Writes Megan McArdle in "Opinion: What the left doesn’t want to face about the eviction moratorium" (WaPo).
I agree that Presidents of both parties ought to be judged by the same standard when they take a challenging legal position, but we need to be consistent in when we're going to say they have "knowingly and blatantly violate[d] their oath."
I read in The Washington Post that Professor Larry Tribe advised the President that the new moratorium would be constitutional. If Biden sincerely believes that — or embraces it with whatever feeling a politician has in the place in heart where ordinary people experience sincere belief — should we denounce him for knowingly and blatantly violating the Constitution?
McArdle proceeds to argue (persuasively) that the moratorium is bad policy. But bad policy doesn't make it a blatant constitutional violation. And yet, even as the desire to adopt the policy is what led Biden to take a challenging constitutional position, recognition that the policy is bad could lead people who don't really care about constitutional limits to back off from that position.
But I don't even trust Biden to choose the best policy or even to believe he is choosing the best policy! It's political maneuvering, and I presume that he not only expects the courts to strike it down, he wants that outcome.
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To be perfectly honest, it seems to me that Professor Tribe tailors his opinion on the Constitution to the result he wants. I think that we all do that to a degree, but it makes me lend less credence to his opinion than you do.
When proposing an extension of the moratorium, Biden acknowledged that it went against a recently decided Supreme Court decision. Any legal advice that a new extension of an illegal policy would somehow be now be legal is fantastical thinking at best. A president can almost always find a legal scholar somewhere to provide a glimmer of hope for an illegal policy. But even Biden did not believe it and said his decision was simply to gain another month or so due to the usual timing of Supreme Court machinations. My hope for the rule of law is that the Supreme Court accepts a petition fro stopping the illegal action and immediately puts in place a restraining order until a new decision can be rendered.
Notice that President Biden didn’t say he was relying on any judicial opinion that supports putting lipstick on the pig of the prior CDC ukase, nor did he note that five SCOTUS justices have opined that the old one was unconstitutional.
Instead, he talked about “scholars”, by which he presumably meant “law professors who will never rule on the question”. Even then he conceded that the bulk of them think Moratorium 2.0 is unconstitutional. He relies on unnamed “key scholars”. Tribe has beclowned himself because of his acute TDS, and no one except our President could call him “ key” anymore. You can find a few law professors to say anything.
It's political maneuvering, and I presume that he not only expects the courts to strike it down, he wants that outcome.
If you are convinced that you do not control the courts, perhaps the next move is to paint the courts as the enemy of the people. It should be easy enough to organize "people over property" events in Aspen and Jackson Hole over the rest of this summer.
Think of the parties! Just don't forget to mask up before the photos get made - those proles are hell on hypocrisy, you know...
We're down to discussing whether private property is good or bad policy.
It's not policy. It's a right listed in the Constitution. Show me I'm wrong. I'll listen, but I'll tell you that without private property, we have nothing. There is no free people without private property.
Free speech is hanging on by a thread. Religion is attacked regularly. Personal finances are a thing of the past (even cryptocurrencies are now being set up for control). See how long it is before they come for your 401Ks. Private property? This should not even be a conversation and the fact the there are famous law professors laying down on this to protect a corrupt, criminal class running our country is not good- unless one is looking for rebellions to break out.
And lately I've been thinking that's exactly what they are looking to create.
It’s not a lie if you believe it. - George Costanza
Serious Question ('cause i Truly Don't Know)
Are these landowners being charged taxes on their properties?
If you've lost, what? the last 18 months of rent; with no end in sight; what IS the value of the property? How much IS the tax, for a worthless property?
"I read in The Washington Post that Professor Larry Tribe advised the President that the new moratorium would be constitutional. If Biden sincerely believes that — or embraces it with whatever feeling a politician has in the place in heart where ordinary people experience sincere belief — should we denounce him for knowingly and blatantly violating the Constitution?"
Yes, if you would have denounced Donald Trump for doing exactly the same thing, with his legal advisors.
I presume that he not only expects the courts to strike it down, he wants that outcome.
Of course Biden does. It's the way the game is played. Soon we'll see a flood of stories of unfortunate working families thrown out on the street by heartless landlords. Biden and Pelosi wanted to help, but couldn't because of that damn Supreme Court with that rapey Kavanaugh and that religious freak Comey-Barrett. And by gosh we need to expand the court to protect people from those vicious right-wingers and blah, blah, blah.
It's all so boring.
Megan McArdle can go shove it. This is what she wanted and voted for: to get rid of BadOrangeMan in favor of restoring the establishment. Trump, for all his faults, respected the Courts enough to abide by their decisions. The next guy to win isn't going to be so nice. I can't wait for the Republican President, or governor, who publicly asks, "How many divisions does John Roberts have?"
I have 2 rental houses that have nonpaying tenants. No rent paid at all for 13 months. No rent assistance for landlords without tenant cooperation in filing- and they don't give a damn and won't help, because they expect in the future to be on the hook for any government rent payments to me.
That's about $40,000 of a government taking of my property, with no due process. I can't sell the houses, even, because of the nonpayment tenants. No relief on paying the taxes, of course.
To hell with this. A year is long enough, stop this nonsense.
History is littered with instances of public finance being put into the hands of those who promise miracles and end up with rampant and ruinous speculation, notably the South Sea Bubble in England in the 1720s and the Mississippi/Louisiana bubble in France at about the same time. The ultimate outcome is financial ruin for the country and those who rode wave.
The Biden administration and their congressional allies are headed for the same disaster. Who suspected that Biden would carry the policies of the "Rent is too damn high" party?
These people need to be removed from power asap.
His personal counsel Dana Remus told him it was unconstitutional. To search until you find someone who agrees with you and then say "See, there are respected authorities who agree with me," is ludicrous. I see your point that it may not be a violation of the oath, because technically he does have someone who agrees with him - and presumably 4 SCOTUS justices have at least some agreement as well. It stinks and is dishonest, but it may not be unconstitutional. Technically.
Having been a tenant all my life, I can say that the landlords will never see their money from the tenants. The point about tenants is that they can come up with X dollars per month but they can never come up with a large sum for if they could accumulate a large sum they would have done so and made a down payment on a house. This non-payment policy has millions of tenants now required to find a large sum at the same time as they will continue to owe monthly rental payments to someone. They can't do it. Sorry, mikee. I think you need to look for tax rebates since it was a government policy.
It's the left's continued effort to destroy mom and pop and the middle class.
Many of these landlords are not rich and they hold bank notes that must be paid.
If the government really wanted to help - it would send aid directly to the person needed rent assistance.
Alas - our current government is sliding towards lawless dictatorship.
If only Biden could look at the long term effect of his arbitrary rent moratorium. One of the US's biggest problems is a lack of affordable housing. But who in their right mind would build or invest in rental housing knowing that rent/revenue stream can be suspended indefinitely on a whim due to political pressure, while the owner remains on the hook for taxes/maintenance costs. Negative cash flow is fatal.
I'll keep my money in cash and stocks, and the heck with owning rental properties.
“If Biden sincerely believes that — or embraces it with whatever feeling a politician has in the place in heart where ordinary people experience sincere belief — should we denounce him for knowingly and blatantly violating the Constitution?”
Utter bullshit. I don’t know if you wrote this satirically, but that I can’t tell is some indication that this fails even as satire. This is the kind of lawyerly weaselism that makes people hate lawyers (with some justification). There is no reasonably intelligent person who believes that the CDC has authority to issue a national eviction moratorium. Those who say they believe otherwise are lying. Utter bullshit.
To Moondawggie’s point: if you’re a huge hedge fund, you can buy out the small landlords at distressed prices and wait out the moratorium. Then your armies of lawyers can sue for late fees, interest and eviction — but better yet, the government will enact tenant relief programs that will pay you off directly for the overdue rent you bought at a discount. So the deadbeat tenants will be bailed out, while the suckers who paid their rent get screwed.
This is a feature, not a bug.
There is a saying about economists that if you ask 10 economists about an issue you will get 11 opinions. The same seems to be true about lawyers. How secure is a society when people can no longer rely on the law to be uniformly and consistently applied in a manner that is fair? There is a debate about whether judges should follow the law or do what is just. What happens when they fail to do both? Society is a fragile thing, that we take for granted. It depends on the expectation of good will from those in power and the ability to petition for redress when not. It can break down pretty quickly when people realize that their own security and property can only be obtained when they take matters into their own hands.
Is it being done to help the tenants? Or is it being done to help big rental property companies buy a lot of assets cheap. I wonder if it's a kind of bailout for big landlords that are stuck with empty office buildings due to employees working remotely.
I agree, the landlords are getting screwed. Make the Davos Bezos of the world pay the rent.
The government just needs to get out of the way, and allow recovery to take place. They could then claim the credit, and possibly avoid the 2022 midterm meltdown.
They just can't help themselves. They really believe that they are the saviors of the country.
Tribe is basically that mythical 5th dentist who doesn't believe in brushing one's teeth.
Don't we need someone here to outline the conservative case for expropriation of private property in this matter?
"Or is it being done to help big rental property companies buy a lot of assets cheap."
As someone looking in from the outside, as neither landlord nor tenant, that's exactly what it looks like. It also looks like an obvious and egregious violation of Constitutional rights.
I'm curious. If I am a landlord renting to a military person and the government says that they don't have to pay to live there, isn't that a violation of the Third Amendment?
"No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
I'm pretty sure the Afghanistan troop withdrawal constitutes a nation no longer at war.
Big landlords don’t want a lot of little properties with no efficiencies and dodgy tenants. Take our friend mikee. He has $40,000 owed to him by tenants, and I bet he is a good landlord. What big landlord would want his properties? Lots of troubles and uncertain revenue streams. Maybe his tenants are good, reliable people whose livelihoods got destroyed by government actions (lockdowns). Maybe some of them are victims and some of them are thieves.
When mikee decides to bail out, he will sell to an opportunist who wants to bottom feed, not to a big landlord, who doesn’t want mikee’s problems to become his problems.
This whole mess is a lesson in how governmental interventions cause distortions in the marketplace, and the people who caused the distortions don’t have to pay for the damage they caused.
To Skippy's 3:04:
If one is on active duty, any landlord (or vehicle lienholder, etc.) knows they need only contact the renter's command to get the service member paying.
Mikee should consult a lawyer - the moratorium has exceptions for bad faith. It will depend on his state laws whether or not he can proceed - if he's in NY or NJ he's probably out of luck but Georgia or Florida would allow him to proceed to eviction if they don't produce the documentation he needs to apply for the rental relief offered by his state or locality.
That's about $40,000 of a government taking of my property
And mikee’s point is important. This is an illegal taking and Kavanaugh should have so-ruled, not to mention Roberts and Kagan, if only they were honest people.
Responding to Big Mike at 6:26.
It's my understanding that the S. Ct. was not ruling on the merits of the CDC's eviction moratorium. Rather, the S. Ct. decided not to vacate a stay of a lower court order. Justice Kavanaugh was being nice because the original CDC moratorium was due to expire & thus this application would then become moot, and he relied on Biden's administration to let it die. What this episode taught the good Justice is that he must rule on the law as it is presented to him, not as he hopes people will act.
The application to vacate stay presented to THE CHIEF
JUSTICE and by him referred to the Court is denied.
JUSTICE THOMAS, JUSTICE ALITO, JUSTICE GORSUCH, and
JUSTICE BARRETT would grant the application.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH, concurring.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20a169_4f15.pdf
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