(mostly via http://instapundit.com) http://patterico.com/2011/01/31/analysis-of-florida-obamacare-ruling-an-enlig... http://volokh.com/2011/01/31/todays-florida-district-court-ruling-striking-do... http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-turn/2011/01/left_unreasoned_and_unpre... http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/01/028256.php http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/florida-ruling-requires-government-to-stop-imp... http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/258509/obamacare-declared-unconstit...
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
A judicial drubbing for Obamacare | Washington Examiner
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2011/01/judicial-drubbing-obamacare
In a rigorously reasoned decision that seemed to delight in turning the government's arguments on their head, U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson on Monday struck down as unconstitutional President Obama's signature legislative achievement, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. In the suit brought by 26 states, Vinson found that "Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority" by including the individual mandate and held the entire act unconstitutional "because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable" from the rest of the law. Vinson, who was appointed by President Reagan to the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Florida in Pensacola, even tweaked Obama, pointing out in a concluding footnote that the president whose name is forever linked to the measure had backed a health care reform bill without an individual mandate when he was in the Senate. Vinson quoted then-Senator Obama as saying in 2008 that "if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house."Vinson said the government even conceded that its interpretation of the Commerce Clause to support the individual mandate "breaks new legal ground" and is "unprecedented." He concluded, "If it has the power to compel an otherwise passive individual into a commercial transaction with a third party ... it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted. It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place."
Monday, January 24, 2011
Thomas Sowell on State Bankruptcy
Read the whole thing for other interesting bits. I just want to address this one issue...
http://rightwingnews.com/2011/01/interviewing-thomas-sowell-on-basic-economics/We're getting very close to the point where we could have states default on their debts for the first time. What should happen then? They should go bankrupt. I'm looking forward to it. There are three possibilities -- bankruptcy or bailouts or ruinous taxations. Of the three, bankruptcy is the one that makes the most sense because it's the one that conveys the most accurate knowledge -- which is that they've run out of money and couldn't cover all the promises they made. That fact should be revealed to all for future reference. The other thing about bankruptcy is that it's the only thing I know of that can get rid of these ruinous public sector union contracts with these extravagant pensions. Those pensions are so popular because the politicians can promise the pension now and get votes now without losing the votes of taxpayers now, because they don't set aside enough money to cover the pensions. Then they simply kick the can down the road and leave it to somebody else to figure out what to do when the money runs out.
I greatly admire Thomas Sowell, and I would never contradict him on economics, but I think he's ignoring the constitutional issues with state bankruptcies. States are sovereign -- there's no current legal way for them to go "bankrupt". They can simply refuse to pay theirs debts, as some did after the Civil War. I think it would take a constitutional amendment to allow states to go bankrupt. That's probably a good idea, but it seems unlikely to happen as long as Democrats are in power. They'll go for a federal bailout so that they can protect their political allies. Look for the bond holders to take a severe haircut. Ask the Chrysler bond holders how that worked out for them.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Greg Mankiw's Blog: Give me $1 billion to cut the budget deficit
(via instapundit) http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2011/01/give-me-1-billion-to-reduce-budget.html > I have a plan to reduce the budget deficit. The essence of the plan is the federal government writing me a check for $1 billion. The plan will be financed by $3 billion of tax increases. According to my back-of-the envelope calculations, giving me that $1 billion will reduce the budget deficit by $2 billion.
>> Now, you may be tempted to say that giving me that $1 billion will not really reduce the budget deficit. Rather, you might say, it is the tax increases, which have nothing to do with my handout, that are reducing the budget deficit. But if you are tempted by that kind of sloppy thinking, you have not been following the debate over healthcare reform. If everybody would just accept government bail-outs, we'd all be on the road to prosperity in no time at all.
>> Now, you may be tempted to say that giving me that $1 billion will not really reduce the budget deficit. Rather, you might say, it is the tax increases, which have nothing to do with my handout, that are reducing the budget deficit. But if you are tempted by that kind of sloppy thinking, you have not been following the debate over healthcare reform. If everybody would just accept government bail-outs, we'd all be on the road to prosperity in no time at all.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
GOP Leaders Unveil Bill To Gut $2.5 Trillion In Government Spending - HUMAN EVENTS
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=41297
Return spending to the 2008 levels, and, after that, force discretionary spending down to 2006 levels. Return unspent “stimulus” money. Slice the civilian government workforce by 15%. Eliminate government subsidies to the Public Broadcasting System, the National Endowment for the Arts, Amtrak, the National Organic Certification Cost-Share Program, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, among other agencies and programs. Prevent funding from going to the implementation of ObamaCare as well as restrict taxpayer money from being used by government lawyers to defend any provisions of the healthcare bill in court.
House repeals healthcare law
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/138897-house-votes-to-repeal-healthcare-law
The House voted on Wednesday to repeal the sweeping healthcare law enacted last year, as Republicans made good on a central campaign pledge and laid down the first major policy marker of their new majority.
The party-line vote was 245-189, as three Democrats joined all 242 Republicans in supporting repeal.
That's a bipartisan vote to repeal Obamacare. Also, note that there were more votes for the repeal than there were in favor of the original bill.
Monday, January 17, 2011
John Podhoretz on the civility non-sequitur
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/257283/yup-jonah-goldberg
John Podhoretz on the civility non-sequitur:
Thus, as we continue to gather more evidence of Loughner’s schizophrenia, the continuing rhetorical calls for the need for “civility” are now turning into nothing less than cover. They’re a dodge, a means by which those responsible for the slanderous accusation that somehow the Tea Party and Sarah Palin and the right were responsible for the massacre have been excused for hurling their grievously unjust charge. For, you see, they were only calling for a “new tone,” for “civility,” and who could be against those?
Saturday, January 15, 2011
George F. Will - A Congress that reasserts its power
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/14/AR2011011404663.html
The idea of American exceptionalism is obnoxious to progressives, who, evidently unaware of the idea's long pedigree (it traces to Alexis de Tocqueville) and the rich scholarship concerning the idea, assume it is a crude strain of patriotism. America, Tocqueville said, is unique because it was born free - free of a feudal past, free from an entrenched aristocracy and established religion.
The American Revolution was a political, not a social, revolution; it was about emancipating individuals for the pursuit of happiness, not about the state allocating wealth and opportunity. Hence our exceptional Constitution, which says not what government must do for Americans but what it cannot do to them.
Americans are exceptionally committed to limited government because they are exceptionally confident of social mobility through personal striving. And they are exceptionally immune to a distinctively modern pessimism: It holds that individuals are powerless to assert their autonomy against society's vast impersonal forces, so people must become wards of government, which supposedly is the locus and engine of society's creativity.
Two years into Barack Obama's presidency, we now know what he meant about "hope" and "change" - he and other progressives hope to change our national character. Three weeks into his presidency, Newsweek, unhinged by adoration of him and allowing its wishes to father its thoughts, announced that "we are all socialists now" and that America "is moving toward a modern European state." The electorate emphatically disagreed and created the 112th Congress, with its exceptionally important agenda.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Charles Krauthammer - Massacre, followed by libel
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/11/AR2011011106068.html
Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence.
The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?
Monday, January 10, 2011
Journalists urged caution after Ft. Hood, now race to blame Palin after Arizona shootings
Byron York on the shootings in Arizona:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/01/journalists-urged-caution-after-ft-hood-now-race-blame-palin-afte#ixzz1Aax2MORf"None at all," Yellin responded. "And there is no evidence that this was even inspired by rage over health care, broadly. So there is no overt connection between Sarah Palin, health care, and the [shootings]."
Indeed, there is no "overt" or any other sort of connection between Loughner and Palin. If such evidence came to light, it would certainly be news.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Instapundit on the Arizona shooting
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/112816/
Let me be clear, as a great man says: If you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Sarah Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting — which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie — or you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. So which is it?
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Time to Rethink Public Employee Unions
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/12/028031.php
For the large majority of our history, public employee unions have been illegal. It is only since the 1960s and 1970s that they have been allowed. Currently, they are legal in roughly half the states. The United States has carried on a four-decade experiment in legalization, and the results are in: public employee unions are a cancer on our country.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Bad Students, Not Bad Schools
Pat Buchanan writes:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=40846Which brings us to "Bad Students, Not Bad Schools," a new book in which Dr. Robert Weissberg contends that U.S. educational experts deliberately "refuse to confront the obvious truth." "America's educational woes reflect our demographic mix of students. Today's schools are filled with millions of youngsters, many of whom are Hispanic immigrants struggling with English plus millions of others of mediocre intellectual ability disdaining academic achievement." In the public and parochial schools of the 1940s and 1950s, kids were pushed to the limits of their ability, then pushed harder. And when they stopped learning, they were pushed out the door. Writes Weissberg: "To be grossly politically incorrect, most of America's educational woes vanish if these indifferent, troublesome students left when they had absorbed as much as they were going to learn and were replaced by learning-hungry students from Korea, Japan, India, Russia, Africa and the Caribbean." Weissberg contends that 80 percent of a school's success depends on two factors: the cognitive ability of the child and the disposition he brings to class -- not on texts, teachers or classroom size.
Economic Optimism? Yes, I’ll Take That Bet
John Tierney wins his five-year bet on oil prices:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/science/28tierney.html?_r=2&ref=scienceIt’s true that the real price of oil is slightly higher now than it was in 2005, and it’s always possible that oil prices will spike again in the future. But the overall energy situation today looks a lot like a Cornucopian feast, as my colleagues Matt Wald and Cliff Krauss have recently reported. Giant new oil fields have been discovered off the coasts of Africa and Brazil. The new oil sands projects in Canada now supply more oil to the United States than Saudi Arabia does. Oil production in the United States increased last year, and the Department of Energy projects further increases over the next two decades.
The really good news is the discovery of vast quantities of natural gas. It’s now selling for less than half of what it was five years ago. There’s so much available that the Energy Department is predicting low prices for gas and electricity for the next quarter-century. Lobbyists for wind farms, once again, have been telling Washington that the “sustainable energy” industry can’t sustain itself without further subsidies.
Maybe something unexpected will change these happy trends, but for now I’d say that Julian Simon’s advice remains as good as ever. You can always make news with doomsday predictions, but you can usually make money betting against them.
Monday, December 27, 2010
George F. Will - A remedy for beggar states
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/23/AR2010122304421.html
Less candor, realism and pre-funding are required of state and municipal governments regarding their pension plans. Nunes's bill would require them to disclose the size of their pension liabilities - and the often-dreamy assumptions behind the calculations. Noncompliant governments would be ineligible for issuing bonds exempt from federal taxation. Furthermore, the bill would stipulate that state and local governments are entirely responsible for their pension obligations and the federal government will provide no bailouts.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
A California Bankruptcy, Dictatorship, and the Guarantee Clause
http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2010/12/a-california-bankruptcy-dictatorship-and-the-guarantee-clause.html
It got me thinking about what would happen if California went bankrupt.
In the absence of a statute, presumably the federal government would conduct some sort of bailout combined with a restructuring. If so, however, who would run the state during the proceeding?
Interesting discussion at ProfessorBainbridge.com, especially in the comments. Personally, I don't think a state can go bankrupt. As a sovereign entity, it can simply default on its debts and claim sovereign immunity to deflect any law suits.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Challenging the Constitutionality of the Health Care Law
Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II is the Attorney General for the state of Virginia.
http://healthreformreport.com/2010/12/va-healthcare-suit.phpVirginia's lawsuit challenging the act rests on two basic arguments. One: The government's attempt to stretch the Commerce Clause to force individuals to buy a private product - private health insurance - fails, as the Constitution does not grant Congress such a power. Two: The penalty the government charges if one does not comply with the mandate cannot be redefined after the fact as a tax, justified by the government's taxing power. Congress and the president insisted the penalty was not a tax, they passed it as a penalty, and it operates as a penalty as a matter of law. They cannot simply change the meaning of words now that they realize their first legal argument is on shaky ground.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Holder and Sebelius on Obamacare
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/255260/holder-and-sebelius-obamacare-yuval-levin
In the wake of Judge Hudson’s decision striking down the individual mandate in the health-care law as unconstitutional, Attorney General Eric Holder and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius have an op-ed in today’s Washington Post making the case for the law.Holder and Sebelius’s case rests on an assertion and two implicit assumptions. The assertion is that the law does things we should want to do, and the assumptions are, first, that there are not other ways to achieve these ends and, second, that the means the law employs should therefore be constitutional. If you don’t think that sounds like much of an argument, you’re right.
Obamacare’s Individual Mandate Exceeds Congress’ Commerce Clause Power
http://www.redstate.com/lexington_concord/2010/12/13/obamacares-individual-mandate-exceeds-congress-commerce-clause-power/
My initial impression is that, while this ruling will widely be viewed as a victory for opponents of Obamacare, there are some potential problems with the opinion that may result in this opinion being a net loss down the road (where it will inevitably be decided by the Supreme Court in any case).
To begin with, Judge Hudson specifically refused to enjoin the Act’s enforcement pending appeal (a decision which will likely not be revisited by the Fourth Circuit whenever they get around to hearing the appeals). More importantly, Judge Hudson - improperly, in my view - severed the individual mandate from the Act as a whole. If that decision stands, it could well result in the wholesale destruction of private health insurance companies in the United States. It is also worth noting that this lawsuit did not address the potential capitation problems being litigated in the Florida lawsuit.
More reaction:
John Yoo:
Richard Epstein:
Monday, December 13, 2010
Federal Judge Rules in Favor of Virginia Challenge to Health Care Law
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/13/federal-judge-rules-favor-virginia-challenge-health-care-law/
Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled Monday for the state's claim that the requirement for people to purchase health care exceeds the power of Congress under the Constitution's Commerce Clause.
Hudson's eagerly awaited decision invalidates the requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance by 2014 or face a federal fine. Hudson's decision is the first striking down part of the controversial legislation.
"It is not the effect on individuals that is presently at issue -- it is the authority of Congress to compel anyone to purchase health insurance," wrote Hudson who was appointed to the federal bench in 2002 by President George W. Bush. "An enactment that exceeds the power of Congress to adopt adversely affects everyone in every application."
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