Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Thanks to Flagrancy for the reminder.

House Roll Call

Senate Roll Call

I was surprised to see Joe Lieberman's name in the "Nay" column. Wasn't it evil enough?

I have an inclination towards conspiracism. So I often have to remind myself that people who are wildly irresponsible economic misanthropes, and deeply sympathetic to the needs of people just like themselves, will reflexively do things that look a lot like deliberately locking the family in the house before setting fire to it -- in this case, the cynically named "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005". Source Watch has a good overview of it. The credit card people have wanted this for a long time, well before the credit bubble/derivative singularity engineered to replace the Dotcom bubble. In defense of my conspiracism, a culture of enduring spite, greed and predatory practices, with privileged access to the political structure, can produce things that look a lot like timely, cunning malevolence. But this is a hedge they've desired for a while now.

U.S. bankruptcy filings were 38 percent higher last month than in July 2006 and are 50 percent higher for all 2007 than they were a year ago, according to data complied by the private research company Jupiter eSource LLC.

Almost 307,000 bankruptcies were filed in the first seven months of this year, the company said Friday, citing U.S. Bankruptcy Court records obtained online.

Business reorganizations accounted for 3,400 filings, a 20 percent rise from the same period in 2006 for corporate Chapter 11 cases. Individual bankruptcies accounted for most of the rest.

The 50 percent growth this year is partly a result of a low rate of filings in early 2006 under a new, more restrictive law. Bankruptcies first rose as individuals rushed to beat the October 2005 deadline, then dropped. They rose steadily in 2006.

If this year's pace continues, new bankruptcies in 2007 will total almost 790,000, 34 percent more than last year.

Link

If anyone wants to fact check the story, the stats are available.

Using the scale I borrowed from Owen, I'd rate the legislation at 5 lantoses in conception and six in action, with the potential for eight and half if the economy gets really bad. The full ten lantoses are reserved for things like privatizing Social Security. It's bad legislation. Though the Democratic aisle crossers in the House and Senate probably couldn't have prevented its passage, the large number in each chamber nevertheless carries nasty weight well past that point.

Aisle crossers make revision or even repeal of bad laws very difficult. Outside the CEO class, there's no group of people more inclinded to persevering in folly than lifelong policitians. They're protected by their party infrastructure and crony networks. They face no consequences. The worst (pdf) of them are supremely confident and add petty ego to the mix. The Democrats always defend their aisle crossers, whose stubborness is proportionate to their inability to consider things thoughtfully and whose obligations to voters end the day after elections. Any other group of human beings could at least discuss where things went awry and take whatever small notice that they had. In the status quo, it will take something like a miracle to even get this modified. The bare minimum outside a miracle is putting a dent in their comfortable patterns, i.e. third party runs and/or spoiling.