Fred Thompson talks some sense

Imagine how much better off the US and the world would be if Fred Thompson had been president the past 3 and 1/2 years.  In this piece, he hits all the right notes in discussing what Justice Roberts did and what it all means.  So many of the cheerleaders have gotten it wrong on both sides of the political divide:

 There may be some truth to all or part of this speculation. The problem is that none of these considerations are an appropriate basis for deciding a lawsuit. Cases are still supposed to be decided upon the law and the facts before the court. This may seem a mundane point in a discussion involving institutional and national salvation, but it’s true nevertheless.

...

 The desire to find a Reagan-like pony in all of this has caused some of my conservative friends to see one where none exists. In fact, many pessimistic liberals and optimistic conservatives have one thing in common: the view that somehow the opinion places new limitations on the use of the Commerce Clause, because it was deemed not applicable in Sebelius. They also think that the decision substantially restricts the conditions that the federal government can place on states regarding programs partially funded by the federal government. Unfortunately, in my view, both of these beliefs are wrong.

...

the political Left has no need for concern that this decision has done anything to diminish the federal government’s ability to call the shots if a state decides to take federal money.

So we are left with no silver linings and one major concern for the future that goes beyond Obamacare. It seems that, after this Court decision, while the government cannot make you buy broccoli under the Commerce Clause, it can tax you if you don’t.

And finally, he makes a point that so many have gotten so wrong:

 some optimists say that, since the Court relied upon the government’s taxing power, we are protected as a practical matter, since Congress would always be reluctant to pass a huge new tax. However, in the future Congress can insist it’s not a tax, just as it did this time.

Yep.

Did left-wing justices leak to put pressure on Roberts?

Or one of their clerks?  It wouldn't be a first.  Felix Frankfurter used to have a very close back channel relationship with FDR after he became a member of the Court.

Stewart Baker connects the dots:

I wonder whether word of the Chief Justice’s wobbliness leaked. 

I remember defenders of the law conducting what seemed like a weirdly belated public lobbying campaign on the Chief Justice.  For example, here’s CNN reporting on a Senator Leahy speech on May 14:

In a floor speech Monday, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, directly addressed Chief Justice John Roberts, urging him in a sharply partisan tone to keep the law, passed in 2010, in place.
“I trust that he will be a chief justice for all of us and that he has a strong institutional sense of the proper role of the judicial branch,” said Leahy. “The conservative activism of recent years has not been good for the court. Given the ideological challenge to the Affordable Care Act and the extensive, supportive precedent, it would be extraordinary for the Supreme Court not to defer to Congress in this matter that so clearly affects interstate commerce.”
It is unusual for a member of Congress to tell the high court how it should vote on a case during the weeks that the justices are crafting their opinion. Oral arguments were held in late March, and the court has been quietly working behind the scenes. An opinion is expected by late June. The Vermont Democrat attended the three-day oral arguments at the Supreme Court.

CNN was underplaying how unusual it is for a member of Congress to make such statements. That’s because such statements are usually stupid, and particularly so when delivered weeks after the argument, with the Justices’ votes already cast.

Why, I wondered at the time, would the chair of the Judiciary Committee risk the appearance of trying to harshly strongarm the Court when his remarks wouldn’t make the slightest difference?

Equally weird was the senator’s focus on the Chief Justice at a time when most Court-watchers still expected Justice Kennedy to play his traditional swing-vote role. But Senatory Leahy’s remarks don’t even mention Justice Kennedy.  Instead, he zeroes in on the Chief, offering only the thinnest of justifications; here’s how his remarks begin:

I was fortunate to be able to attend the argument before the United States Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the provision in the Affordable Care Act providing that individuals should take personal responsibility for paying for their health care by obtaining health insurance, or pay a fine.  There was a good deal of instant analysis from commentators after the argument, including their predictions for how the Court will rule.  I have not seen much devoted to the Chief Justice’s role. 

That’s it.  The Chairman of the Judiciary Committee has not seen much commentary devoted to the Chief Justice’s role in the healthcare case, so he decides to give a speech that reads like like it was written for an audience of one.  It offers flattery and it offers threats, all of them personalized to appeal to Chief Justice Roberts alone.

Again, I wondered, why would defenders of the law be personalizing their focus so aggressively and harshly on a man more likely to be the sixth than the fifth vote for their side?

Now, though, CBS News tells us that the Chief Justice was the defenders’ only hope for a fifth vote — and one that started looking “gettable” right around the time of Senator Leahy’s remarks.  Suddenly, the Senator’s remarks look a lot less foolhardy.  In fact, they look like a miraculously prescient and well-timed gamble.

So well-timed and prescient a gamble that I can’t help wondering whether it was a gamble at all.

I’d like to be wrong. A leak about Court deliberations, especially a leak that went only to one side in a pending case, would truly be a scandal.

 (my bold)

Higher Education/Student Loan Bubble

Nothing original -- just pointing out what others have said because it cannot be stressed enough.  The higher education/student loan bubble and the housing bubble were both caused by government policy.  Government creates the mess and the taxpayer gets stuck with the bill.

Let's Celebrate "Coexist" bumper stickers

Can you imagine how much different life would be if there had never been a 'Coexist' bumper sticker?  Think of the difference that plea to followers of the world's great religions has made in our city and state.

I called the dealerships the other day and made an amazing discovery.  Did you know that those bumper stickers, and the others that always seem to be seen with them, do not come standard on a Volvo or Prius?!  Really, they don't.  The brave people driving those cars make the decision to put them on the bumper their very own selves.

I did some research and you should know that since the first day those bumper stickers appeared not a single Jew around here has strapped on a bomb and blown up a bunch of innocent people.  Not one!  Same for Christians.  Apparently, every one of the Christians around here have similarly managed to avoid the temptation of being a suicide terror bomber for the glory of Jesus.  I don't think I can think of any other program of loving outreach that has managed a 100% success rate like that.  Pretty special.  Try to imagine how many people driving around town have been struggling with terror bomber temptation only to be dissuaded by that special message on those bumpers.  It certainly is difficult to come up with a number.

So today, when you are out driving and you see one, be sure to let the driver know what it means to you to see that message on the bumper.

'Curing' Addiction with ever larger doses

Robert Trascinski makes a point that is easily understood by the average American, but not by our educated, so-called elites in DC.  Stimulus always fails because stimulus always becomes permanent.  And it always becomes permanent because all the incentives work that way.

The economy is hooked on stimulus, and it keeps needing just one more fix, not to thrive, but to keep from crashing.

 ...

 And it's not just that stimulus is permanent. It also becomes all-encompassing. Consider the pattern of the growth of the welfare state-again, this is a permanent, standing form of stimulus spending-to encompass every economic need experience by everyone. James DeLong has a good summary of this process.

"[T]he concept of 'welfare' has become an open, bottomless vessel into which every desire can be poured: Government takeover of the entire health and retirement systems; detailed regulation of employment; manipulation of money; subsidies for housing, education, energy, food; or anything else that strikes the fancy of some segment of the public.

"The 'some segment' part is crucial, because today's welfare has ceased to be limited to that of the public generally, or to the welfare of any group that has a serious claim to special deserts. Instead, it is the welfare of some special interest that is able to capture the policy process."

He writes, "So we've gone from stimulus as the exception to stimulus as the rule, from government assistance as the exception to government assistance as the rule."   And yet our idiot 'leaders' in DC can see only the power that comes to them from giving away the special interest goodies.  Giving everybody everything they want supposedly paid for by someone else makes everybody happy -- 'til, as Margaret Thatcher noted, we run out of other people's money.

He lauds Megan McArdle for pointing out that the economic principle involved is marginal cost pricing that is higher than marginal cost, but lower than average cost.  [my note -- in order for this to work, the seller has to be able to price discrimate.] It works fine as long as the bulk of the costs are taken care of because the marginal customer is just that, at the margin:

"You can get a sweet deal if you are the customer who gets marginal cost pricing. Medicare does this-reimburses hospitals at above their marginal cost, but below their average cost, so that private insurers have to pick up most of the hospital overhead. European countries do this with prescription drugs: reimburse above the marginal cost of producing the pills, but below the total cost of developing the pills, so that the US has to pick up most of the tab for drug development.

"The problem is that as voters and as customers, we often get the notion that this can be extrapolated to everyone. So liberal policy wonks want to save money by putting everyone on Medicare, or some equivalent program that uses the government's monopsony pricing power to get lower prices for everyone; thrifty customers think that everyone should drop cable and just pay $14.95 for streaming plus DVDs.

"But everyone cannot be the marginal cost consumer."

It's the Corruption stupid

From the introduction to Jay Cost's book, "Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic":

The real problem with the health reform efforts was the controversial manner by which it was passed. Rather than propose a bill to Congress, President Obama allowed the legislature to draft health care reform basically from scratch, and the result was a political disaster. Dozens upon dozens of “stakeholders” (the buzzword the Obama administration used for special-interest groups aligned with the Democratic party) emerged out of nowhere to demand this exceptional consideration or that particular carve-out. The line of groups demanding to wet their beaks seemed endless: big businesses, labor unions, liberal activist groups, medical groups representing doctors, nurses, drug companies, and so on. And of course, wavering legislators were able to extract significant concessions, the most infamous of which was Nebraska senator Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback” that exempted only Nebraska from having to pay additional costs for the expanded Medicaid rolls. The only ones who did not get a seat at the table were the American people, the supposed beneficiaries of the reform effort.

(my emphasis added)

Not sure when the Democratic Party was ever noble, but it certainly is corrupt to the very core now.  Republicans inside the beltway, kept somewhat in line by a liberal press ever ready to pounce and a restive conservative/libertarian base that opposes expanded government, must be so jealous.

Justice Roberts is Wimpy

I keep reading various accounts of how Justice Roberts' strange opinion isn't really a disaster for having kept the healthcare clusterf@#$ alive and sucking the life out of the US economy.  Supposedly, we are going to realize some wonderful benefits in the future as a tradeoff for this monstrous affliction in our present.

Color me more than a tad skeptical.  Supreme Court doctrine and precedent come and go.  History teaches us that all it takes is for five justices to agree they want something new and different and the US Constitution instantly stands for something new and different. 

Federal programs, however, are forever.

Justice Roberts has gotten his hamburger.  Will our Tuesday ever come?