Supreme Court: 2nd amendment applies to states as well

[Dr Grump]

Nothing wrong with Statism...sounds like a good idea....

No it isn't.

It denies the individual Liberty at the behest of Government that doesn't have the interest of that individual at heart...but rather to the group mentality.

Sorry...but YOU are dangerous.

If you want individuality, go live in the mountains. If you feel that strongly, don't use roads, hospitals, supermarkets or anything else that necessitates 'group' mentality.

You've got me all wrong. You think I don't believe in freedom, yet the political system I live under is a lot more free than yours (IMO). That aside, as I stated, your current system falls under the Statist definition as YOU posted....go figure...

And there is nothing wrong with group mentality. you think the Dallas Cowboys win on their own? A Walmart runs by itself.

You state's rights, gun loving, neocons need to buy a time machine and go back to the 1700/1800s and head out ot Oklahoma. Go have your freedom under those circumstances and see how you like it....

 

[daveman]

If you want individuality, go live in the mountains. If you feel that strongly, don't use roads, hospitals, supermarkets or anything else that necessitates 'group' mentality.

You've got me all wrong. You think I don't believe in freedom, yet the political system I live under is a lot more free than yours (IMO). That aside, as I stated, your current system falls under the Statist definition as YOU posted....go figure...

And there is nothing wrong with group mentality. you think the Dallas Cowboys win on their own? A Walmart runs by itself.

You state's rights, gun loving, neocons need to buy a time machine and go back to the 1700/1800s and head out ot Oklahoma. Go have your freedom under those circumstances and see how you like it....

You want the government to feed you and powder your bottom, move to Cuba. Don't think you have the authority to give up my freedom for me.

 

[JakeStarkey]

cmike, do none of you understand what "incorporation" means constitutionally? The principle of incorporation is a statist mechanism, is liberalism indeed. If you support this decision, you support statism, you support liberalism, and in doing so, you have either changed your beliefs or you are a hypocrite.

Statism and liberalism support greater restrictions on individual freedom.

So...looks like you're wrong.

Are you truly that uninformed? Incorporation, the incorporating of state powers under federal power, is liberalism. It sublimates powers once state controlled to the national government.

 

[Dr Grump]

cmike, do none of you understand what "incorporation" means constitutionally? The principle of incorporation is a statist mechanism, is liberalism indeed. If you support this decision, you support statism, you support liberalism, and in doing so, you have either changed your beliefs or you are a hypocrite.

Statism and liberalism support greater restrictions on individual freedom.

So...looks like you're wrong.

Really? So all those liberals want to put restrictions on abortion? What's that about individual freedom again??

you don't think your hero Bush having a closed door energy policy meeting with all the main players in the energy market is not restricting freedoms?

 

[Dr Grump]

You want the government to feed you and powder your bottom, move to Cuba. Don't think you have the authority to give up my freedom for me.

No I don't. I just don't want corporations to set the agenda, because they have proven over and over again, greed is their friend. Ask BP....or any Wall St investment bank that hit the wall...

 

[daveman]

Really? So all those liberals want to put restrictions on abortion? What's that about individual freedom again??

Oh, you mean individual freedoms like gun ownership? I love how the left is all hot and bothered about making sure that one's protected. And how about free speech? Those darn conservatives and their PC thought control! Jerks!

you don't think your hero Bush having a closed door energy policy meeting with all the main players in the energy market is not restricting freedoms?

What freedom did that take away?


Really, is this all you have?

 

[daveman]

You want the government to feed you and powder your bottom, move to Cuba. Don't think you have the authority to give up my freedom for me.

No I don't. I just don't want corporations to set the agenda, because they have proven over and over again, greed is their friend. Ask BP....or any Wall St investment bank that hit the wall...

What happens when government sets the agenda? Cuba. Venezuela. China. The USSR. NAZI Germany.


History is against you.

 

[JakeStarkey]

This decision has flushed out the hypocritical righties, has it not? They are statists.

 

[PoliticalChic]

What a fantasy...

There has not been "unfettered capitalism " nor has any such thing been as "proven by the meltdown."

If there are libraries where you are, see if you can find a book about Theodore Roosevelt, the 'Trust Buster'...

Should you require it, I'd been happy to instruct you on the provenance of the 'meltdown,' and the governmental role therein.

America is one of the most unregulated, capatilistic countries in the western world.

And no, the only thing I have ever learned from you on this messageboard is that you are a partisan hack with a skewed world view on the political and financial landscapes....

Well, then let's make sure you can never say that again, because I am about to teach you a new word:
unfettered: To set free or keep free from restrictions or bonds.

So, you have claimed that capitalism in America is "free from restrictions or bonds."

What does that prove about your knowledge...I'm guessing that it proves you are "a partisan hack with a skewed world view on the political and financial landscapes....' and not too bright, as well.

You sort of come across as a dolt who uses words he cannot define, and concepts, the same.


But you do seem to know more about America than I do...I didn't know it was a "capatilistic" country.

Now, as for "the only thing I have ever learned from you ..." may be true, but have you considered that the fault may be in you, not in me.
Some folks are uneducable.

But, let's not be too hasty. Let's have another go at it.
Find the hand of government in the meltdown:
a. Congress passed a bill in 1975 requiring banks to provide the government with information on their lending activities in poor urban areas. Two years later, it passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which gave regulators the power to deny banks the right to expand if they didn’t lend sufficiently in those neighborhoods. In 1979 the FDIC used the CRA to block a move by the Greater NY Savings Bank for not enough lending.

b. In 1986, when the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) threatened to oppose an acquisition by a southern bank, Louisiana Bancshares, until it agreed to new “flexible credit and underwriting standards” for minority borrowers—for example, counting public assistance and food stamps as income.

c. In 1987, Acorn led a coalition of advocacy groups calling for industry-wide changes in lending standards. Among the demanded reforms were the easing of minimum down-payment requirements and of the requirement that borrowers have enough cash at a closing to cover two to three months of mortgage payments (research had shown that lack of money in hand was a big reason some mortgages failed quickly).

d. ACORN then attacked Fannie Mae, the giant quasi-government agency that bought loans from banks in order to allow them to make new loans. Its underwriters were “strictly by-the-book interpreters” of lending standards and turned down purchases of unconventional loans, charged Acorn. The pressure eventually paid off. In 1992, Congress passed legislation requiring Fannie Mae and the similar Freddie Mac to devote 30 percent of their loan purchases to mortgages for low- and moderate-income borrowers.

e. Clinton Administration housing secretary, Henry Cisneros, declared that he would expand homeownership among lower- and lower-middle-income renters. His strategy: pushing for no-down-payment loans; expanding the size of mortgages that the government would insure against losses; and using the CRA and other lending laws to direct more private money into low-income programs.

f. Shortly after Cisneros announced his plan, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac agreed to begin buying loans under new, looser guidelines. Freddie Mac, for instance, started approving low-income buyers with bad credit histories or none at all, so long as they were current on rent and utilities payments. Freddie Mac also said that it would begin counting income from seasonal jobs and public assistance toward its income minimum, despite the FHA disaster of the sixties.

g. Freddie Mac began an “alternative qualifying” program with the Sears Mortgage Corporation that let a borrower qualify for a loan with a monthly payment as high as 50 percent of his income, at a time when most private mortgage companies wouldn’t exceed 33 percent. The program also allowed borrowers with bad credit to get mortgages if they took credit-counseling classes administered by Acorn and other nonprofits. Subsequent research would show that such classes have little impact on default rates.

h. Pressuring nonbank lenders to make more loans to poor minorities didn’t stop with Sears. If it didn’t happen, Clinton officials warned, they’d seek to extend CRA regulations to all mortgage makers. In Congress, Representative Maxine Waters called financial firms not covered by the CRA “among the most egregious redliners.”

i. Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) shocked the financial world by signing a 1994 agreement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), pledging to increase lending to minorities and join in new efforts to rewrite lending standards. The first MBA member to sign up: Countrywide Financial, the mortgage firm that would be at the core of the subprime meltdown.

j. A 1998 sales pitch by a Bear Stearns managing director advised banks to begin packaging their loans to low-income borrowers into securities that the firm could sell. Forget traditional underwriting standards when considering these loans, the director advised. For a low-income borrower, he continued in all-too-familiar terms, owning a home was “a near-sacred obligation. A family will do almost anything to meet that monthly mortgage payment.” Bunk, says Stan Liebowitz, a professor of economics at the University of Texas: “The claim that lower-income homeowners are somehow different in their devotion to their home is a purely emotional claim with no evidence to support it.”

k. Any concern was quickly dismissed. When in early 2000 the FDIC proposed increasing capital requirements for lenders making “subprime” loans—loans to people with questionable credit, that is—Democratic representative Carolyn Maloney of New York told a congressional hearing that she feared that the step would dry up CRA loans. Her fellow New York Democrat John J. LaFalce urged regulators “not to be premature” in imposing new regulations.

l. In July 1999, HUD proposed new levels for Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s low-income lending; in September, Fannie Mae agreed to begin purchasing loans made to “borrowers with slightly impaired credit”—that is, with credit standards even lower than the government had been pushing for a generation.

m. In 2004 Congress pressed new affordable-housing goals on the two mortgage giants, which through 2007 purchased some $1 trillion in loans to lower- and moderate-income buyers. The buying spree helped spark a massive increase in securitization of mortgages to people with dubious credit.

n. In October 1994, Fannie Mae head James Johnson had reminded a banking convention that mortgages with small down payments had a much higher risk of defaulting. (A Duff & Phelps study found that they were nearly three times more likely to default than conventional mortgages.) Yet the very next month, Fannie Mae said that it expected to back loans to low-income home buyers with a 97 percent loan-to-value ratio—that is, loans in which the buyer puts down just 3 percent—as part of a commitment, made earlier that year to Congress, to purchase $1 trillion in affordable-housing mortgages by the end of the nineties. According to Edward Pinto, who served as the company’s chief credit officer, the program was the result of political pressure on Fannie Mae trumping lending standards.

o. In 1992, the Boston Fed produced an extraordinary 29-page document that codified the new lending wisdom. Conventional mortgage criteria, the report argued, might be “unintentionally biased” because they didn’t take into account “the economic culture of urban, lower-income and nontraditional customers.” Lenders should thus consider junking the industry’s traditional income-to-payments ratio and stop viewing an applicant’s “lack of credit history” as a “negative factor.” Further, if applicants had bad credit, banks should “consider extenuating circumstances”—even though a study by mortgage insurance companies would soon show, not surprisingly, that borrowers with no credit rating or a bad one were far more likely to default. If applicants didn’t have enough savings for a down payment, the Boston Fed urged, banks should allow loans from nonprofits or government assistance agencies to count toward one. A later study of Freddie Mac mortgages would find that a borrower who made a down payment with third-party funds was four times more likely to default, a reminder that traditional underwriting standards weren’t arbitrary but based on historical lending patterns.

p. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus launched Hogar in 2003, an initiative that pushed for easing lending standards for immigrants, including touting so-called seller-financed mortgages in which a builder provided down-payment aid to buyers via contributions to nonprofit groups. As a result, mortgage lending to Hispanics soared. And today, in districts where Hispanics make up at least 25 percent of the population, foreclosure rates are now nearly 50 percent higher than the national average, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

q. Republicans and Democrats, meanwhile, have scrambled to reignite the housing market through ill-conceived tax credits and renewed federal subsidies for mortgages, including the Obama administration’s mortgage bailout plan, which recalls the New Deal’s HOLC. Behind these efforts is a fundamental misconception among politicians that housing drives the American economy and therefore demands subsidy at virtually any cost. Our praiseworthy initial efforts—to eliminate housing discrimination and provide all Americans an equal opportunity to buy a home—were eventually turned on their heads by advocates and politicians, who instead tried to ensure equality of outcomes.
Obsessive Housing Disorder by Steven Malanga, City Journal Spring 2009

Now, that's some "unfettered capitalism," huh?

 

[JakeStarkey]

You want the government to feed you and powder your bottom, move to Cuba. Don't think you have the authority to give up my freedom for me.

No I don't. I just don't want corporations to set the agenda, because they have proven over and over again, greed is their friend. Ask BP....or any Wall St investment bank that hit the wall...

What happens when government sets the agenda? Cuba. Venezuela. China. The USSR. NAZI Germany.

History is against you.

FDR in WWII? JFK in October 1962? Your comments are easily dismissed as are you.

 

[JakeStarkey]

PC is merely a female daveman: easily dismissed as well.

 

[Dr Grump]

Oh, you mean individual freedoms like gun ownership? I love how the left is all hot and bothered about making sure that one's protected. And how about free speech? Those darn conservatives and their PC thought control! Jerks!
:

Who doesn't believe in free speech? I do. Gun ownership is a cultural thing. I come from a culture where guns are no prevelent, nor is the subject even an issue...

What freedom did that take away?Really, is this all you have?

Oh, so you don't believe in govt's being held accountable for their actions? Nor should the people they represent (YOU and ME, NOT corporations) be left out of the loop. I thought you were for freedom? Aren't you running late to go and bow before your corporate master?

 

[Dr Grump]

You want the government to feed you and powder your bottom, move to Cuba. Don't think you have the authority to give up my freedom for me.

No I don't. I just don't want corporations to set the agenda, because they have proven over and over again, greed is their friend. Ask BP....or any Wall St investment bank that hit the wall...

What happens when government sets the agenda? Cuba. Venezuela. China. The USSR. NAZI Germany.


History is against you.

Huh? The govt sets the agenda in every country in the world. Why did you cherry pick?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

The meltdown was not the result of unfettered capitalism, it was the result of regulated capitalism. If I can apply the same logic you seem to be applying, we should abandon regulation because it obviously failed.

Maybe i was a bit too heavy on the rhetoric. How do you feel about some of these CEOs and directors of finance companies that almost went bust (and almost took your economy with it) getting million $$ bonuses? Does that sit well with you? If so, why? If not, what can be done about it, as the current US admin tries to put regulations in place to stop these people doing it all over again just so they can have a house in the Hamptons, or get that $10 million Lear jet?

Why should I resent them because they get paid to do a job? I will admit that they did a pretty bad job, but that does not remove their right to get paid. If the government starts telling people how much they are allowed to be paid for their services, where does it end? With everyone working for the government?

 

[Dr Grump]

What a fantasy...

There has not been "unfettered capitalism " nor has any such thing been as "proven by the meltdown."

"If there are libraries where you are, see if you can find a book about Theodore Roosevelt, the 'Trust Buster'...

Should you require it, I'd been happy to instruct you on the provenance of the 'meltdown,' and the governmental role therein.

America is one of the most unregulated, capatilistic countries in the western world.

And no, the only thing I have ever learned from you on this messageboard is that you are a partisan hack with a skewed world view on the political and financial landscapes....

Well, then let's make sure you can never say that again, because I am about to teach you a new word:
unfettered: To set free or keep free from restrictions or bonds.

So, you have claimed that capitalism in America is "free from restrictions or bonds."

What does that prove about your knowledge...I'm guessing that it proves you are "a partisan hack with a skewed world view on the political and financial landscapes....' and not too bright, as well.

You sort of come across as a dolt who uses words he cannot define, and concepts, the same.


?

Oh Bright One, if only your weren't caught up in your own ego, and taken a little bit more time, you would have seen I already said to Quantum I might have been a bit heavy on the rhetoric with regard to 'unfettered'....Oh, well, sorry to waste your time...

 

[Dr Grump]

Why should I resent them because they get paid to do a job? I will admit that they did a pretty bad job, but that does not remove their right to get paid. If the government starts telling people how much they are allowed to be paid for their services, where does it end? With everyone working for the government?

I absolutely agree they deserved to get paid for their job. Where does it end? When they do a BAD job.....

 

[RetiredGySgt]

The second amendment is the sodom and gomorrah story of the Constitution. There is nothing in the 2nd explicitly affirming individual rights to own weapons but only under a well regulated militia I fully support the right to own guns but it's not in the 2nd amendment.

You must be a Prince fan, seein' that you party like it's 1995.

Get with the program...

a. “…well regulated militia…” Consider the sentence “Being a fisherman, Joe needs a boat.” Does this mean that Joe should only buy a boat if he fishes for a living? The reference to a militia is a reason why the people have a right to arms, but it is not the only reason.
“When the words of the enacting clause are clear and positive, recourse must not be had to the preamble.” James Kent, Commentaries on American Law, 1858 (Legal scholar and law professor at Columbia College)

In the Constitution, Congress is given the power “to promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts” by enacting copyright and patent laws (Article 1, Section 8). Would you argue that every copyright work or patented invention must promote scientific progress and useful arts?
George Mason, Father of the Bill of Rights:"I ask, Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers." (Jonathan Elliot, The Debates of the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, [NY: Burt Franklin,1888] p.425-6)

The Constitution gave Congress the power to raise and support a national army, and to organize “the Militia.” This is because an army didn’t naturally exist, while “the Militia” only had to be organized: it always existed. (See enumerated powers in Article 1,Section 8.)
The Supreme Court, in US v. Miller, (1939) “…militia system…implied the general obligation of all adult male inhabitants to possess arms, and, with certain exceptions, to cooperate in the work of defence.” It concluded that the militia was primarily civilians.
Today, federal law defines “the militia of the United States” to include all able-bodied males from 17 to 45 andmembers of the National Guard up to age 64, but excluding those who have no intention of becoming citizens, and active military personnel. (US Code Title 10, sect. 311-313)

b. “…well-regulated…” Regulated does not refer to government regulations. Contemporary meaning from definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary. "Regulated" has an Obsolete definition (b) "Of troops: Properly disciplined" and then "discipline" has a definition (3b) applying to the military, "Training in the practice of arms and military evolutions; drill. Formerly, more widely: Training or skill in military affairs generally; military skill and experience; the art of war." (The pesky meaning of "Well Regulated" - Democratic Underground)

This is what I'm talking about. All of that dancing and it does nothing to address the fact there is no individual guarantee in the 2nd.

You are a RETARD. The second clearly gives an INDIVIDUAL right. Once again for the stupid and the slow, the TERM " the people" is understood to mean an INDIVIDUAL RIGHT, in ever place it appears in the US Constitution, but you would have us believe that in the 2nd that no longer applies.

Again you fucking dumb ass, the second provides two protections. One to the State ensuring the Federal Government can not take away militias and the second one to INDIVIDUAL citizens giving them the right to KEEP and BEAR arms.

 

[The Rabbi]

No I don't. I just don't want corporations to set the agenda, because they have proven over and over again, greed is their friend. Ask BP....or any Wall St investment bank that hit the wall...

What happens when government sets the agenda? Cuba. Venezuela. China. The USSR. NAZI Germany.


History is against you.

Huh? The govt sets the agenda in every country in the world. Why did you cherry pick?

The gov't did not set the agenda in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Iraq, South Africa, etc etc. In all cases the people set the agenda.
I am sorry that big corporations scare you. Maybe you need drugs?

 

[PoliticalChic]

America is one of the most unregulated, capatilistic countries in the western world.

And no, the only thing I have ever learned from you on this messageboard is that you are a partisan hack with a skewed world view on the political and financial landscapes....

Well, then let's make sure you can never say that again, because I am about to teach you a new word:
unfettered: To set free or keep free from restrictions or bonds.

So, you have claimed that capitalism in America is "free from restrictions or bonds."

What does that prove about your knowledge...I'm guessing that it proves you are "a partisan hack with a skewed world view on the political and financial landscapes....' and not too bright, as well.

You sort of come across as a dolt who uses words he cannot define, and concepts, the same.


?

Oh Bright One, if only your weren't caught up in your own ego, and taken a little bit more time, you would have seen I already said to Quantum I might have been a bit heavy on the rhetoric with regard to 'unfettered'....Oh, well, sorry to waste your time...

Well, you did rile me up...

 

[RetiredGySgt]

No regulation of business would destroy the peoples' liberties.

I call shenanigans.

How does forcing people to buy health insurance against their will not destroy their liberty?

I call you hypocrite, for no one is forced to buy health insurance. Stop the lie now.

In 4 years they will be, failure to do so will result in added taxes or fines to force you to buy insurance. Or did you fail to read Obama's Health Care plan? Or are you just being the consummate liar that you pretend to be?