LPM OnlineFebruary 2, 1999 |
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Voters will have a third choice in the upcoming special election for the 13th District Michigan Senate seat. Name: Christopher J. Pellerito Phone: (248) 689-7122 E-mail: PelleritoC@aol.com Mailing address: 345 Trombley Troy, MI 48083 For more information, or to volunteer your help, contact the campiagn using the above information. Biographical information: * Birthdate: 8/3/1975 in Royal Oak, MI * Residence: Troy, MI * Education: Bachelor's and master's degrees in Economics, from the University of Detroit Mercy * Occupation: financial analyst / consultant and adjunct college professor * Other hobbies and interests: guitar playing, designing computer games * Last book read: The Future and its Enemies by Virginia Postrel Platform issues: * Education reform: "Vouchers" or tax credits in the name of school choice, which are favored in some fashion by Gov. Engler and some state Republicans, provide an initial, tentative step in the right direction. School choice would, at the very least, provide an escape for students and parents who live in districts; indeed, forcing schools to compete for headcount would provide a limited amount of impetus to seemingly inert public school bureaucracies. School choice, however, cannot solve all the problems facing our public schools. The politicization of elementary and secondary education, especially at the state level, should be a top concern. Ultimately, the schools need to be privatized, to provide parents not just with a range of school names and locations, but with a variety of emphases, and at a variety of prices. Academe has its own language, and right now "diversity" is the only word in that language. But what could be less consistent with the ideal of "diversity" than a monolithic, state- run school system? * Utility deregulation: The utility deregulation deal pending in the state legislature bears the same hollow ring of "marketization" as other recent initiatives: NAFTA, the Telecommunications Act, etc. What Michigan power consumers need is access to low cost energy in a system that rewards, not stifles, innovation and efficiency gains. The quickest, surest step toward this end would be to eliminate the Michigan Public Service Commission and all the monopoly privileges that agency provides. * Abortion: Roe v. Wade ranks among the most embarrassing cases in the history of American jurisprudence. In a shameful display of judicial activism, the laws and will of the citizens as expressed in ballot referenda were overturned. Michigan was, of course, one of those states that fell victim to the legislative whims of Harry Blackmun and his contemporaries. I do not believe that the Federal government had the right to overturn a valid law of the State of Michigan.
When Rufus King reported to his home state of Massachusetts on the work of the constitutional convention, to which he had been a delegate, he said that "it was the intention and honest desire of the Convention to use those expressions that were most easy to be understood and least equivocal in their meaning." Among them was the phrase "high Crimes and Misdemeanors," as used in the impeachment provisions of the new Constitution. The use of these words in English impeachments stretched back to 1386. When George Mason suggested them to the convention, they were readily accepted because they were a term of art intimately familiar to all those in attendance; there was virtually no debate. But what was clear and unequivocal to the Founders has been to subsequent generations a matter of some confusion. In his Senate speech Thursday in defense of the president, former Sen. Dale Bumpers mistakenly asserted that the crimes for which President Clinton has been impeached don't rise to the constitutional level of "high crimes and misdemeanors." A little history is in order. The first impeachment along modern lines of procedure appears to have been against Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, in 1386. From that time until the 17th century "high crimes and misdemeanors" was used to include common-law offenses as well as other charges that were more clearly political in nature. Those included "advising the King to grant liberties and privileges to certain persons to the hindrance of the due execution of the laws," "procuring offices for persons who were unfit, and unworthy of them," and "squandering away the public treasure." From those earliest cases through the impeachment of Warren Hastings that was occurring at the same time as the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, "high crimes and misdemeanors" continued to be a common charge in impeachments. In the mid-17th century the notion of what constituted "high crimes and misdemeanors" was expanded to include such things as negligence and improprieties while in office. Chief Justice William Scroggs, for example, was impeached in 1680 for, among other things, browbeating witnesses, cursing and drinking to excess, and generally bringing "the highest scandal on the public justice of the kingdom." By the 18th century impeachable offenses under the rubric "high crimes and misdemeanors" weren't limited to indictable crimes in common law but also included more purely political offenses. In 1701 the Earl of Oxford was charged with "violation of his duty and trust." Warren Hastings, governor general of India, was charged with maladministration, corruption in office and cruelty toward the people of India. For those who wrote and ratified the Constitution, the most dominant source of authority on the common law was Sir William Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England," described by James Madison as "a book which is in every man's hand." Blackstone made clear that of the "high misdemeanors" under English law, the "first and principal one is the mal-administration of such high officers, as are in public trust and employment. This is usually punished by the method of parliamentary impeachment: wherein such penalties, short of death, are inflicted, as to the wisdom of the house of peers shall seem proper; consisting usually of banishment, imprisonment, fines, or perpetual disability." Included in Blackstone's list are two offenses of special relevance in the Clinton case. One is "obstructing the execution of lawful process." This, he writes, "is at all times an offense of a very high and presumptuous nature." Such obstructions of public justice, he argues, can be of both "the civil and criminal kind." Although his primary example is of obstruction of an arrest upon a criminal process, the offense clearly isn't limited to that and seems to include any effort to keep the processes of the law from functioning properly. The second offense of some significance to the matter at hand is "the crime of willful and corrupt perjury" and the closely related crime of the "Subornation of perjury [which] is the offense of procuring another to take such a false oath, as constitutes perjury in the principal." Blackstone finds perjury and subornation of perjury to be "detestable" crimes. Although at one point such offenses were punishable by death, by the time of the "Commentaries" they had come to be "punished with six months imprisonment, perpetual infamy, and a . . . fine, or to have both ears nailed to the pillory." In the descending order of gravity that Blackstone sets up, it is striking that perjury is followed immediately by the crime of bribery, one of the two impeachable offenses explicitly listed in the Constitution. The moral and legal inheritance of the Founders included the belief that the violation of an oath was, in Algernon Sidney's word, nothing less than "treachery." The major writers with whom the Founders were intimately conversant saw perjury as one of the most serious offenses. In his widely cited "Treatise on the Pleas of the Crown," for example, William Hawkins explained that there were certain kinds of offenses that were "infamous, and grossly scandalous, proceeding from principles of down right dishonesty, malice or faction"; and it was under this rubric that he included "perjury and subornation of perjury." Indeed, he went further arguing that "perjury . . . is of all crimes whatsoever the most infamous and detestable." Another influential source to whom the Founders turned, Samuel Pufendorf, put it even more strikingly: "Perjury appears to be a most monstrous sin, in as much as by it the forsworn wretch shews that he at the same time condemns the divine and yet is afraid of human punishment; that he is a daring villain towards God, and a sneaking coward towards men." Based on the historical record, the common law, the expressed intent of the Framers, and the writings of the principal legal authorities relied upon by the Framers, there should be no doubt that perjury should properly be deemed a "high crime and misdemeanor" in an impeachment trial under the Constitution. The only question facing the Senate ought to be whether the president is guilty as charged.
Gary L. McDowell is director of the Institute of United States Studies at the University of London.
Commentators, in their endless quest to find anything profound to say about the present drama in the Senate, have attempted to compare Clinton's trial to the 1868 trial of impeached President Andrew Johnson. These comparisons generally draw upon perceived differences in the mood of the country, in the nature of the crimes involved, etc. The commentators have completely missed the most important distinction between the two senate trials, however; the difference in the Senate itself. The Senators, then 54 in number, who tried Andrew Johnson were not popularly elected. The constitution created a Senate whose members were selected by the State Legislatures; this arrangement persisted until the 17th Amendment, requiring popular election of Senators, was ratified in 1913. The original method of state control of the Senate provided a very important service: it helped to preserve the federalist balance between the national government and the States. The Senate, if selected by the state governments themselves, would be unlikely to approve legislation that transferred power from the states to Washington. The system provided a very effective check against "big government." Thus, the Senate that tried Andrew Johnson did not have to worry about what the amorphous "American people" would think of them. They did face pressure from their legislative electors; in fact, of the nineteen US Senators who voted to acquit Johnson, not a single one served another term, because Johnson's reconstruction program was not popular with the northern States. But imagine if Clinton's jurors could vote without having to worry about twice- hourly public opinion polls and virtually endless speculation about their reelection prospects. In an American government devoid of the 17th Amendment, our 100 Senators might actually be willing to consider carefully the evidence in the Clinton case. And of course, if there was no 17th Amendment, we would somewhat limit the amount of noxious rhetoric emanating from Washington every other fall. Wouldn't that be a refreshing change? ***** Chris Pellerito is the Libertarian Party candidate in the upcoming 13th District Michigan Senate special election. You can contact him at pelleritoc@aol.com.
With deadline rapidly approaching, LP urges members to help repeal "Know Your Customer" rule * Immediate action required! Contact the FDIC BAD NEWS: There is slightly over one month left until the public comment period expires on the FDIC's proposed "Know Your Customer" regulation, which would require banks to spy on their customers for the federal government. GOOD NEWS: The Libertarian Party's all-out effort to kill this outrageous proposal by flooding the FDIC with letters, faxes, and e-mails is rapidly picking up steam -- and we need your help to finish the job. What is the Know Your Customer proposal, and how can you help abolish it? Know Your Customer is a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) proposal that would require banks and other financial institutions to develop customer profiles, monitor their customers' accounts, and report any "unusual transactions" to federal law enforcement agencies like the DEA or the IRS. The government claims it is trying to thwart money launderers and drug dealers. But what this law would really do is turn every bank teller into a government informer and every American with a bank account into a criminal suspect -- and that's why Libertarians are fighting this law. More specifically, the Know Your Customer proposal, as published in the December 7, 1998, Federal Register, requires that banks: * Determine their customer's sources of funds. * Determine their customer's "normal and expected" transactions. * Monitor customer transactions and identify transactions that are inconsistent with normal and expected transactions. * Report any "suspicious activity" to federal investigators. This policy is scheduled to go into effect on April 1, 2000, unless we can put enough pressure on the FDIC to kill it. The FDIC is taking public comments on this issue until March 8 -- which gives us just over one month to make it clear that the American public will not accept this outrageous regulation. In order to achieve that, the Libertarian Party has joined a coalition to repeal the proposal along with the ACLU, the Free Congress Foundation, the California Bankers Association, and other privacy groups. Already, our efforts are paying off: * On January 8, the national Libertarian Party issued a press release denouncing the scheme as "the ultimate invasion of your financial privacy," and response from the media has been overwhelming: LP spokespeople have been scheduled for 25 broadcast interviews heard on a total of 356 stations, and interview requests continue to roll in. * Even Congress is paying attention: On January 11, while an LP spokesman was being interviewed on radio station WJBO in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Congressman Richard Baker become so alarmed by the angry calls that he called in and tried to do a little damage control! Baker, a senior Republican on the House Banking Committee, pledged to hold hearings on repealing the Know Your Customer program. * Best of all, the FDIC has already been flooded with over 10,000 letters, faxes, and e-mails protesting the plan! Public opposition to the plan is growing so quickly that the FDIC is starting to retreat on its position. It has now announced that the plan could be "substantially revised." That's where you come in. Libertarians don't want this "Spy on Your Customer" program watered down, revised, or reformed; we want it repealed! With your help, we can immediately DOUBLE the number of public comments the FDIC has received. How? By hitting the FDIC with an avalanche of 10,000 more letters, faxes, and e-mails -- which might be enough to bury this proposal once and for all. That's right: If each of the 10,000-plus subscribers to the Libertarian Party's e-mail list fired off a comment to the FDIC right now, we could immediately double the number of public comments received, putting tremendous pressure on the agency to rescind this plan. And if everyone forwarded this e-mail to just one friend who is concerned about financial privacy, we could triple the number of comments, and so on.
HOW TO CONTACT THE FDIC: * E-mail: comments@FDIC.gov * Write: Robert E. Feldman, Executive Secretary, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 550 17th Street, NW, Washington DC 20429. * Fax: (202) 898-3838 WHAT TO SAY: First, state in simple and unambiguous language that you are opposed to the Know Your Customer regulation, and want it repealed. Then, make some or all of the following points: * In a free society, the government has no business even asking where you get your money or how you spend it -- and politicians certainly have no right to force your bank to monitor your account. This is the kind of thing you might have expected of the government of East Germany, China, or North Korea, but not in the U.S.A. * The Know Your Customer regulation amounts to an illegal, warrantless search that violates the Fourth Amendment. Monitoring every bank account to check for laundered money is no different from pulling over every driver just in case some are intoxicated, or searching every home to check for stolen goods. It is unconstitutional -- plain and simple. * The Know Your Customer regulation could subject your money to asset forfeiture. Asset forfeiture laws allow police to seize your car, your cash, and even your home without having to charge you with a crime -- and force you to go to court to get it back. Instead of being the safest place to store your money, banks could become the most dangerous place -- since Uncle Sam's bank robbers can seize it at will. * Like asset forfeiture laws and fingerprints on drivers licenses, the Know Your Customer regulation is another Prove-You're-Not-A-Criminal law. In America, we're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty -- not the other way around. * Most important, the Know Your Customer regulation cannot be reformed; it should be repealed!
TIPS: Here are a few suggestions to make your efforts as effective as possible:
* Include your name and address; anonymous messages may be ignored. * Be polite. Threats, abuse, and offensive language will cause your message to be disregarded. * Put the above points in your own words. The FDIC is receiving hundreds of form letters, faxes, and e-mails every day, so make yours look personal. * Be brief. Keep faxes and letters to one page, and e-mails to a few hundred words. * Hurry! With the deadline just slightly over one month away, we need to pressure the FDIC bureaucrats now. Let's see if Libertarians working together can cause an "e-mail avalanche" -- and a flood of letters and faxes -- at the FDIC!
Is there anything else you can do? Yes: Pass this Action Item on to a friend or relative and ask them to contact the FDIC, too. |
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