It's Up to the Voters Now

The last chance to stop ObamaCare is in November

By Paul Clement

If there is a modicum of hope in Chief Justice John Roberts's inglorious one-man opinion Thursday, it is that Americans were reminded again that they cannot count on others to protect their liberty. Certainly judges aren't reliable. They can be turned by the pressure of the media and the whims of vanity. If Americans want to repeal ObamaCare, their only recourse is to demand it at the ballot box in November.

The Affordable Care Act is more unpopular now than when it passed, yet it will grind on toward implementation in a second Obama term. The President made that clear in his remarks Thursday, deploying the usual half-truths he used to jam the law through Congress. He continued to claim that no one will lose his current health insurance, though millions are sure to do so as they are dropped from business coverage and tossed into Medicaid or government exchanges.

The Supreme Court And Natural Law

A tough but valuable lesson

by James Miller
I won a bet today.

A few weeks ago I wagered with a coworker that the United States Supreme Court would uphold the Affordable Care Act otherwise known as Obamacare.  He reasoned that the federal government has no authority under the Constitution to force an individual to purchase a product from a private company.  My reasoning was much simpler.  Because the Supreme Court is a functioning arm of the state, it will do nothing to stunt Leviathan’s growth.  The fact that the Court declared no federal law unconstitutional from 1937 to 1995—from the tail end of the New Deal through Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society—should have been proof enough.  He naively believed in the impartialness of politically-appointed judges.  For the first time he saw that those nine individuals are nothing more than politicians with an allegiance to state supremacy.

It was a tough but valuable lesson to learn.

The Big Blink?

Not Really

by Wolf Richter   

Markets soared in Asia, Europe, the US, everywhere. Let the good times roll. The euro jumped to the highest level in a couple of weeks. Yields on Spanish bonds plunged to the lowest level since, well, Monday. A miracle had happened. German Chancellor Angela Merkel had blinked. Um, a little bit.

All eyes were on her at the EU summit in Brussels, the one summit that would once and for all save the Eurozone, THE summit, where she’d be forced to submit to the majority of the Eurozone, and indeed to the majority of the world, and where she’d be forced to come to her senses and give in to the demands set out before the summit.

There was the Grand Plan, issued by European Council President Herman Van Rompuy. It included all the goodies: a European Treasury with power over national budgets and how much countries could borrow; Eurobonds; a banking union that would guarantee deposits; and the ESM that would bail out banks directly.

The Largest Theft Racket In World History

U.S. Entitlements

By Wendy Milling

Suppose that you were a police officer who moved in on a major theft racket that involved thousands of people. You arrest the perpetrators and question them, whereupon they nonchalantly tell you the secret incentive that drew hordes of loot-seekers into their racket.

They had agreed amongst themselves that new recruits would steal from victims on the outside and then turn the loot over to older members. The older members would assist the newer members in the commission of the thefts, and some of the loot would be used to buy off key law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, witnesses, and others in order to assist the racket or protect it from trouble. After a time, the newer members became older members entitled to take from the new recruits. The loot turned out to be larger in size than your state’s economy.

A Finalized Path to Full, Socialized Medicine in America

Thanks to Conservatives and George W. Bush 
By Richard M. Salsman

Once again American conservatives have struck a lethal blow against freedom, rights and capitalism. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling today, condoning every sordid feature of the 2700-page, rights-violating “ObamaCare” law, ensures that America will move still farther and faster down the path to full, socialized medicine, a path first paved in the 1960s, with Medicare and Medicaid. The lawless ruling was made possible by the vote of Chief Justice John Roberts, an appointee of “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush.

With today’s ruling the U.S. government can do virtually anything it wishes to its citizens – liberty and rights be damned, without limit. Officially in America we now have a totally arbitrary and limitless government. That is, we have a “total government.” In short, we’ve got totalitarian government. As to how much further liberty we may lose in our lifetimes, it’ll depend only on how arbitrary and vicious reigning rulers choose to be, or not. There’s no real Rule of Law any more, only the Rule of Men – and these are mostly ignorant, reckless men.

The Truth About Healthcare

Medical care is a scarce good

By Douglas French

Nothing starts a fistfight like the health-care debate. The market for what is just a basic service has been contorted and mangled by government intervention for more than a century. The average person wouldn’t know a free-market health care system if they saw one.

“Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” must include health care, say those on the political left. The alternative is barbaric, they claim. Never mind that someone else’s rights must be trampled upon in order to provide the “right” of health care. And never mind that the results will be seriously degraded for everyone but the elite.

But the political right is just as clueless. Who can forget the Tea Party member who protested loudly, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”

Yet another betrayal, from yet another "compassionate conservative"

A lie makes Obamacare legal

By mark steyn

Three months ago, I quoted George Jonas on the 30th anniversary of Canada's ghastly "Charter of Rights and Freedoms": "There seems to be an inverse relationship between written instruments of freedom, such as a Charter, and freedom itself," wrote Jonas. "It's as if freedom were too fragile to be put into words: If you write down your rights and freedoms, you lose them."

For longer than one might have expected, the U.S. Constitution was a happy exception to that general rule – until, that is, the contortions required to reconcile a republic of limited government with the ambitions of statism rendered U.S. constitutionalism increasingly absurd. As I also wrote three months ago (yes, yes, don't worry, there's a couple of sentences of new material in amongst all the I-told-you-so stuff), "The United States is the only Western nation in which our rulers invoke the Constitution for the purpose of overriding it – or, at any rate, torturing its language beyond repair."

‘Ordering Nature Around’ Some More and Why the EU May Break Apart

France Raises the Minimum Wage Rate
By Pater Tenebrarum

Crisis-stricken Greece had to cut its minimum wage by 22% in February this year – this was part of its agreement with the 'Troika' of lenders. For workers under the age of 25 the cut was an even bigger 32%.

Reuters at the time wistfully reported that this 'slashed the living standards of low-paid workers'. Presumably the author of the report would have rather seen them join the swelling ranks of the unemployed and retain a vague hope of a 'higher living standard' if their jobs ever came back.

Minimum wages raise no-one's living standard. They merely price unskilled workers out of the labor market. Not a single advance in living standards can be credited to so-called 'pro-labor' legislation – what raises real wages and living standards is the increase in capital per worker employed and the concomitant increase in economic productivity.

A Eurocrash is baked in the Cake

"All these hordes of Eurocrats should be summarily fired, and their agencies totally abolished"

In a pungent interview with Louis James, Doug Casey talks about the coming economic crash and how to survive it.

Louis James: So Doug, you're off to FreedomFest 2012 shortly, where people will be able to hear your latest thoughts on many subjects. Maybe you can give us a sneak preview on whatever is uppermost on your mind today. 

Doug: Lately I've been thinking about the EU's rising tide of troubles. We talked about this last January, when I said it was coming, but it seems to me that at this point it's rapidly coming to a head. A major financial and economic catastrophe in Europe is unavoidable. From there, it's likely to spread out to the whole world.

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.