Also Perfect For Today.

I wonder if those people who are frothing at the mouth about the health care mandate would also be upset about the 1792 law, passed by 17 signers of the Constitution and President Washington, that every able bodied man in the United States must own a firearm.

A federal mandate saying that you must own a firearm? Personally, I wouldn't mind that at all but only if it were amended to include women as well:)

More Romney Money Uncovered?

It turns out Mitt Romney has been hiding his true wealth. He has a shell company in Bermuda named Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. Because of the way the law is written (i.e., the wealthy lobbied Congress to make it that way), Romney wasn't required to disclose the investment.

But he's obviously hiding something, because of the tricks he's been playing:

Sankaty was transferred to a trust owned by Romney’s wife, Ann, one day before he was sworn in as Massachusetts governor in 2003, according to Bermuda records obtained by The Associated Press. The Romneys’ ownership of the offshore firm did not appear on any state or federal financial reports during Romney’s two presidential campaigns. Only the Romneys’ 2010 tax records, released under political pressure earlier this year, confirmed their continuing control of the company.

What is Sankaty? It's not really clear, and Romney refuses to say. But in the past it has been used as a slush fund for Bain Capital's financial machinations:

Named for a historic Massachusetts coastal lighthouse, Sankaty was part of a cluster of similarly named hedge funds run by Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded and led until 1999. The offshore company was used in Bain’s $1 billion takeover of Domino’s Pizza and other multimillion-dollar investment deals more than a decade ago.

Today Romney's financial advisers have valued Sankaty at less than $1,000. But this is misleading:

While Sankaty no longer plays an active role in Bain’s current deals, private equity experts said such holdings could provide significant income to Romney under his 10-year separation agreement from Bain, which expired in 2009. Investment funds typically churn “carried interest,” profit shares due to the managers of the funds that often range as much as 20 percent of a fund’s annual profit — known as “the carry.” Even after investment funds are exhausted, profit shares and other late earnings from those stakes can continue to stream, arriving as lucrative “tails,” tax experts say. In some circumstances, the analysts added, offshore companies like Sankaty could also offer limited tax deferral advantages.

Which means Romney could still reap a ton of money from Sankaty. Last month he got a $1.9 million "true-up" payment from another asset in his separation deal with Bain. Thus, millions of dollars could erupt from Sankaty at any time.

The tax code is riddled with loopholes and exemptions that allow wealthy people like Mitt Romney to avoid paying taxes on literally trillions of dollars. The rest of us have to make up that missing revenue to pay for all that disaster relief for people hit by wave after wave of tornadoes, violent storms and wildfires, in addition to regularly budgeted items like defense and highway maintenance.

Mitt Romney obviously sees nothing wrong with this situation. His wealthy billionaire pals, ones like Sheldon Adelson who have business interests overseas and have been giving Republican PACs $10 million a pop, want to keep their special treatment going. They know Romney will never eliminate these tax gimmicks.

There's nothing wrong with being rich or legally using the tax code to maximize your income. Warren Buffett certainly does, but he has also acknowledged that it's outrageously unfair that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. And he's called for changes to the tax code to correct that injustice.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is still hiding his investments overseas, and refuses to release his tax records from his last years at Bain. If he were just an obscure businessman at Bain that would be fine. But he wants to be president of these United States.

A man who hides his true wealth, uses all these tax gimmicks and continues to defend those loopholes cannot be trusted to give all Americans an even break.

Perfect For Today

If one tries to imagine how Gouverner Morris, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the others who wrote the Constitution would have felt--in an era when most Americans were yeoman farmers or craftsmen living in small towns--they would surely have found it preposterous that the federal government require people to buy insurance. But they would also have found it unbelievable that the federal government required hospitals to treat anyone who showed up for emergency care for free if they couldn't pay. In their view, that would have been a state issue, not a federal issue, since hospitals did not operate across state boundaries then. They also probably could not have imagined the federal government licensing the electromagnetic spectrum or sending rockets to the moon. A lot has changed since 1788 and not every modern dispute can be resolved by looking at the text of the Constitution.---Electoral-Vote.Com

An interesting statement that begs the question...what if it's OK to say that the Founding Fathers would have been against something like the health care law but it's still good policy for today? Given that they didn't face the same issues that we do, it's likely they really shouldn't be any sort of authority.

In addition, I'm not sure I agree with Andy here as President Adams signed into a law a bill that forced seamen to hand over some of their pay check for health care.

Too many liberals cower in fear when the right invokes the spirit of the Founding Fathers. I wish they would point out the fact that the FFs argued constantly among themselves. It was out of this debate that our country was born, for better or worse. Even with all the animosity that floats around these days, it's clearly been for the better. 

And it's improving every day. Happy 4th of July everyone!

Offshored, Outsourced and Out of Luck

Mitt Romney's strength is supposedly his experience in the private sector running companies. He knows how to make money. The problem is, his tenure at Bain Capital destroyed a lot of jobs, left a lot of companies in bankruptcy and ruin, but left him a whole lot richer from other people's misery.

I'll be the first to admit that some of those companies were were headed into the dumpster anyway. But Romney took a lot of cash out of less troubled companies and put it in his own pocket. How many of those would have survived and prospered had they not been milked dry and left to die in the ditch, so that Ann Romney could buy Olympic-caliber horses at $100,000 a pop?

A story in the Washington Post covers another aspect of Mitt Romney's experience in destroying American jobs. It examines the role of Bain Capital in the decades-long exodus of American jobs overseas. The Romney campaign complained that there is a difference between outsourcing and offshoring. It's a moot point: either way, Americans are out of luck.

A recent Doonesbury cartoon sums it up succinctly:

The problem with the massive exodus of manufacturing to Asia is that some industries are essential to the security of the United States: first and foremost, electronics and computers. These days every aspect of business, government and defense depends heavily on computers and electronic components.

Nearly all computers and their components are manufactured in Asia. American electronics companies are now even moving the design of integrated circuits to Asia. How can we be sure that Red Army agents haven't infiltrated these companies and are designing back doors into these circuits as you read this? There are reports that this has already happened, though it's not clear the design flaw was intentional. But these devices are incredibly complex and have millions of components and millions of lines of code, making it impossible to ensure that they don't have back doors. The only thing we can do is trust the source. Is that really wise?

Since corporations by definition exist only to make money, they have no allegiance to the United States. That means the US government needs to take steps to ensure that we have reliable domestic sources for all the technology critical to our business and defense needs.

Like any soulless, stateless corporation, Mitt Romney has shown his allegiance is to money and not America, American security and American workers. Romney may not be the Manchurian Candidate, but he helped send American jobs to Manchuria.

A Corner Turned?

Most of you have likely heard the story of Karen Klein, the bus monitor who was mercilessly teased by some junior high kids a couple of weeks back. If not, here is the story.



I have to say that I am honestly glad that this story has come out and people can see what is at the very core of our problem in schools: children's behavior. This is the main reason why test scores are low and children are going off to college with all sorts of issues.

It all starts in the home and with the parents. Time and again, children's parents take the side of their children and not the instructor or administrative staff. This leads to continued problems both with the student and the rest of the class. In short, parents don't parent their fucking kids and teachers like me get blamed for poor test scores. Granted, I don't have as many issues in high school but I can tell which kids (by the time they get to me) have been coddled by the parents. And it's far, far too many.

Certainly, there are some teachers and assistants (like Ms. Klein here) who need to grow a pair. If a kid pulled something like that on me (and I have worked over the years in junior high), they'd be one sorry asshole in less than a second. But this video does illustrate the limits the schools have on discipline.

In my children's school district, they are very strict. If someone is sent to the office they get one warning and then they are suspended on the second offense. Continued poor behavior leads to expulsion and it's off to the "jail" school. More schools need to adopt this sort of no tolerance policy.

Bottom line, we need to be tougher on kids. Very tough, if you ask me. They have far too much power today and it's most parents (conservative or liberal) that are giving them this power. Either they are too lazy or are working too much or both, but something has to change....now.

My hope is that this incident with Ms. Klein will be the turning point.

Romney Says Mandate Is Not a Tax

Didn't Mitt Romney get the memo? He says that the mandate in the Affordable Care Act isn't a tax:

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign on Monday rejected a Republican attack on the Affordable Care Act, repudiating a contention made in last week’s Supreme Court decision that the law’s requirement that individuals carry medical coverage amounts to a tax. 

The Romney team’s refusal to invoke the word “tax” with regard to the individual mandate puts the candidate at odds with others in his party at a moment when Republicans are attempting to capi­tal­ize on the Supreme Court’s decision, which deemed President Obama’s health-care law constitutional. Some Republican-led states are now trying to thwart the legislation’s effort to cover the poor.

The whole thing is pointless bickering over meaningless semantics: penalty, tax, what's the difference? It'll be reported on your taxes if you fail to buy health insurance, so why not let the Republicans have their hissy fit and call it a tax?

But it's irrelevant, because only freeloaders and fools will be paying this tax. A completely optional tax you pay only if you're careless or obstinate isn't really a tax at all. Anyone with a good job will be covered by their employer. Poor people will be covered by Medicaid. Responsible self-employed adults and real small businesses will finally be able to buy decent insurance policies without getting shafted by insurance companies. People who really can't afford it will be given subsidies or exemptions.

Is Romney's disagreement just posturing? Did he get permission from his commanding officer, Grover Norquist, to disagree on the question of whether the mandate is a tax? Is Grover letting Mitt do this in order to make Romney seem somehow more acceptable to independents in the fall? If it is, it shows the depths to which Republicans have to stoop to make their candidates seem electable.


Romney says the first thing he's going to do if elected is repeal Obamacare. Except that Romney says that he's going to keep the part about adult children being covered. And stop insurance companies from kicking you off. And get rid of preexisting condition clauses and lifetime limits. And now he's saying the mandate's not a tax. Basically, Obamacare is identical to the Massachusetts health care law Romney signed.


So, the only real problem are some details about things like how "small" 50-person companies should cover employees. Which means that the law just needs some tweaking around the edges, something which Obama has long said was true: he had to make a lot of compromises to get it passed, and would be glad to fix such problems.

In the end, the only real policy difference between Romney and Obama is that Romney would let some states continue to force hospitals and the rest of us to foot the bill for the health care of obtuse jerks who refuse to take care of themselves.

Sorry, Mitt. We're tired of paying the way for freeloaders. Wait—I'm starting to sound like a Republican!

The Largely Ignored Victory

Any loss for the juveniles on the right is always more devastating given their tendencies towards wild emotional swings (see: junior high). That's why I'm still surprised to see very few celebrating the glaringly obvious victory that has come out of the Supreme Court's ruling on the health care bill. For the first time since the New Deal, the Commerce Clause has been defined in such a way that libertarians have declared victory.

“Under the government’s theory, Congress could address the diet problem by ordering everyone to buy vegetables,” the chief justice wrote. “That is not the country the framers of our Constitution envisioned.”

“We finally won a three-decades-long battle over the commerce clause,” John Eastman, a conservative constitutional scholar and a professor at Chapman University, told me hours after the court’s decision. 

This might seem a paradox, given that the court upheld the legislation. But the decision may ultimately prove a Pyrrhic victory for supporters of expansive Congressional power. The opinion reads like a hymn to the ideal of limited government. And by embracing the broccoli argument, it sharply limits the commerce clause — until now the source of ever-expanding legislative power since Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in 1824 that Congressional power to regulate commerce “may be exercised to its utmost extent.”

“The commerce clause is not a general license to regulate an individual from cradle to grave,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. Libertarians and conservatives have been seeking such a declaration since the New Deal.

You'd think they be happy but no...oh no...Obama won something so it's the end of the world for the 89th time. It's a good thing they don't value "winning the argument" above all else.

Both Sides are Not Equally Hysterical

The difference in rhetoric between Republicans and Democrats couldn't be starker these past few weeks. Republicans are saying the Fast and Furious program is a scandal far worse than Watergate (which is, as Republicans love to say, laughable, since the program was started under George Bush). They're calling the Supreme Court's decision on the health care law "the end of freedom," when all it does is make people take responsibility for themselves.

Meanwhile, Colorado is burning. Texas is burning, and is likely to be hit by a severe power shortage this summer, causing rolling blackouts. Texas isn't on the national power grid, so they don't know what they're going to do. To make things worse, the prevalent forms of power generation, from hydro, to coal, to nuclear, all use vast amounts of water. Many areas in the western half of the US has been in severe drought conditions for years. Earlier this year the south was clobbered by wave after wave of ferocious tornadoes, starting in February. The eastern half of the country has just been hammered by powerful storms, knocking out power for millions, and is now broiling in 90-100 degree temperatures. This heat and lack of air conditioning will kill dozens if not hundreds of the elderly, children and people with asthma and similar diseases.


The increased frequency and severity of these events are due to climate change, but there's a noticeable absence of hysteria about it from national Democratic figures, even though we're probably past the point of no return on climate change.


If climate change were part of the Republican™ brand, though, they would be screaming it was the end of the world, that Armageddon was upon us. They would label the Koch brothers tools of the devil, in league with Saudi princes to jack up the price of oil and bring Sharia law to America. They would say God is punishing us for destroying the environment by turning the environment against us.

But every time it snows more than an inch, or we have a normal winter like those that were common 30 years ago, they say that it's "proof" climate change is a myth. In Virginia law makers removed references to climate change and sea level rise, changing the law to refer to "recurrent flooding," even though sea levels on some parts of the east coast have risen by as much as 3.8 millimeters a year since 1950. Globally, sea level has been rising by eight inches a century since 1843.

And every time we have a heat wave or hurricane, climate scientists will admit, "We can't say this particular severe weather event was caused by climate change." And the nay-sayers immediately pounce and say, "Told you so!"

But that's because climate scientists are honest and have integrity. They won't make a statement they can't prove to be true, because any particular storm might have occurred under any climate regime. What they have predicted is that there will more tornadoes, hurricanes, and thunderstorms, and that they will on average be more severe. Just as we've seen.


Why? Since the atmosphere and ocean are warmer, there is more energy in storm systems. Since the arctic ice is almost completely melting during the summer, there is more water in the atmosphere, the jet stream over the north pole is shifting and weather patterns are changing. This is causing some areas to be hit by colder winters, while others will have much milder ones (like the Twin Cities, where the ground was still bare in mid-January). Some areas will get socked by big snowfalls and floods, while other areas will languish in drought, without enough snow to replenish the snow pack. The result is that Glacier National Park will cease to have glaciers in my lifetime, and people who depend on winter snowfall in the Rockies for their water supply will have to go thirsty.


And it gets more insidious: higher temperatures have allowed insects like pine beetles to migrate north into formerly cool areas, infesting trees that have no defenses. Entire forests die, and then the dead trees burn. Which is exactly what's happening in the Colorado fire.


In short, the "freak" weather we've seen over the last 10 years is doing exactly what climate scientists said it would do. Temperature increases, CO2 levels and sea-level rise are at or above the numbers predicted by the models.


The Republican tactic of throwing a temper tantrum might work for stopping tax increases or repealing health care for all Americans. But it won't stop people from dying of heat stroke or prevent more intense and frequent hurricanes and floods. In the long run, all that damage caused by severe weather and rising seas will cost us trillions of dollars, money we could spend to make our air cleaner and cooler, and making all Americans healthier.

Say Thanks

Remember a couple of months back when President Obama was secretly plotting to drive up gas prices in order to usher in an area of green and clean energy for all his Solyndra like buddies? (This, along with the same plot to walk guns into Mexico which would, in turn, lead to him being able to take guns away here at home.What a crafty Kenyan!)

Yeah, well, things didn't quite happen that way. 

In case you never heard about it, in April the Obama administration asked Congress to spend $52 million to regulate this speculation. According to the Washington Post, this included the following steps:

• Increase by a factor of six Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) surveillance and enforcement staff “to better deter oil market manipulation."

 • Boost 10-fold, to $10 million, the civil and criminal penalties against “firms that engage in market manipulation."

 • Give the CFTC authority to increase the trader margins — the amount of their own capital that traders must set aside for each bet. The administration officials said such authority “could help limit disruptions in energy markets,” according to the Post.

So what’s happened since April? Oil ended the month at $106, and as of June 22, it had lost 21 percent of its value — sitting at $84. I guess I under-estimated the impact of the CME’s boost in margin requirements for oil speculators. 

As I stated back when this flap started, the problem was never the president. The problem was the speculators. Why?

When regulators raise those requirements, oil speculation becomes less attractive to traders, and they place bets elsewhere. And when margin requirements drop, the traders pile into their oil speculations — confident that they can borrow enough to limit their downside while boosting their upside opportunity.

 In February 2011, when commodities exchanges raised the amount of their own capital that speculators must set aside in order to trade — according to Bloomberg, the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) increased its margin requirements 20 percent to $6,075 per contract, and the International Exchange (ICE) increased its margin requirement 7 percent to $5,200 – the price of oil fell 10 percent within a few months.

And a year later, the commodities exchanges cut the amount of capital that speculators need to set aside before trading — the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) cut by 9 percent to $6,885 the amount that Nymex crude speculators have to post to trade the so-called front-month contract, according to MarketWatch – leading prices to soar to $109 that month.

A fine example of how the government can sometimes improve market outcomes and increase market efficiency. These speculators weren't actually trading in oil and were distorting the market. 

So, the next time you fill up at the pump. thank the president for implementing this plan. After all, he is saving you hundreds of dollars a year!

Won't Get Fooled Again

A while back, last in line chided me for not talking more about Fast and Furious, the ATF flap that has currently engulfed Congress and now has resulted in the first ever contempt vote for an Attorney General of the United States. Honestly, I should have listened to his advice and started digging into it. In fact, the same can be said for the media who were accused of ignoring the story because they are in the tank for the Obama Administration. Right wing bloggers all over the nation screamed that the media should start reporting more on this topic.

Oops.

I guess they woke up the sleeping giant.

The agents faced numerous obstacles in what they dubbed the Fast and Furious case. (They named it after the street-racing movie because the suspects drag raced cars together.) Their greatest difficulty by far, however, was convincing prosecutors that they had sufficient grounds to seize guns and arrest straw purchasers. By June 2010 the agents had sent the U.S. Attorney's office a list of 31 suspects they wanted to arrest, with 46 pages outlining their illegal acts. But for the next seven months prosecutors did not indict a single suspect.

Why didn't they arrest them? And, if they were purposefully walking guns, how is it that it comes out now that they wanted to arrest these guys?

Quite simply, there's a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn. 

Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time. 

Wait. How can this be? Every single thing that is published on a right wing blog is 100 percent accurate and never retracted. Oh, wait, I see...

How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today. It's a story that starts with a grudge, specifically Dodson's anger at Voth. After the terrible murder of agent Terry, Dodson made complaints that were then amplified, first by right-wing bloggers, then by CBS. Rep. Issa and other politicians then seized those elements to score points against the Obama administration. 

Amplified, huh...shocking, simply shocking...

Sorry, folks, I really dropped the ball on this one. Had I listened to my regular commenters and dug into this story more extensively we could have been where we are at right now: the truth.

So, I'm very happy to continue to talk about this issue now that all of these facts have come to light.

The Health Care Conversation

Here's a recent conversation I had with a Facebook friend who is positively apoplectic about the Supreme Court's decision on health care. I thought I would copy and past some portions of it as it speaks to some of the comments I have received here thus far. His comments are in blue.

Mark, you're missing the point. The Court didn't say that Congress has the power to tax people for not buying insurance because insurance is important and necessary. The Court said Congress can simply tax people for not doing whatever Congress wants them to do. The point is that if Congress can tax us for not having insurance, it can tax us for not exercising or not eating enough green vegetables.

 I disagree. In looking at the brief, it's very clear throughout the entire opinion that this ties to health care and shared responsibility. For example, 


A tax on going without health insurance does not fall within any recognized category of direct tax. It is not a capitation. Capitations are taxes paid by every person, “without regard to property, profession, or any other circumstance.”  The whole point of the shared responsibility payment is that it is triggered by specific circumstances—earning a certain amount of income but not obtaining health insurance. The payment is also plainly not a tax on the ownership of land or personal property. The shared responsibility payment is thus not a direct tax that must be apportioned among the several States.


To me, this says that the health care market is unique and sets up a precedent that Congress cannot tax people for not doing whatever it is they want them to do. Roberts details that further. 


Congress’s ability to use its taxing power to influence conduct is not without limits. A few of our cases policed these limits aggressively, invalidating punitive exactions obviously designed to regulate behavior otherwise regarded at the time as beyond federal authority.


And the fact that everyone should have decent health care doesn't give Congress or the Court the right to trample to trample the Constitution and invent new powers for Congress to achieve a desired end. I agree that those who benefit from receiving health care should pay for it. But that doesn't mean that the federal government, having gotten in the business of providing and paying for health care, has broad power to compel people to buy health insurance.


From the brief... 


None of this is to say that payment is not intended to induce the purchase of health insurance. But the mandate need not be read to declare that failing to do so is unlawful. Neither the Affordable Care Act nor any other law attaches negative legal consequences to not buying health insurance, beyond requiring a payment to the IRS. And Congress’s choice of language—stating that individuals “shall” obtain insurance or pay a “penalty”—does not require reading §5000A as punishing unlawful conduct.


Further 


The Act, however, bars the IRS from using several of its normal enforcement tools, such as criminal prosecutions and levies. §5000A(g)(2). And some individuals who are subject to the mandate are nonetheless exempt from the penalty—for example, those with income below a certainthreshold and members of Indian tribes. §5000A(e).


So, it's not "broad or new power." In fact, Roberts points out (as does the law), that it is limited power. Roberts also goes to great lengths to point out in the commerce clause section and necessary and proper section that the Constitution does indeed limit the power of the federal government. So, no trampling here certainly. I'd also urge you to read pgs 41-43 of the brief and take note of Roberts reference to Benjamin Franklin's letter to M. Le Roy regarding the Constitution and taxes. 


What if we moved away from an insurance-based model and simply expected that people were going to pay hospital and doctor bills on their own? The cost of healthcare is ridiculously inflated by the comprehensive insurance model, which keeps larding benefits into plans. The government can tax people to put money into a pool available on a means-tested basis for those who can't pay for major health problems. Let people take back ownership for their own health care costs, decisions and priorities. 


The issue I have here is inelastic demand. If services and products were directly available to the public without insurance in the way, what's to stop the supplier from charging a high price. In many health care markets, demand is inelastic because people aren't going to leave the market when the price goes up. The suppliers will know that they have their customers trapped and will undoubtedly act to increase profit. So, these markets would not allocate resources efficiently and consumer surplus would erode. Believe me, I'd love to remove insurance from the equation. My wife and I pay nearly 800 dollars a month for our family! But that would lead to higher prices unless the government got involved and put price controls in place. That also would be detrimental as it would erode market efficiency. 


Don't forget that the Democratic Congress and the Administration argued loudly and repeatedly that revenue in re: the individual mandate was NOT a tax. The Court has declared that it is, so therefore it is constitutional. It's bizarro-world. Again, what practical limits are there now on Congress' power to force people to do whatever it happens to decide is in the people's best interest?


These practical limits are pointed out extensively in the brief as I have listed above. You and I have different sensitivities when it comes to the federal government so we will likely have to agree to disagree here. My hope is that you take some solace in Roberts' words, though:) 


Enumerated powers is effectively a dead doctrine, and now the federal government can do anything that the constitution and Court precedent have not explicitly forbidden. Think about that, and what that might mean when a political party and/or President you don't like get back in power.


Well, this speaks to our differing views on government. Yes, government is indeed bigger today but so is the private sector. I don't see a problem with that. We have a 15 trillion dollar economy and a global marketplace that is in a constant state of change every single day. In my view, having less government in light of these facts (and regardless of who is in power), would be detrimental.


That's it so far. Likely the conversation will continue...

Today's Decision

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States voted 5-4 to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Directly after this decision was handed down, conservatives around the country went even more batshit than they are already are and took to Twitter and Facebook to scream about the federal government.

"What doesn't the federal government have the power to tax?" one of my FB friends asked? Xanax? Therapy?

Anyhoozles, here are my thoughts on the decision.

As I noted yesterday, everyone wins. The president's signature bill is Constitutional. The Democrats can now run with a very large win under their belt as there will be no more legal challenges to the ACA. Mitt Romney wins because now he can now energize the base for this election with promises of repeal. I know he is saying "Repeal and Replace" but I have yet to see the "Replace" part of that equation. In fact, is there a solution from anyone on the right other than "Do Nothing?" Regardless, there are a lot of Armageddon shelter builders out there that will now turn out to vote.

The main thing I keep thinking about is how this was originally a GOP plan. It originated at the Heritage Foundation and does, in essence, what the right bitches about all the time-ELIMINATE THE FREELOADERS. Since the law states that we must treat everyone, then everyone should have health insurance. If you choose not to (that's right, no one is forcing you), you have to pay a penalty.

Now the GOP were all for this until January of 2009 when Obama and the Democrats got behind it in the completely hilarious hope that the Republicans would support it as well. That ended up going something like this.

"What?!!!? Dad and Mom support it now??!! Fuck that noise!"

And then they hated it.

Toss in all the feelings and emotions they have about the other side winning and you have all the usual.

I'm sadly disappointed in Anthony Kennedy for not siding with Chief Justice Roberts and the other four justices in the majority. For being a "swing voter," he certainly does seem to fall on libertarian grounds more often than not. The fact that he couldn't see it as a tax shows how his personal ideology interfered with his supposed blind judgement. That's also true of Scalia, Alito, and Thomas.

Speaking of taxes, wasn't it great how Chief Justice Roberts did the Democrats job for them? The fact that they were so chicken shit back in 2009-2010 that they couldn't call it a tax says a lot. Now, of course, it's fine to talk about raising taxes on the wealthy after the OWS movement but where were they back then when it took real guts?

Doing a piss poor job of effectively communicating why this bill is needed while allowing the right to panic monger the shit out of it.

I guess I'm happy, mostly, though with the outcome today. It's the best option we have right now for dealing with this problem and I'm grateful that John Roberts saw this in a larger picture rather than his personal ideological lens.

Chief Justice Roberts Mans Up

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare, is constitutional in a five to four decision. The ruling lets stand the personal mandate and most of the other provisions, the exception being the  penalties imposed on states that refuse to expand Medicaid.


This is a major milestone for the Supreme Court, which for the last twelve years has made many decisions for political instead of legal reasons. This ruling, along with Monday's on the Arizona immigration law, may indicate that Chief Justice John Roberts is evolving into an independent jurist who takes his stewardship of the law of the land seriously, and is not a political puppet bent on satisfying his political masters or pursuing a partisan agenda. The different between Roberts and Antonin Scalia is particularly striking.

The interesting thing about the ruling was that the mandate was found constitutional not on the commerce clause, but on the federal government's authority to levy taxes. This was always obvious to me from the beginning, but Democrats avoided characterizing it that way because they didn't want to be painted as creating a new tax. During oral arguments the justices seemed to denigrate the commerce clause as a justification for the mandate, making many think it would almost certainly be overturned. Scalia attempted to equate the mandate to forcing people to buy broccoli.

This was always a bogus argument, because people who don't buy broccoli don't eat broccoli, but people who don't pay for health insurance can still use health care. If you have a medical emergency the hospital is required by law to treat you. Which means that if you have a heart attack while jogging you won't die just because you didn't have your insurance card with you.

The law does not make it a crime to avoid buying health insurance. You just have to pay a penalty if you're not covered. In essence you have the choice between a) buying health insurance and b) paying an obstinacy tax. Furthermore, if you really can't afford to pay for health care the law provides subsidies and exceptions.


People have characterized the mandate as Obama's plan, but during the 2008 presidential primary he frequently voiced his opposition to it. Hillary Clinton had endorsed mandates by 2008 because conservatives, like Mitt Romney and Bob Dole and the Heritage Foundation, had proposed it to counter the health care plan she developed during the first Clinton administration. Obama and many Democrats compromised and reluctantly signed on to the mandate thinking that they could get some number of those same conservatives to be consist and continue to support what they themselves had invented. But almost no Republicans signed on; they only cared about handing Obama a political defeat.

Everyone knows that our health care system is too expensive and inefficient, that hospitals can't be expected to provide emergency room treatment for free, and that people should be responsible for themselves. Republican opposition to the health care law is simply political sabotage.

It's a relief to see Justice Roberts admit that and do what's right for the country.

SCOTUS EVE

'Twas the night before the Supreme Court ruling and all through the house, predictions and prognostications were stirring even the mouse! Any thoughts on how it will go? Politico has an interesting piece up that essentially says that if the law is partially or entirely struck down, everyone loses.  

I agree. 

To the Ends of the Earth!

A lot of the people who support Big Oil are skeptical that human CO2 emissions from the burning of coal and oil could possibly change the climate. But Big Oil is about to make out like bandits because the receding arctic ice cap has uncovered a new supply of oil near the North Pole. Because the ice cap is now gone most of the summer, Shell Oil will be able to start exploratory drilling this summer.

According to an article in Scientific American (which has frequently run ads for Shell):

The US Geological Survey estimated in 2008 that the Arctic holds up to 90 billion barrels of oil — 13% of the world’s technically recoverable supply. Exploration and production is already under way on the other side of the Arctic, off Norway and Russia, for example (see The great Arctic oil race begins). Many parts of the Arctic circle are becoming ever-more accessible thanks to improved technologies and a reduction in summer sea ice because of climate change.

That 90 billion number is interesting, because the estimated world consumption of oil for 2010 is about 90 million barrels a day, according to this website and by adding up the numbers on the CIA world factbook website.

That means the entire reserve in the arctic would last the world about a thousand days, or less than three years. However, it will likely take years or decades to extract that oil, because the oil fields are remote, frigid and deep beneath the ocean. If you thought the technological challenges of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico were daunting, imagine drilling for oil when the temperature is 40 below zero and the wind is blowing 50 miles an hour. Because even though the arctic sea ice now melts almost completely in the summer, winter at the pole is still terribly harsh. And since countries like Russia, Norway, Sweden, Canada and Finland will also have claims to arctic oil the amount the United States could drill would likely last less than a single year.

Doesn't it seem a little crazy to spend that much money and risk men's lives in such a treacherous environment to extract that last little bit of oil from the ends of the earth? At this point it makes more sense to invest those resources on a renewable source that will provide us with energy for long term. We can always wait to go after that oil later, after the technology has improved.

But it makes you wonder: are Big Oil's supporters intentionally lying about global warming so they can get at that last bit of oil?

Step One: Be A Giant Dick

When 14-year-old boys sound exactly like you do and can produce radio shows and books and speeches that sound exactly like yours, maybe you should rethink the shit that comes out of your mouth. Remember the Republican debates we had this year? They applauded for the idea of letting a sick man without insurance die. Herman Cain got cheers for saying he’d electrify the border fence. They booed a gay man serving his country in the military. No wonder 14-year-old boys can do your act, you act exactly like 14-year-old boys.

There’s no ideology here. It’s just about being a dick.

Yep. 

A Victory? Really?

Today in what many are calling a victory for the Arizona immigration law, the Supreme Court ruled most the law unconstitutional:

The justices let stand for now the part of the law that requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they detain or arrest if they have “reasonable suspicion” that the person is in the country illegally. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) declared that decision, on the part of the law that had generated the most controversy, a victory. 

The court ruled that Arizona cannot make it a misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to carry identification that says whether they are in the United States legally; cannot make it a crime for undocumented immigrants to apply for a job; and cannot arrest someone based solely on the suspicion that the person is in this country illegally. 

The court also said the part of the law it upheld — requiring officers to check the immigration status of those they detain and reasonably believe to be illegal immigrants — could be subject to additional legal challenges once it is implemented.

This means that the state of Arizona can force the police to you for your papers if they've stopped you on the street for some other reason, but the cops can't arrest you if you fail to do so, they can't arrest you for applying for a job without producing papers, and they can't arrest you just because they suspect you're here illegally.

What's the point of being able to ask for your papers if you can just say no, and there's nothing they can do if you refuse?

Basically, the Supreme Court says it's okay for Arizona to make laws that require the police to hassle people on the street. It's okay to pass laws that produce an oppressive cloud of suspicion on anyone who looks "Mexican."

The Court also left open the door for challenges the law once it goes into effect. This seems quite likely because different jurisdictions will enforce it differently, and different officers will exercise varying degrees of "reasonable suspicion," meaning that there will be selective enforcement and individuals will not all receive equal treatment under the law.

This doesn't sound like a big victory for Jan Brewer and the "centerpiece" of law. It sounds like this law was just gutted of its enforcement provisions, and will promptly be challenged when Joe Arpaio's men start harassing people for DWL (driving while Latino). And since the entire basis of it is blatantly subjective, it will probably face a skeptical Supreme Court if the state bothers to appeal it that far.