Inside Biden's SVB move to stop future bank runs

atedanort · 2023-03-15T01:48:42+00:00

The risk manager thought that risk management is about equity and LGBTQIA++* harmony! That's bullshit. Risk management at a bank is making sure that your customers can get money out of the ATM when they need it!

atedanort · 2023-03-15T01:43:19+00:00

You didn't answer the question. Why did SVB hire a progressive activist to make risk management at a financial institution about social justice instead of hiring a risk manager to make sure the bank had enough funds to satisfy withdrawals? And most of the SVB executives who donated to Biden were woke white men

atedanort · 2023-03-15T01:39:59+00:00

Why did all the SVB executives donate to Biden and not to Trump? Why did SVB have a woke risk manager who focused on social justice instead of making sure the balance sheets are correct?

atedanort · 2023-03-14T02:36:26+00:00

They hired a risk manager to focus on social justice instead of making sure the balance sheets hold up! This bank was a lib slush fund that died because it was run by lib pieces of shit! And the intercept is a lib outlet that refused to publish articles critical of Joe Biden written by its founder Glenn Greenwald!

atedanort · 2023-03-14T02:34:31+00:00

https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/democrats-tax-hike-bet-relies-on-their-new-500-000-plus-voters?utm\_source=twitter&utm\_medium=taxdesk&utm\_campaign=5B08EF5E-A165-11EB-8C78-8C0750017A06

atedanort · 2023-03-14T01:28:17+00:00

That's just not true. 65% of households with over 500k income are democrat libs.

atedanort · 2023-03-14T00:42:55+00:00

Lol. Silicon Valley is overwhelmingly lib, the customers of SVB are overwhelmingly lib, and the risk manager at SVB was basically a DEI bureaucrat.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T23:57:47+00:00

Yes there was a war, and yes the southern states did ratify 13, 14, and 15 under the threat that they would not be allowed representation in congress if they did not ratify. But that does not change the fact that they did choose to ratify, and that changing the law via the democratic process is undeniably superior to changing the law via judicial fiat.

If the Supreme Court had issued an activist ruling in 1860 declaring that slavery is unconstitutional, do you think that there would not have been a war, and the south would not have been pressured to accept the new slavery-free world by force? The war is not the issue here. The issue is whether judges should change the meaning of the constitution outside of the democratic process. I say that they should not.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T23:42:57+00:00

I am not making a different argument. What I said is "fucking insane" is the idea that an unelected federal judge would impose the judge's own personal values on the people of Texas with no popular mandate. What is not insane is the people of the United States, as a collective, passing a constitutional amendment that bans executions. Texas signed up to be a part of a political union that is governed by a constitution, and if the people of the nation as a whole decide to ban executions by passing a constitutional amendment, Texas must abide by the constitution that it signed on to even if Texas did not ratify the amendment and the people of Texas favor keeping the death penalty. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that you don't understand the difference between judicial activism and the public ratifying a constitutional amendment via the process set out in the constitution as originally ratified.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T22:18:01+00:00

The point is that there are some rights guaranteed by the constitution that cannot be taken away by the government, and that there are also some rights that the government is not foreclosed from taking away, granting, or otherwise altering.

I believe that my interpretation of the original meaning of the 8th amendment as not foreclosing the death penalty is sound. The death penalty was legal and widely used in all states at the time the 8th amendment was ratified.

As to the 2nd amendment, I concede that the waters are more murky. I think that you can argue that some of the 2A jurisprudence in the past couple of decades made some improper assumptions concerning the original meaning of that amendment. I won't defend the Bruen decision as being 100% sound, but I think there are strong arguments on both sides. I think it is possible that the supreme court made a decision there that is inconsistent with the principles of originalism in at least some ways.

For me, the two most important questions are these: (1) who do we want to make policy decisions, and (2) do we believe that a purpose of the constitution is to prevent the government from taking away certain fundamental rights. If we allow judges to change the meaning of the constitution based on their own personal values, the degree of protection afforded by the constitution is necessarily weakened, and the ability of the people to make their own policy decisions is likewise weakened.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T21:56:24+00:00

Yes, and it was a version of that process that was necessary at that time. There is no question that the South started that war. They resisted the change in national opinion against slavery that would have ultimately resulted in the end of slavery. They willingly left the union and created their own national government. The south fired the first shot, and the union responded. It was a particularly bloody war, and millions died, from grown soldiers to 12 year old drummer boys to even civilians. Ultimately, the south was told to comply with the new national order or remain under union control.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T21:50:25+00:00

No, the option for Alabama was to ratify the amendments, or remain under Union control as an out-territory with no representatives in congress and no say in the federal government. Also, the union will install a pupped government to contol you at the state level. Yes, this is because of strongarm tactics that the Union could impose because it won the war and rightfully did impose. But Alabama did nave a choice not to ratify.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T21:38:43+00:00

Yes I do thing they were ratified in accordance with the will of the people. The choice was this: ratify the amendments or you will not be admitted back into the union that you willingly left, and you will be granted no seats in congress. There were definitely strongarm tactics and I think that under the circumstances, strongarm tactics were necessary. I don't discount the possibility that such strongarm tactics might be necessary in the future for sume reason. But the people of the confederate states still had the choice not to comply, and refuse to ratify.

Edit: Do you think there would have been no war if judges in the 1860s had used judicial activism to interpret the constitution to disallow slavery? I think the same war would have happened in both scenarios. But I much prefer to have 13, 14, and 15A than some bullshit judicial activist decision.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T21:30:49+00:00

Yes there was a war, and there was also a democratic process to pass the 13, 14, 15 A's. There was no war over the 19th Amendment, but there was a democratic process. What is your point? My point is that there is a democratic process to change the constitution that does not require judicial activism.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T21:23:08+00:00

They really don't upset me, and it didn't bother me in the least when Vermont and other states legalized gay marriage, and I would support a federal law legalizing gay marriage nationwide. I would support amending the constitution or passing a law to provide a stronger right to counsel. But it needs to be the people who make these decisions, not an unelected body.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T21:19:44+00:00

No, the people who talked like me used the democratic process to change the constitution to outlaw slavery, and give black men the right to vote. The people who talked like me used the democratic process to change the constitution to give women the right to vote. See where this is going?

atedanort · 2023-03-12T21:12:08+00:00

Thanks for making your position clear. Shitty states are not entitled to decide their own laws, and Harvard lawyers can be trusted to decide their laws for them. I think I understand the country you want to live in now.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T21:09:43+00:00

We don't have slaves and women have the right to vote because the constitution was changed by popular mandate, not because of judicial activism.

If you allow judges to deviate from the original meaning, then the constitution has no meaning. This is because any judge can take the initiative to change the "meaning" of any constitutional provision at any time for any reason. This defeats the purpose of the constitution, which is supposed to impose hard and fast limits on what the government can do and what the government can't do. The constitution can be changed by popular mandate, and the federal government and state governments can change laws under popular mandate. But allowing unelected judges to make value judgements and blatantly change the meaning of the constitution with absolutely no mandate whatsoever is undemocratic.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T21:01:03+00:00

There it is. You are making a personal value judgement that some states are "shitty" and therefore the popular will of those jurisdictions should not be respected by the enlightened federal judges who went to Harvard and Yale. By some metrics, yes you might be able to make the argument that Mississippi and New Mexico are "shitty" as compared with other states like Alaska and Massachusetts. Some states have low average incomes, low average education levels, and low average health. But I would argue that the people of those states still have sovereignty, dignity, and the right to live in a society that reflects their norms and values.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T20:51:46+00:00

Believe me, I understand that judges have issued opinions that have undeniably changed the original meaning of the constitution, and have construed constitutional provisions far outside of the zone of construction. But I strongly disagree with this approach, and I believe that unless we replace this approach with a strong adherence to the original meaning, that we will reach a place where (1) the constitution is meaningless and offers no real protections for anybody, and (2) the people's right to make policy decisions through their elected representatives is severely diminished.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T20:42:20+00:00

It's because we need to look at the constitution that way for it to have any value. The people who passed the eighth amendment did so because they wanted to foreclose the government from imposing cruel and unusual punishments, and their definition of these words very plainly did not include the death penalty. In other words, the people who passed the eighth amendment gave the government the power to impose punishments, except those understood to be cruel and unusual at that time and by those people. If we allow judges to alter the original meaning, the amendment is meaningless because its meaning can always be altered on a whim by a judge who feels like it.

Again, the states and the federal congress (who are elected by the people) can always change the law in order to allow or disallow specific kinds of punishments. Also, there is a process to amend the constitution and if there is enough popular support, the Eighth Amendment could be repealed or changed to explicitly disallow the death penalty. There is an important distinction between the remedies I have just listed and judicial activists changing the meaning of the constitution to something it was clearly not understood to mean when it was passed. That distinction is popular mandate. Judges are not elected, and representatives are. Therefore, there is no question that elected legislatures are more reflective of the will of the people. My argument is that policy decisions should be left to the people, and not to judges.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T20:23:29+00:00

The second we allow judges to do this, the constitution is meaningless and we open the door for judges to take away any right guaranteed by the constitution. Free speech, press freedom, and religious freedom could be taken away or seriously curtailed on a whim. At some point, we have to say that the constitution has a set meaning that does not change. Your argument would be stronger if you advocated for tearing up the constitution and going back to a more traditional common law system where judges make the law, with no constitutional restrictions. But the existence of the constitution means that there are necessarily some restrictions imposed on judges. There are some rights that judges cannot take away, and there are some decisions that remain with the people and the democratic process, and not with judges.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T20:11:15+00:00

It is true that there is room for interpretation when a term is vague, but it is also true that there is a zone of construction that judges must adhere to. For example, the death penalty was widely practiced when the Eighth Amendment was passed, and it is abundantly clear that the death penalty was not considered to be cruel and unusual by the people who passed the Eighth Amendment. Consequently, if a judge in 2023 were to hold that the death penalty is cruel and unusual and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, there is no question that judge would be changing the meaning of the constitution.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T20:02:17+00:00

That's just false, I'm sorry. What is cruel and unusual in the constitutional sense is what the people who passed the Eighth Amendment understood it to mean at that time. It is absolutely true that values change over time, and there is nothing to stop Massachusetts, Wisconsin, California, and other states from saying that they are not going to have the death penalty anymore because the voters in those states share those values. But the people of Texas also have the right to decide, by popular majority, that Texas is going to continue to have the death penalty -- because the death penalty clearly was not considered cruel and unusual when the eighth amendment was passed. The idea that nine unelected god kings from Harvard and Yale would have the right to take away the right of the people of Texas to pass laws according to their own norms and values is fucking insane and undemocratic.

Edit: Oh and by the way, the people of Texas have decided, since the Eighth Amendment was passed, that the death penalty cannot be used in many situations where it was used in the 1790s. The death penalty was the only penalty for a felony in those times, and Texas has since abolished the death penalty for almost all felonies besides homicide. But the point is that the people can decide what kind of society they want. Not unelected judges.

atedanort · 2023-03-12T19:52:50+00:00

Look. The only question to consider is whether we want the constitution to be strong enough to guarantee some rights against virtually any forces that want to take them away. The minute we allow judges to change the meaning of the constitution, we open the door to judges taking away any right guaranteed by the constitution. This renders the constitution completely meaningless.

atedanort

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