Socialized Medicine Is Here to Stay by Laurence M. Vance July 3, 2012 The Supreme Court heard 65 cases this term, but waited until the very end of the term to issue its ruling in the case regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more popularly known as Obamacare. The main issue was the constitutionality of the “individual mandate” that every American not covered by Medicaid, Medicare, or health insurance must purchase ...
Supreme Court’s Word Game Saves Obamacare by Sheldon Richman July 2, 2012 The Supreme Court decision upholding the health-insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has an Alice-in-Wonderland feel to it. As Lewis Carroll wrote in Through the Looking Glass, “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Chief Justice ...
What Part of “Illegal” Really Matters? by Scott McPherson July 2, 2012 The mantra of some in the anti-immigration movement in this country can be found in the following question: What part of “illegal” do you not understand? It is regularly featured on protest placards; it’s in their widely circulated emails. Most anti-immigration types will not say they are anti-immigration, of course — they’re just anti–illegal immigration, they ...
An Echo, Not a Choice by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2012 Last November, Barack Obama stood before an audience and said government needs to be “responsive to the needs of people, not the needs of special interests.” He added, “That is probably the biggest piece of business that remains unfinished.” He made those remarks, the New York Times reports, before a $17,900-a-plate fundraising dinner at the home of Dwight and Antoinette ...
The Federal Wetlands War, Part 1 by James Bovard July 1, 2012 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Since the 1980s, federal wetlands crackdowns have been one of the most brazen violations of American property rights. Federal agents have continually sought to play trump cards that effectively turned owners into serfs of federal bureaucracies. And despite a recent Supreme Court ruling vindicating landowners, the ...
Keynesians, Austrians, and the Continuing Economic Depression, Part 2 by William L. Anderson July 1, 2012 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The existence of business cycles — the boom-and-bust patterns — has puzzled economists. While Marx might have created a theory of why depressions occur, nonetheless there was nothing in Marxism to explain the boom period that preceded the bust. Furthermore, there was nothing in Marxism that could ...
Book Review: The Reality of Race Oppression by Anthony Gregory July 1, 2012 The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (New York: New Press, 2010); 312 pages. Many Americans deny that their country is home to any serious problem of institutional racism. Segregation was abolished generations ago and slavery has been extinct nearly a century and a half. Those favoring smaller government often see that the ...
Flexing Executive Privilege by Wendy McElroy June 29, 2012 The rather dry matter of executive privilege is becoming a hot talking point in the news. This power of the executive branch is the latest battleground between the president and a largely hostile Congress. The Republican congressman Darrell Issa — chairman of the recently scorned House Oversight Committee — is determined to create as much heat as ...
Polish Senator’s Startling New Allegations about the CIA Torture Prison in Poland by Andy Worthington June 29, 2012 In the long quest for accountability for those who ordered, authorized, or were complicit in the Bush administration’s torture program, every avenue has been shut down within the United States by the Obama administration, the Justice Department, and the courts. The only hope lies elsewhere in the world, and specifically Poland, one of three European ...
Obama’s Logic of War by Sheldon Richman June 29, 2012 Despite the alleged difference between Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran, both embrace a position that logically commits them to war. If war is to be avoided, as Obama says he wishes, he will have to abandon his current stance. The difference between Obama and Netanyahu is more apparent than real. Both say Iran’s possession of ...
How Roosevelt’s Farm Policy Paved the Way for Obamacare by James Bovard June 28, 2012 The Obama administration invoked a 1942 Supreme Court agricultural-policy case to justify its sweeping health- care law compelling individual Americans to purchase health insurance. The role of Wickard v. Filburn in sanctifying Obamacare is a reminder of how the New Deal continues to imperil our rights and liberties. Unfortunately, few U.S. Supreme Court justices or journalists recognized the sordid ...
The Big Health-Care CON by Michael Tennant June 28, 2012 For decades governments have been passing laws and regulations with the stated goal of bringing down health-care costs. For just as long libertarians have been pointing out that government policies such as Medicare, Medicaid, physician licensing, pharmaceutical regulations, and insurance mandates are at the root of the problem and that every attempt to fix the problem without addressing those ...