On this, the last day to file bankruptcy under the old code, we are in the midst of an honest-to-goodness Bank Run. In Los Angeles and in bankruptcy courts across the country, there are lines at the filing window that snake out into the street and beyond. Normally, there might be one or two people in line. The electronic filing system that my office (and most professionals) use is overloaded; just to enter data is a time-consuming process. A bankruptcy trustee informed me yesterday that ten thousand people filed last Friday, just in the Central District of California. Probably half the clients I'm getting are people who would normally have had no intention of filing, and even the thought of so doing wouldn't have crossed their minds.

What this will do to the economy I shudder to think about....

It only took four months, but the New York Times has also come to the conclusion that a robust housing market has an inverse correlation to the rate of bankruptcies in a state. Barry L. Ritholtz also notes the intriguing connection between high bankruptcy rates and Republican voting, something that can be seen when one looks at a county-by-county map of the rate of increase/decrease in bankruptcy filings since 2000, and the county-by-county electoral maps from 2000 and 2004. An apples-and-oranges comparison, of course, since one map reflects a four-year trend, while the others are snapshots that don't quite give a sense of how strong the inclination is in some states to file bankruptcy (Utah, for example, has hardly budged since 2000 in the number of bankruptcy filings, but has consistently been at or near the top in terms of the percentage of filers), but interesting nonetheless.

YBK [Part 25]: Remember back in March, when we set a monthly record for the number of bankruptcies filed. On average, there were just under 7,200 filings per day back then, which was the same month that the Bankruptcy Reform bill passed Congress.

In the week ending October 7, 2005, there were more than 20,000 bankruptcy filings per day in the United States.

Los Angeles [A] 5, New York [A] 3: Not quite the finish I was expecting. Ervin Santana was the hero filling in for the injured Bartolo Colon, but his initial inning was shaky enough: back-to-back-to-back walks, followed by a single by the nine hitter and a sac fly. But the Angels took back control of the game in their half of the second, thanks to GAnderson and Kennedy, and blooped Messina to death in the third. Thereafter, Santana took control of the game, the Angels dominated the tail end of the Yankees' lineup, and A-Rod and Matsui couldn't hit in the clutch to save their grannys' lives. After Jeter's home run in the seventh, I began having flashbacks to 1986, and with the Yankees getting three singles in the Ninth, my queasiness about the stopper abilities of K-Rod seemed justified. But stellar defense got the job done, again, and it's on to the North Side.

Now comes the hard part. Who's gonna start after Game 1?

Considering what a Heads fan I used to be, I'm surprised I didn't know he has a blog....

YBK [Part 24]: CNN is reporting that the week ending October 1 saw a record 68,387 filings, up approximately 25% from the old record, which was set the previous week. It also notes what I predicted some time ago, that the new law will generate a billing bonanza for bankruptcy professionals.

Ironically, this last-second panic to file before the new law goes into effect a week from today may not be necessary. The U.S. Trustee, which administers the bankruptcy courts and has the responsibility, along with the court, of enforcing the means test under the new law, drafted a letter last week formally stating that it considers "...income loss, expense increase, and other adverse impacts of a natural disaster to constitute 'special circumstances' in determining whether to file an enforcement motion on grounds of presumed abuse." The Trustee also announced it would waive some of the paperwork and credit counseling requirements from affected debtors, as well as agree not to pursue venue objections against displaced debtors filing in other states.

Of course, this should alleviate some of the potential problems faced by survivors of Hurricane Katrina, who lost critical financial records that could have backed up any "special circumstances" claim before the courts, as well as destroying the legal infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. It may also ease pressure on Congress to revise the new law before it goes into effect October 17. Although creditors can still raise objections under the new law, it would become prohibitively expensive for them to do so; the advantage of the new law for them was supposed to be the fact that they could piggy-back on the Trustee's office's without having to fill out the paperwork in each and every instance. Now, of course, if they file a motion to convert, they will do so before a court that has already been put on notice that the U.S. Trustee is presumptively on the side of the debtor.

More interesting to me, though, is the fact that the Trustee, an instrument of the Department of Justice, is interpreting its discretionary power to act, or not to act, quite broadly. The new law does not make it mandatory for the Trustee to attempt to convert cases where the debtor's income exceeds the medium level for the state; it is a power the Trustee "may" exercise. The only thing the Trustee is obligated to do is notify the court at a certain point that it considers the case to be an abuse, and that it intends to seek the conversion of the case. That the Trustee has already decided to ignore congressional intent to not include financial losses resulting from natural disasters as a "special circumstance" indicates a reticence about bringing motions to convert cases to Chapter 13 in other situations as well. A broad definition of what constitutes "special circumstances" will mean that the new law may only create new paperwork for filers, not a dramatic shift in who will be permitted to receive bankruptcy relief.

Et tu, Ilsa: It's hard to oppose the Miers nomination when she's even getting dissed by the Brownshirts:

Harriet Miers went to Southern Methodist University Law School, which is not ranked at all by the serious law school reports and ranked No. 52 by US News and World Report. Her greatest legal accomplishment is being the first woman commissioner of the Texas Lottery.

I know conservatives have been trained to hate people who went to elite universities, and generally that's a good rule of thumb. But not when it comes to the Supreme Court. First, Bush has no right to say "Trust me." He was elected to represent the American people, not to be dictator for eight years.

Among the coalitions that elected Bush are people who have been laboring in the trenches for a quarter-century to change the legal order in America. While Bush was still boozing it up in the early '80s, Ed Meese, Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork and all
the founders of the Federalist Society began creating a farm team of massive legal talent on the right. To casually spurn the people who have been taking slings and arrows all these years and instead reward the former commissioner of the Texas Lottery with a Supreme Court appointment is like pinning a medal of honor on some flunky paper-pusher with a desk job at the Pentagon — or on John Kerry — while ignoring your infantrymen doing the fighting and dying.

Second, even if you take seriously William F. Buckley's line about preferring to be governed by the first 200 names in the Boston telephone book than by the Harvard faculty, the Supreme Court is not supposed to govern us. Being a Supreme Court justice ought to be a mind-numbingly tedious job suitable only for super-nerds trained in legal reasoning like John Roberts. Being on the Supreme Court isn't like winning a "Best Employee of the Month" award. It's a real job.

Of all the reasons that may exist to oppose Harriet Miers, the fact that she graduated from a non-prestigious law school thirty years ago is perhaps the weakest, and the one least likely to garner sympathy from the public. If anything, lawyers who reach the top of their profession, as Ms. Miers surely has, after attending such a school is all the more reason to judge her credentials positively. The Supreme Court is not a law review, thank god. It should have a diverse representation of members, representing the broad sweep of America, limited only by achievement and knowledge of law.

Notwithstanding her positions on the constitutionality of abortion or of civil rights for homosexuals, she has accomplished a great deal in her legal career, a career not limited to running the Texas State Lottery, as Ann of a Thousand Lays so condescendingly mentions. She broke the barrier against her sex at a major law firm in Texas, ran the Bar Association in Dallas, then later in the whole state of Texas, and served on the Dallas City Council, before becoming White House Counsel. It may not be unfair to label her a "crony" of the President, but Byron White was no less a "crony" of JFK when he got tabbed, and his credentials were every bit as similar as Miers'. If Bush's other crony appointments were akin to Harriet Miers, the issue probably wouldn't come up, just as it didn't with President Kennedy. Even if I choose to oppose her nomination, her accomplishments entitle her to my respect.

UPDATE: Greetings and salutations to the people joining us from Reason. Some interesting critiques in the comments section over there, but one I'd like to address concerns a number of posters who took exception with my comparison of the qualifications of Harriet Miers and Byron White. One person noted, somewhat ironically, that White, unlike Miers, was a Rhodes Scholar, the top graduate in his class at Yale Law School, and clerked for the Supreme Court. That indeed is an impressive track record, and I might also add that he finished second in balloting for the Heisman Trophy and played a bit for the Detroit Lions and Pittsburgh Steelers.

What any of that has to do with his qualifications to sit on the Supreme Court two decades later escapes me, except showing that Whizzer White did very well in school. So did Harriet Miers; although her law school grades haven't been released, as far as I know, we do know that she clerked for a U.S. District Court judge after graduating, and was the first woman to be hired as an associate by one of the more prestigious firms in her state. Remembering that she doesn't come from one of the prominent families in the Lone Star State, those credentials suggest that someone back then thought she exhibited talent. SMU wasn't Yale Law School, obviously, but it should be noted that during the period Byron White matriculated there, and on through to Ms. Miers' final year of law school (1969), Yale was a mens-only college. It took an Act of Parliament in 1977 to open the selection criteria for the Rhodes Scholarship to include women. Being a Rhodes Scholar or finishing first at Yale simply wasn't going to be in the cards for her.

When JFK nominated his WWII buddy (White had been an investigator for the Navy looking into the future President's PT-boat mishap), his legal career was remarkeably similar to Harriet Miers. Both had spent most of their time in private practice in Flyover Country before hooking up with a future President. Both worked in the White House for the new President (White as an Assistant-AG; Miers in a number of positions, including White House counsel) before being nominated to the Supreme Court. Neither had exhibited much professional inclination to constitutional law before being nominated. I stand by my comparison.

Doodoodoodoodoo, today is my birthday.
Doodoodoodoodoo, I'm goin' have a good time...

In the meantime, check out this column from Slate, on "guilty pleasures" at the cinema. He's right about Denise Richards, by the way....

YBK [Part 23]: What was foreseen back on June 1 has come to pass. From today's Washington Post:

Two weeks before a new, more restrictive national bankruptcy law goes into effect, financially strapped Americans are rushing to file for protection from their creditors, with filings climbing to an unprecedented average of 13,000 a day last week.

Week after week records are toppled. Last week's 68,287 filings surpassed the record set the week before by 24 percent, and this week's total is likely to be higher, according to data released yesterday by Lundquist Consulting Inc., a financial research firm. Daily filings averaged 10,367 in September, compared with an average of 6,079 in September 2004.

The surge is in anticipation of the new bankruptcy law, long sought by the financial industry, which takes effect Oct. 17. The law will make it harder and more expensive for people to completely wipe out their debts under Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

"We are seeing a rush, mainly from people we saw a year ago," Northern Virginia bankruptcy lawyer Robert Weed said. A year ago his clients thought they would be able to work their way out of debt without filing for bankruptcy, he said, "but now they're in a panic to get in before the law is changed."

That is what prompted Samantha Gordon, 28, of Woodbridge to file. "I was putting it off and putting it off," the single mother of three said. Gordon, a patient-care coordinator, said she kept hoping to pay off her debts, but every time she had thought she was close, "a new bill, mostly medical, came up." She decided to take action after her father alerted her about the new law.

Along with using the "P-word" (as in "panic"), the Post did report some good news today: the office of the U.S. Trustee, the branch of the Justice Department that administers the Bankruptcy Court, agreed to temporarily waive enforcement of the provisions of the new law that mandate credit counseling to residents in Louisiana and the Southern District in Mississippi due to this season's hurricanes. Since none of the approved credit counseling agencies is physically located in the state (in fact, the new law specifically permits "credit counseling" to be done over the internet), this may have been done, as Prof. Robert Lawless suggests, to alleviate some of the pressure now on Congress to suspend the effective date of the bill by tossing a bone to hurricane survivors.

In the meantime, other provisions of the new law are set to further the devastation started by the Furies named Rita and Katrina. With homes and businesses still underwater, the local courts out of operation, trained professionals in the bankruptcy field having to relocate their offices, and the paperwork necessary under the new law now part of the debris rimming the Gulf Coast, victims of the storms are now placed in a predicament. Without any time to prepare for the traumatic experience of filing a bankruptcy petition (most of my clients struggle through their debts for years before finally succumbing to the inevitable), and now without the means of proving hardship that Congress, in its infinite wisdom, demanded when it passed the Bankruptcy Reform Act last spring, residents of the Gulf Coast now have nine days to decide whether to take this step, or risk the onerous provisions when the Bankruptcy Code changes on October 17.

Proponents of the new law point to 11 U.S.C. §707(b)(2)(B), which states that "...the presumption of abuse may only be rebutted by demonstrating special circumstances, such as a serious medical condition or a call or order to active duty in the Armed Forces, to the extent such special circumstances that justify additional expenses or adjustments of current monthly income for which there is no reasonable alternative." Thus, the argument goes, all a filer will have to do is explain to the judge that Hurricane Katrina destroyed his home, removed his livelihood, and all will be hunky-dory in the end. Former Bush Administration appointee Todd Zywicki observes:

The legislation simply requires high-income filers who can repay some or all of their debts to do so as a condition for filing bankruptcy. If a person has lost his job and income because of the hurricane, then the legislation permits that person to file bankruptcy just like under the current rules. The means-testing provisions of the legislation specifically allow for "special circumstances" that mean that those provisions of the legislation should not apply to a given bankruptcy filer--clearly the destruction of a person's house and job easily fit within those provisions of the legislation.

Assuming that a debtor, defined by Prof. Zywicki as being "upper income" because he earns over the median income for his state, which in Louisiana was $35,523 per year last year, will be able to retain a lawyer, dredge up the tax returns and credit card invoices and submit the proper paperwork that will be necessary to prove "special circumstances", there remains one tiny problem: Congress already explicitly rejected an attempt to include natural disasters, such as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes, as "special circumstances". As Professor Elizabeth Warren points out,

Indeed, the "special circumstances" provision doesn't come close to doing the work the Congressman claims. In one of the many ironies that mark the amendments to the bankruptcy bill, any adjustment requires additional documentation, and, for those whose papers are somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, the plain language of the statute seems to provide no relief. For hundreds of other blows inflicted by the bankruptcy amendments, such as the increased rights of landlords to toss out tenants or the new risks facing someone who has drawn down a cash advance on a credit card, there is no pretense of relief of any kind....

Of course, there are some judges who will gladly rule that Hurricane Katrina is a "special circumstance"; as I pointed out back in March, there will be judges who will pretty much carve out a "special circumstances" exception to any vicissitude of life, while other judges will limit themselves to the examples specifically enumerated in the statute (ie., "a serious medical condition" or "order to active duty"). The fact that Congress voted down an attempt to include natural disasters as an enumerated exception will be a powerful aid to those judges who are willing to follow the more draconian course; it may be years before any of the appellate courts has a chance to spell out what the provision means, and provide some degree of consistency in how it is interpreted. In the meantime, without Congressional intervention at this late stage, we are set to witness pandemonium the likes of which haven't been seen in the federal courts in our nation's history, all of which will create many losers, but only one small class of winners: Lawyers. Special circumstances? Laissez les bons temps rouler !!

The nomination of Harriet Miers has led to some predictable backsniping from lefty bloggers, as well as some unexpected opposition from our cohorts to the right. As the first nominee to the high court since Lewis Powell not to have had previous judicial experience, the "c-word" (as in "crony") has been getting a workout today, as well as some unnuanced criticism that she's a "third-rater", a "D-minus pick". More importantly, though, the endorsement of her nomination by Senators Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, and Patrick Leahy will deflate much of the partisan opposition (and TalkLeft's Jerralyn Merritt has kind words for Ms. Miers as well), and barring anything shocking that may turn up in the next few months, she should win confirmation easily.

In desperation, one avenue a number of bloggers from both sides are pursuing is a claim that she is not only a crony, but a crooked one at that. Conservative UCLA prof Bainbridge notes that Ms. Miers' firm paid a $22 million settlement in 2000 over their representation of a client, former U of T placekicker Russell Erxleben, who ran a ponzi scheme. From the left, Nathan Newman quotes the routine post-settlement denial of liability by Ms. Miers, who was the managing partner of the firm at that time, and compares her with Ken Lay: "Boy, no wonder Bush loves her. She never admits responsibility for actions by her underlings either.
But do we really want someone on the Supreme Court whose law firm is a poster child in Texas for lawyer malfeasance?"

Going even further, David Sirota attacks the nominee for having led a

...firm (that) represented the head of a "foreign currency trading company [that] was allegedly a Ponzi scheme. The lawfirm admitted that it 'knew in March 1998 that $ 8 million in [the company's] losses hadn't been reported to investors" but didn't tell regulators. This wasn't an isolated incident, either. The Austin American-Statesman reported in 2001 that Miers' lawfirm was forced to pay another $8 million for a similar scheme to defraud investors. The suit, which dealt with actions the firm took under Miers in the late 1990s, was again quite troubling. As the 9/20/00 Texas Lawyer reported, Miers' firm helped a now-convicted con man 'defraud investors and allowed the firm's [bank] account to be used as a 'conduit.' The suit said "money from investors that went into the firm's trust account was deposited into [the con man's] bank accounts and was used to pay for his 'expensive toys.'"

If you think Miers wasn't involved in any of this - think again. Miers wasn't just any old lawyer at the firm. She was the Managing Partner - the big cheese. True, she could claim she had no idea this was going on. But that would be as laughable/pathetic/transparent as the Enron executives who made the same ones after they ripped off investors.

Harriett Miers may be as crooked as the day is long, but the examples disingenuously cited above do not show that. She was the President, then Managing Partner, of an office which employed close to 400 attorneys. There was no evidence that she had any direct supervisorial role over the attorneys who were implicated, nor was she named as a defendant in any of the lawsuits. Far from running a crooked shell game, a la Enron, or laundering money, a number of lawyers at her firm were accused of committing legal malpractice, not against their clients, but by way of a novel Texas legal theory, against investors of their clients. The attorneys who were involved may or may not have had guilty knowledge of their clients' misdeeds, but the specific accusation against them dealt with whether they had an obligation to betray their clients' confidence, in potential violation of the attorney-client privilege, by informing investors of their suspicions.

Moreover, the operative term in this situation is that the cases settled. There was no admission of liability, simply an agreement by the parties not to litigate the matter further upon an exchange of money. There are numerous reasons a law firm may wish to settle a malpractice action, including some understandable arm-twisting by its insurers, that have nothing to do with its actual culpability. And any large firm is going to settle a legal malpractice claim at some point, regardless of its innocence.

Ms. Miers should no more be held accountable for the sleaziness of some of her firm's clients than public defenders or ACLU counsel are. Lawyers represent people who need legal counsel, and a lot of those people are, interestingly enough, criminals. Unlike Kenneth Lay, there is no evidence that Harriet Miers broke the law herself, or looked the other way while another lawyer at her office did.

We should remember that any chance of defeating the Roberts nomination died when one of the advocacy groups ran an ad exaggerating a legal argument he made in a case involving an abortion clinic bombing. After the ads aired, it was impossible to make a cogent ideological argument against the nomination without seeming to be hysterical, and Roberts breezed through. There will probably be enough legitimate reasons to question her nomination without making stuff up, or exaggerating alleged malfeasance on her part. Lets try to use an Indoor Voice this time.

For those of you interested in how rising home values, political allegiance, and/or population density correllates with bankruptcy filings in all 50 states, an updated chart comparing appreciation rate of home values and bankruptcy totals, as well as some other odds and ends, can be found here.

YBK [Part 22]: Bankruptcy Reform Determined to Strike at U.S.

During the months necessary for economic stabilization, thousands of Gulf Coast residents will be without a paycheck. For some, savings will deplete within a month or two. Others never had any. While incomes plummet, bills pile up: car payments are due regardless of the operability of the vehicle; medical bills, credit card debt, car loans, mortgages and student loans have to be repaid.

One of the consequences of so many Americans living paycheck to paycheck is their extreme vulnerability during crises. About half of families roll over credit card balances every month, and balances average almost $5,000. Last year 1.6 million cardholders declared bankruptcy. To meet their financial obligations, many Americans have refinanced their homes; about 42 percent of new mortgages are refinances, and 77 percent strip equity from homeowners, leaving them with higher monthly payments. Many of the victims fell into that camp even before the hurricane. The federal bankruptcy reform is on a collision course with those left behind.

Evacuees will be eligible for disaster assistance, but such aid will be inadequate to protect them from bankruptcy reform scheduled to strike on October 17. FEMA has promised each evacuee household $2,000, which will hardly cover the expenses of hotel rooms, food and other necessities, let alone mounting loan payments. Some will be eligible for Disaster Unemployment Assistance, but beneficiaries will receive 50 to 70 percent of their weekly salary for only 26 weeks. Private charities, especially the Red Cross, will also assist victims, but such assistance is short-term and often capricious.

--Howard Karger, Alternet

"...an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do." My favorite part of Bill Bennett's Final Solution to the crime problem is the nethercutting sentence that followed. I mean, we could compel them to have abortions, but it would be wrong.

Roberts Confirmed: In open defiance of this blogger's advice, Senate Democrats refused to filibuster the nomination, and half of them voted for confirmation. Hard to generate much passion over Roberts; too many of the people who had worked with him over the years, particularly liberals, raved about the guy, and once he became the replacement for Rehnquist, there was no longer the urgency to defeat him. Both sides tried to explain away his pro bono work on the Romer case, but the fact was, Rehnquist wouldn't have involved himself with a case broadening the civil rights of others at the same point in his career. No one gives a rat's ass about legal memos he drafted in his late-20's, and his silence before the Judiciary Committee on the legal issues of the day is pretty typical for any nominee to the high court. Whether he becomes a Souter or a Scalia can not be predicted by anything that he did the last two months.

If the next pick is a wack job, then we go to the mattresses. The Roberts nomination was less a dress rehearsal than a walk-through.

Dallas: The Movie? Seriously, and they're looking to cast Mel Gibson or John Travolta in the role of "JR Ewing". Is nothing sacred?

YBK [Part 21]: Although the underlying reasons for bankruptcy usually range from medical disasters to job losses, the canaries in the coalmine are usually defaulted credit cards and lagging home sales. The first event indicates that a person is no longer able to keep current on his borrowing, while the second means that the indebted is finding it harder to use the equity on his home to pay off his debts. So, here's some miscellany to consider as we head into October 17:

1. According to the American Bankers Association, the number of credit card holders that were at least 30 days delinquent on their accounts rose to 4.81% in the quarter ending in June, setting an all-time record.

2. Home sales dropped precipitously in August, falling 9.7% from its record total in July. Consumer confidence also plunged: in the 30-days ending September 20, the consumer confidence index fell nearly 20 points, a drop larger than what resulted from the September 11 attacks.

3. A personal observation. I practice law in the Central District of California, which has been the national pacesetter for bankruptcy filings since the early-90's. In recent years, the number of filings, which peaked around 1997-8, have been declining, even as the numbers have gone up everywhere else, and even the signing of the new law didn't spark as dramatic a rise as we've seen elsewhere.

That is now changing. Lines to file new petitions are snaking through the Federal Building downtown, even though the new law isn't scheduled to go into effect for three weeks. Chapter 7 filings for August were up 30% for the month over the same time last year. Los Angeles has seen its fair share of Katrina survivors, many of whom are too far away to use the courts in their home district, so potential efforts to obtain debt forgiveness may occur in our local bankruptcy court as well. The closer we get to October 14, the more similar those lines are going to be to the lines at the post office on April 15 every year. Yikes.

As a practicing attorney, I file my cases electronically, so I don't wait in line, and usually expect to receive confirmation from the court that a case was filed successfully a few hours after I transmit the package to the court. Thanks to the backlog, it now takes 2-4 days to get confirmation. Since a rejection by the court of any bankruptcy petition might soon be tantamount to legal malpractice if the YBK deadline is missed, that's a very scary prospect for me and other local professionals.

It's worth noting that the California Congressman set to replace the recently-indicted Tom Delay, Representative David Dreier, is gay. Self-hating or not, it is history.

[UPDATE: Or not. CNN is reporting that the GOP caucus elected Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt instead, perhaps due to the gay issue, and perhaps because Dreier was viewed as a placesitter for Delay, when a sharper break was desired]

[UPDATE: Kevin Drum asks, "Is every single liberal blog in the world planning to post a slobbery, wink-wink-nudge-nudge mention that David Dreier is rumored to be gay? Pardon me while I throw up. And spare me the drivel about the "principled" case for outing gay politicians. I'm not buying, and there's nothing principled going on here in any case. It's just childish nonsense that perpetuates the notion that there's something sordid about being gay."

Since when is the truth "childish nonsense"? I believe that a "just-the-facts" post is all that's required on this issue. I am no more judgmental about that than I am about Barney Frank being gay, or Mary Chaney, or Ken Mehlman. The GOP had a chance this afternoon to make a positive statement about civil rights and tolerance, and didn't take it. That's not "childish nonsense".]

Los Angeles [A] 4, Oakland 3: SWEET!!! Bring on the Sox?!?

YBK [Part 20]: From today's New York Times-

Right after Hurricane Katrina struck, several lawmakers - mostly Democrats but including some Senate Republicans - suggested that storm victims along the Gulf Coast should get relief from the new law's stricter provisions, which are intended to screen filers by income and make those with higher incomes repay their debts over several years.

(snip)

But House Republicans, who fought off a proposed amendment that would have made bankruptcy filings easier for victims of natural disasters, said there was no reason to carve out a broad exemption just because of the storm.

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, rejected the notion of reopening the legislation, saying it already included provisions that would ensure that people left "down and out" by the storm would still be able to shed most of their debts. Lawmakers who lost the long fight over the law, he said, "ought to get over it," according to The Associated Press.

A White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said the administration "doesn't see a lot of merit" in calls to delay the law's effective date but was considering making allowances for hurricane victims.

In the meantime, many victims of Hurricane Katrina - and the much smaller group ruined by Hurricane Rita - will face a kind of Catch-22. Those who try to beat the Oct. 17 deadline in hopes of filing under the less-onerous current law may find it impossible to do so, because residence rules generally require that individuals seek protection against creditors in their hometowns. (Assuming people in New Orleans can find their lawyers and records, they can file for bankruptcy protection in their bankruptcy court, which has reopened and is sharing space with another court in Baton Rouge.)

Moreover, most people displaced by the storm will probably not know for months if they even need to file for bankruptcy. By that time, the tougher new law will be in force.

"Ought to get over it"!!! These people really are soulless bastards.

Roger L. Simon has an approving link to an article, here, which argues that the cronyism that has so afflicted this President is nevertheless excusable, because "nepotism" is also endemic in Hollywood and the news media. Needless to say, cronyism and nepotism are not the same thing; Bush, to his credit, has not tried to nominate daughter Jenna to the Supreme Court, or name brother Neil to be his Secretary of the Treasury. Even so, the notion that Kate Hudson being cast in a movie is somehow morally equivalent to putting a campaign advance man in charge of emergency preparation and relief is absurd.

More to the point, the writer seems to confuse nepotism (ie., the appointment of a family member to a position to which he is not qualified) with the phenomenon that exists in most professions: children pursue occupations similar to their parents. It is routine to the point of banality for the children of attorneys to enter into the legal profession, or the children of doctors to become heart surgeons. Men and women who work on the assembly line at GM or Ford may be joined by their offspring a generation later. It is understandable for kids to want to emulate their closest role models, and observing how someone practicing a particular livelihood behaves is a good way to get a step forward on those who are starting from scratch. In fact, I dare say the idea that one may be able to pass on to the next generation a business or craft is part of the American Dream.

And the same has been true with acting since the days of the Barrymores and Booths. Regardless of whether you believe that Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicholas Cage, Mira Sorvino or Sean Penn deserved their Oscars, the fact they get cast in roles today has nothing to do with who their parents are. Their success is based on whether people see their movies, or whether the right sort of people like their movies. And similarly, Kate Hudson's floundering career can only be redeemed by her own efforts at mastering the thespian craft; even Goldie Hawn's power is limited in that regard.

It might have helped those actors at the beginning of their careers to have a parent in the biz, just as it helped athletes like Kobe Bryant, Barry Bonds and Peyton Manning get an extra look from scouts on the basis of their names and pedigrees, but they ultimately had to get the job done. Notwithstanding the fact that Mike Piazza was drafted by the Dodgers almost entirely because Tommy Lasorda was friendly with his dad, he's still going to the Hall of Fame. Piazza, like those other athletes, had to put in the hard work necessary to show he belonged, and he had to display his talent to the fullest extent.

And the same is true in the Business of Show. When Francis Coppola cast his daughter in Godfather III, that was clearly a demonstration of nepotism, and the move backfired. But that has nothing to do, ten years later, with whether Lost in Translation is a great film, or whether Sofia Coppola earned her Best Screenplay Oscar. Whether or not Gwyneth Paltrow gets cast in Proof or Sylvia is determined by her talent, her perceived compatibility for the roles, and her ability to sell enough tickets to make those movies profitable, not by the fact that her mom is Blythe Danner.

The problem with Bush isn't that he has appointed so many pals and stalwarts to important positions, it's the fact that a high percentage of them can't do their jobs competently, and the man at the top won't hold them accountable when they fail. If FEMA had efficiently gotten supplies to Mississippi and Louisiana, would anyone have cared that Michael Brown's expertise was in judging Arabian stallions? I doubt the subject would have even come up, anymore than Harry Truman's occupation as a haberdasher was relevant when he integrated the military or fired Douglas MacArthur (who, it should be pointed out, was himself the son of a general).

Administrations are always filled with people like Michael Brown, people who are honored for their partisan service and friendships, not their qualifications, dating back to George Washington. Sometimes, even an unqualified hack like Brown will rise to the occasion, and evidence talents heretofore unrecognized; that, after all, is the life story of Harry Truman in a nutshell. Good Presidents put them in positions where they can do little harm, and act quickly to replace them when they do. Unforgivably, Bush has put his party above the interests of his country. His passivity in the face of incompetence must be judged as willful.