The Real Unemployment Story

Below is a link to a discussion of how the current unemployment number vastly under-estimates actual unemployment be ignoring the number of working-age Americans who have left the workforce.  Today the economy added 74k jobs, and unemployment dropped from 7 to 6.7%.  The only way unemployment decreases with such a small number of jobs is if people give up and leave the workforce and are no longer counted.  Sure enough, 347K people left the work force (some of these are retirements, but still, that's a much larger number than the 74K job added).  The labor force participation rate is now 62.8%, the lowest since 1978.

http://www.epi.org/publication/missing-workers/

Liberalism by gesture

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By George F. Will, Published: January 8

The era of Gesture Liberalism is at hand. It may be more amusing than consequential.

Americans who exercise consumer sovereignty wherever Barack Obama still tolerates it are constantly disappointing him. For generations they persisted in buying what he calls“substandard” policies from what he calls “bad apple” health insurers. They stopped only when he forced them to stop — when he rescued them from their ignorance by banning their benighted preferences.

Have consumers thanked him for trying to wean them from their desire to drive large, useful, comfortable, safe vehicles that he thinks threaten their habitat, Earth? The 2013 numbers tell the tale of their ingratitude. In 2013, for the 32nd consecutive year, the best-selling vehiclewas Ford’s F-Series pickups. This supremacy began, fittingly, in the first year of Ronald Reagan’s deregulatory presidency.

Today’s consumers, who cannot get it through their thick heads that they are supposed to want wee vehicles such as Chevrolet’s Volt, bought 763,402 F-Series trucks. That is 740,308 more than the number of Volts General Motors sold.

In 2010, a GM official carefully said “more than 120,000 potential Volt customers have already signaled interest in the car.”Signaled? How? Not by buying. At the 2013 rate of sales, by 2046 GM will have sold as many Volts as Ford sold F-Series trucks this year. Obama, our Nostradamus, prophesied a million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015. If so, they will have to outsell F-Series trucks this year.

The sort-of-electric Volt — it is a hybrid — probably is one of those great ideas Joe Biden celebrated in 2010: “Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive.” Government’s incentive for Volt buyers is a tax credit up to $7,500. A 2011 study showed that taxpayer-subsidized Volt or Nissan Leaf buyers had average annual incomes of $150,000, and more than half of them owned at least two other vehicles.

In 2009, the Obama administrationdisapprovingly said: “GM earns a large share of its profits from high-margin trucks and SUVs, which are vulnerable to a continuing shift in consumer preferences to smaller vehicles.” Continuing? A 2011 Wall Street Journal headline: “Americans Embrace SUVs Again.” A Wall Street Journal subhead last week: “U.S. Sales Cruise Back to 2007 Levels, Driven by Fondness for Pickups, SUVs.”

Building the Volt was bankrupt-and-bailed-out GM’s gesture of obeisance to its Washington masters. And causing the Volt to be built was a gesture by those masters to demonstrate how much they worry about the climate. The climate may not understand the importance of gestures.

Today, Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged v. Sebelius may be the second-most serendipitously named court case in U.S. history, second to Loving v. Virginia (wherein Richard Loving, who was white, and his wife Mildred, who was black, in 1967 overturned Virginia’s law against interracial marriages). The Little Sisters are challenging the Obamacare mandate that makes them complicit in providing, through their health insurance, contraception, something that offends their faith.

This mandate illustrates Gesture Liberalism: It is unimportant to the structure of Obamacare. It has nothing to do with real insurance, which protects against unexpected developments — car insurance does not pay for oil changes. The mandate covers a minor expense: Target sells a month of birth control pills for $9 . The mandate is, however, a gesture affirming liberalism’s belief that any institution of civil society can be properly broken to the saddle of the state.

The next item on Gesture Liberalism’s agenda is to raise the minimum wage for the 23rd time. Less than 3 percent of the workforce earns the minimum; more than 60 percent of those who do earn it get a raise within a year; more than half of minimum-wage earners are students or other part-time workers from households with average incomes of $53,000. Never mind. Raising the minimum is a gesture of devotion to “equality.”

As is Obama’s support for universal preschool, the centerpiece of the agenda of New York City’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio. When, in Obama’s first inaugural address, he vowed to “restore science to its rightful place,” he evidently meant to exclude social science: There is much discouraging data about the efficacy of universal preschool.

It will, however, mean billions for hiring more members of teachers unions, whose dues will help elect the likes of Obama and de Blasio. So this component of Gesture Liberalism is more than just a gesture.

The 'Trickle-Down' Lie

The 'Trickle-Down' Lie

By Thomas Sowell - January 7, 2014

New York's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, in his inaugural speech, denounced people "on the far right" who "continue to preach the virtue of trickle-down economics." According to Mayor de Blasio, "They believe that the way to move forward is to give more to the most fortunate, and that somehow the benefits will work their way down to everyone else."

If there is ever a contest for the biggest lie in politics, this one should be a top contender.

It should win the contest both because of its purity -- no contaminating speck of truth -- and because of how many people have repeated it over the years, without any evidence being asked for or given.While there have been all too many lies told in politics, most have some little tiny fraction of truth in them, to make them seem plausible. But the "trickle-down" lie is 100 percent lie.

Years ago, this column challenged anybody to quote any economist outside of an insane asylum who had ever advocated this "trickle-down" theory. Some readers said that somebody said that somebody else had advocated a "trickle-down" policy. But they could never name that somebody else and quote them.

Mayor de Blasio is by no means the first politician to denounce this non-existent theory. Back in 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama attacked what he called "an economic philosophy" which "says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else."

Let's do something completely unexpected: Let's stop and think. Why would anyone advocate that we "give" something to A in hopes that it would trickle down to B? Why in the world would any sane person not give it to B and cut out the middleman? But all this is moot, because there was no trickle-down theory about giving something to anybody in the first place.

The "trickle-down" theory cannot be found in even the most voluminous scholarly studies of economic theories -- including J.A. Schumpeter's monumental "History of Economic Analysis," more than a thousand pages long and printed in very small type.

It is not just in politics that the non-existent "trickle-down" theory is found. It has been attacked in the New York Times, in the Washington Post and by professors at prestigious American universities -- and even as far away as India. Yet none of those who denounce a "trickle-down" theory can quote anybody who actually advocated it.

The book "Winner-Take-All Politics" refers to "the 'trickle-down' scenario that advocates of helping the have-it-alls with tax cuts and other goodies constantly trot out." But no one who actually trotted out any such scenario was cited, much less quoted.

One of the things that provoke the left into bringing out the "trickle-down" bogeyman is any suggestion that there are limits to how high they can push tax rates on people with high incomes, without causing repercussions that hurt the economy as a whole.

But, contrary to Mayor de Blasio, this is not a view confined to people on the "far right." Such liberal icons as Presidents John F. Kennedy and Woodrow Wilson likewise argued that tax rates can be so high that they have an adverse effect on the economy.

In his 1919 address to Congress, Woodrow Wilson warned that, at some point, "high rates of income and profits taxes discourage energy, remove the incentive to new enterprise, encourage extravagant expenditures, and produce industrial stagnation with consequent unemployment and other attendant evils."

In a 1962 address to Congress, John F. Kennedy said, "it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now."

This was not a new idea. John Maynard Keynes said, back in 1933, that "taxation may be so high as to defeat its object," that in the long run, a reduction of the tax rate "will run a better chance, than an increase, of balancing the budget." And Keynes was not on "the far right" either.

The time is long overdue for people to ask themselves why it is necessary for those on the left to make up a lie if what they believe in is true.

Sorry, But "Income Inequality" Is About To Increase

January 02, 2014/ Francis Menton

Yesterday, New Year's Day, new Mayor Bill de Blasio was sworn in on the steps of City Hall.  He gave an inaugural address reiterating all his major campaign themes.  Chief among these was what he calls the "crisis of inequality."

New York has faced fiscal collapse, a crime epidemic, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters. But now, in our time, we face a different crisis – an inequality crisis. . . .  It’s a quiet crisis, but one no less pernicious than those that have come before.  Its urgency is read on the faces of our neighbors and their children, as families struggle to make it against increasingly long odds. To tackle a challenge this daunting, we need a dramatic new approach. . . .   A city that fights injustice and inequality — not just because it honors our values, but because it strengthens our people.

There were no specifics in the speech as to what de Blasio intends to do about the crisis, or why he thinks he can solve it, if indeed it is a problem.

I have a prediction for de Blasio that he might not like:  income inequality, as measured by government statistics,  is going to increase over the next four years, both in New York and in the United States as a whole.  That will occur literally no matter what de Blasio does, no matter how much in the way of taxpayer resources he devotes to the issue.  The reason is that government policies beyond his control, largely at the federal level, have a powerful effect of increasing measured income inequality.  The big three policies driving measured income inequality are food stamps, Medicaid, and Obamacare.  The third has just begun to work its destruction.

President Obama is also all over the income inequality issue.  He gave a big speech on the issue in Kansas on December 4 (where he called income inequality "the defining challenge of our time"), and the smart money is betting that this will also be the big theme of his upcoming State of the Union address.  And of course government benefits for low income people have exploded during Obama's five years in office.  So has measured income inequality increased or decreased on Obama's watch?  The answer is that it has increased.  Not only has it increased, but it has increased faster than it increased during the eight years of GW Bush.  Among many articles discussing this seeming anomaly, here is one from the Huffington Post of September 1, 2013.  An excerpt:

The difference between America’s median and average wages grew at a rate of 0.28 percent under President Bush, while it’s grown at a rate of 1.14 percent -- or about four times that -- under Obama, according to The New York Times. The median wage is the midpoint of all workers’ wages, so it only ticks up when everyone is earning more. While a small group of people earning higher pay can push the average wage up.  So, as the difference between the two rises, it means that those at the bottom of the income scale are making fewer gains compared to those at the top.  This data point is one of many that illustrates that in Obama’s America the rich are gaining while the rest of us are struggling to get by.

How could this possibly be?  The answer is that increases in government benefit programs are actually the main cause of the increase in measured income inequality.  This happens because the government benefit programs have the effect of suppressing the measured income of the lowest tiers of the income distribution.

To understand why, you need to know two things: (1) government in-kind benefit programs do not count at all in the measurement of "income" that then goes into the measurement of "income inequality," and (2) at the bottom tiers of the income distribution, government benefit programs seriously discourage the formation of families with a breadwinner.  And thus we have large numbers of single-parent households, living largely or entirely off government benefits, all of which count as zero income.  No amount of new jobs in the economy, no amount of increases in minimum or average wages, no amount of union organizing, and for that matter no amount of increases in the in-kind government benefits, is going to provide these families with measured income. 

The increase in measured income inequality on Obama's watch corresponds to the explosions in food stamp and Medicaid enrollment during this period.  This is not a coincidence.  Put yourself in the position of a woman who has had a couple of children at a young age without marrying and has been able to make a go of it with a suite of government benefits, including housing, food stamps, and free medical care.  All of those things count at zero in the income statistics.  Now a hard-working young man comes along, interested in being with you, and he has a lower- to middle-class income, say $30,000 to $40,000 per year.  You would be out of your mind to marry this man.  Instantly you are disqualified from all the benefits (or in the case of the housing, your rent shoots up).  And why, when you can hang out with the guy four or five or six days a week, you keep the apartment and the food stamps and the Medicaid and he keeps the money (and maybe gives you some of it on the side)?  Ninety-nine percent of people facing this situation are going to make the same choice.  As more people get the benefits (the number on food stamps has increased by about 20 million since Obama took office), more will make the decision to perpetuate an income-free family unit to keep the benefits flowing. 

Meanwhile, at the higher reaches of the income distribution, income continues a slow but steady rise.  The effect of that, combined with government-caused stagnation at near zero levels at the bottom, is steady increases in measured income inequality.  

Suppose now that the government substantially increases all the benefits that it provides to the poor.  This has absolutely no effect on measured income inequality, since none of the benefits count in the statistics.

And into this mix, now throw Obamacare.  Beginning basically today,  Obamacare offers very substantial subsidies on medical care premiums to households depending on where their income stands relative to "federal poverty level" (FPL).  Subsidies continue all the way up to 400% of FPL, which for a family of four now approaches $100,000.  Here is a basic summary of the workings from Kaiser Health News.   To put it in simple terms, lots and lots more people are going to find it to their major economic advantage to not be married, which will in turn mean that there will be lots and lots more low and zero income households that previously would have been combined with other households to make middle income families.

So starting now, a young lady just getting started with a low income from freelancing and a little waitressing goes to healthcare.gov to look for a plan, and they ask her her household income.  Does she include the live-in boyfriend's income or not?  That could easily be a $5000 or $10,000 per year issue.  I'm guessing that maybe 97.23% opt for not including him.  OK, if she's really conscientious about honesty maybe he has to go and stay with his parents one or two nights a week.

There is no question but that Obamacare is going to have a large effect on increasing measured income inequality.  Sorry, Bill, but there is nothing you can do about this.  The good news is that little or none of it is real; it's just an artifact of the statistics.  But of course, de Blasio doesn't know that, or at least he hasn't shown any awareness of these issues in anything he has said to date.

Obama the oblivious

Obama the oblivious

 By Charles Krauthammer

In explaining the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, President Obama told Chris Matthews he had discovered that “we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly.”

An interesting discovery to make after having consigned the vast universe of American medicine, one-sixth of the U.S. economy, to the tender mercies of the agency bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Internal Revenue Service.

Most people become aware of the hopeless inefficiency of sclerotic government by, oh, age 17 at the department of motor vehicles. Obama’s late discovery is especially remarkable considering that he built his entire political philosophy on the rock of Big Government, on the fervent belief in the state as the very engine of collective action and the ultimate source of national greatness. (Indeed, of individual success as well, as in “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”)

This blinding revelation of the ponderous incompetence of bureaucratic government came just a few weeks after Obama confessed that “what we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.” Another light bulb goes off, this one three years after passing a law designed to force millions of Americans to shop for new health plans via the maze of untried, untested, insecure, unreliable online “exchanges.”

This discovery joins a long list that includes Obama’s rueful admission that there really are no shovel-ready jobs. That one came after having passed his monstrous $830 billion stimulus on the argument that the weakened economy would be “jump-started” by a massive infusion of shovel-ready jobs. Now known to be fictional.

Barack Obama is not just late to discover the most elementary workings of government. With alarming regularity, he professes obliviousness to the workings of his own government. He claims, for example, to have known nothing about the IRS targeting scandal, the AP phone records scandal, the NSA tapping of Angela Merkel. And had not a clue that the centerpiece of his signature legislative achievement — the online Obamacare exchange, three years in the making — would fail catastrophically upon launch. Or that Obamacare would cause millions of Americans to lose their private health plans.

Hence the odd spectacle of a president expressing surprise and disappointment in the federal government — as if he’s not the one running it. Hence the repeated no-one-is-more-upset-than-me posture upon deploring the nonfunctioning Web site, the IRS outrage, the AP intrusions and any number of scandals from which Obama tries to create safe distance by posing as an observer. He gives the impression of a man on a West Wing tour trying out the desk in the Oval Office, only to be told that he is president of the United States.

The paradox of this presidency is that this most passive bystander president is at the same time the most ideologically ambitious in decades. The sweep and scope of his health-care legislation alone are unprecedented. He’s spent billions of tax money attempting to create, by fiat and ex nihilo, a new green economy. His (failed) cap-and-trade bill would have given him regulatory control of the energy economy. He wants universal preschool and has just announced his unwavering commitment to slaying the dragon of economic inequality, which, like the poor, has always been with us.

Obama’s discovery that government bureaucracies don’t do things very well creates a breathtaking disconnect between his transformative ambitions and his detachment from the job itself. How does his Olympian vision coexist with the lassitude of his actual governance, a passivity that verges on absenteeism?

What bridges that gap is rhetoric. Barack Obama is a master rhetorician. It’s allowed him to move crowds, rise inexorably and twice win the most glittering prize of all. Rhetoric has changed his reality. For Obama, it can change the country’s. Hope and change, after all, is a rhetorical device. Of the kind Obama has always imagined can move mountains.

That’s why his reaction to the Obamacare Web site’s crash-on-takeoff is so telling. His remedy? A cross-country campaign-style speaking tour. As if rhetoric could repeal that reality.

Managing, governing, negotiating, cajoling, crafting legislation, forging compromise. For these — this stuff of governance — Obama has shown little aptitude and even less interest. Perhaps, as Valerie Jarrett has suggested, he is simply too easily bored to invest his greatness in such mundanity.

“I don’t write code,” said Obama in reaction to the Web site crash. Nor is he expected to. He is, however, expected to run an administration that can.

Reid exempts staff from ObamaCare

Amazing.  I don't usually post articles calling out specific individuals, but this is just too ridiculous not to publicize...


Reid exempts some staff from having to buy insurance on ObamaCare exchange
Published December 04, 2013
FoxNews.com

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is allowing some staffers to keep their health insurance instead of making them buy it through an ObamaCare exchange, although he was one of the strongest Capitol Hill supporters of the 2010 law.

The Nevada Democrat is exercising his discretion under the president’s signature law to designate which staffers can keep their federal insurance plan and which must now purchase a policy through the District of Columbia’s health-care exchange.

However, he purportedly is the only top congressional leader to exercise that option, which resulted in sharp criticism Wednesday from Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, perhaps the staunchest ObamaCare opponent on the Hill.

"Sen. Reid's decision to exempt his staff … is the clearest example yet of ObamaCare's failures and Washington hypocrisy,” he said. “His staff worked to pass it and continue to promote it, now they don't want to be part of it because it's a disaster.”

The distinction is between personnel staff, forced onto the exchange, and leadership and committee staff, who are allowed to keep their federal plan.

However, drawing a distinction is difficult because some duties overlap, a Reid staffer told Fox News.

The staffer could not give a breakdown. But Reid is going on the exchange and says he is happy with its options.

An amendment to ObamaCare by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley forced staffers onto the exchanges, but additional changes allow for some flexibility. Still, the final rules, put forth by the Office of Personnel Management, leave some discretion with the lawmaker.

“The only fair path forward is to repeal ObamaCare, in its entirety, for everyone," Cruz added.

Thankful for Property

Thankful for Property

By John Stossel - November 27, 2013

Had today's politicians and opinion-makers been in power four centuries ago, Americans might celebrate "Starvation Day" this week, not Thanksgiving.

The Pilgrims started out with communal property rules. When they first settled at Plymouth, they were told:

"Share everything, share the work, and we'll share the harvest."

The colony's contract said their new settlement was to be a "common." Everyone was to receive necessities out of the common stock. There was to be little individual property.

That wasn't the only thing about the Plymouth Colony that sounds like it was from Karl Marx: Its labor was to be organized according to the different capabilities of the settlers. People would produce according to their abilities and consume according to their needs. That sure sounds fair.

They nearly starved and created what economists call the "tragedy of the commons."

If people can access the same stuff by working less, they will. Plymouth settlers faked illness instead of working the common property. The harvest was meager, and for two years, there was famine. But then, after the colony's governor, William Bradford, wrote that they should "set corn every man for his own particular," they dropped the commons idea. He assigned to every family a parcel of land to treat as its own.

The results were dramatic. Much more corn was planted. Instead of famine, there was plenty. Thanks to private property, they got food -- and thanks to it, we have food today.

This doesn't mean Pilgrims themselves saw the broader economic implications of what they'd been through. "I don't think they were celebrating Thanksgiving because they'd realized that capitalism works and communal property is a failure," says economist Russ Roberts. "I think there were just happy to be alive."

I wish people understood. This idea that happiness and equality lie in banding together and doing things as a commune is appealing. It's the principle behind the Soviet Union, Medicare, the Vietnam War, Obamacare and so on. Some communal central planning is helpful, but too much is dangerous. The Pilgrims weren't the first settlers on the East Coast of the New World to make this mistake.

Just a few years before, the colony of Jamestown was almost wiped out by the same idea.

Historian Edmund S. Morgan, in "American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia," describes what happened in 1609-1610: "There are 500 people in the colony now. And they are starving. They scour the woods listlessly for nuts, roots and berries. And they offer the only authentic examples of cannibalism witnessed in Virginia. One provident man chops up his wife and salts down the pieces. Others dig up graves to eat the corpses. By spring only sixty are left alive."

After that season, the colony was abandoned for years.

The lesson that a commons is often undesirable is all around us. What image comes to mind if I write "public toilet"? Consider traffic congestion and poor upkeep of many publicly owned roads. But most people don't understand that the solution is private property.

When natural resources, such as fish and trees, dwindle, the first impulse is to say, "Stop capitalism. Make those things public property." But they already are public -- that's the problem.

If no one owns the fishing rights to a given part of the ocean -- or the exclusive, long-term logging rights to part of the forest -- people have an incentive to get there first and take all they can before the next guy does. Resources are overused instead of conserved. We don't maintain others' property the way we maintain our own.

Colonists in Plymouth nearly starved because they didn't understand that. In Jamestown, some were driven to cannibalism.

But no one starves when ranchers are allowed to own land and cattle. Or turkeys.

Private ownership does good things. Be thankful for it this week

Hobby Lobby - Corporations as People

You may have heard that Hobby Lobby (privately held) has objected to aspects of Obamacare that they feel violate their religious beliefs.  Lower courts have been split (3-2 in favor of Hobby Lobby), and the case will now be heard by the Supreme Court.  This opinion piece was on CNN today the link and full text (my comments in red) are below):

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/26/opinion/wydra-supreme-court-obamacare/index.html

Editor's note: Elizabeth B. Wydra is chief counsel for the Constitutional Accountability Center, a public-interest law firm, think tank and action center. She regularly participates in Supreme Court litigation.

(CNN) -- Once again, Obamacare has made its way back before the Supreme Court.

The high court decided Tuesday to review two challenges by for-profit corporations and their religious owners over comprehensive contraception coverage required by the Affordable Care Act. And if the justices follow more than 200 years of constitutional law and history on what it means to enjoy the free exercise of religion in America, the court should yet again hand a victory to the act.

It had little choice but to agree to hear the cases this term.

Using unprecedented legal reasoning, three federal circuit courts of appeals have ruled that secular, for-profit business corporations and/or the individuals who own them have a valid claim that the mandate to provide no-cost, FDA-approved contraception in their employer-sponsored health plan violates their asserted right to the free exercise of religion.

Two other federal circuit courts of appeals have rejected these claims; the Supreme Court frequently steps in to resolve such disagreements among the federal courts of appeals.

Unless the Supreme Court reverses these radical decisions, the consequences could reach far beyond the Affordable Care Act, making this particular roadblock for Obamacare more problematic in the long term than the well-publicized problems associated with the health exchange website's rollout.

By accepting the religious free-exercise claims, these three federal courts have turned first principles of religious freedom, as well as fundamental tenets of corporate law, on their head.

From the nation's founding until today, the Constitution's protection of religious liberty has been seen as a personal right, inextricably linked to the human capacity to express devotion to a God and act on the basis of reason and conscience.

Business corporations, quite properly, have never shared in this fundamental constitutional tradition for the obvious reason that a business corporation lacks the basic human capacities -- reason, dignity and conscience -- at the core of the right to free exercise of religion. Obviously not "persons" in the usual sense of the word, these corporations are also not religious organizations, which have historically received some constitutional protection and are, in fact, given exemptions from the contraception mandate.

The author needs to check her constitutional history - as far back as 1888(!) (Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania) the Supreme court ruled "Under the designation of 'person' there is no doubt that a private corporation is included [in the Fourteenth Amendment]. Such corporations are merely associations of individuals united for a special purpose and permitted to do business under a particular name and have a succession of members without dissolution."

These businesses do not hire employees on the basis of their religion and their employees are not required to share the religious beliefs personally held by the corporation's owners.    This is particularly misleading, as "discriminating" during hiring is illegal - that's why these business do not hire employees based on their religion or personally held beliefs"  Meanwhile, speak out against the personally held belief in Diversity in corporate America do and see how long you last.  In all of American history, secular, for-profit corporations have never been understood to "exercise" religion -- have you ever seen Exxon Mobil in the pew next to you at church? -- and have never been protected by the right to free exercise. Again, the author seems to struggle to understand the difference between public and private companies. Seeing as she isn't stupid, I have to believe she is overlooking this distinction purposely. 

To be sure, the devout individual business owners behind the corporations in these challenges have their own personal rights to exercise their religion, but those rights have nothing to do with Obamacare's contraception coverage requirement. Why? Because federal law does not require the individuals who own the company to personally provide health care coverage or to satisfy any other legal obligation of the corporation. The law places requirements only on the corporate entity.  Classic misunderstanding here - there is no such thing as the "corporation" paying.  The corporation is owned by individuals - it is these individuals who pay for all costs and reap all profits.

To conflate the corporations in these cases with their owners violates basic principles of corporate law.

When business owners create a corporation as the means of carrying out their business, they create a distinct legal entity with rights, obligations, privileges and liabilities that are different from the individuals who set up the corporation. This generally works to the benefit of the individual owners, which is why people choose to incorporate in the first place. And it means that certain rights specific to individuals do not carry over to the corporate form.  

For example, the Supreme Court has held that an individual acting in his personal capacity has the right to "plead the Fifth" and refuse to turn over documents that could incriminate him, but that same individual acting in his official capacity as a corporate owner has no such right against self-incrimination. Like the right to the free exercise of religion, the right against self-incrimination has always been understood to be a personal right of freedom and conscience that artificial corporate entities simply do not share.   These two paragraphs are the strongest sections of her argument, but I suspect she again is failing to distinguish between public and private corporations, as well as criminal vs. civil proceedings.

A business owner simply does not have the right to move back and forth freely between individual and corporate status to obtain all the advantages and avoid any of the disadvantages of the respective forms.

Whether you have cheered the misfortunes Obamacare has suffered over the past month or bemoaned them, the distortion of basic principles of corporate law and free exercise jurisprudence by the three federal courts that have endorsed the corporate challenges to the ACA's contraception mandate should be troubling.

The Supreme Court, as always, will have the final say.

If the justices follow more than 200 years of constitutional law and history, not to mention basic principles of corporate law, the court should hand another victory to Obamacare.

I'm sure the administration -- and more importantly, the women and their families who risk losing important health benefits to which they are legally entitled -- would welcome the win.

 

Obamacare laid bare

Obamacare laid bare
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: October 31

Every disaster has its moment of clarity. Physicist Richard Feynman dunks an O-ring into ice water and everyone understands instantly why the shuttle Challenger exploded. This week, the Obamacare O-ring froze for all the world to see: Hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters went out to people who had been assured a dozen times by the president that “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.”

The cancellations lay bare three pillars of Obamacare: (a) mendacity, (b) paternalism and (c) subterfuge.

(a) Those letters are irrefutable evidence that President Obama’s repeated you-keep-your-coverage claim was false. Why were they sent out? Because Obamacare renders illegal (with exceedingly narrow “grandfathered” exceptions) the continuation of any insurance plan deemed by Washington regulators not to meet their arbitrary standards for adequacy. Example: No maternity care? You are terminated.

So a law designed to cover the uninsured is now throwing far more people off their insurance than it can possibly be signing up on the nonfunctioning insurance exchanges. Indeed, most of the 19 million people with individual insurance will have to find new and likely more expensive coverage. And that doesn’t even include the additional millions who are sure to lose their employer-provided coverage. That’s a lot of people. That’s a pretty big lie.

But perhaps Obama didn’t know. Maybe the bystander president was as surprised by this as he claims to have been by the IRS scandal, the Associated Press and James Rosen phone logs, the failure of the Obamacare Web site, the premeditation of the Benghazi attacks, the tapping of Angela Merkel’s phone — i.e., the workings of the federal government of which he is the nominal head.

I’m skeptical. It’s not as if the Obamacare plan-dropping is an obscure regulation. It’s at the heart of Obama’s idea of federally regulated and standardized national health insurance.

Still, how could he imagine getting away with a claim sure to be exposed as factually false?

The same way he maintained for two weeks that false narrative about Benghazi. He figured he’d get away with it.

And he did. Simple formula: Delay, stonewall and wait for a supine and protective press to turn spectacularly incurious.

Look at how the New York Times covered his “keep your plan” whopper — buried on page 17 with a headline calling the cancellations a “prime target.” As if this is a partisan issue and not a brazen falsehood clear to any outside observer — say, The Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who gave the president’s claim four Pinocchios. Noses don’t come any longer.

(b) Beyond mendacity, there is liberal paternalism, of which these forced cancellations are a classic case. We canceled your plan, explained presidential spokesman Jay Carney, because it was substandard. We have a better idea.

Translation: Sure, you freely chose the policy, paid for the policy, renewed the policy, liked the policy. But you’re too primitive to know what you need. We do. Your policy is hereby canceled.

Because what you really need is what our experts have determined must be in every plan. So a couple in their 60s must buy maternity care. A teetotaler must buy substance abuse treatment. And a healthy 28-year-old with perfectly appropriate catastrophic insurance must pay for bells and whistles for which he has no use.

It’s Halloween. There is a knock at your door. You hear: “We’re the government and we’re here to help.”

You hide.

(c) As for subterfuge, these required bells and whistles aren’t just there to festoon the health-care Christmas tree with voter-pleasing freebies. The planners knew all along that if you force insurance buyers to overpay for stuff they don’t need, that money can subsidize other people.

Obamacare is the largest transfer of wealth in recent American history. But you can’t say that openly lest you lose elections. So you do it by subterfuge: hidden taxes, penalties, mandates and coverage requirements that yield a surplus of overpayments.

So that your president can promise to cover 30 million uninsured without costing the government a dime. Which from the beginning was the biggest falsehood of them all. And yet the free lunch is the essence of modern liberalism. Free mammograms, free preventative care, free contraceptives for Sandra Fluke. Come and get it.

And then when you find your policy canceled, your premium raised and your deductible outrageously increased, you’ve learned the real meaning of “free” in the liberal lexicon: something paid for by your neighbor — best, by subterfuge.

The judiciary and free speech

The judiciary and free speech
 By George F. Will

“The First Amendment does not permit laws that force speakers to retain a campaign finance attorney, conduct demographic marketing research, or seek declaratory rulings before discussing the most salient political issues of our day.”

— U.S. Supreme Court,
Citizens United (2010)

Brick by brick, judges are dismantling the wall of separation that legislators have built between political activity and the First Amendment’s protections of free speech and association. The latest examples, from Mississippi and Arizona, reflect the judiciary’s proper engagement in defending citizens from the regulation of political speech, a.k.a. “campaign finance reform.”

In 2011, a few like-minded friends and neighbors in Oxford, Miss., who had been meeting for a few years to discuss politics, decided to work together to support passage of an initiative amending Mississippi’s Constitution. The amendment, restricting the power of the state and local governments to take private property by eminent domain, was provoked by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo ruling that governments could, without violating the Fifth Amendment (“nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”), take property for the “public use” of transferring it to persons who would pay more taxes to the government.

The Mississippi friends and neighbors wanted to pool their funds to purchase posters, fliers and local newspaper advertising. They discovered that if, as a group, they spent more than $200 to do these simple things, they would be required by the state’s campaign finance law to register as a “political committee.” And if, as individuals, any of them spent more than $200 supporting the initiative, they must report this political activity to the state.

Mississippi defines a political committee as any group of persons spending more than $200 to influence voters for or against candidates “or balloted measures.” Supposedly, regulation of political activity is to prevent corruption of a candidate or the appearance thereof. How does one corrupt a “balloted measure”?

Granted, there is some slight informational value in knowing where money supporting a voter initiative comes from. But surely not enough to burden ordinary citizens expending $200 with monthly reporting requirements, concerning which legal advice might be necessary because any violation of the campaign regulations “is punishable by imprisonment in the county jail” for up to a year. As the Supreme Court said in its excellent Citizens United ruling, “Prolix laws chill speech for the same reason that vague laws chill speech: People ‘of common intelligence must necessarily guess at [the law’s] meaning and differ as to its application.’ ”

So, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi held: “Where, as here, potential speakers might well require legal counsel to determine which regulations even apply, above and beyond how to comport with those requirements, the burdens imposed by the state’s regulations are simply too great to be borne by the state’s interest in groups raising or expending as little as $200.” And the same is true regarding “the state’s informational interest in individual speakers” expending $200.

When, in 2011, Dina Galassini of Fountain Hills, Ariz., wanted to oppose her city’s plan to augment its spending with a $29.6 million bond issue, she sent e-mails encouraging 23 friends and acquaintances to write letters of opposition to newspapers and to join her in a demonstration. Six days later, the town clerk sternly admonished her: “I would strongly encourage you to cease any campaign-related activities until the requirements of the law have been met.”

Arizona’s law says that whenever two or more people collaborate, using at least $250, to influence voters about anything, they instantly become a “political committee,” a magical transformation that triggers various requirements — registering with the government, filling out forms, and establishing a bank account for the “committee” even if it has no intention of raising money. All this must be done before members of the “committee” are permitted to speak. Galassini got no response when she wrote to the clerk to find out if she could have permission to e-mail the 23 persons to tell them the demonstrations were canceled.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona supported Galassini. It had to, given that Citizens United said laws requiring official permission to speak “function as the equivalent of prior restraint by giving the [government] power analogous to licensing laws implemented in 16th- and 17th-century England, laws and governmental practices of the sort that the First Amendment was drawn to prohibit.”

Liberals who love the regulatory state loathe Citizens United. You can understand why.

More legal trouble for Affordable Care Act

Critics of Obama's healthcare plan are suing over a part of the law that offers tax credits through state exchanges. If they win, the program falls apart in 36 states.

By David G. Savage

5:00 AM PDT, October 25, 2013

WASHINGTON— If computer glitches are not enough of a problem, President Obama's healthcare law also has a legal glitch that critics say could cause it to unravel in more than half the nation.

The Affordable Care Act proposes to make health insurance affordable to millions of low-income Americans by offering them tax credits to help cover the cost. To receive the credit, the law twice says they must buy insurance "through an exchange established by the state."

But 36 states have decided against opening exchanges for now. Although the law permits the federal government to open exchanges instead, it does not say tax credits may be given to those who buy insurance through a federally run exchange.

Apparently no one noticed this when the long and complicated bill worked its way through the House and Senate. Last year, however, the Internal Revenue Service tried to remedy it by putting out a regulation that redefined "exchange" to include a "federally facilitated exchange." This is "consistent with the language, purpose and structure … of the act as a whole," the Treasury Department said.

But critics of the law have seized on the glitch. They have filed four lawsuits that urge judges to rule the Obama administration must abide by the strict wording of the law, even if doing so dismantles it in nearly two-thirds of the states. And the Obama administration has no hope of repairing the glitch by legislation as long as the Republicans control the House.

This week, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, a President Clinton appointee, refused the administration's request to dismiss the suit. Instead, he said the challengers had put forward a substantial claim, and he promised to issue a written ruling.

"This is a problem," said Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University. "This case could have legs," although "it was never the intent of Congress to establish federal exchanges that can't do anything. They were supposed to have exactly the same powers."

Michael Carvin, the Washington lawyer leading the challenge, says the wording of the law is what counts. "This is a question of whether you believe in the rule of law. And the language here is as clear as it could possibly be," he said.

Last year, Carvin went before the Supreme Court to argue that the law's mandate to buy insurance was unconstitutional. The high court handed down a split decision. By a 5-4 vote, the justices ruled the government may impose a tax penalty on those who can afford to buy insurance but decline to do so. But in a 7-2 decision, they said states had the option to expand their Medicaid coverage under the law, or to turn down extra federal money.

The states have now split evenly, as 25 of them have opted to take the extra money from Washington and expand their Medicaid coverage, and 25 have refused. As a result, the law's aim to provide free healthcare for those who are poor will go forward in only half of the nation.

The new suits take aim at the parts of the law that offer subsidies to those who are above the poverty level but still may struggle to pay for insurance. A single person with an income up to $45,960 can qualify for subsidies now, as can a family of four with an income up to $94,200. If the federal government cannot offer these subsidies in the 36 states without exchanges, it cannot enforce the mandate to have insurance, lawyers say.

"My jaw dropped when I first saw this," said Michael F. Cannon, a health policy expert at the Cato Institute and a fierce critic of the law. He and others credit former Justice Department attorney Tom Christina and Jonathan Adler, a Case Western Reserve University law professor, with first highlighting the glitch.

"This has the potential to sink Obamacare. It could make the current website problems seem minor by comparison," Cannon said.

Defenders of the law say the courts are being used as part of the political campaign against the law.

"This is definitely heating up. It is now the major focus of the Republican strategy for undoing the Affordable Care Act," said Simon Lazarus, a lawyer for the Constitutional Accountability Center. "The lawsuits should be seen as preposterous," he said, because they ask judges to give the law a "nonsensical" interpretation.

No judge has ruled directly on the claim that the IRS rule put forth by the administration is illegal and contradicted by the words of the law. Indiana Atty. Gen. Greg Zoeller filed one of four lawsuits this month. A federal judge in Oklahoma is considering a similar suit filed by that state's attorney general. A fourth suit is scheduled to be heard by a judge in Richmond, Va.

If any of the four judges agree with the challengers, they are likely to be asked to put the law on hold until the legal dispute is resolved. And that in turn could quickly send the issue to a U.S. appeals court and then to the Supreme Court.

"They are betting on getting five votes at the Supreme Court," Lazarus said. "I don't think it will happen."

How to NOT take Responsibility

Amazing.  It is always someone else's fault.  Why hasn't she been fired yet?

I love that those in charge continue to say that the healthcare website's problems are driven by larger than expected demand.  This is surprising, since Democrats have been saying for years that millions of people are clamoring for this system.  How can they then be surprised by the turnout (especially since this is the President's #1 agenda item, promoted constantly for 3+ years)?  All that is a ruse anyway -  the Secretary admits the site crashed during testing with only hundreds of people on it - can we please stop this charade that unexpected demand is to blame?

Also, the suggestion that now they have brought in the A team to fix the problems is amusing.  Here's a quote from the article below: 

"We (had) hoped that they had their 'A-Team' on the table" from the start, Sebelius said of the contractors and agencies responsible for the project.

She does realize she's in CHARGE of this project, right?  The buck stops with her.  Feel free to take responsibility at any point.  And she says the President was not made aware of any shortcomings before the launch?  That alone would get you fired in the private sector - bosses do not like their major projects blowing up on launch day when the project manager had advance warning and said nothing.  And she says the President knew nothing about it as if that absolves him of responsibility.  Being ignorant of the problems is not reassuring - so he's oblivious rather than incompetent?  The evidence seems to suggest he (and Sebelius) are both.

Finally, a note to the media - STOP QUOTING APPLICATION TOTALS.  I know we're desperate to find a silver lining here, but the number of people to opened an account or started the process is pretty meaningless at this point.  Give me the number of people who have actually completed the process.  Oh wait, the government won't release that information.  I wonder why.

Sebelius: Obamacare website problems blindsided the President
By Greg Botelho and Holly Yan , CNN
updated 8:56 AM EDT, Wed October 23, 2013 CNN.com


(CNN) -- Before it even launched, red flags went up about the Obamacare website. Health insurance companies complained about it, and the site crashed during a test run. But nobody told the President of any of it, the nation's health chief told CNN.

Kathleen Sebelius said President Barack Obama didn't hear that there may be problems with the sign-up portal for his signature health care law until it went live on October 1. That's when the site nosedived into a technical abyss.

In an exclusive interview with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the Health and Human Services secretary admitted that her department and the White House are displeased with the technically botched website's rollout.

"No one could be more frustrated than I am and the President," she said.

The site was supposed to make it simple for people to search and sign up for new health care policies, but instead it's been clunky and, at times, inoperable. And for Sebelius, that's disappointing.

"We're not at all satisfied with the workings of the website," she said. "We want it to be smooth and easy and let consumers compare plans."

A team of high-tech experts from within the government and from Silicon Valley is going to tackle the issues, Sebelius said. Jeff Zients, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, will lead the team.

So why weren't they brought in before the website launched October 1?

"We (had) hoped that they had their 'A-Team' on the table" from the start, Sebelius said of the contractors and agencies responsible for the project.

But now, she said, "we want new eyes and ears. We want to make sure that we get all the questions on the table, that we get all the answers and accelerate the fix as quickly as possible."

The secretary attributed some problems to "extremely high" volume, saying nearly 20 million people came to the Obamacare website in the first three weeks after its launch. Yet only 500,000 people have created accounts on the website. And not all of them have necessarily enrolled in health care plans.

It's not like no one saw this coming. When the website crashed during a test run, just a few hundred users were on it.

But the Obama administration went ahead with the launch. Waiting was not an option, Sebelius said.

"There are people in this country who have waited for decades for affordable health coverage for themselves and their families," she said.

Sebelius' comments struck some Republicans as surprising and even odd.

"At this point, she has a lot of questions to answer, and we look forward to her testimony in the House next week," said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.

A Senate GOP leadership aide called the situation "odd."

"Everyone was surprised by her statement that the President was unaware of the website's failures until a few days into it," the aide told CNN.

"They had been claiming that the Obamacare rollout was his top priority and that he was receiving regular updates, which was inaccurate. And he gave remarks on October 1 about how great it was and that people should go sign up," the aide said. "Assuming that he didn't know that the website didn't work, why did they let him make that speech when they knew it had crashed in testing? Did really no one recommend a delay to the President? It just seems odd."

Before the website's launch, Republicans made targeting the program a centerpiece of their agenda. Many insisted they wouldn't vote to fund the entire government unless Obamacare was defunded or delayed.

They said that the website's woes show that the Obama administration and the federal government generally aren't capable of executing what the GOP says was an ill-advised program from the get-go.

"God only knows how much money they've spent, and it's a failure," Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, said Sunday on CBS. "The government isn't going to be able to get this job done correctly."

On the other side, Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire sent a letter to Obama asking that the open enrollment period be extended past March 31, 2014. She also asked that he consider delaying assessment of a penalty to those who don't sign up for any health insurance before the so-called individual mandate kicks in.

Even Obama has been critical, insisting Monday that there's "no excuse for the problems." But he also said the problems should not amount to a blanket condemnation of the Affordable Care Act.
"Nobody's madder than me about the website not working as well as it should," Obama said, "which means it's going to get fixed."

Several top Republicans -- including 2012 vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan -- have called on Sebelius to step down due to the program's problems. The secretary skirted questions Tuesday about whether she'd step down, saying only that she works "at the pleasure of the President" and is committed to her job.

"I think my job is to get this fully implemented and to get the website working right," she told Gupta.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett stood up for Sebelius in an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan on Tuesday night.

"I am a friend of Kathleen's, and I'm a friend of her when she's in trouble," he said. "I like Kathleen. I feel sorry for her in the position she's in. Obviously, it's a huge screw-up, but it will get worked out."

Sebelius refused to give a timetable Tuesday as to when the website will be fully operational, but she insisted it's improving every day.

"More people are having an easier time," she said, "and we intend to stay at this until we open the doors wide open."

Rubio calls for delay of Obamacare sign-up deadline

And it's too early to call the rollout a failure, the health secretary said. There's still a long time for people to take advantage in person, by calling or by using the website during the open enrollment period.

When that six-month stretch is over, Sebelius said, people can better decide whether this part of Obamacare is a success or a failure.

Our government wants you to play a role in the slimdown -- it's your job to panic

Our government wants you to play a role in the slimdown -- it's your job to panic

By John Stossel
Published October 09, 2013 /

A fence surrounds the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington October 5, 2013. (Reuters)

Government wants you to play a role in the slimdown or “shutdown” of the federal government. Your role is to panic.

Republicans and Democrats both assume that shutting some government is a terrible thing. The press concurs. “Shutdown threatens fragile economy,” warns Politico. “Federal workers turn to prayer,” laments The Washington Post.

If the public starts noticing that life goes on as usual without all 3.4 million federal workers, we might get dangerous ideas, like doing without so much government. Politicians don’t want that.

They’d rather have us worry about how America will cope.

President Obama gave a speech where he actually said we need to keep government open for the sake of people like the person working for the Department of Agriculture “out there helping some farmers make sure that they’re making some modest profit,” and the Department of Housing and Urban Development “helping somebody buy a house for the first time.”

Give me a break. Farmers don’t need bureaucrats to teach them how to make a profit, and Americans can buy first homes without HUD helping a chosen few. Americans would make more profit and afford better homes if they didn’t have to spend a third of national income on federal taxes.

Bureaucrats, acting like bullies, protest the partial closures by doing things like cutting off access to public parks -- even privately funded ones.

Federal cops block access to outdoor war memorials and much of Mt. Rushmore.

They block access to motels and order people out of private homes that happen to sit on federal land.

The Washington Free Beacon reports, “The closure of a Virginia park that sits on federal land, even though the government provides no resources for its maintenance or operation.”

This is shutdown theater.

It’s similar to the fake “austerity measures” in other countries. We’re told that Europe’s slow economic growth is a result of “austerity” embraced by European governments.

But there hasn’t really been any austerity. England, where a “conservative” government is in charge, increased government spending by 4 percent.

“Austerity” in Greece -- supposedly so drastic that the public has little choice but to riot in protest -- meant changes like reducing mandatory severance pay to one entire year (instead of two!).

In the U.S., Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif..) told CNN the federal government has cut so much spending that there’s just nothing left to cut: “The cupboard is bare! There’s no more cuts to make!”

What? The federal government spends almost 4 trillion dollars! The government cupboard overflows! We fund entire cabinet departments that are worse than useless.

The Labor Department interferes with actual labor. Commerce would flow more smoothly without Commerce Department bureaucrats channeling money to their cronies.

The government hasn’t cut spending -- it never does. After the last shutdowns, politicians even voted to award retroactive pay to government workers who didn’t work. Bet they do it again this time. The federal government remains the biggest employer in the country. President Obama says so with pride.

Compare this to what happens in the private sector in tough times: AT&T cut 40,000 workers. Sears cut 50,000. IBM: 60,000. They weren’t easy decisions, but they enabled the companies to stay profitable. With fewer workers, leaner companies found more efficient ways to get things done.

And the rest of us barely noticed. We expect change and adaptation in free-market institutions. But it doesn’t happen in government. Government just grows.

Maybe the ugliest part of this story is that the city that whines most about suffering through the shutdown, Washington, D.C., is now the richest geographic area in America. Washington got richer while the rest of America didn’t. Over the past 12 years, median income in the U.S. dropped about 6.5 percent -- but not in D.C.! There, it rose 23 percent. Four of the five richest counties now surround Washington, D.C.

No wonder politicians and bureaucrats are convinced big government is essential to keep the economy going -- it is essential to keep them going.

Who shut down Yellowstone?

Who shut down Yellowstone?
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: October 3

The Obamacare/shutdown battle has spawned myriad myths. The most egregious concern the substance of the fight, the identity of the perpetrators and the origins of the current eruption.

(1) Substance

President Obama indignantly insists that GOP attempts to abolish or amend Obamacare are unseemly because it is “settled” law, having passed both houses of Congress, obtained his signature and passed muster with the Supreme Court.

Yes, settledness makes for a strong argument — except from a president whose administration has unilaterally changed Obamacare five times after its passage, including, most brazenly, a year-long suspension of the employer mandate.

Article I of the Constitution grants the legislative power entirely to Congress. Under what constitutional principle has Obama unilaterally amended the law? Yet when the House of Representatives undertakes a constitutionally correct, i.e., legislative, procedure for suspending the other mandate — the individual mandate — this is portrayed as some extra-constitutional sabotage of the rule of law. Why is tying that amendment to a generalized spending bill an outrage, while unilateral amendment by the executive (with a Valerie Jarrett blog item for spin) is perfectly fine?

(2) Perpetrators

The mainstream media have been fairly unanimous in blaming the government shutdown on the GOP. Accordingly, House Republicans presented three bills to restore funding to national parks, veterans and the District of Columbia government. Democrats voted down all three. (For procedural reasons, the measures required a two-thirds majority.)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won’t even consider these refunding measures. And the White House has promised a presidential veto.

The reason is obvious: to prolong the pain and thus add to the political advantage gained from a shutdown blamed on the GOP. They are confident the media will do a “GOP makes little Johnny weep at the closed gates of Yellowstone, film at 11” despite Republicans having just offered legislation to open them.

And besides, whence comes the sanctity of the “clean CR,” the single bill (continuing resolution) that funds all of government? The Democrats have declared it inviolable — and piecemeal funding, as proposed by the Republicans, unacceptable on principle. On what grounds? After all, the regular appropriations process consists of 12 separate appropriation bills. The insistence on the “clean CR” is just a fancy way to suggest some principle behind the president’s refusal to compromise or even negotiate.

(3) Origins

The most ubiquitous conventional wisdom is that the ultimate cause of these troubles is out-of-control tea party anarchists.

But is this really where the causal chain ends? The tea party was created by Obama’s first-term overreach, most specifically Obamacare. Today’s frantic fight against it is the echoing result of the way it was originally enacted.

From Social Security to civil rights to Medicaid to Medicare, never in the modern history of the country has major social legislation been enacted on a straight party-line vote. Never. In every case, there was significant reaching across the aisle, enhancing the law’s legitimacy and endurance. Yet Obamacare — which revolutionizes one-sixth of the economy, regulates every aspect of medical practice and intimately affects just about every citizen — passed without a single GOP vote.

The Democrats insist they welcomed contributing ideas from Republicans. Rubbish. Republicans proposed that insurance be purchasable across state lines. They got nothing. They sought serious tort reform. They got nothing. Why? Because, admitted Howard Dean, Democrats didn’t want to offend the trial lawyers.

Moreover, the administration was clearly warned. Republican Scott Brown ran in the most inhospitable of states, Massachusetts, on the explicit promise to cast the deciding vote blocking Obamacare. It was January 2010, the height of the debate. He won. Reid ignored this unmistakable message of popular opposition and conjured a parliamentary maneuver — reconciliation — to get around Brown.

Nothing illegal about that. Nothing illegal about ramming it through without a single opposition vote. Just totally contrary to the modern American tradition — and the constitutional decency — of undertaking major social revolutions with only bipartisan majorities. Having stuffed Obamacare down the throats of the GOP and the country, Democrats are now paying the price.

I don’t agree with current Republican tactics. I thought the defunding demand impossible and, therefore, foolish. I thought that if, nonetheless, the GOP insisted on making a stand, it should not be on shutting down the government, which voters oppose 5-to-1, but on the debt ceiling, which Americans favor 2-to-1 as a vehicle for restraining government.

Tactics are one thing, but substance is another. It’s the Democrats who have mocked the very notion of settled law. It’s the Democrats who voted down the reopening of substantial parts of the government. It’s the Democrats who gave life to a spontaneous, authentic, small-government opposition — a.k.a. the tea party — with their unilateral imposition of a transformational agenda during the brief interval when they held a monopoly of power.

That interval is over. The current unrest is the residue of that hubris.

Minimum Wage Madness

Minimum Wage Madness

By Thomas Sowell - September 17, 2013

Political crusades for raising the minimum wage are back again. Advocates of minimum wage laws often give themselves credit for being more "compassionate" towards "the poor." But they seldom bother to check what are the actual consequences of such laws.

One of the simplest and most fundamental economic principles is that people tend to buy more when the price is lower and less when the price is higher. Yet advocates of minimum wage laws seem to think that the government can raise the price of labor without reducing the amount of labor that will be hired.


When you turn from economic principles to hard facts, the case against minimum wage laws is even stronger.

Countries with minimum wage laws almost invariably have higher rates of unemployment than countries without minimum wage laws.

Most nations today have minimum wage laws, but they have not always had them. Unemployment rates have been very much lower in places and times when there were no minimum wage laws.

Switzerland is one of the few modern nations without a minimum wage law. In 2003, "The Economist" magazine reported: "Switzerland's unemployment neared a five-year high of 3.9 percent in February." In February of this year, Switzerland's unemployment rate was 3.1 percent. A recent issue of "The Economist" showed Switzerland's unemployment rate as 2.1 percent.

Most Americans today have never seen unemployment rates that low. However, there was a time when there was no federal minimum wage law in the United States. The last time was during the Coolidge administration, when the annual unemployment rate got as low as 1.8 percent. When Hong Kong was a British colony, it had no minimum wage law. In 1991 its unemployment rate was under 2 percent.

As for being "compassionate" toward "the poor," this assumes that there is some enduring class of Americans who are poor in some meaningful sense, and that there is something compassionate about reducing their chances of getting a job.

Most Americans living below the government-set poverty line have a washer and/or a dryer, as well as a computer. More than 80 percent have air conditioning. More than 80 percent also have both a landline and a cell phone. Nearly all have television and a refrigerator. Most Americans living below the official poverty line also own a motor vehicle and have more living space than the average European -- not Europeans in poverty, the average European.

Why then are they called "poor"? Because government bureaucrats create the official definition of poverty, and they do so in ways that provide a political rationale for the welfare state -- and, not incidentally, for the bureaucrats' own jobs.

Most people in the lower income brackets are not an enduring class. Most working people in the bottom 20 percent in income at a given time do not stay there over time. More of them end up in the top 20 percent than remain behind in the bottom 20 percent.

There is nothing mysterious about the fact that most people start off in entry level jobs that pay much less than they will earn after they get some work experience. But, when minimum wage levels are set without regard to their initial productivity, young people are disproportionately unemployed -- priced out of jobs.

In European welfare states where minimum wages, and mandated job benefits to be paid for by employers, are more generous than in the United States, unemployment rates for younger workers are often 20 percent or higher, even when there is no recession.

Unemployed young people lose not only the pay they could have earned but, at least equally important, the work experience that would enable them to earn higher rates of pay later on.

Minorities, like young people, can also be priced out of jobs. In the United States, the last year in which the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate -- 1930 -- was also the last year when there was no federal minimum wage law. Inflation in the 1940s raised the pay of even unskilled workers above the minimum wage set in 1938. Economically, it was the same as if there were no minimum wage law by the late 1940s.

In 1948 the unemployment rate of black 16-year-old and 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent. This was a fraction of what it would become in even the most prosperous years from 1958 on, as the minimum wage was raised repeatedly to keep up with inflation.

Some "compassion" for "the poor"!

Unserious Commander-in-Chief

Unserious Commander-in-Chief
 If Obama can’t tell us what his objectives for attacking Syria are, Congress should vote no.

Charles Krauthammer

Senator Bob Corker: “What is it you’re seeking?”

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “I can’t answer that, what we’re seeking.”

— Senate hearing on the use of force in Syria, September 3


We have a problem. The president proposes attacking Syria, and his top military officer cannot tell you the objective. Does the commander-in-chief know his own objective? Why, yes. “A shot across the bow,” explained Barack Obama.

Now, a shot across the bow is a warning. Its purpose is to say: Cease and desist, or the next shot will sink you. But Obama has already told the world — and Bashar Assad in particular — that there will be no next shot. He has insisted time and again that the operation will be finite and highly limited. Take the shot, kill some fish, go home.

What then is the purpose? Dempsey hasn’t a clue, but Secretary of State John Kerry says it will uphold and proclaim a norm and thus deter future use of chemical weapons. With a few Tomahawk missiles? Hitting sites that, thanks to the administration having leaked the target list, have already been scrubbed of important military assets?

This is risible. If anything, a pinprick from which Assad emerges unscathed would simply enhance his stature and vindicate his conduct. Deterrence depends entirely on perception and the perception in the Middle East is universal: Obama wants no part of Syria.

Assad has to go, says Obama, and then lifts not a finger for two years. Obama lays down a red line, and then ignores it. Shamed finally by a massive poison-gas attack, he sends Kerry to make an impassioned case for righteous and urgent retaliation — and the very next day, Obama undermines everything by declaring an indefinite timeout to seek congressional approval.

This stunning zigzag, following months of hesitation, ambivalence, contradiction, and studied delay, left our regional allies shocked and our enemies gleeful. I had strongly advocated going to Congress. But it was inconceivable that, instead of recalling Congress to emergency session, Obama would simply place everything in suspension while Congress finished its Labor Day barbecues and he flew off to Stockholm and St. Petersburg. So much for the fierce urgency of enforcing an international taboo and speaking for the dead children of Damascus.

Here’s how deterrence works in the Middle East. Syria, long committed to the destruction of Israel, has not engaged Israel militarily in 30 years. Why? Because it recognizes Israel as a serious adversary with serious policies.

In this year alone, Israel has four times launched airstrikes within Syria. No Syrian response. How did Israel get away with it? Israel had announced that it would not tolerate Assad’s acquiring or transferring to Hezbollah advanced weaponry. No grandiloquent speeches by the Israeli foreign minister. No leaked target lists. Indeed, the Israelis didn’t acknowledge the strikes even after they had carried them out. Unlike the American president, they have no interest in basking in perceived toughness. They care only about effect. They care about just one audience — the party to be deterred, namely Assad and his allies.

Assad knows who did it. He didn’t have to see the Israeli prime minister preening about it on world television.

And yet here is Obama, having done nothing yet but hesitate, threaten, retract, and wander about the stage, claiming Wednesday in Sweden to be the conscience of the world, upholding not his own red line but the world’s. And, incidentally, Congress’s — a transparent attempt at offloading responsibility.

To his dovish base, Obama insists on how limited and militarily marginal the strike will be. To undecided hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who are prepared to support a policy that would really alter the course of the civil war, he vaguely promises the opposite — to degrade Assad’s military while upgrading that of the resistance.

Problem is, Obama promised U.S. weaponry three months ago and not a rifle has arrived. This time around, what seems in the making is a mere pinprick, designed to be, one U.S. official told the Los Angeles Times, “just muscular enough not to get mocked.”

That’s why Dempsey is so glum. That’s why U.S. allies are so stunned. There’s no strategy, no purpose here other than helping Obama escape self-inflicted humiliation.

This is deeply unserious. Unless Obama can show the country that his don’t-mock-me airstrike is, in fact, part of a serious strategy for altering the trajectory of the Syrian war, Congress should vote no.