"…Prior to the passage of this bill there was probably some disagreement in federal courts (probably a very specific line of divergent cases that also probably tied up the federal courts and cost you money as a taxpayer) as to whether the federal government or a federally funded entity had consented to be sued under the FDCPA for a federally funded mortgage. The passage of this bill clarified the matter, and the answer is “no.” explained** jklann**.
Why yes, I agree, there probably was some disagreement about the wording of the original law and it probably did tie up the courts and cost me, as a taxpayer, money.
Unfortunatly the question " as to whether the federal government or a federally funded entity had consented to be sued under the FDCPA for a federally funded mortgage", as you put it, remains moot.
"Ta da!"
You should be proud** jklann**, you have built a whole castle with a single brick. Congress said that it was going to clairify a muddy law and, by golly, you, jklann, believe that they did.
And as they say, * that’s close enought for government work!*
If elected, I will run off and hide under the bed and pretend not to be home until they go away. That porno actress is better qualified than I am to be governor.
Maybe we shouldn’t hijack this off into an Electoral College discussion, but I don’t like the current system.
Geographic separation of interests should be addressed by the way we have Senators. I would like to see a direct election of the President by simple majority or plurality. The idea being to foster a commonality of interests in electing a President.
In a way, it is the same motive as abolishing affirmative action. We should think of ourselves as one nation, not a collection of groups, whether racial or ethnic or anything else.
Of course, given a choice between whatever Constitutional amendments I wanted, and the ability to pack the Supreme Court with nine solidly conservative judges, I would go for the Court in a heartbeat. Have them start enforcing the Tenth Amendment, and watch the shrinkage of the federal role happen almost automatically.
While we’re on the topic of reading comprehension, that wasn’t jklann, that was me. You didn’t know what they did or why they did it, so I told you. They said you can’t sue somebody attempting to collect on a federally related mortgage under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. They did it so the federal government or the people it assigns mortgages to can’t be sued in federal court. Generally when they pass a law designated a clarification like this they’re doing it to settle a disagreement in the federal courts about an interpretation of federal law. So yes, that’s probably what happened.
Ha! I apologise to you pravnik and also to jklann for getting you two crossed in my mind. Better still I would like to apologise in the government prose style that you so highly admire…
I apologise for the Post I posted that wrongly identified two posters who posted posts penadjacent and postliminous to each other I hereby apologise… and for other purposes.
And pravnik, direct my nebulochaotic mind to the part where the House Bill says that the government can’t be sued.
Of course I can’t, because you have it backwards. A bill doesn’t have to say the government can’t be sued, that goes without saying. It only has to explicty say if it’s creating a law where the government can be sued. The government can never be sued unless it gives its consent. The govenrment doesn’t have to remind us it can’t be sued; under the doctrine of Sovereign Immunity it is immune from suit until it says otherwise.
How about an amendment that radically changes how easy it is for Congressmen to throw more appropriations onto a bill.
Something that suddenly made it far more difficult to tack 2.2 million dollars to renovate a highway onto a health care bill. That would save money and stop some of the out of control spending.
(I apologize if this has already been suggested. I will read everyone’s posts this afternoon.)
So I understand now. We are simply a nation, and not a collection of groups. Yet a State is, technically, a group (or at least the residents of a State are). And we are the United States of America. So it was explicitly stated that we’re something other than just America. It’s in our name. We are, in fact, a collection of groups…a set of sets, or something like that. But the set that is America doesn’t consist of people so much as it consists of States, and so I would have to contend that we are, in fact, a collection of groups - a set of sets.
The direct election of members of the United States Senate is repealed.
All votes in the United States Senate shall be recorded in such a way that the vote of no individual Senator shall be known.
The purpose of all this is to restore the election of Senators by the state legislatures. Senators will therefor no longer have to raise money for expensive elections.
Also this would make it impossible for any Senator to be identified with any particular vote. This way each member can vote as he thinks best without worrying about his political future.
This will allow the Senate to be what it was designed to be, the saucer that cools the tea of legislation proposed by the popularly-elected House.
The Constitution should be amended to make it easier to amend the Constitution. I suggest constitutional amendments require majority approval in a national referendum; and that proposed amendments can be placed on the national ballot by a simple majority vote of either house of Congress, or by concurrent resolution of only one-fourth of the state legislatures.
