The typical American household made less money last year than the typical household made a full decade ago.

To me, that’s the big news from the Census Bureau’s annual report on income, poverty and health insurance, which was released this morning. Median household fell to $50,303 last year, from $52,163 in 2007. In 1998, median income was $51,295. All these numbers are adjusted for inflation.

Progress!

Alice Rocchio is an office manager at the New York headquarters of the Hess Corp., drives a 1993 Chevy Cavalier and lives in an apartment in Queens, N.Y., with her husband, Pasquale, an Amtrak foreman.

Despite what appears to be a middle-class lifestyle, the couple has written $61,600 in checks to John McCain’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee, most of it within days of McCain’s decision to endorse offshore oil drilling.

At a June fundraiser, the Rocchios joined top executives at Hess Corp. — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hess, his wife, Susan, his mother, Norma Hess, and six other officials in giving a total of $313,500 to a joint McCain-RNC fundraising committee, Federal Election Commission records show.

Vote McCain! It’s like doubling down on Bush. You get 10% more narcissism, bloodlust, and sock puppetry for big oil and/or the evangelicals all for the same low price!

Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Nine of these contributions, seven from Hess executives and two from members of the Hess family, came on the same day, June 24th, the records show. The total collected in the wake of McCain’s reversal for the fund, called McCain Victory 2008, from Hess execs and family is $285,000.

Mysti was one of the last people out the door at New Century Financial, once the nation’s No. 2 subprime lender. She had been in charge of e-commerce customer service with dozens of employees reporting to her. It was at New Century where the Copes met in 2000.

Kent worked for several of the firms that helped give birth to the industry, which specializes in making loans to people with less-than-perfect credit, in the 1990s. He has been out of work since August when he was laid off by Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group (FBR) unit First NLC Financial Services.

Yeah, tough times. I feel for you guy-

Despite their financial problems, the Copes have worked hard to protect their credit rating, staying current on bills. And they’ve made cutbacks: trading in Kent’s Corvette for a Suburban and getting rid of the gardener, for example. But the couple also has learned that it didn’t need everything it used to spend money on.

Nevermind.

Special bonus points for being a midlife crisis, ‘vette driving, trophy/daughter’s age wife havin douchebag sugar daddy wannabe with no job. And being named “Kent.” Though that one’s probably not completely his fault.

Well, after this morning’s emergency session, and we have confirmation of a new third role for the Fed – they’re also Wall Street’s Bitch.

The Federal Open Market Committee has decided to lower its target for the federal funds rate 75 basis points to 3-1/2 percent.

The Committee took this action in view of a weakening of the economic outlook and increasing downside risks to growth. While strains in short-term funding markets have eased somewhat, broader financial market conditions have continued to deteriorate and credit has tightened further for some businesses and households. Moreover, incoming information indicates a deepening of the housing contraction as well as some softening in labor markets.

Oh, there had been hints before about the Fed pulling out the patent leather and gags any time their daddy fund managers came a’knockin, but today’s out-of-the-blue rate drop ices that cake. Or creams that banana. Or rims that job. Wev.

Now, given my current employment and market positioning, this is all good news for me, but I’m worried about what it means for the country. Because now we have a (quasi, but for all intents and purposes) governmental body making policy based on the whims of a tiny numbers of private corporations and individuals.

Then again, this is the third Gilded Age and a similar (though inverse) relationship has existed before, so maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised.

A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.

The former Republican congressman from Michigan, Mark Deli Siljander, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

Siljander is a true warrior for the true GOP cause – money. It’s not about nationalism, jingoism, saving the troops, saving the unborn, saving christmas… it’s all about the benjamins. With regards to his true orthodoxy, Siljander is surely going to spend eternity with his 72 bags of glittery gold. Or the gold may be from the fronts of his soon-to-be cellmate smiling down at Siljander as Siljander performs his patented 72-lick salad toss. Hard to tell on these things. It’s heaven for one of them!

I give it approximately 30 10 minutes before Faux news “inadvertently” labels the GOP Republican GOP Republican GOP Republican GOP Republican GOP Siljander as “(D-MI)”. Oopsies! How’d that D get in there?

Read the indictment in my newly-opened “unfinished” legal bits section.

For the first time in more than 100 years, British living standards have risen above those of Americans, a report has declared.

Increasing incomes, longer holidays and “free” healthcare have all contributed to making Britons better off than our friends across the Atlantic, according to the respected Oxford Economics consultancy.

Can we have that talk about socialized medicine v. free market health care discussion again now? How about that “Republicans are good for the economy” one?

It turns out that the Strategic Oil Reserve wasn’t needed, but the oil price drop sure did come in like a freight train. Here are crude oil prices for the past few months. Notice anything… interesting?

Beginning in August, oil prices took an unprecedented and ahistorical dive (non-recent election year ahistorical, that is). The world is at peak production of oil and there is ever increasing demand. Heading into the coldest months of the season, the price of unleaded gas dropped more than $0.70 per gallon on average. Even the loss of half of our crude refining capacity due to the spill and shutdown of a BP plant in Alaska did not make the price of gas go up in this country.

This was commented on at the time, including an actual study, showing not only an artificial drop, but a correlation in this ahistorical drop to US domestic election years (See the charts from 2006-2003, 2002-1999, 1998-1995. These look interesting but inconclusive to me, but I’ll trust the judgment of people who have much more experience in this field than do I).

Hamilton analyzed the gap between pump prices and the spot price of crude oil in election years, compared to the non-election previous years. He found that in 2002, 2004 and now in 2006 there was a moderate to substantial shrinking of that gap, meaning less profit potential for the oil companies, in measurements taken the first week in October.
…
“This pattern of the last three election years is an indication that motorists who smell something fishy in the rollercoaster prices they’ve endured this year may be on to something,” said FTCR President Jamie Court. “The rise to record high gasoline prices this spring unleashed a wave of justified criticism of bloated oil company profits. Now the price drop in the pre-election period, by a percentage well beyond reductions in the price of oil, smells just as bad.”

Even the loss of half of the oil shipped by BP from Alaska after a pipeline accident did not put a dent in steadily rising gasoline production, which exerts downward pressure on retail prices.

Obviously, a drop in gas prices before November in even-numbered years but only for the last three election cycles makes no economic sense. But it makes a boatload of sense if you are an oil company with close ties to the ruling party of a significant economic country. A country that, should your friends go out of power, might decide to not only investigate you, but to tax your record windfall profits, and possibly implement those dreaded price controls.

There are other post-election examinations of the convenient nature of unexpected and illogical oil price drops and the US midterm elections too numerous to list. I do recommend the pre-election link above is a recommended read, with some great discussion and graphs. Including this one of unleaded prices over the past year:

My best guess is that the drop in oil prices was the October Surprise the GOP had lined up as their killer move. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for the country, their gambit did not work. This was probably for a few reasons: one, they couldn’t claim credit for it, because that would give the whole corrupt game away. No credit means no votes, other than general feelgood inclinations twoards them. Two, the effect was too subtle for general good feelings in the populace toward our paternalistic GOP rulers. And, not least, three, that their other scandals, incompetence, and corruption were so overwhelmingly large that they could be giving gas away on the corners and people would still be wondering why Johnny only has one leg. Apparently they are as lacking in competence at October Surprises as kar Rove is at having a soul.

As further anecdotal evidence to the pile, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been noticing gas prices inching back upwards of late. Here we go again.

I wonder if the gas companies are going to try and claim their unrealized profit from the artificial deflation of gas prices as political contributions and exempt it from their incomes on their taxes this year? Better yet, I wonder if anyone will file a shareholder lawsuit2 against the boards of directors of the oil companies for breach of fiduciary duty to the company?

1. OK, I wouldn’t do the Chavez part. You just know he’d go blabbing his big fat mouth about the deal everywhere. No link because the discussions were offline. You’ll have to ask Ms. Grumpy to verify.

2. AKA a “derivative suit.”

While trying to figure out how I could monetize my “$100 million and climbing” HSX brilliance, I found Intrade (AKA Tradesports and some others). Holy cow is this awesome. Actual money on politics and news events. Of course, given my recent successful predictions (and GOP shenanigans), this is could just be an even easier way to lose money than Lotto. Also, I have no money. But the idea’s fun.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the things you can trade in (I don’t know precisely what will come up; it’s a dynamically generated frame):

And their banner advertisement looks something like this:

Yet another thing that’s probably more Chartoo’s forte than mine, but I’m kind of excited about day trading in the presidential aspirations of Saint Rudy. Theoretically, of course. I would never engage in any sort of illegal activity like online gambling (non-Lotto and non-casino division, particularly laws attached as riders by cat killer Frist to port security bills) and then talk about it here on the interweb thingy. I’d have to be pretty stupid to do that now, wouldn’t I?

I know. I need to get out more.

Lieberman’s Democratic opponent, Ned Lamont, has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission over the $387,000 in petty cash the senator spent in the waning days before the August Democratic primary.

Political committees may make expenditures of not more than $100 to any person or for a transaction out of the petty cash fund and are required to keep a written journal documenting the payments.

The campaign has said it is under no legal obligation to release the journal and has no plans to do so. Lieberman also said their attorney has assured him that they have done nothing illegal.

…
The FEC requires the treasurer of the political committee to keep a written journal of all disbursements out of petty cash, including names, addresses, dates and purposes.

The campaign failed to make campaign manager Sherry Brown available for an interview on the campaign report and the status of the journal. Treasurer Lynn Fusco also failed to return phone calls seeking comment.

Also, Reyes and another man, Daryl Brooks of New Haven, who ran a consultant service, said they each got one check from the campaign for their services, but they are listed in the third quarter campaign finance report as getting two checks, for a total of twice what the men said they received.

The report lists Reyes as getting two checks for $8,250, one on Aug. 4 and one on Aug. 15. Brooks received $12,200 on Aug. 11 and another check for the same amount on Aug. 15, according to the Lieberman report. Both men said this was inaccurate.

Several young men, who were paid $60 a day out of petty cash to canvass in Bridgeport, said they were paid in cash for aggregate earnings over $200.

Rob Dhanda, 18, or Stratford, said he earned $480 in cash over several weeks, while Walter Ruilova, 18, also of Stratford, said his total was an estimated $360 in cash. Ruilova estimated there were about 30 teenagers working out of the Bridgeport office, each earning $60 a day in cash, over a few weeks.

Michelle Ryan, a spokeswoman for the FEC, would not comment on specifics of the Lamont complaint, but said “in terms of itemization, it is required once the aggregate total to a recipient is in excess of $200.”

He’s been attempting to buy votes 19th century styel, plain and simple.

The best part is that the Last Honest Man in Politics prevaricates and passes the buck. It’s not Joe’s fault! It’s never Joe’s fault.

Lieberman answered an inquiry about releasing the journal, by pointing to his history of compliance with campaign rules.

“I have an unblemished record of compliance with election laws. I always tell my staff at the beginning, whatever you do, just totally follow the law. I’ve never received anything approaching even a fine,” the senator said in a recent interview.

The size of the petty cash involved raised eyebrows with the nonpartisan Public Campaign Action Fund, which asked the campaign to go beyond the legal requirements and disclose the particulars of the expenditures.

“No other senatorial campaign that we know of has ever left undisclosed to the public a sum as large as this,” said the fund’s board Chairman Pete MacDowell, in a letter to the senator this week.

He said the issue could impact future elections if the campaign found a new loophole and is setting a precedent “of opening up a serious breach in the campaign finance disclosure laws.”

(from this week’s Variety)

The former football great, who was acquitted in criminal court 11 years ago of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, reportedly has been paid a whopping $3.5 million to write about the double murder that shocked and riveted the nation in 1994, according to a detailed report in the new National Enquirer.

But Simpson is not actually confessing to the murder — rather, he’s writing a “hypothetical” book — which the Enquirer reports is tentatively being called “If I Did It.”

Every time I think I can’t be shocked by the moral depravity and narcissistim of the human creature, something like this comes along to remind me how little I know. I’m holding the publisher accountable as well for their $3.5M advance to the acquitted-due-to-government-incompetence unrepentant murderer.

Now, as Wal-Mart rolls out a new round of workplace restrictions, employees at a Wal-Mart Super Center in Hialeah Gardens, Fla., are taking matters into their own hands. On Oct. 16, workers on the morning shift walked out in protest against the new policies and rallied outside the store, shouting “We want justice” and criticizing the company’s recent policies as “inhuman.” Workers said the number of participants was about 200, or nearly all of the people on the shift.

It’s the first time that Wal-Mart has faced a worker-led revolt of such scale, according to both employees and the company. Just as surprising, the company quickly said it would change at least one of the practices that had sparked the protest. Late in the day on Oct. 16, there was some disagreement over which of the new policies would be put on hold.

The protest wasn’t led by any union group. Rather, it was instigated by two department managers, Guillermo Vasquez and Rosie Larosa. The department managers were not affected directly by the changes, but they felt that the company had gone too far with certain new policies. Among them were moves to cut the hours of full-time employees from 40 hours a week to 32 hours, along with a corresponding cut in wages, and to compel workers to be available for shifts around the clock.

In addition, the shifts would be decided not by managers, but by a computer at company headquarters. Employees could find themselves working 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. one week and noon to 9 p.m. the next. “So workers cannot pick up their children after school everyday, and part-timers cannot keep another job because they can be called to work anytime,” says Vasquez.

In addition to scheduling changes and reduction in hours, workers are now required to call an 800 number when they are sick. “If we are at an emergency room and spend the night in a hospital and cannot call the number, they won’t respect that,” says Larosa, who has worked at the store for six years. “It will be counted as an unexcused absence.”

W*l-Mart, bringing low prices, unemployment, crap products, a burden on your communities social services, religious right censorship, and outsourcing jobs to other countries to you. Every day.

Go organized labor, go! Even disorganized. Whatever it takes.

The findings contradict the common notion that many people would be better off financially if they moved from areas with high housing costs, such as California, to states like Texas or Georgia, where housing is much cheaper. The median house price in San Diego, at $613,000, is four times that of Dallas. But the study found that working families in San Diego spend 59% of their income on housing and transportation, only slightly more than the 57% they spend in Dallas. Families in Dallas spent just 26% of their income on housing, compared with 31% in San Diego, but the Dallas families spent more on transport.

The study also found that moving to an inexpensive outer suburb, but continuing to work near a city center, often backfires. Typically, a move that adds more than about 12 miles to a one-way commute will result in a rise in transport costs that outweighs the savings on housing, the researchers found…

Web search leader Google Inc. on Monday said it agreed to acquire top video entertainment site YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in stock, putting a lofty new value on consumer-generated media sites.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, adjusted for inflation, is down 17 percent from its all-time high on January 14, 2000.[1] It would need to rise another 2,378 points to set a new record, adjusted for inflation. It is only when no adjustment is made for inflation that the Dow can be said to have closed at a record high on October 3, 2006, as has been widely reported in the media.

Just sayin.

Patricia C. Dunn, the former chairwoman of Hewlett-Packard, and four other people will be named in indictments expected to be filed by California’s attorney general today in the spying case at the company, according to lawyers involved in the case.

In addition to Ms. Dunn, Attorney General Bill Lockyer intends to indict Kevin T. Hunsaker, a former senior lawyer at H.P.; Ronald L. DeLia, a Boston-area private detective; Joseph DePante, owner of Action Research Group, a Melbourne, Fla., information broker; and Bryan Wagner, a Littleton, Colo., man who is said to have obtained private phone records while working for Mr. DePante.

All of those named face four charges: using of false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility, unauthorized access to computer data, identity theft, and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes. All of the charges are felonies.

Carly “the Hatchet” Fiorina’s coming to Hewlett Packard was the worst thing that ever happened to that company (most notably, the merger with Compaq, which was almost as bad as AOL-Time Warner). Fiorina drove a former flagship company into an amorphous, unweildy limpid and that, combined with her unethical, self-serving corruption, irretrievably sullied HP’s name (Fiorina is GOP, of course). In short: she ran that company into the ground… and got a $21 million severance package for her troubles.

Dunn was Carly’s replacement and it looks like she brought the culture of corruption with her. Unethical, amoral, and apparently illegal.

There’s an interesting parallel between the corporate illegalities and spying and the actions of the current administration (you know, the one with the “CEO” president), but I think it goes back further than just this administration. The current corruption, from WorldCom to Enron to HP can be traced to the unending GOP attempts to deregulate anything and everything associated with capitalism.

Should we be surprised? Perhaps, but only that these guys got caught.

The civil suits to follow should be quite entertaining.

A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to recruits and might need to be partially demolished, U.S. investigators have found.

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country’s security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed “the rain forest.”

“This is the most essential civil security project in the country — and it’s a failure,” said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. “The Baghdad police academy is a disaster.”

After years of raiding “redneck labs” and arresting local methamphetamine cooks, drug squads in Georgia appeared to be gaining the upper hand on the makeshift operations in 2004, when the number of busts declined sharply from a peak of more than 800 the previous year.

But the glow of success quickly faded as international drug cartels distributing a purer form of the drug known as “ice” rushed in to fill the void.

“The labs start to decline and you’re happy,” said Phil Price, special agent in charge of regional drug enforcement for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. “But the imported meth has really hit us hard. … It’s cheaper now to buy it on the streets.”

I can feel some NAFTA love coming on right now. I need a moment here. *sniff* Tito, bring me a tissue.

In April, Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson told a group of real estate officials that he once canceled a government contract because the contractor was critical of President Bush. Awarding contracts based on political leanings “violates federal law.” Jackson is a “longtime Bush friend” and former neighbor in Dallas, Texas.

The Inspector General for the Department of Housing and Urban Development has conducted a detailed investigation and produced a 340-page report detailing his findings. The agency has given a copy to Jackson, but refused to release the report to the public.

I’m waiting now for the Senate judiciary committee to meet so that Lindsay Graham and Arlen Specter can craft a bill legalizing partisan rewards via federal contract. I suspect it’ll be here in about, oh, … 30 seconds.

If you spend any significant amount of time browsing around YouTube, you’ll notice a surprising number of videos consisting of people busting a move to popular music. It can be anything from a presumably inebriated couple with a camera orientation problem dancing to Prince’s “Kiss” to a solitary college student grooving in his dorm room. Whatever the context, it’s all but certain that the dancers haven’t paid the RIAA for the rights to the song.

That has led to a recent spate of cease-and-desist notices from the music trade group directed at some users of YouTube. Despite the fact that the recordings are generally of poor quality—especially where the audio is concerned—the RIAA is moving to rid the Internet of the scourge of amateur Solid Gold dancers.

SCENE.

Kenneth Lay, who rose from a poor preacher’s son to become a millionaire before being convicted of corporate fraud, died early Wednesday in Aspen, Colo., a family spokeswoman said.

Lay, 64, was awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of conspiracy and fraud in the Enron trial in May.

Few people have been responsible for more pain to more people in recent decades than Ken Lay. Fitting, then, that he’s a preacher’s son. Also fitting that he was one of Bush’s biggest and earliest supporters.

“Apparently, his heart simply gave out,” said Lay’s pastor, Dr. Steve Wende of Houston’s First United Methodist Church.

Obviously, this is a lie as he had no heart.
Obviously, this was a cabalesque hit, enacted by the same Clintonista hitmen who whacked Vince Foster.

If there is a Heaven, Lay is not there.
If there are souls, Lay’s was deficient.
If there is reincarnation, he will come back as a worm. Or possibly a leech, but I think that would just reinforce his cycle of lifetimes rather than break him out of his rut.

To the extent that his family and friends miss him, my condolences. To the man himself… good riddance. He was an immoral narcissist, focused on breaking whatever rules he needed to break in order to best benefit himself. He is an exemplar of what I consider to be inhuman. He enriched himself while ensuring that hard working blue collar workers now have to live with their children and have no retirement funds.

Even in dying he cheated the system by never paying for his crimes, crimes for which he never felt sorry, only caught.

And I was so looking forward to seeing him in penitentiary orange.

Update: Alternatively, it’s all a hoax (h/t to Chartoo in the comments)

President Bush, urging the Senate to pass the line-item veto, on Tuesday criticized House Democrats who didn’t back the measure even though they’ve called for federal spending restraint.

The line-item veto? You mean, the line-item veto that the Supreme Court has already ruled is unconstitutional line-item veto? That one? The one that has been definitely unconstitutional since 1998?

The Busheviks believe that the current setup of the bill will pass constitutional muster. The article would have you believe that this is because any line item veto can be overruled by a simple majority in the House.

Not so much.

In short: a line-item veto is an unconstitutional grant of power to the Executive at the cost of the Legislature (and we, the People), and is a threat to our Liberty. The “new” bill is no different from the old, even down to the Congressional override. While a line-item veto may be considered a good idea, unless and until the Constitution is amended, it is not a legal one.

This is a long post, so I’ll save the analysis for after the jump.

From the original line-item veto decision in Clinton v. City of New York (Stephens’ opinion), we see that the line-item veto is a flashing neon sign of unconstitutionality, with the Constitution’s silence on the issue considered to be an absolute prohibition:

Thus, in both legal and practical effect, the presidential actions at issue have amended two Acts of Congress by repealing a portion of each. Statutory repeals must conform with Art. I, INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 954 , but there is no constitutional authorization for the President to amend or repeal. Under the Presentment Clause, after a bill has passed both Houses, but “before it become[s] a Law,” it must be presented to the Presi dent, who “shall sign it” if he approves it, but “return it,” i.e., “veto” it, if he does not. There are important differences between such a “return” and cancellation under the Act: The constitutional return is of the entire bill and takes place before it becomes law, whereas the statutory cancellation occurs after the bill becomes law and affects it only in part. There are powerful reasons for construing the constitutional silence on the profoundly important subject of presidential repeals as equivalent to an express prohibition.

Here’s Article I, section 7:

Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law.

Further, and this is the best part, the original bill had a provision identical to the one that supposedly makes this bill Constitutional:

A cancellation takes effect upon receipt by Congress of the special message from the President. See §691b(a). If, however, a “disapproval bill” pertaining to a special message is enacted into law, the cancellations set forth in that message become “null and void.” Ibid . The Act sets forth a detailed expedited procedure for the consideration of a “disapproval bill,” see §691d, but no such bill was passed for either of the cancellations involved in these cases. 24

A majority vote of both Houses is sufficient to enact a disapproval bill. The Act does not grant the President the authority to cancel a disapproval bill, see §691(c), but he does, of course, retain his constitutional authority to veto such a bill.

Stephens continues, expanding on why this issue is so important.

There are important differences between the President’s “return” of a bill pursuant to Article I, §7, and the exercise of the President’s cancellation authority pursuant to the Line Item Veto Act. The constitutional return takes place before the bill becomes law; the statutory cancellation occurs after the bill becomes law. The constitutional return is of the entire bill; the statutory cancellation is of only a part. Although the Constitution expressly authorizes the President to play a role in the process of enacting statutes, it is silent on the subject of unilateral Presidential action that either repeals or amends parts of duly enacted statutes.

There are powerful reasons for construing constitutional silence on this profoundly important issue as equivalent to an express prohibition. The procedures governing the enactment of statutes set forth in the text of Article I were the product of the great debates and compromises that produced the Constitution itself. Familiar historical materials provide abundant support for the conclusion that the power to enact statutes may only “be exercised in accord with a single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered, procedure.” Chadha, 462 U.S., at 951 . Our first President understood the text of the Presentment Clause as requiring that he either “approve all the parts of a Bill, or reject it in toto.” 30

What has emerged in these cases from the President’s exercise of his statutory cancellation powers, however, are truncated versions of two bills that passed both Houses of Congress. They are not the product of the “finely wrought” procedure that the Framers designed.

Note the George Washington portion; there’s your original constructist argument. I’m sure that “original constructionist … so long as it fits today’s GOP agenda” Scalia will find a way to mold his oh-so-flexible “strict” constructionalism around that little beauty though. You know, what with a Republican in power and all.

Justice Kennedy’s concurrence is also compelling:

A nation cannot plunder its own treasury without putting its Constitution and its survival in peril. The statute before us, then, is of first importance, for it seems undeniable the Act will tend to restrain persistent excessive spending. Nevertheless, for the reasons given by JUSTICE STEVENS in the opinion for the Court, the statute must be found invalid. Failure of political will does not justify unconstitutional remedies.
…
In recent years, perhaps, we have come to think of liberty as defined by that word in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and as illuminated by the other provisions of the Bill of Rights. The conception of liberty embraced by the Framers was not so confined. They used the principles of separation of powers and federalism to secure liberty in the fundamental political sense of the term, quite in addition to the idea of freedom from intrusive governmental acts. The idea and the promise were that when the people delegate some degree of control to a remote central authority, one branch of government ought not possess the power to shape their destiny without a sufficient check from the other two. In this vision, liberty demands limits on the ability of any one branch to influence basic political decisions. Quoting Montesquieu, the Federalist Papers made the point in the following manner:

” ‘When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body,’ says he, ‘there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws to execute them in a tyrannical manner.’ Again: ‘Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor. ‘ “

The Federalist No. 47, supra, at 303.

It follows that if a citizen who is taxed has the measure of the tax or the decision to spend determined by the Executive alone, without adequate control by the citizen’s Representatives in Congress, liberty is threatened. Money is the instrument of policy and policy affects the lives of citizens. The individual loses liberty in a real sense if that instrument is not subject to traditional constitutional constraints.

And so on.

It is evident that this bill is unconstitutional from the getgo, regardless of what the Cato Institute or Duhbya’s puppet masters might be saying. As a thought exercise, let’s imagine for a moment the effects of the bill as it applies to our government…

If a bill is passed that includes a totality provision (that is, the bill must be taken as a whole and not line-item vetoed), can the Executive line-item veto that provision… and then line-item veto individual sections of the bill?

If not, then what is the point of the line-item veto? If so, then what power does the Legislative branch have remaining?

This, of course, doesn’t even begin to address the purely partisan questions, such as the use of the line-item veto to override opposing parties’ initiatives or to coerce legislators to toe the line to avoide the veto.

Despite the roar from the right and conservative think tanks, there is no possible formulation of law that allows for the grant of partial veto power to the Executive given the current construction of our Constitution. And this is a good thing for we, the People.

Warren E. Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and one of the world’s wealthiest men, plans to donate the bulk of his $44 billion fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four other philanthropies starting in July.

The donations, outlined in a series of letters that Mr. Buffett released yesterday and will execute today, represent a singular and historic act of charitable giving that vaults him into the top tier of industrialists and entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller Sr., Henry Ford, J. Paul Getty, W. K. Kellogg and Mr. Gates himself, all men whose fortunes have endowed some of the world’s richest private foundations.

Mr. Buffett plans to give away 85 percent of his fortune, or about $37.4 billion, all in Berkshire stock. Of that amount, he will channel the greatest share, about $31 billion, into the Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation, dedicated to improving health and education, especially in poor nations, is already the United States’ largest grant-making foundation, with current assets of almost $30 billion. Mr. Buffett’s huge contribution may permanently solidify that philanthropy’s standing as the biggest and most influential organization of its kind. Mr. Buffett will join Mr. and Mrs. Gates as a trustee of their foundation.

His lack of egotism is remarkable. You don’t see the Carnegies or the Rockefellers doing this, do you? That not having to set up his own foundation also saves millions in administrative costs is just icing on the cake. And further proof that Buffet is a smart, goodish man.

Right on, Warren.