FISA, Immunity, Pardons, and Luthor Collins

The recent discussions about immunity in the context of the FISA bill have stirred up a great deal of frustration among people who have been shocked or disapproving of the Bush administration’s apparent cavalier attitude to complying with the law. This resentment no doubt provides some of the fuel for the populist movement that seems to be carrying Obama along. Both Republicans and Democrats have expressed to me frustration that there is not even any meaningful investigation of the charges. The administration does not have immunity but it does seem to operate with impunity.

Part of the public’s outrage about FISA relates to the appearance of hypocrisy. The same law-and-order people who advocate strong criminal sentencing standards advocate immunity for the corporate officials whose conduct apparently involved violation of constitutional rights on a massive scale. The sense of hypocrisy is heightened by the color and class distinctions between the criminal justice defendants and the corporate miscreants.

This frustration is very deep and involves what appears to be a failure of our system of checks and balances. The Republican Congress during the first six years of the Bush administration is widely seen as having allegiance to party over country or over the citizens of the country. During this time effort seemed to be directed to covering up the regularly occurring scandals. The two years of Democratic control of Congress have not been signifiantly different in terms of rendering people in the executive branch accountable for their transgressions. The FISA bill in granting immunity for illegal domestic surveillance was profoundly disillusioning for many. It went beyond disregarding disreputable behavior to condoning it.

FISA’s defender’s chant “national security” and to my knowledge there is nothing more than this rather empty slogan to support the position, a slogan that I had thought was used so much by the Nixon administration that it would not be heard again in connection with domestic activity. This slogan has also been used to justify the treatment of detainees and has been gradually rejected by the courts. Without anything to back it up it is just a slogan famously used around the world throughout the twentieth century. People need more substance to the claim for it to have traction outside of Congress.

The defenders of FISA point out that the guilty can still be prosecuted for crimes that were committed but few doubt that Bush will pardon everyone before leaving office. He, however, can only pardon for federal crimes and at least in theory any enterprising attorney general could investigate and prosecute under state law for crimes committed against its citizens. I doubt that anyone believes this will happen.

Bush is likely to pardon everyone in his administration, making the investigations promised by Obama unlikely. If McCain is elected he would not conduct investigations at all, at least as far as I know. The only way the Bush could be prevented from pardoning everyone would be for him to be impeached. If he were impeached, he could not grant pardons during the process. There appears to be no chance that this might happen.

Thus it appears that this itch to see criminal conduct exposed, or at least investigated, and punished will go unscratched regardless of the party favored in the next election. This rather sorry state of affairs is not without local precedent.

Civilization came to the Seattle area in the middle of the nineteenth century. Settlers first arrives on Alki, then some came to what is now the downtown area. A few located near the mouth of the Duwamish River between the two camps. Civilization, as everyone knows, requires government and the settlers were quick to elect a commissioner: Luthor Collins, our first governmental official. Two years after his arrival he was arrested for lynching a Native American. His civic leadership may have contributed to the dismissal of the charge. Later, having rooted himself in the administration of local affairs, he lynched two Native Americans and presumably it was his his august stature that prevented charges from being made.

Landlord Tenant; SB 6060

A bill that would overhaul the eviction process passed the senate by unanimous vote on Friday. SB 6060 is intended to streamline the process. I have not reviewed this sufficiently to comment on its fulfillment of that purpose, but those affected by it should submit any comments to their representative in the house quickly.

City of Seattle Audit

For those intrepid souls willing to look at something written by an auditor, the Seattle Auditor’s report for 2007 gives an interesting list of areas in which the City needs improvement. Some are refrains we hear year after year, but the report should be taken as a potentially useful tool for those engaged with the City on any of the listed issues. It covers topics ranging form the massively under financed duty to represent indigents to the substantially disregarded Cable Customer Bill of Rights, which got so much attention when it was passed. The report is here. Those who do not already subscribe might be interested in Nick Licata’s newsletter called “Urban Politics.” To subscribe go to urbanpolitics-subscribe@speakeasy.net.

Foreclosure Relief

Here’s a promising development. Seattle’s Mayor Nickels announced a pilot program which, through the offices of nonprofits Solid Ground and the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, will provide foreclosure relief to householders earning $48,000 to $50,000 per year, about 80% of the mean household income. The program will loan money to forestall foreclosure and provide debt counseling. The loans are limited to $5,000 and the funding is small, $200,000, but the program will be assessed after 6 months to determine its viability.

My guess is that the amount will turn out to be a bit low, as typically people pay their last cent avoiding a foreclosure. By the time a foreclosure is begun they have little money to pay the lender and the cost of curing the default is much higher than the sum of the monthly payments that were missed. Default interest rates, trustee’s fees, attorneys fees, title reports, publication costs and the like quickly escalate the cost of curing a default. It is not terribly uncommon for these foreclosure-related costs to come to $5000.

In reality these will be loans to the vigilant and the informed, as the amount of money offered is most likely to be helpful before the foreclosure has progressed too far and accumulated a lot of extra costs.

The thing about this that appeals to me and which highly recommends it, is that the grant is for a loan and is presumably secured. The borrower agrees to refinance or sell the property to repay the loan. If the borrower is forced to sell the home, the borrower at least gets to receive all the equity in the house. If these loans are properly administered, they should all be repaid, or at least substantially all of them should be. It strikes me as a win-win type of program: the money goes back to the government and the home owner either keeps the house or sells and gets all the equity. The government’s net savings are substantial by avoiding responsibility for any sort of relief to the working family.