Panic, therefore, panic!

When in the course of human events a purportedly democratic official demands that the people give him  $700,000,000,000 -- no strings attached, by week's end, or else -- then the duly elected representatives of the people have one and only one responsible response: Say "No."

Better yet, say "Hell no."

$700 billion. Seven hundred billion dollars. Dollar sign, seven, 11 zeroes.

Seven. Hundred. Billion.

You could never count to 700,000,000,000. You could never count to 700,000,000,000 by thousands.

If you were to take $700,000,000,000 in $100 bills and lay them end-to-end, well, it might turn out to be a better use of the money than if you just gave all those bills to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in exchange for nothing more than his promise to put all that money to good use if we'd all just leave him alone.

And, yes, that's exactly what Paulson is asking America to do. He is asking us to give him $700,000,000,000 to spend however he sees fit, without interference or question. Here is language from the Bush administration's initial panicked anti-panic proposal:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

I'll gladly concede that Paulson knows more about the world's rapidly collapsing finance system than I do. That doesn't matter. Paulson's request violates an inviolable principle, namely, to repeat, that if a public official demands $700 billion by week's end, no strings attached, with no democratic or judicial review of that official's unfettered discretion to spend that $700 billion as he chooses, then you say, "No."

"No" is the only possible answer a free person can give to that request.

If you don't answer "No," then you have to answer "Yes, Your Majesty, screw that whole experiment-with-democracy thing, we think you'll make a fine sovereign and king and please take our money as tribute from your loyal, unquestioning subjects." I prefer the former answer, and not just because it's shorter.

This isn't overstatement. To hand over such a kingly sum -- $700,000,000,000 -- while agreeing that it will be spent without review, without accountability and without interference, is to abandon even the pretense of democracy. Period.

This holds true even if the official urgently demanding the $700,000,000,000 is the Secretary for the Prevention of Collisions With Very Large Asteroids and you can look up and see the asteroid in question hurtling toward the Capitol.

I appreciate that Very Bad Things are happening and that Someone Needs to Do Something Soon. But I still don't want a king. So if the only alternative to the Very Bad Things is to anoint Paulson as King Henry I, then I'd prefer to take my chances with the Very Bad Things.

And, yes, I'm sure that Paulson really is a very nice and very clever man, and I'm sure that he's sincere when he says we can all trust him not to abuse his royal powers. But if he keeps up this routine of insisting that we must trust him with royal powers then my response is to say "Come back, Aaron Burr, your country needs you."

That may be a bit harsh, but we do have one incontrovertible piece of evidence that Henry Paulson cannot be trusted to handle $700 billion of the public's money without oversight or democratic accountability. We know he can't be trusted to do this because he wants to do this. No one who would accept such royal powers can be trusted with them. Who, then, can be trusted with them? No one. That's the point.

Fortunately, crowning King Henry and doing nothing at all aren't our only options. The events of the past week seem to prove that the American financial sector is in a full-blown panic. The Bush administration is now insisting that we fight panic with panic. That won't work.

It may, in fact, be the case that something huge and unprecedented and Very, Very Expensive will be required to save the republic. But if we can't manage to do that democratically -- with accountability, oversight and the full participation of the people's representatives -- then the thing we are saving will no longer be a republic.

Fear itself has the Bush administration scared witless, but the rest of us need not lose our heads as well. As the Good Book (the other one) says, "Don't Panic." We can address the current crisis without giving in to the demands of terrified extortionists insisting that the only solution must be taxation without representation.

Comments

[JamesK]

Best summery I've seen so far. Forwarded to everyone bitching at me on AIM. Thank you.

[hapax]

But if we can't manage to do that democratically ... then the thing we are saving will no longer be a republic.

Can somebody say, "A-MEN!"

The more I hear our putative "news" media turn for objective information to the foxes that have been gorging the henhouse* (whose invariable analysis has been "You must give Wall Street lotsa money! Immediately, or Bad Things will happen! What? Why? You're too stupid to understand! Just sign the check!"), the more I am inclined to say, "To hell with all of them. Let the banks burn."

Yes, I understand that a lot of innocent people will suffer -- lose their homes, their savings, their retirement -- under the "imminent collapse of our financial system." (Really? We're going to go back to the barter system? Good thing I have this box of cowrie shells!) But, hell's bells, that's already happening -- and nobody's given a hint how Paulson's plan is supposed to fix it.

If I'm going to throw away three quarters of a trillion dollars, I'd a lot rather get health care for kids, repaired bridges, and abundant college scholarships for my money. Oh, and laser-equipped sharks, too. And I bet we'd STILL have money left over.

*OTOH, it beats the interview that followed on NPR, in which Steve Inskeep asked Mahmoud Freakin' Ahmadinejad the burning question, "Do you listen to Led Zeppelin?"

[Jim Wetzel]

Well said!

For the record, I prefer the "Hell, no" formulation. In fact, I'd be inclined to maybe make it a little more emphatic yet.

[Jeff]

Great post! But Fear itself has the Bush administration scared witless? Is that really so hard? It seems getting up in the morning and walking to their offices has the Bush administration witless.

[MikhailBorg]

The Bush Administration plan:

1) Identify oncoming crisis.
2) Make damn sure no one has the authority or budget to prevent the crisis.
3) Allow crisis to occur.
4) Strike sad, patronizing pose, and say "If you'd only let us do whatever we wanted, this would never have happened. But we can prevent it from getting worse if you'll just surrender a little bit more freedom."
5) Bring the monarchy one step closer.
6) Repeat.

Oops! Left out the most important part:
5.5) Profit!

[Josh]

Well, Paulson is stuck between a rock and a hard place here. If he gets congressional oversight over every detail of his plan, it is likely that the bail-out will be delayed, politicized, and less efficient.

On the other hand, there is your point, which is valid. I think the best course of action would be for Paulson to try to pressure Congress into acting swiftly, while hoping they would do their jobs, and that a reasonable compromise would be reached.

[Jon]

I found this posted at Mark Evanier's blog; apparently it's making the rounds via e-mail:

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship
with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country
has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of
800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it
would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my
replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you
may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation
movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the
funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds
in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under
surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a
reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the
funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund
account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to
wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission
for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond
with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to
protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully,
Minister of Treasury Paulson

It could use some more misspellings and odd sentence constructions to add verisimilitude, but otherwise it's pretty dead-on.
I'm also amused because it brings to mind images of rich old white guys being - *sigh* I hate use the "word," but it seems appropriate - pwn3d by the 419 Eater.

[John Small Berries]

Fortunately, the Congressional Republicans are starting to remember that there's an election in under two months, and that all that money may go into the hands of a Secretary of the Treasury of a markedly different ideological bent - and are therefore suddenly rediscovering concepts like oversight and fiscal responsibility.

I say "fortunately" because the Democrats have shown that they are congenitally unable to deny the current Administration anything it asks for, despite making token noises of protest before it comes down to a vote.

[Jon]

*sigh* again: I hate to use the "word"

Anyway, great post as always, Fred. Love the reference to the "other" good book, and I'm especially fond of this part:

This holds true even if the official urgently demanding the $700,000,000,000 is the Secretary for the Prevention of Collisions With Very Large Asteroids and you can look up and see the asteroid in question hurtling toward the Capitol.

[Froborr]

"We don't have time for oversight or obeying the law! We must act now, immediately and supralegally, or the crisis will destroy us!" is the standard opening salvo of the fascist.

See also "We don't have time for habeas corpus!" and "We don't have time to get warrants!"

[Lila]

Thanks, Fred. The BBC had a great post putting this into perspective.

And Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) has a somewhat more sensible counter-proposal with at least a gesture towards oversight (without enough red tape to bog the thing down completely).

[Naked Bunny with a Whip]

The Bush administration is now insisting that we fight panic with panic.

Well, sure, why not? It's how they approach everything.

[Yet Another Kevin]

I would put profit at 2.5 or 3.5, myself.

[Dennis]

"Come back, Aaron Burr, your country needs you."

Brilliant

[hapax]

@Josh: What, exactly, would you propose a a "reasonable compromise" between tyranny and democracy?

[Lauren]

If you were to take $700,000,000,000 in $100 bills and lay them end-to-end, well, it might turn out to be a better use of the money than if you just gave all those bills to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in exchange for nothing more than his promise to put all that money to good use if we'd all just leave him alone.

That gave me a quickly-stiffled chuckle. It kinda snuck up on me, you know?

For example, we could use $700,000,000,000 in $100 bills to build a wall on the border with Mexico, and it would stop all the illegal imigrants from entering the US (at least until the money ran out).

[bellatrys]

No, this isn't monarchial. It's much worse than that.

Kings have been tried and exiled, tried and beheaded, their heirs barred in perpetuity from holding executive office, for pulling what Bushco has pulled. Armed insurrections against crowns have started, for less.

This is the action of a minion of a would-be God-Emperor.

But since we long ago decided that our presidents were above the law, really, it's only to be expected. (Knock, knock - who's there. Iran-Contra. Iran-Contra Who? I ranna contra into da ground! [/Chico Marx voice])

[Gray]

Very well said.

By why do I have the sinking feeling it's already a done deal?

--Gray

[J]

I appreciate that Very Bad Things are happening and that Someone Needs to Do Something Soon.

I don't appreciate that at all. The only crisis near at hand to my point of view is that the people who fucked up are dangerously close to themselves having to pay for their own fuck-ups. The solution proposed is to have all of us pay for it instead.

So how about instead of giving $700 billion without conditions, or $700 billion with conditions, we give them and call it a day.

[Bernhard]

I can see the request but I can not see this being constitutional ... Either this has to come as a constitutional amendment or it will not survive being challenged in the supreme court, no?

[Vermic]

So what, if anything, can ordinary citizens like myself do to prevent this, or is the decision already out of my hands?

[JayDeeJaye]

Ok, so, let me get this straight. You want my savings, my pension, my gas money, my food money, my house and the lot it sits on. And you're going to do what with it? Hand it over to a bunch of clowns who've already proved they're not responsible enough to handle their own money?

What's that? You want to make them commercial banks? So they can take deposits?? So they can abuse more people's money???

Yeah. Right. Don't think so.

I have a better idea. How about we sack all the executives* of these investment banking firms confidence rings and send them a bill? Pack up your desks and go. No, no, put the severance package down.

*Worker-bees excluded. My apologies if your job is at stake...if you were in charge, we probably wouldn't be considering any of this.

[Froborr]

@J: Well, no, there are customers of the FMs who have done everything right, never missed a payment, and are now totally screwed by the collapse of their lender. Something has to be done about them.

Of course, only communists would consider directly helping the people who actually need it, so instead we'll give the money to the people who engineered this disaster in the first place, AND we won't admit that it's deregulation that allowed them to do it.

[Froborr]

Vermic: Write your Congressman and encourage others to do the same. Do not use a form letter.

I'd do it, but I live in the so-called capital of the free world and therefore only get a non-voting rep. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

[Praline]

I don't think you need the word 'king' here. We have a royal family, and they're not pulling this crap. I think the word you want is 'dictator'.

[bluefrog]

Write your Congresspersons and send them a copy of Fred's post, telling them how much you agree with it.

[Froborr]

Oh yeah, and send the letter snail mail if you have the time. It's been my experience that most Congressmen pay more attention to you the more effort your communication involves, so a (typed, professional-looking) paper non-form letter will get their attention faster than a mass e-mail will.

YMMV -- I recall a friend of mine talking about the very, very different responses he got from sending the same letter to both Virginia's Senator Warners.

[Samantha Joy]

It turns out that this has been in the works for months. MONTHS.

See today's Roll Call for details. The specific mention is here. It's not long, less than half a page. Read it, please. Spread this far and wide. It comes across like a Mafia mug: "That sure is a nice economy you had there. Sure would be a shame if anything happened to it. Whoops! Well, you don't want it to get hurt any worse than that, do you?"

And according to the logic espoused in that thing, we MUST do this, or the economy will fail, and fail hard, and we'll have bread lines. And we MUST NOT stop the CEOs from getting their financial packages, because if we do that, it will "provide disincentives" for companies to not take the money, which will make the economy fail, and fail hard.

I am so very afraid right now. And kinda sick.

[Froborr]

I don't think you need the word 'king' here. We have a royal family, and they're not pulling this crap. I think the word you want is 'dictator'.

I ask from a position of total ignorance, here: does the Queen actually have any actual governmental power, or is she the glorified parade marshal she's normally portrayed as in America?

[cjmr]

...because sometimes things look so bleak there's no place to go but a musical:

Tyrannosaurus Debt

[Lizzy L]

I am watching the (small amount of) retirement money I have invested melt away. I am watching the value of my house, on which I still owe the bank, melt away. I am 62 years old. I expect to continue working until I am physically unable to do so, but I was kind of hoping that at that point I would have a place to live and some money to live on, besides the very small amount of Social Security which I am still hoping to get.

Yes, I am scared. But no, I don't want to give Mr. Paulson 700 billion dollars to play with.

Pass me that pitchfork, sonny...

[Amaryllis]

I don't think you need the word 'king' here...I think the word you want is 'dictator'.

How about "Supreme Potentate"?

[Cowboy Diva]

Thanks, Lizzy L, for the shot of perspective.
...

Perhaps aunursa would like to demonstrate, for our edification, his knowledge of Senator McCain's response to Secretary Paulson's request?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am asking for it.

[mike.timonin]

I don't think you need the word 'king' here...I think the word you want is 'dictator'.

How about "Supreme Potentate"?

If I recall, the word he prefers is "Decider".

[Nix]

The Queen has quite a lot of governmental power, in theory (she can veto laws, appoint any subject as Prime Minister, appoints the Cabinet, and dissolve Parliament on a whim), on the strict assurance that she never uses it except under strict conventions (e.g. appointing the leader of the party with the largest representation in Parliament as PM rather than, say, Posh Spice, and appointing the people the PM asks as Cabinet members, when he asks). If she does use any of this power in unconventional ways, it'll almost certainly be taken away (and this has historical precedent). e.g. monarchs, as the fountainhead of law, can theoretically veto laws: but the last monarch to veto a law was Anne, in *1708* (as the tail end of an amusing series of events starting (by some interpretations) in 1701, which nearly saw war between Scotland and England, personal union notwithstanding: as if Canada and England went to war now). And that was three *centuries* ago. As of the Act of Settlement 1701, the monarch is *not* technically sovereign: the 'monarch in Parliament' is sovereign, and if that sounds like a bodge to you, welcome to the UK's unwritten constitution. That constitution is a wonderful example of governance by accretion. The centre of power slowly expands, under pressure to include more and more people (to avoid offending them, as favours, and so on): in the end it becomes too unwieldy, a new power centre breeds itself out of the old, and the old one becomes increasingly symbolic and powerless. The English governmental system has gone round this treadmill many, *many* times. I mean, everyone's heard of the Prime Minister, right, with powers granted, technically, by the Queen? One level down we have the Cabinet (itself too large: inner sub-Cabinet groups make many decisions): one level below that we have the ministers, this group and ministries constiuting the government. One level below that we have Parliament, technically the sovereign entity and still capable of making growling noises and scuppering governmental plans. But there is even now no official office of Prime Minister. His official and original title is the 'First Lord of the Treasury', itself an office whose primary purpose back in the 16th century was to stop random MPs voting to spend money on whateverthehell they wanted. Except that sometimes he held a different office, Lord High Treasurer. The Lord High Treasurer is one of the *next* level out, the Great Officers of State (not Great *Offices* of State, which are posts like the PM and Home Secretary that hold the power today). These offices are these days not terribly great, but used to be enormously powerful, running things like the navy and the police (obviously the Lord High Treasurer used to be the money man). A couple of them, like the Lord High Chancellor, still have some power, but who the hell has heard of the Lord High Constable or the Lord Privy Seal doing anything? (We're also back at the stage where Scotland diverges and has *different* Great Officers: this stuff predates the Act of Union.) Several of these offices (like the Lord High Constable) are vacant, brought briefly back from the dead on rare occasions like coronations: several are inherited and held jointly by silly numbers of people in rotation (over a dozen for Lord Great Chamberlain, holding fractions down to 1%). We're back in ancient history now. The Lord High Steward's office has been vacant (except for coronations and trials of peers) since the 1400s, because he had way too much power before that for the power-hungry monarchs of the day to be comfortable with. Another layer out: Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council originates in advisors to the Norman kings, and gradually grew until its subcommittees gained power. One of them, the Star Chamber, gained rather too much and had to be trimmed back. Another, the Cabinet, we mentioned above: it only ceased to be a subcommittee of the Privy Council in the middle of the First World War (you'd think they'd have had more important things to concentrate on). Thus, Cabinet members don't have to be MPs (that's *another* unwritten convention). The Privy Council as a body has very little actual power left (but some subcommittees have quite a bit of legal power: quite a few important classes of judicial appeals go there, as well as some completely demented ones like vets appealing against disciplinary procedures). It make Orders-in-Council as long as they're uncontroversial: the last time they tried to do anything controversial with an Order-in-Council, the courts quashed it. It's grown to appalling size: it has over 500 members now. Most of them don't attend meetings, and the few subcommittees that do anythign useful are much smaller. :) Parliament itself has generally had more actual power than the Privy Council (Henry VIII's reign being a notable exception): before that we had the Curia Regis, and before that the Witangemot, and we don't even know when that started. Parliament is *old*... but an amazing number of layers have tried to wrap themselves around it and take power from it in the time it's been going. Oh, I said Parliament was sovereign? Perhaps not, nobody is quite sure: it might be sovereign in England but not Scotland: it might not be sovereign even in England, depending on whether one concentrates on it has the heir of the English Parliament or the Scottish one: best not to think about it too much. It's not *completely* sovereign, as it can't stop itself from contradicting itself in the future. And that's not all. I've briefly covered about a tenth of the the obscure bizarre obsolescent crap in the UK unconstitution, lots of which has done nothing for centuries and is just a footnote, but a footnote with enormous theoretical power, if anyone would ever appoint it again, which they never will. Sometimes I wonder how the UK works at all, let alone how it ever ran an empire with a political system like this. You can always recognise the UK constitutional scholars: they're the ones who live in insane asylums. ;}

[Nix]

I had lots of linefeeds in that comment. They appeared in the preview and vanished when I posted: sorry :(

[konrad_arflane]

Let me get this straight:

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

Does this mean that the Secretary could conceivably buy a nice house for him self and set up a trust fund to take care of his descendants for the next 20 generations, and it wouldn't be illegal (or at least prosecutable)?

Come to think of it, what if he were to hire a private army and set himself up as King of (say) Wyoming? Could that be "reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency"?

[Ian]

I assume the staggeringly insane God-Emperor plan is being floated so that the President and Congress can agree on a "compromise" plan that is merely dreadful and dictatorial. Perhaps $600B with token oversight?

My Queen, QEII, would never countenance the likes of this. ("bring her victorious, happy and glorious, long to reign over us, God save the Queen")

[mike.timonin]

Frivolity aside, assuming that Lizzy L's approach (pitchforks and torches ahoy!) is viable, how does that work? Seriously. I'm a historian, and the period that I study includes the two major marches on Washington (Bonus Army, and the Poor Peoples March for Jobs and Freedom). So, I know that it is possible to organize a march on the capital. But I don't recall, in reading about either of those marches, anyone explaining how to actually DO a march on the capital. Is there an organization currently in operation which could work out the logistics of such a march? If so, where are they, and how do I sign up?

[cminus]

For example, we could use $700,000,000,000 in $100 bills to build a wall on the border with Mexico, and it would stop all the illegal imigrants from entering the US (at least until the money ran out).

It actually wouldn't be much of a wall.

A hundred dollar bill is 6.14 inches long. 7 billion of them would be 676,136 miles long, or long enough to trace the US-Mexico border 346 times, with $770,635,294 left over. Given that Paulson is by his own account a very responsible person, let's assume that he manages to cut up the remaining $770 million so that he doesn't waste any taxpayer money, and creates a wall on the Mexican border 346.381334 hundred dollar bills tall.

Since a hundred dollar bill is 2.61 inches tall, that works out to a fence that's 75 feet, 4 inches tall. Sounds impressive, no? But there's a catch. The resulting wall is a mere 0.0043 inches thick! Clearly, that won't stop anyone, a wall that won't stop anyone is a waste of money, and we don't want that. We can make the wall tougher, of course, by making it double-ply, or triple-ply, and so on. We need at least a 58-ply wall, which works out to a quarter inch thick.

But to thicken the walls, we have to sacrifice height. Quite a lot of height, actually. So, in the end, our $700 billion will have been used to build a wall along the US-Mexico border 1952 miles long, a quarter inch thick -- and all of fifteen inches high! Now that would be quite a boondoggle! Ha, ha!

The conclusion is inescapable: we need to use tens.

[clew]

Nix, that is surprisingly clear and strangely restful. You wouldn't happen to have a little disquisition on the Chiltern Hundreds queued up?

[clew]

Dumb question: if I print and mail a letter today, is there any chance of it being read while relevant? Without using FedEx, etc?

[bluefrog]

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or administrative agency."

Hmmmm. . .absolute power and seven hundred billion dollars, to be handed over without question or review. Control of Wall Street, and a major influence on the economies of the world. Nicolae Carpathia wouldn't have needed the UN, he could just have taken over as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. Does that make Henry Paulson a candidate for the Antichrist?

Sign me up for the march on Washington.

[Josh]

@ Hapax

Paulson goes to Congress and says "I want this". If Congress is doing its job, it says, "wait a minute, we want to change this, this, and this," and they work out a compromise. That's how democracy works. Tyranny is Paulson not bothering to go to Congress. That's not what's happening.

[Doctor Science]

Froborr:

Don't send snail mail to Congress. Since the anthrax attacks, paper letters have been taking at least two weeks to get through security. My congressdude (Rush Holt, NJ-12) recommends email -- there's a form on his site, as on most (all?) others'.

[Doctor Science]

No, Josh. Democracy is when it doesn't even occur to Paulson to put an "absolute power, no oversight, no redress" clause in his proposal. Democracy is when if does do such a thing Congress laughs in his face and, on camera, rips his proposal in half and tells him to come back with something Constitutional.

[Jeff]

Lord Privy Seal doing anything

Not even balance a ball on his nose? And why do they lock the Head Pennepod in the loo?

[damnedyankee]

If someone wants to borrow twenty bucks from me, I still want to have an idea of what he's going to do with it.

[Drake Pope]

Paulson goes to Congress and says "I want this". If Congress is doing its job, it says, "wait a minute, we want to change this, this, and this," and they work out a compromise. That's how democracy works. Tyranny is Paulson not bothering to go to Congress. That's not what's happening.

I have to admit, he's right about this. Paulson at least bothered to ask permission first. So, I guess this makes this plan more autocratic than totalitarian.

[Karen]

I'm very surprised that no one has discussed the National Recovery Administration cases effect on this idiotic bill. The relevant case is Schechter Poultry, which spawned the greatest headline of all time "Sick Chicken Kills Mighty Blue Eagle." Anyway, the NRA (the first New Deal agency, not the gun lobby) was set up with Congress under a bill that said, more or less, fix the economy. The National Industrial Recovery Act didn't set any standards that the agency had to meet or under which it would operate. The National Recovery Administration created business councils that, among other things, set the wages, prices, and standards for production in each industry. (It was the early 1930's; Mussolini looked like a genius then.) Anyway, Schechter Poultry sold a chicken that failed to meet the NRA's Poultry Council standards and sued. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress had violated the separation of powers provisions by delegating the authority to set all the National Recovery Act standards to the executive branch. Said doctrine is still very good law.

In this case, the bill gives the Treasury Secretary, who is part of the executive branch, authority to hand out the money under standards the Treasury Secretary creates. It is EXACTLY THE SAME as the National Recovery Administration, just without the feathers. Given that the Secretary will almost certainly piss someone off in the distribution of the booty, someone will sue and get the monstrosity invalidated. This is still a bad thing, because the taxpayers will never get one thin dime of their money back. Our government will be crippled to cover the gambling debts of a bunch of guys in nice suits.

I hear Home Depot is running out of pitchforks. Time to head to Tractor Supply.