John Roberts’s Betrayal

The "stealth strategy" for the court has failed -- try winning elections instead.

By W. JAMES ANTLE III

The Supreme Court was poised to deliver conservatives a major victory by overturning a hated liberal policy with little basis in the Constitution. A majority of the justices had been appointed by Republican presidents. Some of them were so conservative that Senate Democrats had attempted to prevent their confirmation.

Yet when the much anticipated ruling was finally handed down, the liberal policy was upheld with fairly minor caveats. A Republican-appointed justice unexpectedly voted with the liberal bloc. Instead of a victory, conservatives feared they had endured a permanent defeat on an important issue, and in an election year to boot.

While this certainly describes the past day’s events, it was also true 20 years ago. When the Senate narrowly confirmed Clarence Thomas, liberals feared he would be the deciding vote against Roe v. Wade. Well, Thomas did rule that Roe was wrongly decided at his first opportunity. But in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 5-4 majority affirmed the core holding of the infamous abortion decision.

The Constitution Is What They Make It

The Founders’ fear of a powerful central government has been betrayed by the Court

 “You are free to not eat broccoli, but if you don’t the government will impose a penalty on you. This penalty is really just a tax and since the government has the power to tax for all sorts of reasons, they can tax you if you don’t eat broccoli.”

By Jeff Harding

This is the logic of Justice Roberts argument in the Obamacare case that was handed down today.

This should not surprise us because the Constitution is whatever the Justices wish it to be. Now they have handed the government another mandate to regulate our behavior. As we know they can and do regulate our behavior already. For example, if you smoke, they will tax your habit heavily. It is not a giant leap to force you to do something they want you to do by penalizing you for not doing it. According to today’s ruling, there is nothing in the Constitution preventing them from doing this.

This Frau’s Not for Turning

At Least Not Yet

By DoctoRx

The Telegraph has an opinion piece out titled Angela Merkel isn’t bluffing; like everyone else in Europe, she’s defending national sovereignty.  It compares her to Britain’s Margaret Thatcher in steadfastness and then says this:

"Take this extraordinarily prescient observation by the radical economist Wynne Godley, penned as early as 1992. “It needs to be emphasised at the   start that the establishment of a single currency in the EC would indeed   bring to an end the sovereignty of its component nations and their power to   take independent action on major issues…I sympathise with those (like Margaret Thatcher) who, faced with the loss of sovereignty wish to get off the EMU train altogether. I also sympathise with those who seek integration under the jurisdiction of some federal constitution with a federal budget very much larger than that of the Community budget."

The Healthcare Myths We Must Confront

Fixing our system is not as complicated as many make it out to be

As debate about whether ObamaCare is a good idea continues, rejecting four major misconceptions about healthcare is crucial to any chance of our eventually emerging with a better system.

By Cliff Asness

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ObamaCare decision, we must refocus. The Court’s decision was never about whether ObamaCare was a good idea, only about whether it was constitutional. The Court found a convoluted way to uphold the law.

That’s done, but the debate on whether ObamaCare’s provisions are good ideas will continue. To date, this debate has been unable to shake off a lot of mythology—things believed about healthcare and our healthcare system in general, or ObamaCare specifically—that simply are not so.

A Confused Opinion

Another Step towards full scale Socialism

By RICHARD A. EPSTEIN

THE stunner yesterday was that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., joined by the Supreme Court’s four most liberal justices, wrote the majority opinion that upheld the individual mandate in President Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act, which requires Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. In an ironic twist, the chief justice simultaneously accepted the conservative argument that Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce did not include the power to regulate economic inactivity, like a decision not to purchase health care. The court ruled 5 to 4 on that point, with the chief justice joined by the court’s four other conservative justices.

But what Chief Justice Roberts took from Congress with one hand, he gave it with the other: a broad reading of the taxing power. In the majority opinion, he wrote that since paying a penalty for not obtaining insurance could be seen as a tax, and since “the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.” He will no doubt attract praise in some quarters for splitting this baby.

Americans Are Being Prepared For Full Spectrum Tyranny

It is happening right now

by Brandon Smith

Totalitarian governments, like persistent forms of cancer, have latched onto the long history of man, falling and then reemerging from the deep recesses of our cultural biology to wreak havoc upon one unlucky generation to the next.  The assumption by most is that these unfortunate empires are the product of bureaucracies gone awry; overtaken by the chaotic maddening hunger for wealth and power, and usually manipulated by the singular ambitions of a mesmerizing dictator.  For those of us in the Liberty Movement who are actually educated on the less acknowledged details of history, oligarchy and globalized centralism is much less random than this, and a far more deliberate and devious process than the general unaware public is willing consider.  

Unfortunately, the final truth is very complex, even for us… 

The Long Memory of “The Sick Man of Europe”

Governments in the EU “are all bankrupt,” and Europeans “will be indentured servants of the Chinese.”

By Wolf Richter

It’s astounding just how distorted the coverage of Germany’s role in some grand Eurozone bailout scheme has been—well, at least in the English-speaking mainstream media. Time after time, we’re confronted with the inanest headlines and reports that place German politicians, and particularly Chancellor Angela Merkel, on some kind of invisible verge where they will suddenly, and under tremendous international pressure, come to their senses and ... blink.

And by blinking, Germany would agree to, guarantee, and fund all the panaceas regularly trotted out by those that need them, particularly Spain, Italy, and now loudest of all, due to its shaky megabanks, France. The lasted blast came from the Wall Street Journal where Berlin Blinks on Shared Debt. Others regurgitated it, including MarketWatch. Yet, it contradicted everything that either German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble or Chancellor Merkel had ever been quoted saying in the German press. And indeed, not much later, a spokesman at the Ministry of Finance made it clear, once again: “This is not true,” he said.

Rio +20 Earth Summit

The End of International Environmentalism

By Ronald Bailey

Twenty years ago the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro marked the ascension of environmentalism as a political force in international affairs. That conference in 1992 produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. At the time, Chris Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute crowed, “You cannot go to any corner of the globe and not find some degree of environmental awareness and some amount of environmental politics.” Flavin added that with socialism in disrepute, environmentalism is now the “most powerful political ideal today.” At the conclusion of the Rio +20 Earth Summit, it is clear that that is no longer so.

The largest United Nations conference ever—featuring more than 50,000 participants from 188 nations —was a flop. For most of the environmentalist ideologues at the Rio +20 conference the only question was whether it was a “hoax” or a “failure.” Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking preferred "hoax" while "failure" was Greenpeace spokesperson Kumi Naidoo’s dismissive term.

The Mysticism of "Social Justice"

A good catchword can stop thought for 50 years

By Thomas Sowell

If there were a Hall of Fame for political rhetoric, the phrase "social justice" would deserve a prominent place there. It has the prime virtue of political catchwords: It means many different things to many different people.

In other words, if you are a politician, you can get lots of people, with different concrete ideas, to agree with you when you come out boldly for the vague generality of "social justice."

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catchword can stop thought for 50 years. The phrase "social justice" has stopped many people from thinking, for at least a century -- and counting.

The war is over

And nobody won

The ‘symbolic’ handshake between the queen and the former IRA chief is a meeting of the ghosts of British imperialism and Irish republicanism.

by Mick Hume 

Everybody agrees that the meeting between Her Majesty the Queen and Martin McGuinness, the IRA commander-turned-deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, is heavily ‘symbolic’. But what exactly does it symbolise?

In all of the media fuss about the planned handshake behind closed doors, a key word has been ‘reconciliation’. That rather gives the game away. Because there could never be reconciliation between Irish republicanism and the British Crown. They are, by definition, mortal enemies whose hands belong around one another’s throat. The handshake between the queen and McGuinness must be symbolic of something else: the fact that neither the unionist British Establishment nor the Irish republican movement still exists in its historic form. It is a meeting of ghosts – the ghost of British imperialism and that of Irish republicanism.

Inviting the state into our intimacies

Marriage should become a matter of private preference rather than an institution validated by the state

Gay marriage is presented as an issue of equal rights, but it’s better understood as a top-down overhaul of the institution of marriage.

by Frank Furedi 

Today, there are continuous disputes over moral issues – abortion, sexuality, euthanasia – yet the ideal of marriage retains a formidable influence over society.

It is true that this ideal is frequently contradicted by people’s behaviour. Britain is now at a point where people are more likely to co-habit than get married. Almost half of new births occur outside of marriage. With spectacularly high rates of divorce and a rise in single-parent households, it would appear that marriage has lost its status as a fundamental institution of society. And yet marriage as an ideal still dominates the cultural imagination. Most people look upon marriage as an institution that deserves society’s support, and also as a model that they aspire to embrace.

The Math Scam

Only so much stuff can be forced inside human brain

By Stan Brin

Some of us are good at math, some of us struggle merely to get through it.

Whether we’re good at it or bad, few of us will ever again use anything we learned in calculus or trigonometry class ever again, not even once. After graduation, few will even be able to recognize such general terms as sine and cosine, much less be able to explain what they mean.

For those who want to become engineers, scientists or economists, math is the foundation of their careers. It’s vital, not to be questioned.

For the rest of us — and I include technicians and medical workers* among the rest of us — math is, more often than not, a painful and soul-breaking ritual that we are forced to endure if we hope to have a decent life.

The official line is that lots and lots of math is supposed to prepare us for work. It’s supposed to teach us to think logically. It’s also supposed to help America compete against Asian Tiger economies that are eating our national lunch.

Many Keynesians really hate the concept of liquidationism

I’m trying to grasp why

By John Aziz

Paul Krugman wrote:

One discouraging feature of the current economic crisis is the way many economists and economic commentators — apparently ignorant of what went on over the last 75 years or so of macroeconomic debate — have been reinventing old fallacies, imagining that they were coming up with profound insights.

The Bank for International Settlements has decided to throw everything we’ve learned from 80 years of hard thought about macroeconomics out the window, and to embrace full-frontal liquidationism. The BIS is now advocating a position indistinguishable from that of Schumpeter in the 1930s, opposing any monetary expansion because that would leave “the work of depressions undone”.

How Much To Save The Euro?

How much does it make sense for Germany to pay?

by Geoffrey Wood

Germany keeps being told that it must pay up to save the euro. But how much can Germany pay? No-one seems to have thought about that, but there is already concern about the possible size of bill – German bond yields rose soon after news of the Spanish bail out, even before it was announced where the money was going to come from. (And it was of course a bail out for Spain, regardless of what Spain’s prime minister says. If I borrow money and then lend it to someone else I’ve still borrowed it.)

There is though a more basic question. How much does it make sense for Germany to pay? What sort of bill would it be reasonable to present to them? In fact the best approximation one can arrive at is a bill of zero.

Why zero? What about all these exports that have been produced because Germany has a currency whose value is determined not just by Germany but also by less productive, higher cost, economies?  That link has artificially depressed the prices of German exports. These net exports resulting from Germany’s Eurozone membership are actually the problem.

Without change US will become a socialist nation

The Rest versus the old West

Moyo achieved a chemistry degree and MBA at Washington DC’s American University, a doctorate in economics from Oxford and a masters from Harvard before working as a consultant at the World Bank and then for nearly a decade at Goldman.

Economist Dambisa Moyo predicts in her new book that the West's economic dominance will collapse unless some very difficult choices are made.

By Andrew Cave

Dambisa Moyo is that rare type of person – an economist who makes waves. Her first book, Dead Aid, angered many in the charity sector by arguing that foreign aid has harmed Africa and should be phased out.

Her second, which is published in London on Thursday, accuses America and other Western powers of squandering their world economic dominance through a sustained catalogue of fundamentally flawed policies.

How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly – And the Stark Choices Ahead goes so far as to predict that the US will be a “bona fide socialist welfare state” by the latter part of this century.

Peripheral Europe will never be like Germany

The End Of The Euro: What’s Austerity Got To Do With It?

By Simon Johnson

Most of the current policy discussion concerning the euro area is about austerity.  Some people – particularly in German government circles – are pushing for tighter fiscal policies in troubled countries (i.e., higher taxes and lower government spending).  Others – including in the new French government — are more inclined to push for a more expansive fiscal policy where possible and to resist fiscal contraction elsewhere.

The recently concluded G20 summit is being interpreted as shifting the balance away from the “austerity now” group, at least to some extent.  But both sides of this debate are missing the important issue.  As a result, the euro area continues its slide towards deeper crisis and likely eventual disruptive break-up.

No Peak Oil in Sight

We've Got an Unprecedented Upsurge in Global Oil Production Underway

The global oil boom underway represents the most significant increase in any decade since the 1980s.

By Mark Perry

In the tradition of resource economist Julian Simon, here are some of the conclusions and predictions from new research just published by Harvard Research Fellow Leonardo Maugeri, titled "Oil: The Next Revolution; The Unprecedented Upsurge of Oil Production Capacity""

1. Contrary to what most people believe, oil is not in short supply and oil supply capacity is growing worldwide at such an unprecedented level that it might outpace consumption. From a purely physical point of view, there are huge volumes of conventional and unconventional oils still to be developed, withno “peak-oil” in sight. The full deployment of the world’s oil potential depends only on price, technology, and political factors. More than 80 percent of the additional production under development globally appears to be profitable with a price of oil higher than $70 per barrel.

A Guidebook for the Urban Age

Cities may rise and fall, but the concept of the city can't be unmade

By NATE BERG

The city is both ambiguous and defined, with endless quirks but also finite borders. It's housing and politics and slang and disease and a zillion other things, a fractal-like creature that becomes more complex the closer you look. Delving in is exciting but also a little intimidating. None of that dissuaded P.D. Smith, author of the new book City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age, an impressively comprehensive look at this very broad topic.

Culture Matters

Why the West is Best

By Bruce S. Thornton

Occasionally, the mainstream media will let slip something that reveals the incoherence of multiculturalist orthodoxy. Not long ago, the New York Times reported on an Indian casino in California that had begun purging its rolls of members deemed insufficiently Indian. At the end of the story, an official from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, himself an Indian, remarked: “The tribe has historically had the ability to remove people. Tolerance is a European thing brought to the country. We never tolerated things. We turned our back on people.”

Such honesty about the Western origins of goods like tolerance is rare these days among the media, academic, and popular-culture purveyors of multicultural “diversity.” For them, other cultures are just as good as, if not better than, the West’s—but at the same time, these cultures allegedly endorse Western ideals such as tolerance, gender equality, human rights, political freedom, and the other universal boons to which people everywhere aspire. They deem it Eurocentric or racist to assert the superiority of the West because it originated those goods, even as they castigate the West for its racist, sexist, imperialist, and colonialist crimes. But as Ibn Warraq shows in his thoughtful and compelling new book, the ideals that even multicultural relativists profess have their origin and highest development in the West.

The forgotten man

There are still Hans Littens around the world today

by Hans Nilssen
In the Berlin courtroom, Adolf Hitler's face burned a deep, furious red.

The future dictator was not accustomed to this kind of scrutiny.

But here he was, being interrogated about the violence of his paramilitary thugs by a young man who represented everything he despised - a radical, principled, fiercely intelligent Jewish lawyer called Hans Litten.

The Nazi leader was floundering in the witness stand. And when Litten asked why his party published an incitement to overthrow the state, Hitler lost his composure altogether.

"That is a statement that can be proved by nothing!" he shouted.

Litten's demolition of Hitler's argument that the Nazis were a peaceful, democratic movement earned the lawyer years of brutal persecution.