Posts Tagged ‘Dodd-Frank’

Fifth Circuit Court Starts Dismantling The Administrative State

Thursday, May 19th, 2022

American Civics 101 teaches us that there are three branches of the American government: Executive, Legislative and Judicial. However, that clean, elegant division started to go awry in the early 20th century (some would place the problems even earlier) with the creation of the Federal Reserve and the vast expansion of the administrative state under the New Deal.

One blow to that traditional tripartite division of federal powers was the creation of administrative courts for independent agencies. Yesterday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes Texas) ruled such courts were unconstitutional.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s in-house judges violate the U.S. Constitution by denying fraud defendants their right to a jury trial and acting without necessary guidance from Congress, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday.

The court ruled 2-1 in favor of hedge fund manager George Jarkesy Jr and investment advisor Patriot28 LLC, overturning an SEC administrative law judge’s determination that they committed securities fraud.

A spokesperson for the SEC and counsel for the petitioners did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

The Dodd-Frank Act, which Congress passed after the 2008 financial crisis, expanded the SEC’s ability to seek penalties in its administrative proceedings.

In the ruling Wednesday, the majority said that because seeking penalties is akin to debt collection, which is a private right, the defendants were entitled to a jury trial.

The SEC had argued that it was acting to protect investors and enforce public rights found in the securities laws.

The majority also found that SEC judges, known as administrative law judges, lack authority under the Constitution because Congress did not provide guidance on when the SEC should bring cases in-house instead of in a court.

U.S. Circuit Court Jennifer Walker Elrod, joined by Circuit Court Judge Andrew Oldham, penned the majority opinion.

This is a long overdue trimming of the unelected administrative state and a restoration of the division of responsibilities between the three branches that forms part of the Constitution’s vital system of checks and balances. However, given the potentially far-reaching effects of the decision, expect first an en banc hearing of the Fifth Circuit, and then an appeal to the Supreme Court.

LinkSwarm for September 29, 2017

Friday, September 29th, 2017

Looks like I’m going to get out of this week without having to do a separate post about the NFL. (Yay me!) A good thing, since I’ve been chronically short of time this week (for work and Reasons). Here was a supposedly irresistible force (the SJW Long March through every possible institution of American life) meeting the immoveable object (the fact that the vast majority of NFL fans are more conservative than the liberal identity politics the league suddenly feels necessary to espouse). But President Donald Trump, like Bill Ciinton, is very adept at getting in front of a parade. In this case, Trump noticed that the vast majority of Americans who don’t hate the flag weren’t being represented in the controversy. With one tweet, Trump turned the debate on its head, forced the league to make its support for #BlackLivesMatter identity politics explicit.

The ironic thing is that #BlackLivesMatter was a George Soros gambit to keep black voters riled up enough to ensure they voted for Hillary Clinton, and it failed miserably. So the NFL is stuck degrading its own popularity to continue defending a political gambit that failed.

  • How President Trump’s NFL stance helps him:

    He takes a commonly held sentiment — most people don’t like the NFL protests — and states it in an inflammatory way guaranteed to get everyone’s attention and generate outrage among his critics. When those critics lash back at him, Trump is put in the position of getting attacked for a fairly commonsensical view.

  • And the whole controversy is not helping Democrats either:

    What voters in that big chunk of the country turned red do you plan to win back on a platform of kneeling for the national anthem, revoking due process, removing monuments of our founders, sympathizing with jihad, glorifying property-destroying (and journalist-punching) thugs or backing Kim Jong Un in a nuclear showdown? The more the left has ramped up its cultural war, the more their governing power has diminished. Who cares if the Affordable Care Act wiped them from the electoral map, as long as Jimmy Kimmel gets his sick burns in.

    Donald Trump’s election should have been a giant wake up call to both the media and the left that the causes they care about and blast out with their bylines are not the issues Americans care about. They may view Donald Trump’s twitter commentary as beneath the office of the presidency, but they can forgive a lot when the other party is demanding they bend the knee.

  • And least anyone forget, Democrats are already plenty screwed. “If Democrats don’t refine their pitch to alienated white voters, Trump could win re-election with ease.”
  • The biggest threat to the lives of black males is not police officers, it’s other black males. And the “Ferguson Effect” of reduced policing in the inner city is making things worse. (Hat tip: Powerline.)
  • Another day, another Russian hacking story that turns out to be complete hogwash.
  • Washington policy is screwing the Kurds. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Illegal Aliens Cost US Taxpayers An Average Of $8,075 Per Illegal.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Gay Jew argues for free speech rights for everyone, instantly gets labeled a Nazi. “The mob cannot be reasoned with…It is truly frightening to see how deeply marinated the Left has become in hate that it sees itself as righteous for committing violence against all it views as evil.”
  • “Healthy” food researcher accused of wholesale data manipulation.
  • Ted Cruz wants to repeal Dodd-Frank.
  • The city of Marienthal, Austria tried out that “guaranteed income” thing liberals raved about in the 1930s. Spoiler: it didn’t work:

    “Cut off from their work,” the workers “lost the material and moral incentives to make use of their time.” They began to “drift gradually out of an ordered existence into one that is undisciplined and empty. . . . [For] hours on end, the men stand around on the street, alone or in small groups, leaning against the wall of a house or the parapet of a bridge.”

    “Nothing is urgent anymore,” the report observes. “They have forgotten how to hurry.”

    “It used to be magnificent,” one woman told the researchers. “During the summer we used to go for walks, and all those dances! Now I don’t feel like going out anymore.” Another man summarized, “[ T] here was life in Marienthal then. Now the whole place is dead.”

    And Democratic policies have done the same for black America.

  • Scholar withdraws article ‘The Case for Colonialism’ after social media and professional attacks.” What attacks? “After demands for retraction, to fire the journal editors, to fire and blacklist the author, and to revoke his PhD.” And even though no less a liberal icon that Noam Chomsky defended his right to publish the controversial piece.
  • Fight in ’empathy tent‘ at UC Berkeley leads to 4 arrests.” “You’ve got a guy with purple hair with a f—ing lightsaber talking about Hitler. It’s hard for me to take any of this seriously.”
  • A “summary of President Trump’s UN speech. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Dogs actually do love us.
  • Bulldozer 1, Police Car 0. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Florida man: “Man wields machete, makes off with $17 worth of potato chips.”
  • Florida woman: “Maid of Honor Chugs Bottle of Fireball, Punches Best Man, Steals Car, Nearly Runs Him Over During Wedding.”
  • SR-72?
  • Jerry Pournelle’s eulogy by his son. (Hat tip: Borepatch, who also shares another Jerry story.)
  • World’s largest flawless diamond to be auctioned.
  • The story behind the recording of Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction.”
  • Heh.
  • Heh II: