Lied To, Scorned and Betrayed!

That's how a majority of the American people have been treated by the majority in its government and its court. In a 2009 interview, President Obama said "you can't just make up the language and decide that that's called a tax increase." (Video here.) Yet that is exactly what the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court today just did.

National Review called the majority's ruling "Chief Justice Roberts's Folly:"

The dissent acknowledges that if an ambiguous law can be read in a way that renders it constitutional, it should be. It distinguishes, though, between construing a law charitably and rewriting it. The latter is what Chief Justice John Roberts has done. If Roberts believes that this tactic avoids damage to the Constitution because it does not stretch the Commerce Clause to justify a mandate, he is mistaken. The Constitution does not give the Court the power to rewrite statutes, and Roberts and his colleagues have therefore done violence to it. If the law has been rendered less constitutionally obnoxious, the Court has rendered itself more so. Chief Justice Roberts cannot justly take pride in this legacy... [emphasis added]

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli called the decision "a dark day for American Liberty," and 
Rush Limbaugh said it was "the largest tax increase in the history of the world."

The text of the Court's individual mandate opinion is here.

Obamacare: We Shall Never Give Up!

The High Court’s decision today letting Obamacare stand may mark the end of this one legal journey, but it will not mark the end of Americans’ quest to preserve their God-given freedom.

The Court today has given America’s radical Leftists a constitutional platform on which to establish a thoroughly wealth redistributionist society. Left in place, Americans are no longer individuals endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, but serfs begging Washington on bended knee for their bread. It cannot stand.

It is a time to remember the words of Winston Churchill, “This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never given in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

To understand the weight of the mountain of taxes the High Court today authorized, see Americans for Tax Reform’s list of new and increased taxes.

Pipes: How Will White House Respond to Obamacare Decision

Health care expert Sally Pipes looks at the 4 most likely outcomes of the US Supreme Court decision on Obamacare and how the White House might respond to each one. It's worth reading to understand why the court's decision, however it comes out, isn't likely to mark the end of the health care reform debate.

WSJ: How High Court Could Rule on Health

The Wall Street Journal blog offers a useful summary of the 4 most likely ways the Supreme Court could rule on Obamacare and the fallout from each one: (1) found entirely constitutional; (2) insurance mandate struck down, but rest of law remains; (3) mandate and 2 related regulatory provisions struck down, but rest of law remains; and (4) found entirely unconstitutional.

'Fast and Furious' Story Gets Legs

"Fast and Furious hasn’t been discussed a lot in the mainstream media, which is why the facts can seem so preposterous when you read them for the first time," writes Tim Stanley at the UK Telegraph. "But the story is slowly unraveling and the public is catching up with the madness" following a House Oversight & Government Reform Committee vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for withholding documents and President Obama's 11th hour decision to invoke Executive Privilege on them. Stanley does a masterful job of summarizing the story succinctly:

Here’s what Fast and Furious is all about — and for the uninitiated, be prepared for a shock.

In 2009, the US government instructed Arizona gun sellers illegally to sell arms to suspected criminals. Agents working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were then ordered not to stop the sales but to allow the arms to “walk” across the border into the arms of Mexican drug-traffickers.

Washington's Insane Regulatory Burden

Deficits, taxes, and spending are the defining issues of 2012, write Ryan Young and Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but "regulation deserves a seat at the table, too." Consider the following from CEI's annual Ten Thousand Commandments report:

• Federal regulations listed in the Code of Federal Regulations is more than 169,000 pages long and growing.
• The annual cost of complying with federal regulations has exceeded $1 trillion since around 2005, and none of those costs appears in the federal budget.
• Small businesses bear an outsized share of the burden: small businesses with fewer than 20 employees pay $10,585 per employee per year to comply with federal rules.
• Big businesses, with more than 500 employees, pay about $7,755 per employee per year to comply, giving them a built-in competitive advantage of nearly $3,000 per employee, courtesy of Washington.

Those price tags will only grow as big government agencies and their regulations expand.

Congress passed 81 new laws last year, but agencies issued 3,870 new regulations. ... Of those rules, 212 are classified "economically significant," which means they cost more than $100 million per year. 

The authors argue that regulations-without-representation, i.e., regulations and rules written by bureaucrats requiring no approval by Congress, needs to be stopped.

Just as Congress is supposed to pass a budget every year for what it spends, it should pass a regulatory budget. If it caps regulatory burdens at, say, $1 trillion, it would then have to prioritize which rules it believes provide the most bang for the buck. Voters would also know when Congress votes to increase regulatory costs, giving members at least some incentive to keep regulation in check.

The fight for real regulatory reform is a long one, not least because neither party has shown the seriousness needed to see it through. But the only way to win is to fight.

Get the Economic Growth Choice Right

"Get the growth choice right, and we'll be ok," argues Daniel Henninger at the Wall Street Journal. "Get it wrong and your kids will be talking Australia emigration."

Right now, with growth stuck below 2%, we're toast. With strong growth at 3% or better, there will be jobs. With long-term growth, Medicare, debt and the rest of the horribles that keep worrywarts awake at night are solvable. With strong growth, the U.S. will not have to cede world leadership prematurely to whichever Chinese functionary slugs his way to the top of their heap. With strong growth, your college graduate can move out of the house. With normal American growth, Europe may be irrelevant but it won't die, and a U.S. president won't look oddly small talking to the Vladimir Putins of the world.

Mr. Obama was exactly right in Cleveland when he said economic growth "is the defining issue of our time," that his and his opponents' views on growth are fundamentally different and "this election is your chance to break that stalemate." This he gets. Only the most obtuse "pragmatists" persist in believing the solution lies in a mystical center somehow combining elements from this ideological oil and water. ... Voters have to pick [between] two competing growth models, which means paying attention to what the candidates are saying about economic growth. 

Women Waging War on Big Government

The Tea Party isn't waging a war on women, argues Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express; but its women are certainly waging a war against Big Government, big spending, and big debt policies. 

One of the most recent attempted diversions is the invention of a "Tea Party-led war on women." Ironically, much of the Tea Party leadership is made up of a new generation of powerful conservative women.

The truth is that Tea Party women are leading the charge to tackle the fundamental problems brought on by the ever-expanding Big Government agenda. Women are not only the most protective of loved ones. They are also the most familiar with how policies will affect their family on a micro level.

Common-sense conservative women are now driving the movement to shrink the size of government and rein in the out-of-control spending. We are going to get this country back on track, and thanks to the millions of conservative mothers, sisters, wives and daughters across this nation, we are going to restore the American dream for our children's generation and all future generations to come.

What Gender Wage Gap?

Conventional wisdom holds that women suffer employer discrimination because they make 79 cents for every dollar men make doing the same work. Not so fast, argues June O'Neill, a former Congressional Budget Office director.

If male-female work experience is factored in, the wage "gap" decreases from 79 cents to 88.6 cents on the dollar. And if schooling level, cognitive skills, time out of the labor force for child-rearing, and type of employer are factored in, the gender wage "gap" virtually disappears, to 96.7 cents on the dollar.

Further supporting this conclusion, O'Neill finds that single women without children, on average, make 8 percent more than their similarly situated male colleagues. This suggests that it is the social pressures of being a mother and/or wife, and not employer discrimination, that drives down female wages.

For full details, see "The Disappearing Wage Gap."

Greed Meets Envy

Tired of hearing about 'greed' from liberals? Change the subject to 'envy'.  Envy, unlike greed, is always personally and societally destructive, argues attorney David McGinley, and the Left owns and thrives on envy!

Covetousness (or envy), meaning the possession of a strong desire for what another has, does not get the attention that its close relation "greed" gets. ... Why? Greed is not always destructive, while envy is. Greed is the desire to have more and, depending how that desire is acted upon, can be beneficial or detrimental. The profit motive has made the United States the most prosperous nation in history; but, conversely, the abuse of that motive was greatly responsible for the September 2008 financial collapse. When envy, on the other hand, is acted upon, there is no good, only bad. At its worst, it leads to mass theft and murder.

The Taste for Arbitrary Power

"When The New York Times revealed not long ago that President Obama was personally selecting which suspected terrorists should live and which should die, everyone – supporters and critics – treated it as a national security story, period," writes Clark Judge. "I saw it as something else."

To me the White House generated portrait of Mr. Obama personally picking the targets of drone strikes reflects his most disturbing characteristic – a taste for the arbitrary exercise of power.

Confidence in Public Schools Hits New Low

"Americans' confidence in public schools is down five percentage points from last year," reports Gallup, "with 29% expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in them." The chart below shows the near continuous decline in public confidence over the past 40 years of Gallup's tracking.

The low confidence level will surprise no one except perhaps the teachers union, given U.S. students' downward spiral in international math and science achievement comparisons, and it should greatly encourage those who have long advocated universal school choice and an open, free market in K-12 education. 

A Win for Common Sense

"The UCLA College faculty has once again voted down a diversity-related general education requirement," reports the Daily Bruin.

The "Community and Conflict in the Modern World" requirement would have required students to take a GE course dealing with conflicts and collaboration that can emerge through differences in communities. It had been in the works since 2010.

The vote against "studies" departments was remarkable, writes Tim Groseclose at ricochet.com

The proposal would have required each UCLA student to take a class that examines “community and conflict.”  Although the proposal did not precisely define “community and conflict,” it listed a set of sample courses that would satisfy the requirement.   Approximately half of those courses were taught by one of the “studies” departments—e.g. African American Studies, Chicano Studies, Asian American Studies, Labor and Workplace Studies, American Indian Studies, etc.  Almost all of the remaining half would naturally fit in one of the “studies” departments.

The college's budget woes contributed to faculty rejection of the GE requirement, according to the Daily Bruin.

Galliher: God Bless the Conservative Father

"Many of us were fortunate to be raised by a responsible, moral, conservative father — imperfect though he may have been," writes Betsy Galliher at American Thinker. "He scoffed when his children cried, that's not fair. He taught us work before play, the value of money, self-respect, right and wrong, and the limits of government and the power of personal responsibility — if not in words, by his example. I am grateful for many blessings, but a conservative father is chief among them..."

Read the rest of God Bless the Conservative Father.

Klein: What Historians Think of Obama's Presidency

"On the evening of Tuesday, June 30, 2009—just five months into his administration—Barack Obama invited a small group of presidential historians to dine with him in the Family Quarters of the White House," writes Edward Klein. "His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, personally delivered the invitations with a word of caution: the meeting was to remain private and off the record."

Judging from Mr. Obama’s questions, one subject was uppermost in his mind: how could he become a “transformational” president and bend the historic trajectory of America’s domestic and foreign policy?

Two similar dinner parties over two years later, one historian who attended all three meetings expresses doubt that Obama will "have the place in history he so eagerly covets..." 

Americans' Wealth Fell 40% in 3 Years

Economic policy decisions have real consequences. "The recent recession wiped out nearly two decades of Americans’ wealth, according to government data released Monday, with ­middle-class families bearing the brunt of the decline," reports the Washington Post. "The Federal Reserve said the median net worth of families plunged by 39 percent in just three years, from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010. That puts Americans roughly on par with where they were in 1992."

The wealth wipe-out is likely to have a generational trickle-down effect for those hoping for an inheritance, according to Anne Tergesen at the Wall Street Journal:

...for a growing number of boomers, things aren't going according to plan. The postwar generation is living longer—and many are spending their savings along the way. And, of course, many of them also took a hit in 2008.

The result is that, as a group, boomers likely won't be getting as much of an inheritance as they hoped. Even worse, far from receiving a bequest, a growing number are tapping some of their own savings to help their cash-strapped parents make ends meet.

For families, the result is often a lot of scrambling, dashed dreams, and conflict and angst as parents and children try to come to grips with the lean new reality—and divide up a smaller pie.

EPA Wants to Regulate Your Ditches

In an unprecedented power grab, the Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of reclassifying private property ditches and gulleys as "waters of the United States" for the purpose of regulating an owner's use of his/her own property, reports Audrey Hudson. Democratic and Republican lawmakers are joining forces to block EPA's latest overreach.

The unusual alliance of the powerful House Republicans and Democrat to jointly sponsor legislation to overturn the new guidelines signals a willingness on Capitol Hill to rein in the formidable agency.

“The Obama administration is doing everything in its power to increase costs and regulatory burdens for American businesses, farmers and individual property owners,” Mica said in a statement to Human Events. “This federal jurisdiction grab has been opposed by Congress for years, and now the administration and its agencies are ignoring law and rulemaking procedures in order to tighten their regulatory grip over every water body in the country.”

“But this administration needs to realize it is not above the law,” Mica said.

The House measure carries 64 Republican and Democratic cosponsors and was passed in committee last week. A companion piece of legislation is already gathering steam in the Senate and is cosponsored by 26 Republicans.

Will: Subprime College Education

Taxpayers, students and their families are "paying rapidly rising prices for something of declining quality," writes George Will, and the government-induced bubble, built around a 440 percent increase in tuition and fees over 30 years, is about to pop.

In his "The Higher Education Bubble," [University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan] Reynolds writes that this bubble exists for the same reasons the housing bubble did. The government decided that too few people owned homes/went to college, so government money was poured into subsidized and sometimes subprime mortgages/student loans, with the predictable result that housing prices/college tuitions soared and many borrowers went bust. 

Will cites examples of declining quality:

• Since 1961, the time students spend reading, writing and otherwise studying has fallen from 24 hours a week to about 15 — enough for a degree often desired only as an expensive signifier of rudimentary qualities (e.g., the ability to follow instructions).
• UC San Diego (UCSD), while eliminating master’s programs in electrical and computer engineering and comparative literature, and eliminating courses in French, German, Spanish and English literature, added a diversity requirement for graduation to cultivate “a student’s understanding of her or his identity.”
• UCSD lost three cancer researchers to Rice University, which offered them 40 percent pay increases. But UCSD found money to create a vice chancellorship for equity, diversity and inclusion. 

Read his full article.

Servants Have Neither Choices nor Responsibility

Warning that "a free man is responsible for his choices [while] a servant has neither choices nor responsibility," John Hayward challenges Mayor Bloomberg's argument for a 16-oz soda ban and the larger risk it poses to Americans.

In the United States, liberals have spent generations selling the illusion of “independence” without responsibility – the promise of government benefits provided at no great cost to individual liberty. This illusion shattered forever when the American Left finally achieved its dream of government-controlled health care. The true cost of dependency could no longer be concealed. The Catholic Church is no longer free to follow its religious conscience. Contrary to President Obama’s assurances, you don’t get to keep your old plan if you liked it.

Obama Administration's Faulty View of Federal Power

"As the world awaits the Supreme Court's ruling on ObamaCare," writes Ilya Shapiro, "there's a larger story that the pundits are missing: the court's rejection of the Obama administration's increasingly extreme claims on behalf of unlimited federal power. ... When the administration can't get even a single one of the liberal justices to agree with it in these unrelated areas of the law, that's a sign there's something wrong with its constitutional vision."

He cites 3 cases in which the high court unanimously rejected government's claims this year:

Wisconsin Recall Fallout

"The petty, protected, pampered lefty government unions—still indignant over Scott Walker's 2010 win—simply threw a 75 million dollar tantrum as a third do over on that same election," writes C. Edmund Wright. "And the unions' reward from the citizens of Wisconsin for a year and a half of hell was a resounding 'go to hell' of epic proportions." He draws up a long list of the losers, including Big Labor, MSM and exit polling, Democrat Party, Republican Party Establishment, GOP consultants/conventional wisdom, Bipartisanship, and Julia.  Read Big Labor's Big Boo-Boo at American Thinker.

Video: Why Progressive Institutions are Unsustainable

This fast-paced little video does a great job "outlining the differences between the classical liberalism of the Tea Parties and the progressive agenda advanced by the Occupy Wall Street movement." It's based on Richard Epstein's new book, Why Progressive Institutions are Unsustainable.



http://tinyurl.com/75smfq3%29

Feminism's American Caste Society

Feminists were dead wrong: The single-motherhood revolution "has been an economic catastrophe for women," writes Kay Hymowitz, who calls it the makings of a caste society.

Defenders of the single-mother revolution often describe it as empowering for women, who can now free themselves from unhappy unions and live independent lives. That’s one way to look at it. Another is that it has been an economic catastrophe for those women.

Poverty remains relatively rare among married couples with children; the U.S. Census puts only 8.8 percent of them in that category... But over 40% of single-mother families are poor [and] of the two-fifths of bottom-quintile households that are families, 83% are headed by single mothers.

The Brookings Institution's Isabel Sawhill calculates that virtually all the increase in child poverty in the United States since the 1970s would vanish if parents still married at 1970 rates..."

Hymowitz highlights several studies that show married mothers (including 'shotgun' unions) are economically better off than single or co-habitating mothers. So are married fathers, it turns out. 

Servants Have Neither Choices Nor Responsibility

Warning that "A free man is responsible for his choices" while "a servant has neither choices nor responsibility," John Hayward challenges Mayor Bloomberg's argument for the 16 oz soda ban.

Bloomberg’s soda ban is just one sobering reminder that independence and responsibility are inextricably linked.  If people don’t want to accept responsibility for their actions, they must sacrifice their liberty as well...

In the United States, liberals have spent generations selling the illusion of "independence" without responsibility — the promise of government benefits provided at no great cost to individual liberty. This illusion shattered forever when the American Left finally achieved its dream of government-controlled health care. The true cost of dependency could no longer be concealed. The Catholic Church is no longer free to follow its religious conscience. Contrary to President Obama’s assurances, you don’t get to keep your old plan if you liked it.

The War on Obesity is still fairly young, as political crusades go, but it has spotlighted the loss of liberty that inevitably accompanies dependence. If the government is to be held accountable for financing your health care, it must have power over your life, in order to keep those socialized costs down. Once the basic premise of socialism is accepted, and everyone is collectively obliged to pay for everyone else, this only makes sense. 

And if New Yorkers don't stand up to Bloomberg's "benevolent tyranny"?

...there will eventually be no purpose in complaining about it, because you’ll never get your lost choices back. You will be expected to grow comfortable with a more limited range of motion, within the perpetually shrinking cage your betters have designed for you. You will become steadily less responsible for your life, and the lives of your children, which is very soothing. You’ll also be less free, by definition, as your “unacceptable” choices are taken away. It is widely assumed that Americans are no longer the sort of people who grow angry over such things.

Hilarious Take on the Nanny State

Ordering lunch under the dictates of Mayor Bloomberg and First Lady Michelle Obama can be a very dissatisfying. See for yourself at http://youtu.be/9R5WXcXi9SY