out that the Constitution is "the fundamental and paramount law of the nation" and that "an act of the legislature repugnant to the constitution is void."[2] The Constitution is the nation's highest law and when an act of Congress conflicts with it, that act is to be held invalid.

To be fair, the words of the President, keeping in mind he is the head of the Executive Branch, attacking the power of a co-equal branch of government, in this instance the Judicial Branch, are not unprecedented nor constrained to one political party. President George W. Bush criticized "unelected judges" and their power to go against the will of the people. Both conservatives and liberals reliably point to the hand of judicial activism when things do not go their way. Some so-called Supreme Court experts go so far as to assert that a Supreme Court justice will ever only view any given issue of law through either a Democratic or Republican prism-ruling out any allegiance or oath to the Constitution or the complexity of Constitutional law-of course to many of these experts, there is no complexity to the law or other matters, other than what falls between bold ideological demarcations.

Perhaps the most famous Supreme Court skeptic was President Franklin D. Roosevelt. President Roosevelt displayed a contempt for the Supreme Court calling it the Court of "Nine Old Men" because in 1937, six of the justices were age 70 or more and the youngest one a mere 61. When the Supreme Court held the Railroad Retirement Act of 1934, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 un-Constitutional, President Roosevelt famously complained that the plainly archaic court had applied "the horse-and-buggy definition of interstate commerce." In order to remedy their apparent senility or his belief that they would only continue to strike down several parts of the New Deal, he came up with a plan in the form of a bill that would require all Supreme Court Justices to retire at 70 or have the President appoint a younger justice to serve alongside them.

Since Roosevelt, Presidential candidates from George Wallace to Newt Gingrich have run on platforms promising to rein in the Judiciary in the way they think appropriate.

Somehow, the Founding Fathers managed a design that would anticipate even the hyper-politicization of the present day. A powerful reason for the Constitution's establishment of three equal and separate branches of government was to ensure that each branch would serve as a check and balance on the others-in theory not permitting one to become too powerful. Unelected judges were intended to be removed from shifting political tides and ensure that political mobs and their demagogues would not overrun the basic protections of freedom guaranteed by the United States Constitution. The law of the land would not be held hostage to it's the shifting agendas of political parties or vain ideology. To anyone but an ideologue, the unelected nature of Supreme Court judges and the lifetime tenure of Federal Court judges are not bad things.

Judge Smith's asking the Department of Justice to clarify whether the words of its boss were those of the Attorney General and the posture of the Department of Justice is extraordinary. Many would argue that Congress, politicians of every stripe and Presidents violate a respect and regard for the other branch of the government by routinely criticizing the Judiciary and politicizing everything. All pretense of a kinder gentler discourse on matters of public policy may have gone the way of the Dodo to be replaced by discourse at the lowest common denominator. So perhaps Federal judges should be above the fray and not get sullied by stepping into political brawls. A counter-argument might be that if I make one legal argument to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals during oral arguments and the moment I walk outside the building contradict what I have just said by making another legal argument, the Court of Appeals would have a right to inquire what my position really is. Perhaps because President Obama is essentially a litigant in the appeal and his suggestion of judicial review being unprecedented, radical enough a legal posture, Judge Smith's query of the Department of Justice is reasonable.@
R. Tamara de Silva

April 4, 2012
Chicago, Illinois

R. Tamara de Silva is an independent trader and lawyer

Footnotes:
1. http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/OralArgumentRecordings.aspx?prid=257465
2. 5 U.S. 137 (1803)

Update- Department of Justice Responds to the Court:
April 5, 2012: Attorney General Eric Holder responds to Judge Jerry Smith-the full text of his letter is here: AG letter to 5th Circuit .pdf
Mr. Holder states that his letter should not be taken as a supplemental brief and does not concern the arguments before the Court but points to the presumptive Constitutionality of Federal statutes and quotes two Federal judges who did not find Obamacare to be violative of the Constitution.

Is Mitt Romney guilty of capitalism? His opponents in the race for presidential nominee of the Republican Party have converged in their rhetoric and ideology with the Democratic Party and President Obama to decry that Romney's actions at Bain Capital and the private equity model in particular, are wrong, so extremely wrong that they make him wholly unworthy of consideration of President of the United States. Whether or not the latter conclusion is true or false, their argument is not evidence of either conclusion. I have read that a majority of Americans tune out politicians unless they stand to benefit from a specific government program or benefit-this would be a rational instance of when to tune them out.[1 ] The Democrats and accusing Republicans are in error about private equity and capitalism. What is worse they are placing populism above this country's core principles.

"If someone who is very wealthy comes in and takes over your company and takes out all the cash and leaves behind the unemployment? I don't think any conservative wants to get caught defending that kind of model." This quotation, which could have been from David Axelrod or President Obama, was actually from Newt Gingrich. In other words, conservatives cannot defend capitalism if it means that people will lose jobs.

Some history is helpful. Job creation and job retention are not the primary motivations for innovation and industry in the United States, they have never been. Job creation gained traction in the public discourse when it used as a justification for the government spending TARP funds-the rationale being that the government's spending would create a soft landing for the economy, lessen the economic impact of the recession and Credit Crisis and create (albeit often temporary and expensive) jobs. Yet it is not job creation that has motivated this country's most celebrated capitalists but profit motive or sometimes the pursuit of excellence expressed as an idea. Henry Ford did not start building his own self-propelled vehicles that ran on gasoline in order to create jobs any more than Steve Jobs began building personal computers to create jobs.

Hard Edges

We may not be in an economic crisis but a period of economic change. Capitalism has hard edges, especially in periods of extremely rapid economic change. Failure and obsolescence are the sina qua non of capitalism. What Mr. Gingrich's statement is missing is the possibility that America and the rest of the developed world are in the midst of period of rapid flux.

Almost without exception, most neo-classical economic theory holds that crises do not persist indefinitely, because economic systems revert to some equilibrium or balance. Perhaps, America and Western Europe as seen by the possible collapse of the European monetary union, may by in as much a period of economic change as it is in crisis. The distinction is important because if we are in a period of rapid economic change, things may not get better exactly as we expect them to-they will change.[ 2 ]

We may be in the midst of another economic revolution akin to that of the Industrial Revolution. Alternatively, we may be seeing disruptive technologies change the world and create economic upheaval (the hard edges) in the form of extreme wealth and extreme poverty as we saw in the close aftermath of the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, the railway and the utilization of electricity.

The world has never been, not at any time since mastery of the seas meant dominance in trade-not even during the silk trade--as interconnected as it is now. Technologies like the Internet and information technology have been both disruptive and creative at once, and at a breathtaking pace. The face of manufacturing, as we have recognized it for most of the twentieth century has itself changed, so has its importance as a percentage and engine of economic growth. It has been replaced by other sectors including and perhaps infamously, the financial services sector described by the term financialization. Just as what happened one hundred years ago, politicians lobbied for groups that were nearing obsolescence, but were unable to stop change itself. We see changes in the countless examples of relatively lower skilled, high paying jobs that have been erased and may never return. In periods of rapid economic change, settled patterns of work are upended. Another factor is the creation of disparate wealth between wealthy superclasses (robber barons) and everyone else, including the newly displaced.

Bain Capital, Private Equity and Venture Capital

It is easiest to extol the virtues of free markets and capitalism when able to toss in Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison or Henry Ford as stunning examples of its success- but to be fair, these people are eight sigma events. Most capitalists are hardly this glamorous, they never make magazine covers, and their stories and personages are decidedly more bland if not just boring-fitting very well into the fat middle of a normal bell curve. Mitt Romney has been roundly accused of being unpardonably bland but this is not an economic transgression. Attacks on his career at Bain Capital are misplaced because both the private and venture capital business models provide extremely important social and economic functions.

Romney and Bain Capital are charged with making too much money, having businesses fail and alternatively, causing some of the most sympathetic people in North America to lose their jobs. The fallacy of these arguments are legion.

Bain Capital is primarily a private equity firm that also has a venture capital arm. Private equity firms invest by buying ownership of companies where they see the potential for a return for themselves, a return they capture by later selling the company at a profit to another party or parties either in the private or public markets (they sometimes retain acquired companies). Private equity investors can be more sophisticated than other corporate governors and in theory be better managers- thereby using their unique vantage point and experience to create wealth for investors.

Venture capitalists take a lot of risk, often investing their own money in start-ups and the new companies of entrepreneurs in the hopes of finding the next Google, or Apple. Both private equity and venture capitalists are rewarded for being able to recognize the best entrepreneurs, the best ideas, and helping to bring them to market by financing them, so that the world profits from the next iPhone, the next life-saving technology or Google.

No one in either industry risks their own or their investors' money expecting to fail. They would not stay in business if they did.

Sometimes, as the bi-partisan critics point out, people in companies acquired by private equity lose their jobs. One of the reasons for this is that private equity turns companies around by making them more efficient. This is often accomplished by getting rid of excess layers of management, unnecessary employees and generally, "bloat." It is important to remember that what is considered "excessive" in layers of management or how "bloated" a company may look-is largely subjective. Profit motive is the engine of capitalism, not job retention.[3 ]

When we introduce terms like "looting" which is a loaded term it is important to keep in mind that this is also a subjective term. Romney's critics are looking at Bain in hindsight...with some not insubstantial measure of bias. Also consider, that the world may be changing at a rapid place and some degree of job displacement may be the norm.

Investing in companies and trying to turn them around is not as easy it is sounds. It also involves an appetite for risk that most people do not have. A majority of businesses fail within two years of sooner after their inception (even if they are not distressed to start before being acquired by a Bain Capital).

Taking risk is nonetheless commendable. Taking huge risks can lead to catastrophic failure or success. I read somewhere that Thomas Edison failed well over 1,000 times before successfully creating the lightbulb. But he made in well in excess of 1,000 attempts and had the stomach to endure that much defeat-this is not common. Facebook, and Google were not guaranteed to successes. There is only one Mark Zuckerberg and only one Steve Jobs. If a high failure rate did not come with taking significant risks, there would be a 100,000 Bill Gates as opposed to just one. Looking at Bain's record, I am reminded of the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule--that 80 percent of the effects are the result of 20 percent of the causes.

Overall, venture capitalists do well and their importance to the economy cannot be disputed. Venture capital is responsible for 12.1 million private sector jobs or about 11% of total private sector jobs that collectively generate $2.9 trillion in revenue.[4 ] Private and venture capital firms are responsible for most jobs in the software, telecom and semiconductor industries.[ 5]

Slavery and Principles in Opposition

The Founders has a very odd notion for their time, the idea that people were born with natural rights-not granted by a monarch or a government but actually born with rights, rights inherent to all individuals. This was a radical idea!

While there is no pure form or capitalism, capitalism is more conducive to individual freedom and human rights than any other system.[6 ] It simply trumps all alternatives. Capitalism promotes the opposite of slavery and is conducive a core principle deeply held by the Founding Fathers - that human beings have human rights. Self-ownership, the opposite of slavery is one of them.

This also comes with the harsh reality that some people will not succeed and must fail in a capitalist system. Because in a larger sense, it really makes no difference whether capitalism works perfectly or not-it is the legally instituted economic system most opposite of slavery.

Candidates for the Presidency, including the incumbent, like all politicians crave power so much that they must feed populist tendencies which, are based on emotion regardless of whether they cannibalize this country's core principles. All of the arguments against Bain Capital are populist ones designed to enrage, and excite anger and envy. They seek to alter the capitalist system by selectively identifying what parts of a free market are acceptable at a moment in time and what are not--and to suggest improper conduct where there is no evidence of any illegality (other than profit) by imposing the same arbitrary values-envy not being a great value by the way.

Some principles have to be above populist tendencies or we will have no principles standing. Steve Jobs and Henry Ford are good examples against these populist arguments-their motivations were never job creation or job retention but their economic enrichment-in pursuing these narrow goals they changed the world. Insisting that job creation or retention trump the motive of wealth creation, is something entirely other than capitalism.

Adam Smith's first great work before The Wealth of Nations was The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which made the case for sympathy as a foundation for human relationships in a civil society. Politics plays a large role in human relationships especially when it is used as lever to ignite class warfare and to institutionalize envy. Populism must never be used as a political campaign, however convenient or effective, because it ultimately enrages and divides a nation at its core, and sometimes these divisions cannot be healed.

Instead of attacking Bain Capital, all the candidates from both parties ought to address what harms capitalism (other than themselves obviously). If it were just Adam Smith's animal spirits competing and the fiercest winning, we would not have government subsidies, tax breaks and bailouts--all selectively doled out for a few-not all. Not even a Fed giving free money to some (a preferred very few)-not all. Or maybe we would because many of those that succeeded the most would always use their resources to create cartels, monopolies and buy political influence. Bribery and policy for vote getting- have no place in a purely capitalist system and their presence has...at least this is my guess-given capitalism a bad name.@
R. Tamara de Silva
Chicago, Illinois
January 14, 2012

R. Tamara de Silva is an independent trader and securities lawyer

Footnotes:
1. Class War? What Americans Really Think About Economic Inequality, Lawrence Jacobs.
2. Of course economists that guess correctly and point out a plausible causal variable will appear brilliant but there again, only in hindsight. We cannot really know if we are in a crisis or in a period of dramatic change but it cannot hurt to be aware of the possibility of the latter.
3. The profit motive cannot be selectively excised from capitalism in favor of job retention, as many of Romney's critics suggest. It was not that long ago that the USSR boasted of full-employment but could never match the sheer volume of innovation produced by its arch rival.
4. http://uvc.org/why-private-capital-backed-companies/#jobGenerators
5. Id.
6. There is no purely capitalist system and may have never been-in the sense of a laissez-faire system because the State is always and in some manner involved.