Socialism and the End of the American Dream

How does the Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, allow Congress to prohibit the decision to not purchase health insurance-something that involves no commercial transactions, much less commercial transactions across state lines, and which couldn't possibly involve interstate commerce anyway given that there's currently no way to buy insurance across state lines.  Today, Cato Chairman Robert Levy has a much clearer explanation of how the Supreme Court has ruled on Commerce Clause cases which involve neither commerce nor the crossing of state lines. In Wickard v. Filburn and Gonzales v. Raich, he explains, the gist of the Supreme Court's decisions was that "if the failure to regulate would undercut a federal regulatory regime, then [the Supreme Court is] going to permit it." But, he argues, the individual mandate is still uncharted territory; the federal government isn't merely telling individuals what they can't do, it's telling them what they must do, and what they must do is purchase a product from a private company. As I've noted frequently, the CBO has called the mandate "an unprecedented form of federal action," and Levy's analysis tracks with that assessment. I still don't think I'd put money on the Supreme Court actually striking down the mandate, but Levy's argument that they should is fairly convincing. 

Goldman Sachs reputation with its clients-who must have at least $10 million to open an account-has never been better. Among the general public, however, the perception is that Goldman is the toxic epicenter of everything wrong with Wall Street. The firm's 32,000 employees are seen as an army of Gordon Gekkos, greedy manipulators who pumped up the housing bubble, then bet opportunistically on its implosion as American International Group (AIG), its trading partner, buckled under massive debts. It is widely alleged-though unproven-that Goldman called on its close friends in government to arrange for an AIG bailout, effectively pocketing billions of taxpayer dollars. "Every game has a sucker," says William K. Black, a professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri at Kansas City who was deputy director of the Federal Savings & Loan Insurance Corp., "and in this case, the sucker was not so much AIG as it was the U.S. government and taxpayer." Heads Goldman wins, tails you lose, America.

Urban Survival website.  George Ure & Clif High will discuss their Web Bot technology on Coast to Coast 4/01/2010, which has continued to give archetype descriptors of future events. They'll share predictions about world events and the U.S. economy, and what's in store for the summer of 2010. The WebBot predictions are based on a massive algorithm analyzing conversations and documents.  They focus on key words, basing their predictions on human intuition.  amazing stuff.  One of the terms that stuck out is that of "SKED", a Roman term used to describe the debating analysis of a opposing speakers where, the language and presentation style of the opponent was believed to reveal the reality of who they were, where they came from  and what was their heartfelt viewpoint. SKED istself could also stand for subjective knowledge escalated through global distribution. Great predictions.  Watch out for July 2010, where the revolution against the illuminati gets very real.  The dollar is being intentionally diminished and destroyed.  This will culminate in November of 2010, with something approaching civil war in the USA brought on by the collapse of the dollar.

There is a quiet anger boiling in America. It is the anger of millions of hard-working citizens who pay their bills, send in their income taxes, maintain their homes and repay their mortgage loans -- and see their government reward those who do not. It is the anger of small town and Middle American folks who have never been to Manhattan, who put their savings in a community bank and borrow from a local credit union, who watch Washington lawmakers and presidents of both parties hand billions in taxpayer bailouts to the reckless Wall Street titans who brought down the economy in 2008. ....... Good writing from from former WSJ editor James Gannon.  Need to articulate your anger?  Mr. Gannon does it for you.  Good read.

s the GOP really just the party of no, as Democrat talking points say and the Democrat party controlled media echo? Or do Republicans have a positive vision for America besides their well-justified opposition to the ultra-left Obamacrat agenda? This article covers: ..... Gingrich's American Solutions ..... The Paul Ryan Roadmap ..... A Healthcare discussion "Patient Power v. Government Power" The article is an excellent read and good resource for future reference.  One thing though.  it would be helpful if Constitutional Conservative writers replaced the Democrat/Marxist Media term for Republicans as "the Party of NO", with a more accurate description; "The Party of HELL NO!"

Excellent charts for gold, currency, oil, energy and stock markets worldwide.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with U.S. Resident Village Idiot, and World renown Marxist, President Barack Obama on March 23. The meeting follows the explosion in U.S.-Israeli relations after Israel announced it was licensing construction of homes in East Jerusalem while U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel. The United States wants Israel to stop all construction of new Jewish settlements. The Israelis argue that East Jerusalem is not part of the occupied territories, and hence, the U.S. demand doesn't apply there. The Americans are not parsing their demand so finely and regard the announcement - timed as it was - as a direct affront and challenge. Israel's response is that it is a sovereign state and so must be permitted to do as it wishes. The implicit American response is that the United States is also a sovereign state and will respond as it wishes...... Stratfor analyst George Friedman explains, in geopolitical terms, the tensions between Israel and a Socialist America.  Good history lesson.  For instance, american support for Israel didn't commence until 1967, when someone had to replace France and Britain.  Interestingly, in 1956, when Britain and France seized the previously nationalized Suez Canal during another Israel triumph against it's Arab enemies, Eisenhower forced Britain and Franc to return the canal to Egypt!    Yet, anti American sentiment surged throughout the middle east.

District 14, California zip code 94063.  Easy selection of congressional district with complete rap on congress criters.  Includes contact information.

Like everyone else, Lewis ignored the fact that the CDS market is private only because the Commodity Futures Modernization Act made it that way. It was regulated underground. Without the CFMA, a transparent public futures market in CDSs could have formed and was, in fact, being discussed before the law put the kibosh on it. Everybody and his brother would have seen prices on CDSs for Lehman Brothers and AIG rising during the summer of 2008, harbingers of impending doom, way ahead of the ratings agencies. What's more, banks sold prime mortgage loans and bought "triple-A-rated" collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) only because the Basel II Capital Accords established lower capital requirements for triple-A-rated securities than for prime mortgage loans. When capital requirements drop, you suddenly have more money you can spend on other things. Basel II made the ratings agencies instantly more powerful and important to a bank's competitive position than the behavior of its own underwriters. Throw in the Community Reinvestment Act, two ill-managed massive entities making markets in mortgages (Fannie and Freddie), and the Federal Reserve - a government-created private banking cartel - and you have a government-led financial disaster. There's plenty of blame to go around, I know. But how anyone could miss the massive role of the misguided, heavy-handed regulation is beyond me. Everyone who ought to know better - from hedge-fund managers to our elected representatives - says we need more regulation, not less. Isn't that curious? The solution is never less regulation, and the fault is never too much regulation. If I were more paranoid, I'd cry conspiracy.

The Federal Reserve and central banks in general are running a grand experiment on the economic body, without the benefit of anesthesia. They are testing the theories of Irving Fisher (representing the classical economists), John Keynes (the Keynesian school) Ludwig von Mises (the Austrian school), and Milton Friedman (the monetarist school). For the most part, the central banks are Keynesian, with a dollop of monetarist thrown in here and there. Over the next few years, we will get to see who is right about debt and stimulus, the velocity of money, and other arcane topics, as we come to the End Game of the Debt Super Cycle, the decades-long cycle during which debt has grown. I have very smart friends who argue that the cycle is nowhere near an end, as governments are clearly increasing debt. My rejoinder is that it is nearing an end, and we need to think hard about what that end will look like. It will not be pretty for a period of time. The chart below shows the growth in debt, both public and private.

Here's one of the only economic charts that really matters: Total U.S. debt to GDP (from John Mauldin). This chart shows the trend from the end of the Civil War until now. 

Quite a few observers, including this blogger, have been stunned and frustrated at the refusal to investigate what was almost certain accounting fraud at Lehman. Despite the bankruptcy administrator's effort to blame the gaping hole in Lehman's balance sheet on its disorderly collapse, the idea that the firm, which was by its own accounts solvent, would suddenly spring a roughly $130+ billion hole in its $660 balance sheet, is simply implausible on its face. Indeed, it was such common knowledge in the Lehman flailing about period that Lehman's accounts were sus that Hank Paulson's recent book mentions repeatedly that Lehman's valuations were phony as if it were no big deal. Well, it is folks, as a newly-released examiner's report by Anton Valukas in connection with the Lehman bankruptcy makes clear. The unraveling isn't merely implicating Fuld and his recent succession of CFOs, or its accounting firm, Ernst & Young, as might be expected. It also emerges that the NY Fed, and thus Timothy Geithner, were at a minimum massively derelict in the performance of their duties, and may well be culpable in aiding and abetting Lehman in accounting fraud and Sarbox violations. We need to demand an immediate release of the e-mails, phone records, and meeting notes from the NY Fed and key Lehman principals regarding the NY Fed's review of Lehman's solvency. If, as things appear now, Lehman was allowed by the Fed's inaction to remain in business, when the Fed should have insisted on a wind-down (and the failed Barclay's said this was not infeasible: even an orderly bankruptcy would have been preferrable, as Harvey Miller, who handled the Lehman BK filing has made clear; a good bank/bad bank structure, with a Fed backstop of the bad bank, would have been an option if the Fed's justification for inaction was systemic risk), the NY Fed at a minimum helped perpetuate a fraud on investors and counterparties. This pattern further suggests the Fed, which by its

University of Chicago publication on the Web of all Federalist Papers.  The question i was researching had to do with Michael Hickens comparison of Hamilton to FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt).  I was looking for some are where there might be some measure of "agreement" between Hamilton and FDR. Hamilton of course is known as a great defender of personal liberty, LIMITED government, and the importance of ENUMERATED powers in the Constitution.  In this paper he argues that the call for a Bill of Rights added to the proposed Constitution is uneccessary exactly because the people did not grant to the government the powers to infringe or take away any freedoms/rights to begin with.  He further argues that enumerating these "rights" would suggest that somehow the federal government would have this power!  Even though it's enumerated in the Constitution.  So why write an enumerated Constitution if you have to further enumerate the rights of the people beyond the limits of government? FDR of course is the great statist/socialist who believed that the Constitution doesn't go far enough in it's obligations to CARE for the people's needs.  So FDR proposed a second Bill of Rights that expanded the governments responsibilities and POWER to provide for damn near every physical and material need a person might ever have.   Two interesting "value statements" to consider.  Guess which one would be supported by that great Federalist, Hamilton.  And which by that great statist/socialist, FDR? Karl Marx: "From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need" The Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, " And then there's t

"How would a constitutionalist president go about dismantling the welfare-warfare state and restoring a constitutional republic?" This is a very important question, because without a clear road map and set of priorities, such a president runs the risk of having his pro-freedom agenda stymied by the various vested interests that benefit from big government.

The decimation of our health care system under Obamacare begins with government mandates, regulations, bureaucracies, and controls. The House and Senate health care bills that President Obama and the Democrats refuse to take off the table create close to 100 new health care bureaucracies, boards, commissions and programs. This is the government takeover of health care. These new authorities arrogate to the government the power to decide "what works" in health care, and what doesn't. The code words they use include "best practices" -- a government bureaucracy in Washington is going to decide what are the "best practices" in providing health care for you and your children, not you and your doctor. Another code phrase is "reward doctors for quality not quantity." Government bureaucracies in Washington do not know how to do this. But they will make a huge mess out of your health care in trying to. These government bureaucracies will also have the power to cut off your health care when they decide it is no longer worth the money. We have already seen a glimpse of this in the declaration by a bureaucracy, to be expanded with more powers under Obamacare, that women over 72 should not have mammograms. What they are saying here is that if you are over 72 and get breast cancer, they don't want to know about it. Just take the painkiller and go home, to paraphrase President Obama. They believe they can buy more votes taking the money for your care and spending it somewhere else. This is called "cost effectiveness." The destruction of the health care system is then expanded through the payment system. Among the code words here are "pay for performance" and "accountable care." This is how the bureaucracy will enforce its dictates concerning what works and what doesn't, best practices, cost effectiveness, and termination of health care no longer deemed worthy. Doctors and hospitals will be rewarded through payments if they follow the centralized bureaucracy's dictates; they will b

incredible plan!  This article is a quick synopsis of the comprehensive, but "short" plan Republican representative Paul Ryan introduced to Congress in 2009.  It covers everything.  And if ever there was a Conservative Manifesto, this is the nuts and bolts of how to get it done.  Unbelievable.  

If you were to read only one article explaining the Wall Street, Washington DC and financial crisis, this is the one! What an incredible story, but confirmed by everything i've been able to piece together. Very entertaining, well written, and sadly, true to my understanding of the facts. Read it and weep. Wall Street's Bailout Hustle Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash MATT TAIBBI

And if anyone had any doubts that the CDS market is officially backstopped, look no further than the Bear Stearns and AIG rescues. To put not too find a point on it, the industry understands full well who is the ultimate bagholder: United States commercial banks, those with insured deposits, held $13 trillion in notional value of credit derivatives at the end of the third quarter last year, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The biggest players in this world are JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. All of those firms fall squarely into the category of institutions that are too politically connected to fail. Because of the implicit taxpayer backing that accompanies such lofty status, derivatives become exceedingly dangerous, said Robert Arvanitis, chief executive of Risk Finance Advisors, a corporate advisory firm specializing in insurance. "If companies were not implicitly backed by the taxpayers, then managements would get very reluctant to go out after that next billion of notional on swaps," he said. "They'd look over their shoulder and say, 'This is getting dangerous.'" Morgenson is positively tame compared to Munchau. I'm quoting him more liberally, because the tone of his remarks are remarkably pointed for him and the FT generally. Notice that he explicitly, and repeatedly, says the use of naked credit default swaps looks an awful lot like a crime:

A "conservative" judge is not one who always votes to uphold conservative laws and to strike down liberal ones. Rather, when observers call a judge "conservative," they typically mean that he is to some degree an originalist. That is, he believes that laws have reasonably definite meanings, set by the words within them, and that these meanings do not change over time. Originalists do not believe that the Constitution is "living," and most originalists agree that judges should avoid looking beyond the text of enacted laws, except to learn the context and meaning of the laws themselves. Originalism has come a long way in a very short time. During a speech at an American Spectator dinner in late 2008, Justice Samuel Alito noted that there has been an explosion of judges' citing dictionary definitions from the eras when laws passed. This reflects a desire to understand what laws meant when the people, through their representatives, consented to them. Alito also noted that in Heller, both the majority opinion and the main dissent used originalist arguments. That is, the justices disagreed only on what the words of the Second Amendment meant to the generation of Americans that enacted it, and used a good deal of historical evidence in making their points. To understand originalism's rise, it helps to understand originalism's history. In the 18th century and most of the 19th, originalism was the only game in town. The Supreme Court almost never struck down the actions of the other branches of government. When the justices made decisions, the reasoning was typically grounded in the text of the Constitution, sometimes with extra evidence of the Founders' intentions from contemporary documents like the Federalist Papers.