Isn't there a principle that says, essentially, if a given law isn't readily and easily understood by the people then, it's not a good law?
I'm sure such a notion exists among a fair number of people and it's one that I would generally agree with.
I don't know you personally and what training and education you have but, suffice it to say, everyone on here thinks of you as a well above average person in terms of knowledge and understanding of the topics you comment on, especially the legal opinions. I would suggest everyone also thinks of you as rational and reasonable in your thoughts and most, if not all of us would say "If Tilted thinks this or that is a good idea, I'd probably agree." Unless it's about music.
Please stop. I blush easily and I'm heading out soon and I don't want any cute ladies I may pass in my travels to think I'm enamored to the point of red-facedness with their mere presence. Also, I have very little education and almost no training.
Point being, that in laying out your thoughts on AIG, I think it reads like a chapter straight out of Orwell and in and of itself, not your opinions or thoughts of the events and issues, but, the very existence of such issues and events, are all the evidence needed to come to the conclusion that there is no law. The freak show that is TARP and everything surrounded it, AIG, the auto bailouts, the Stimulus, this new rationalization of the irrational, that we HAD to do this or HAD to do that, man, I mean, ready that;
So that we're clear, those were only my thoughts in the sense that my intention was to refer to some of the notions underlying Starr's legal arguments. I didn't mean to endorse them.
That said, and maybe this goes a little off-direction, one of my core beliefs about government is that once we agree or accede to organization as a society and in so doing empower government in some form to act on behalf of, and with the collective power of, that society, transgressions by that government are of more systemic concern than transgressions by individual members or groups of members within that society. So regardless of the fate of societal members (e.g. AIG, its shareholders), as being deserved or otherwise, I'm usually more viscerally concerned with the behavior of government in regard to that fate and in general. If our government violated the Constitution or our established laws in its handling of the AIG situation, I think it is important that it is punished for that violation (even though I realize that punishing the government means, in effect, punishing society's members - as it is those members that ultimately and collectively control government and use it, foolishly or wisely, negligently or intentionally, to whatever ends it effects). I believe that even if it means particular beneficiaries of that punishment are, reasonably considered, undeserving.
The beauty of the system that our forefathers aspired to is that it sought to constrain and improve the behavior of government more than it sought to constrain and improve the behavior of individual members of society, even if satisfactory performance regarding the former meant lackluster performance regarding the latter. Simply put, the notion of freedom they aspired to - the flavor which defines the American ideal - was one that valued righteousness on the part of government more than government enforced righteousness on the part of members of society. The Universe at large ultimately, more or less, rewards and punishes righteousness on the part of its inhabitants. To the extent that government is needed to fine tune that enforcement in the name of more effective cooperation between some of those inhabitants, it should do so beholden to a Hippocratic Oath of sorts -
first do no harm. Government should seek to prevent harm between and among members of society, but only to the extent it can do so without itself doing unjustified harm to those members.
As for the rationalization of TARP and other various bailouts, it's warranted (i.e. not just rationalization for rationalization's sake) depending on what the goal was / should have been. If the goal was / should have been to preserve some semblance of the society (particularly the economic aspect of it) that we had and the prosperity that we had enjoyed, then the actions by our government - or some other similarly substantial actions - were 'needed'. I've little doubt about that. Though many people do doubt that, I think they do so with the benefit of not having had to endure, confront, or accept the fate which they personally - whether they shared significantly in the blame or not - would likely have met had the government not taken the actions it did. We were all saved from a situation that would almost surely have been far worse than what we have collectively endured. It's easy to say that you didn't need someone to violently pull you back from the roadway you were walking into after they did so and you thusly weren't run over by a 5-ton truck. For most people I suspect that their complaints about the government's actions during that time pale in comparison to the complaints they would have voiced in the wake of government inaction. Ignorance is sometimes bliss and, unfortunately, unhealthily emboldening.
The question remains whether that should have been the goal. I for one am a purist when it comes to government, and when it comes to the Universe's ultimate control of our fates - its ultimately unyielding intent to impose righteousness on the behavior of all its inhabitants. That being the case, I think the goal should have been otherwise and, thus, I don't think the government should have done the things that it did. It should have let the delusion crumble under its own weight, it should have let the devastating correction happen. It would have been painful - painful enough that most people, perhaps even purists such as myself (and yourself, as I take you), would have reconsidered their conclusions that inaction was proper. But the storm would have cleaned the air and the ground on which new, hopefully longer lasting, prosperity might be built.
But we've had this conversation about 3 thousand times...