The Period Of Short Term Memory

 The election is two weeks from today.  When I took an into psych course over half a century ago, I was taught in it that two weeks is the period of short term memory, the period in which we remember events with special salience.  I do not know if this is still the official view of the profession, but it has since then made sense to me: I seem to be able, even now, to remember what happened day by day for the previous two weeks.  Things before then are "in the past," although certainly some are salient and on my mind. But those that happened in the past two weeks are just that much more on my mind.

With this in mind even four years ago when people asked me to forecast the election outcome I would drag this up and say "anything can happen in the last two weeks that can change it," and four years ago it happened with the James Comey public reopening of an email investigation into Hillary Clinton 11 days before the election.  Even though about two days before he announced nothing was found, the damage was done.  This year we all remember this, and while he is further ahead in national polls than she was at this point then, Joe  Biden is not much further ahead, and even behind in some, than she was in those crucial battleground states that will determine the outcome. So it remains fully possible that something unexpected can happen that will give Trump the victory.

I must admit, however, that I have been trying to think what could do it.  Much discussion focuses on "October Surprise," as if things early in October has as much salience as those in the last two weeks.  So far most of those surprises have hurt Trump more than Biden, and the poll gap has widened in Biden's favor, with the new rise in cases and hospitalizations of the coronavirus seeming to be the dominant issue, and with Trump's illness and superspreader events not helping him on that front. So if something happens to push it the other way, it is going to have to overcome a strong pressure coming on that front that I simply do not see moving in Trump's favor.  There will not be a vaccine approved prior to Nov. 3, much to Trump's distress and despite all his efforts to force one through.

Of course we have seen the Trump people try to push new stuff on the Hunter Biden case and Burisma, with last Wednesday's New York Post story about his supposed laptop. But, not only did it come out before the final two weeks, it does not seem to be convincing anybody not already in the Trump camp, just too many holes and nonsense I shall not bother  with.  Yes, the brief blocking of it by Twitter et al gives it a few more legs, but it seems not to be going anywhere  serious, mostly just another effort to get the Trump base out, if it  was not already out.

My suspicion is that at this point the only thing that could really do it would be a genuinely unexpected event, with something from abroad the most likely, given that we pretty much know all there is to know about Joe Biden himself.  A 9/11 style terror  attack from the Middle East might do it, fits Trump's narrative and would allow him to pull a "rally the troops around the national leader," or something equivalent.

I close by noting a report I just saw that looked at October Surprises, not just final two weeks stuff, over elections dating back to 1980.  In fact most of them were pretty well baked in by the beginning of October, with few seeing movement in national polls exceeding 1%.  2016 saw the second largest move, almost 3%.  That was the Comey Announcement Effect.  Curiously the only other election with a larger net move was 1992, when Clinton gained about 7%, although I do not remember a specific event or "surprise" that triggered that.  So, in fact, the probability of a something really election altering happening within the next two weeks is pretty low, although not yet to be ruled out.

Barkley Rosser

Why Does MbS Want Hllary Clinton's Emails?

 In yesreday's Washington Post David Ignatius reports in a column about serious efforts by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) to get the infamous emails of Hillary Clinton publicized, something that President Trump also wants and SecState Pompeo has been promising while complaining about problems getting them out.  My guess is there is nothing in them not already known, but MbS has really been pushing on this.  Aside from trying to help his pal, Trump, what is up with this?

Ignatius speculates that this is tied to a new effort to assert his dictatorial total power in Saudi Arabia by MbS, in particular against the man he removed and replaced as Crown Prince in a coup that was encouraged by the Trump administration. That man is Mohammed bin Nayef (MbN), who was much admired and respected by the US intelligence establishment due to his cooperation in combatting various internatrional terrorist groups.  His father, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz, a full Sudeiri Seven brother of MbS;s father, King Salman, was Minister of the Interior for a long time, and MbN served in that position, as well as being named Crown Prince by the previous king, Abdullah.

MbS had him arrested in his own palace by MbS's personal military, with him having access to plenty as Minister of Defense when he pulled this off in 2017.  MbN was kept from having medicines he needed and forced to abdicate.  He has remained under house arrest since.

But, according to Ignatius, MbS wants to charge him with treason, with attempting to overthrow him, MbS, as Crown Prince, when it was MbS who overthrew MbN.  This reminds me of MbS's pal Trump accusing others of being liars and crooks.  So MbS is looking for evidence of MbN's supposed plotting against him, MbS.  Somehow he thinks that such evidence can be found in in HIllary's emails, as well as communications by Joe Biden.  I think this is just ridiculous, but it certainly puts him in synch with his pal Trump just before Trump is up for reelection.

It may be that what is going on here is that MbS realizes that Trump may well be defeated and replaced by people who do not like him at all, Biden and crew, and he is unhappy.  The funny thing is that even Trump may be distancing himself from the murderous crown prince, having just cut a deal with the Yemeni Houthis that freed two Americans for the US freeing over 300 Houthi fighters, something MbS is very unhappy about, but MbS's awful war in Yemen is simply becoming less and less popular in he US.  He may indeed be about to get into real trouble with the US. So, all the more reason he needs to gin up a phony treason trial for the man he traitorously deposed in his coup.

Barkley Rosser

Stealing Signs

 I know this is a widespread basically trivial matter, but since I had posted earlier about all of the BLM signs on my block (including at our house) accompanied more recently by signs related to the various political races (we have a Senate race, as well as House, and city council here) on the block, where we had some apparently hostile drivebys some while ago.

So last night somebody came and stole all the signs off our block that were not clearly for a GOP candidate in some race, with all the BLM signs going, including ours.  I really do not like the idea of somebody coming on my property and stealing something, even if it is just a political sign.  Oh well.

Barkley Rosser

In The Face Of Total Turbulence, Go Totally Conventional For The Nobel Prize

 I have noted in various places that I could not make a forecast this year on the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel because of all the turbulence on so many fronts going on.  So it occurred to me that the committee might avoid political controversy by going technical, although I thought it more likely they would give it for something in econometrics. But this year's award was clearlyi in the works after Jean Tirole and Alvin Roth got theirs.  The real question for this one was which of the "Gang of Four," David Kreps, Paul Milgrom, John Roberts, and Robert B. Wilson, who coauthored the super important game theory paper on reputation effects, allowing for cooperation over time in prisoner's dilemma and other games, would get it. 

In the end it was Milgrom and his major professor Wilson, leaving Kreps and Roberts in the dust. It is given for their work on helping set up the FCC spectrum auctions, something practical for these theoreticians to do.  Milgrom is the giant of this group, withover 100,000 google scholar citations and a long list of other major accomplishments, such as the no-trade theorem, and things even in macro and economic history.  But Wilson has substantially fewer google scholar citations than either Kreps or Roberts.  They both have about 50,000 while Wilson is just over half that, despite being older than any of these others.  So it was Wilson's work with Milgrom on the spectrum auction that got him to join Milgrom for the trip to Stockholm.

This is a non-controversial, almost boring, and certainly apolitical award, the committee playing it safe in this tumultuous year.

Barkley Rosser

When did Israel Become "America's Best Ally"?

 In the recent US Vice Presidential debate, the current US VP, Mike Pence dropped a throaway line that until nobody has noticed until now. He labeled Israel as America's "best ally," or a term meaning the same thing.

I think that from at least 1917 the "best ally" of the US was either Canada or UK. Under Trump both of those alliances were downgraded, although they were loyal to us for all that time.

So now we have the supposedly new "best ally" (might be slightly different wording, but it means this), Israel.  

Now I am much more for Israel than many on the left and elsewhere. I have long supported the two-state solution set in Oslo in 1992 or thereabouts. But the current admin throws that into a trash can.

On June 8, 1967, Israel sank the USS Liberty, killing 34 American citizens, wounding 171. 

Sorry, Israel may be an "ally" of the USA, but this throaway line that somehow it is US.s "best" or "top" or "leading ally" is just a joke.

For the record, if the current POTUS is not reelected, this fantasy will be undone and we shall return to our long established relationships.  Sorry any fantasists who think otherwise, but Canada is a closer ally of the US than Israel.

Barkley Rosser

Voting in a Time of Covid: A Question about Judicial “Originalism”

The originalist theory of legal interpretation holds that judges, in reviewing the implementation of a statute, should be guided by the “plain meaning” of its language at the time it was adopted.  This is in opposition to the notion of a “living law”, whose interpretation should evolve as the conditions it addresses evolves.  For instance, originalists are appalled by Supreme Court decisions like Roe v Wade, since nowhere does the Constitution establish a right to bodily privacy, nor could the framers have plausibly thought back in the eighteenth century that the language they drafted encompassed such a right.  It is one interpretation of the living law view, on the other hand, that, as governments increasing acquired the administrative power to regulate our intimate lives, the zone of restriction implicit in the first amendment should be extended to measures that impinge on the freedom to control one’s own body.

Until his death the most vocal supporter of originalism on the Court was Antonin Scalia; now we are looking at the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, who describes herself as an acolyte of Scalia and a resolute defender of his philosophy.

Here is a case I would bring up if I were questioning Barrett.

The rules governing elections are established at the local and state levels, not federal, but the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of how they might be interpreted.  It is common for jurisdictions to have regulations prohibiting interference with or attempts to influence voters at voting sites.  In every instance I’ve seen this is expressed in terms of physical distance, something like “within 100 yards of the polling place”.  In enforcement this has always implied a radius extending from the door voters use to enter the building in which they will cast their vote.  You can’t hold signs and shout at voters, much less accost them, within so many feet of that door.

But voting has changed during the pandemic.  Social distancing has forced election officials to disperse voting booths, reducing the number of booths per site.  Lines also have to be distanced, and they now stretch out for many blocks, even the better part of a mile, from the door.  Because of this, voters waiting to cast their ballot are often beyond the specific distance specified in the law for prohibition of campaigning.

Should these prohibitions be interpreted according to their plain language, which unambiguously permits campaigning beyond a specified radial distance, or should they be understood more flexibly in terms of the changed circumstances of voting in a pandemic?

There is an easy way out, but on a little reflection it is obvious it doesn’t work.  That is, an originalist could say, “It’s clear that the purpose of the statute is to protect voters during the process of voting, which includes waiting to vote.  With the pandemic, that purpose can and should be served by overriding the numerical stipulation and extending prohibition to the entire voting line, no matter how long.”

Sounds good, but consider that (a) the authors of these laws could have used a qualitative description of the prohibited zone (“in close proximity to voting booths and lines”) but used a quantitative one instead, and (b) this is not the first pandemic; those in a position to write or amend these laws were familiar with the Spanish Influenza of 1918-19, where similar adaptations needed to be made.  Really, only one of two possibilities exist: either the laws should be taken at their word and judges, while they may lament how poorly they were written, can only enforce them literally, or it should be assumed that those drafting them expected that future generations would understand their purpose and apply them flexibly.  In the second possibility, the numerical demarcators were intended to convey a broader intent: you might say “within 100 yards” not to get out the tape measure but to express the idea that the immediate vicinity of the voting site should be differentiated from the community surrounding it.  That’s not a strange way of communicating intent.  Lots of rules parents set for children work that way.  “Be home by 11 pm” means you need to have a good reason to stay out later.  We could interpret voting regulations that way, but that puts us in living law-land.

So I’d ask Barrett about the enforcement of voting interference statutes during the pandemic and ask a follow up question when she tries, as she likely would, to give the easy-but-inadequate response about intent.

"Papa Haydn" or "Papa Bach"

 So a cultural diversion from all the current shouting.  Was it "Papa Haydn" or "Papa Bach"? And if the latter, which one, hint, probably not the more famous Johann Sebastian.

So Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809) gets called that as he largely invented the modern form of the string quartet and the symphony (of which he composed 104), starting in the late 1750s as he held positions with various aristocratic families, following a youth in which he suffered extreme poverty and serious malnutrition.  He also codified the sonata allegro form, which, would along with firmly establishing modern keys, would become the basis by the 1780s when he completed his musical form innovations the classical form of classical music, aided by his younger friend, W.A. Mozart (1756-1791), with whom he played string quartets in Vienna and who got him into the premier masonic lodge of the city. This standard of composition would be the form that later composers would rebel and modify and extend and finally completely overthrow over the next century and a half, starting with Haydn's student, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) and arguably culminating with the total serialism of Elliott Carter in the mid-20th century.

However, it turns out that Haydn was deeply influenced by a particular composer, one who actually invented the sonata allegro form in particular.  That was Karl Philip Emmanuel Bach (1714-1788), whose manuscripts Haydn studied deeply during the 1760s as he developed his own style while working as Kappellmeister for the Estrhazy family from 1761 until his death, although he composed nothing after 1805 due to illness, the year Beethoven invented Romantic music with his Eroica Sympnyony No. 3, beginning the long deviation from Papa Haydn's standard.  K.P.E. Bach was the oldest son of J.S. Bach (1685-1750) and was long at the Court of Frederick the Great in Berlin, until moving in 1764 to Hamburg to replace his late godfather, Philip Telemann in a position there.

In his lifetime KPE Bach was far more well known and renowned than his father.  Both Haydn and Mozart were crucially influenced by him.  It was Mozart who recognized this by calling him "Papa Bach."  However, in the 19th century, Mendelsohn would revive interest in his father, who is now much better known.

Barkley Rosser

Open Thread

Spreadipus Rex seems to be suggesting that he deliberately infected himself and a whack of other people with the Covid "as your leader."

"The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe, 1842

The red death had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the madness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease, were incidents of half an hour.

But Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his crenellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.

Is the Beady-Eyed Religious Fanatic A Major Superspreader Of The Pandemic?

 It now appears that the Rose Garden ceremony on Saturday, Sept. 26, presenting SCOTUS candidate Amy Coney Barrett, who has the beadiest eyes I have ever seen on any human being in my life, has turned into a superspreader event of SARS-Cov2. Among those who may have become infected include the president and his wife, along with at least two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee (Lee of UT and Tillis of NC), the president of Notre Dame University where Barrett was a law school prof, as well as others, with it likely more will be learned to have gotten it there.

This is a low probability theory, but clearly there was probably a super spreader individual at this ceremony, one upfront apparently, given where those infected were sitting.  Apparently the SCOTUS candidate herself, she of the creepy beady eyes, has already had the virus.  But we now learn that one who has had it can continue to spread the virus for quite a long time afterward.  So, it may be that this fanatic who most assuredly does not belong on the SCOTUS is the actual superspreader at this awful event.

I note my disagreement with Anonymous about use of the term "beady-eyed" regarding this horrible nominee for the court.  I deeply respect Anonymous, and I recognize for the record that A holds the view that this descriptor is "prejudicial." I note this for the record. 

However, for the record, I have disagreed with this view, so I am not at all surprised that this possible superspreader of this deadly virus is Beady-eyed! Beady-Eyed! Beady-Eyed! 

Barkley Rosser

Ponzi Finance II: quid pro quo

The real story revealed by the New York Times Trump tax returns bombshell is not that Donald Trump paid no taxes in 10 out of 15 years or that he paid $750 in 2016 and 2017. The real story is that he doesn't have net income to service his debt. There is nothing inherently illegal about that. He did it before in the 1980s and when real estate prices stopped rising in 1990, his creditors were left holding the bag.

Hyman Minsky wrote about Donald Trump's investment strategy in a 1990 talk, "The Bubble in the Price of Baseball Cards."

One of the puzzles of the 1980s was the rapid rise in the financial wealth of Donald Trump, author of The Art of the Deal, and what else. Trump’s fortune was made in real estate. Many large fortunes have been made in real estate, since real estate is highly leveraged. Two factors made Trump somewhat unique — one was the he developed a fortune in the period of high real interest rates, and the second was that the cash flows on most of Trump’s properties were negative.

Trump’s wealth surged because the market value of his properties — or at least the appraised value — was increasing faster than the interest rate. Trump obtained the funds to pay the interest on his outstanding loans by increasing the draw under what in effect was a home equity credit line. The efficiency with which Trump managed these properties was more or less irrelevant — hence Trump could acquire the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City without much concern about the impacts on the profits of the two casinos he already owned. Trump was golden — he had a magic touch — as long as property prices were increasing at a more rapid rate than the interest rate on the borrowed funds.

The puzzle is that the lenders failed to recognize that the arithmetic of his cash flows was virtually identical with that of the developing countries; in effect Trump was Brazil in drag. In the short run Trump could make his interest payments with funds from new loans — but when the increase in property prices declined to a value below the interest rate, Trump would become short of the cash necessary to pay the interest on the outstanding loans.

The increase in U.S. real estate prices in the 1980s was regional, and concentrated in the Northeast and in coastal California; for the country as a whole, real estate did not increase relative to the price level. The regional dispersion in the movement in real estate prices more or less paralleled the changes in personal income. Real estate prices dipped in the oil patch, climbed modestly in the rust belt, and surged in those areas that benefitted from the rapid increases in incomes in banking and financial services — sort of a derived demand from the financial success of Drexel Burnham. In effect, those individuals with high incomes in financial services — and with the prospect of sharp increase in incomes — set the pace for increases in real estate prices. 

...

Trump’s cousins were alive and well and flourishing in Tokyo, Taipei and Seoul especially in the second half of the 1980s. The prices of equities and real estate were increasing because they were increasing — the "greater fool theory" may have been relevant, in that the recent buyers believed there was a greater fool to whom they could sell these assets before the bubble imploded.

In any market economy the price of real estate will tend to reflect both its rental return and the rate of return on the riskless bond. Real estate is a riskier investment than bonds and even public utility stocks, so the anticipated return should be higher. But the real estate offers investors a more effective hedge against inflation. The cliché, "land is a good investment, the price of land always increases is right, wrong and irrelevant. The price of land rises and the price of land sometimes falls — the relevant question is whether the anticipated increase in the price of land is sufficiently higher than the interest rate on bonds to justify a riskier investment.

To make a long story short, when the interest rate on bonds rose above the rate of increase in real estate prices, Trump's real estate stopped being a "good investment." He could no longer pay off his old loans with the proceeds of new loans. Since his properties were money losers, there was no question of paying off his loans from his negative cash flow. That was Trump Ponzi Finance I.

The mystery of Ponzi Finance II is who would be "stupid" enough to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to a guy who had a track record of defaulting on hundreds of millions of dollars of loans and was recycling the same old racket? I'm sure you've all heard the expression quid pro quo? 

 

 

A Beady-Eyed Religious Fanatic For The Supreme Court

 Others may not see what I see when I look at a full-face photo of Amy Conet Barrett, but I see someone who looks like a fanatic to me, although that may be me reading in what I have heard of her views on things, she being Trump's nominee for the SCOTUS, with GOPsters in the Senate hypocritically ready to put her in there in time to help Trump steal the election.  

I know we are not supposed to pick on people for their religious views, but she does belong to a weird cult, the Praise for People group, which is not strictly Catholic as many have claimed, but did come out of the Catholic Charismatic movement in 1971 with most of its members Catholic.  It accepts such things as speaking in tongues, which is not something generally accepted by most Catholics, generally something practices by extreme Protestant sects. It also is sexist, with women forbidden from holding leadership position and with each member having to follow the lead of a "Head.

Those defending Barrett claim she is "very intelligent."  I am sure she is, but that does not keep her from being a fanatic.  She clerked for the late Justice Scalia, and conservatives want someone like him, but her views are more extreme than his.

Of course, she has criticized Roe v. Wade as well as the ACA, with a case on that being heard on Nov. 10 by the SCOTUS.  Clearly this is the issue Dems need to run hardest on in trying to oppose her, which will be hard given that even Sen. Murkowski of AK is thinking of supporting her.

As an example of just how extreme she is I note one item I have seen written about things she has written in academic publications.  It is known that she is an "Originalist," a term Scalia used for himself, which means one tries to rely on the original meaning of a term in a case from when the Constitution was writeen or when an amendment was adopted.  However, what is not so well known is that there are factions among these people, and apparently Barrett is part of an especially extreme faction that views both the 14th and 15th Amendments as not being legitimate because when they were passed by Congress, the Confederat states were not represented in Congress. Of course these amendments, especially the 14th, are the foundation of all SCOTUS rulings on civil rights and against discrimination on any grounds.

I shall add that indeed I am sorry RBG did not take the reportedly subtle invitation to resign that Obama offered to her in a lunch in 2013. But I also understand why she did not. One factor was that she had this competition with her old friend going on, Scalia, for whom Barrett clerked.  By the time he died 11 months before the next president would be sworn in was too late for her to do so, as we all know McConnell blocked even the moderate centrist Merrick Garland from even getting a hearing. And, of course, RBG was expecting HRC to be the next prez.  But that did not work out, much to all our disappointments, and for RBG, well, it looks that her final wish will not be obeyed, even though it is supported by a solid majority of the American public, including even 49% of Republicans reportedly. But the current Senate is not paying any attention to that in their rush to confirm Barrett before the election.

Barkley Rosser

Open Thread

It annoys me when people "comment" by pasting articles from the media that are unrelated to the original posts they are pasted to. The original post may get 500 or less visits and it is likely the irrelevant article is read by no one -- and certainly not by me. So here is a space for readers to paste articles from the media that they perhaps think no one else has seen. If it is successful in diverting irrelevant pasting, maybe I'll put up an open thread regularly.

Laughing to keep from Freaking Out

 On the theory that one effective weapon against an Insane Clown Would-be Dictator is ridicule, here is something I wrote a while ago.

The Second Coming 

“This is the greatest president for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world. Not just in America, Trump is the best president for Israel in the history of the world. And the Jewish people love him like he is the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God." –Wayne Allan Root

 “I take the gospel whenever it’s possible, but with a grain of salt.” –Sportin’ Life, in Porgy and Bess

 

Ok, Scoffers, I scoffed, too. But I went back to the Scriptures –the true scriptures, not the ones the dem--marxist-atheist haters just make up—and Lo, what do I find?

 Jesus made his first million shekels selling water with a little purple food-coloring as Jesus Wine. 

He met the woman at the well and called her a “Horse-face.”

 He started Jesus University, which promised that graduates would be able to do miracles just like him, the curriculum of which consisted of memorizing the entirety of The Art of the Heal, a Ghost-written, worthless piece of fiction. He was sued for fraud and settled.

 He started a foundation, the Jesus Foundation, which solicited funds for the poor and used them to pay off his own debts and finance giant pictures of himself.

 He mocked lepers and amused his followers with imitations of them.

 He sent the wise-men away from the manger, telling them “I love the poorly-educated.”

 After threatening Satan with fire and fury, he met him and “fell in love.”

 He evaded taxes and stone-walled all of Herod’s tax collectors’ requests for information, telling them, “You’ll have better luck getting a camel through the eye of a needle than you will getting a penny from me!”

 When he began to go bald, he went into the desert and asked God to “Take this cup from me.” God replied: “Verily I say unto you, comb it over already!”

 He threw the money-changers out of the Temple so he could turn it into luxury condos – financed by coerced loans from the money-changers themselves, who were never repaid.

 His dismissal of aspiring candidates for discipleship on his show Celebrity Disciple --“You’re damned!”— became a by-word in Jerusalem.

 Of course, his success came at a price. He knew what God wanted in return: that he must suffer for the sins of mankind by forfeiting his life. Here is where his brilliant negotiating skills saved him. As it is written: “God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son....bone-spurs.

"Constitutionalism"

Democratic Despotism: 

"We find latent in their conception of law— and some have been publicly preaching this view— that law emanates solely from the will of the majority of the people, and can, therefore, be modified at any time to meet majority wishes. This doctrine is absolutely totalitarian, and is contrary to our basic conceptions of the source of law. We have seen that our political system is predicated on the doctrine that there are some immutable laws of nature and certain other divinely sanctioned rights, which the Constitution and our tradition recognized as being above and beyond the power of the majority, or of any other group of individuals or officials of the Government. There are, also, other rights, which because of man's historic experience, that are specifically protected by the Constitution, and which can only be modified under the prescribed method set forth in the Constitution; and, consequently the majority- will is not free to modify them as it pleases, but only in the circumscribed manner prescribed by the Constitution. That is why our system has been characterized as a government of laws, not of men. That is the distinction between impersonal law and personal law. Americanism is the system of government by impersonal law: totalitarianism is the system of government by personal law.” (emphasis added) -- Raoul E. Desvernine, vice-president of the American Liberty League, Democratic Despotism. 1936 (cited in "Business Organized as Powerr: The New Imperium in Imperio" see also "Constitutionalism: Political Defense of the Business Community during the New Deal Period.")

"Business Organized as Power":

"As stated in its constitution, the [American Liberty] League's purposes were, among others, "to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States," "to teach the necessity of respect for rights of persons and property," "to encourage and protect individual and group initiative and enterprise, to foster the right to work, earn, save and acquire property, and to preserve the ownership and lawful use of property when acquired." To win these goals the League went further than any previous liberty-loving, liberty-saving organization in our history. Crucial to its functioning was the National Lawyer's Committee, a group of some 58  prominent attorneys, which issued reports or opinions in advance of Supreme Court decisions, opinions setting aside with solemnity and erudition one after another of the entire New Deal legislative mélange. The League went still further: this private court having, for example, formally declared the Wagner Labor Relations Act unconstitutional, openly advised employers to ignore its provisions."