If the Supreme Court rules that the ObamaCare individual mandate is permitted by the Constitution the consequences for individual liberty and the future of America will be catastrophic.  If the court strikes down the individual mandate future Congresses will be on notice that there are still limits to government’s power over the people.

The Court has announced it will rule and has scheduled oral arguments for next April.

Here’s an excerpt from an editorial in the Los Angeles Times by Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law setting forth the liberal/progressive/Obama position:

Under current constitutional law, this should be an easy case to predict — the law is clearly constitutional. But what complicates the decision and makes the result unpredictable is whether the justices will see the issue in terms of precedent or through the partisanship that has so dominated the public debate and most of the court decisions so far.

The key word is current.  The progressive movement’s agenda of government supervision and control over the personal and economic lives of The People is prohibited by the plain language of the Constitution.  To overcome this barrier progressive politicians have argued, and Supreme Court Justices have ruled for about a century, that the Constitution was intended to evolve and thus the original meaning of its words is irrelevant.  Instead the court is to establish “current constitutional law” based on precedent established by previous court decisions and on the latest trends in progressive ideology.  Mr. Chemerinsky defiantly sneers that consideration of the original meaning of the Constitution as “partisanship!”

Chemerinsky continues:

The primary issue before the Supreme Court is whether Congress’ power to regulate commerce among the states gives it the authority to require that individuals either purchase health insurance or pay a penalty. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that under the commerce clause, Congress may regulate economic activity that, taken cumulatively across the country, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

Yes the court has indeed repeatedly blessed Congress’ expansions of its own power over the lives of the people.  For a century politicians and judges and Supreme Court Justices have brazenly violated the Constitution largely through deliberate misinterpretation of its commerce clause which says:

“The Congress shall have Power To…regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”

The Federalist Papers were written by the authors of the Constitution to explain it to the public.  They make it clear that the progressive interpretation of the commerce clause as expressed above by Chemerinsky is not what the original text meant.

In the Founders era the term “Commerce” was buying and selling transactions, in this case across state lines.  The purpose of the commerce clause was to prevent unnecessary barriers to transactions across state lines.   James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper #22 of problems caused by state governments that were attempting to interfere with commerce:

The interfering and unneighborly regulations of some States, contrary to the true spirit of the Union, have, in different instances, given just cause of umbrage and complaint to others, and it is to be feared that examples of this nature, if not restrained by a national control, would be multiplied and extended till they became not less serious sources of animosity and discord…

Madison cited as a negative example the German empire that, similar to America was an association of independent states:

The commerce of the German empire is in continual trammels from the multiplicity of the duties which the several princes and states exact upon the merchandises passing through their territories, by means of which the fine streams and navigable rivers with which Germany is so happily watered are rendered almost useless.

Madison was concerned that some states had already tried to restrict interstate transactions with various forms of taxes and regulations and could cripple interstate commerce as had happened in the German empire.

But Progressives don’t care about the original purpose or meaning of the commerce clause.  The landmark precedent for Chemerinsky’s interpretation, is the Supreme Court’s decision in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942).  During the Great Depression Congress had imposed limits on crop production, in an effort to enrich farming businesses at the expense of everyone else by artificially reducing the food supply, which would cause food prices to rise.

Mr. Filburn was fined by the government for growing “too much” wheat.  He argued that Congress had no Constitutional authority to regulate his wheat production because his entire crop was consumed on his own farm, and was not sold to anyone, and therefore could not possibly be part of interstate commerce. The government agreed that Filburn did not sell any of his wheat but argued that he affected interstate commerce by not buying wheat on the open, interstate market.  The court took the government’s side and the rest is history.

Based on this precedent and ignoring the plain language of the Constitution, Chemerinsky justifies a federal law requiring us all to purchase a health plan designed by bureaucrats in Washington because not buying it has “an effect on interstate commerce.”

The word “effect” is not in the Constitution and the intent was not to grant Congress such power.  But since it could be argued that virtually any human activity could, however remotely, effect interstate commerce, we are now told that The Founders meant for Congress and the federal government to have unlimited power to intervene and control every aspect of our lives.   The obvious question is, if they intended for Congress to have unlimited power why did they include a list of limited, authorized powers in Article I, section 8?  If they wanted to empower Congress to be able to require or regulate anything, without limit, why did they add the tenth amendment?

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people

—Tenth Amendment

In his editorial Chemerinsky tries to rig the process by asserting there are only two questions for the Supreme court to answer:

First, is Congress regulating economic activity? Second, if so, looked at in the aggregate, is there a substantial effect on interstate commerce?

Chemerinsky does not want the Court to ask the question that should come before those two: Does the commerce clause grant to Congress the power to regulate any activity that may be said to somehow have an economic effect on commerce?  (Chemerinsky and the progressives don’t even bother mentioning the interstate qualifier any more.)  By the way, the Obama Administration has not offered any examples of activities that might not be subject to Congressional control under their interpretation of the commerce clause.

The Obama Administration will argue that an individual decision to not buy government approved health insurance is an “affirmative economic activity” subject to regulation by the government.  By that standard we effect commerce even when we sleep because we’re not doing anything and thus commerce must endure eight hours without our participation.

If the Court rules in favor of ObamaCare the next step will be more federal laws designed to regulate our personal lives in order to “hold down the cost of health care.”  Any activity the bureaucracy may decide adds to the risk that we might become an expense to the health care system will be considered for possible regulation.  We can expect restrictions or bans on activities like

• target practice with guns
• high school sports
• boxing, and marshal arts training
• rock climbing
• surfing and swimming

Since the bureaucrats are already convinced that obesity is the cause of most health problems they’ll contradict themselves by asking Congress to require us all to work out in a gym regularly even though doing so might risk injury that would require medical treatment.

Logically, we should all be required to drive large SUVs to reduce injury from crashes.  but that won’t happen because it would conflict with another progressive priority, coercing us all into tiny, high mileage cars.

We’re swerving toward the very circumstances the founders fought the Revolutionary War to avoid: a system where all the limits are on the liberty of The People, not on the power of government.

Communication from the Congressional “Super Committee” reminds us of an overused gag from “I Love Lucy” and other early TV sitcoms.   Rickey comes home from work to learn that his ditzy wife Lucy has spent money they can’t afford on something they don’t need and he doesn’t want.  Lucy assures him the unneeded trinket didn’t cost anything because she bought it with money she saved by buying a new dress on sale.

The Super Committee is supposed to find a path to $1.2 trillion in “deficit reduction.”   But committee Democrats seem to believe it best to achieve deficit reduction through increased spending.  One of their proposals is to log “savings” each year from 2013 through 2022 from ending military operations in Iraq this year and in Afghanistan in, as now planned, in 2014.

Consider this exchange between Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace and Democratic Congressman James Clyburn, a member of the Super Committee:

WALLACE: “The Democratic plan would count hundreds of billions of dollars in savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that would be applied to entitlements, things like that. Isn’t that a classic Washington budget gimmick, to count savings on money that wasn’t going to be spent anyway?

CLYBURN: We believe and the CBO believes that there is around $917 billion to be saved over the next 10 years from the overseas contingency account. And we ought to count that.  We ought to use that savings to plow it back in to fix Social Security, that will allow it to be solvent for another 75 years, to plow it into job creation programs that would get people back to work…

• The latest estimates from the Administration and the Congressional Budget Office are that the 2012 deficit will come in at just below $1 Trillion.
• Clyburn and the Democrats want to enact Obama’s “jobs bill” that would increase 2012 spending by about by $450 billion.
• To offset the extra spending Democrats propose no cuts in other programs.  They don’t even propose tax increases.  They would simply run a larger deficit – about $1.5 Trillion – in 2012.  This would be the largest  deficit in US history.
• Democrats want the Super Committee on Deficit Reduction to propose to Congress that it increase the 2012 deficit over the already bloated level, AND give the committee credit for “deficit reduction” by reporting “savings” in the years 2013 – 2022 from the end of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In his Tonight Show monologue Jay Leno might respond: “My question is why not count 66 years of savings since the end of World War II?  Then we could just give every American a million dollars and still run a budget surplus!”

One would never know it from all the anguish expressed by the political-media establishment, but the Congressional Super Committee’s assignment is absurdly easy.

This week the august Senators and Congressmen head into their final, dramatic days of deliberations.  Their assignment is to propose $1.2 trillion of “deficit reduction” over ten years, beginning 2013.

In Washington the phrases “spending cuts” and “deficit reduction” are more political slogans to deceive the people than legitimate accounting terms.  Even if the committee reaches an agreement that Congress approves spending will increase every year and future deficits could be greater than the 2011 deficit.

Congress operates on a corrupt system called “baseline budgeting,” driven by the assumption that virtually every government program and function will receive a funding increase, every year.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) produces reports called “baselines” that project spending increases in each of the next ten years.  In this context a “cut” does not mean  that future spending will be less than current spending.  It means that – on paper – the “baseline” will be adjusted.

As has always happened in the past, even these illusory, baseline “cuts” won’t last.  The current Congress has authority only over the current budget and cannot force the elected members of 2013 or 15 or 18 Congress to comply with a baseline published by CBO bureaucrats in 2011.  But the tax increases Democrats demand in exchange for their phony “cuts” would be real.  They would be enacted into law immediately.  If the currently serving Republicans allow themselves to be suckered by this scam all the Conservative/Tea Party victories of 2010 will have been for nothing.

The charts below show what genuine deficit reduction could look like.  The first is a summary of the government’s tax revenue, spending and deficits from 2007 through the 2011 fiscal year that ended September 30. [continued below the chart]

Each of Obama’s three deficits about three times 2008, the largest of the Bush era.  The Obama deficits are in part the outcome of falling tax revenue due to the recession.  But mostly they result from massive increases in spending he and the Democrats initiated in 2009.

The next chart illustrates what could have been a budgeting alternative to achieve smaller deficits.  What if instead of huge spending increases for almost every department of government Congress had frozen spending at 2007 levels, allowing exceptions only for Social Security, Medicare, Defense and Veterans’ Benefits?  This chart shows that the Obama deficits deficits would have been $1.3 trillion less.  [continued below the chart]

A partial spending freeze could have resulted $1.3 trillion of real deficit reduction in three years vs the $1.2 trillion over ten years of illusory deficit reduction the Super Committee is tasked with proposing.  Congress cold have driven those deficits even lower by actually cutting some programs below 2007 levels and/or changing Social Security and Medicare eligibility rules very slightly.

Few Americans would remember 2007 as a year of national suffering because the federal government spent a third less than it does now.  Barack Obama’s campaign began in 2007 and he would have been booed off the stage if he had promised to increase federal spending by 32% from 2007 to 2011.

Since the government-caused recession began in 2008 most Americans have had to cut their household and business budgets and reduce their standard of living even as government spending exploded.  Many now wish they still lived as well as they did in 2007 when unemployment was at 4.7% (Vs 9% today) and the deficit was $161 Billion.  The Obama government borrows $161 billion every six weeks!

All the Super Committee and the current Congress have to do is ask future Congresses to spend an average of $120 billion per year less by voting to instruct the CBO to modify its “baseline” schedules.  $120 billion is about 1.5% of 2011 spending.  No tax increases would necessary.  Does this simple task really justify the Congressional and Presidential anguish and wrenching emotion on display in the media?

The Captivating Mrs. BoomerJeff created this oil painting called “A Hero’s Prayer,” from a DoD photo of World War II Vets who had received the Medal of Honor.   Read more »

We’ve been through almost a year of dramatic and acrimonious political debate about the government’s deficit, and it isn’t over yet.

Much of the political media establishment has been suffering fits of anguish over alleged “austerity” and “deep cuts” being inflicted upon the defenseless government by Republicans, driven by those terrible Tea Party activists.  But based on the final figures for the government’s fiscal year 2011 (ended September 30) recently released by the Treasury Department, President Obama and the big spenders  have scored a decisive win over those who would shrink government.  As the chart shows after all the sound and fury they managed to increase spending in 2011 over and above the already bloated levels of 2009 and 2010.

In reality  government spending is at a much higher level than just a short time ago and dramatic reductions are easily achievable  [Continued below the chart]

The next chapter in the on-going deficit reduction melodrama is the Great Super Committee, created by legislation passed in July.  Typically, committee members have accomplished nothing in four months, and now the deadline for action is only two weeks away.  While Americans wait, powerlessly, twelve Senators and Congressmen sit in a locked room to negotiate our future, not with us but with each other.  Their goal is a “deal” for $1.9 Trillion in “deficit reduction.”  This may look impressive, but in context it’s trifling.

If they succeed in reaching a “deal” spending will still increase every year.  To meet their goal they do not have to spend less or tax more.  All they have to do is pare back already scheduled spending increases and/or contrive some tax code change that can plausibly be claimed to increase revenue above current projections over a ten year period, beginning in 2013.  That’s an average of $190 billion per year, or 5% of the amount spent in fiscal 2011 (ended September 30.)

If they don’t reach an agreement that passes both the House and Senate by Thanksgiving “draconian cuts” will kick in automatically, beginning in 2013.  Stay tuned for two weeks of contrived, high drama as the deadline approaches.

Next Post: Much more immediate and significant deficit reduction than contemplate by the Super Committee is easily achievable.

The Labor Department released its jobs report for October:

• Employers added 80,000 jobs, about 65% of the monthly growth in the working age population.
• The Unemployment rate remained tragically high, at 9.0%.
• If the 2011 job growth rate continues it will take until 2016 to replace the jobs lost in 2008 and 2009.

The Obama Administration and its supporters try to spread lipstick on their jobs pig each month with a three step rhetorical formula:

1. Ignore the year of continuous job losses after Congress passed the $820 billion stimulus that was supposed to “immediately jumpstart  job creation.”  Act as if history began in 2010.
2. Ignore the loss of public sector jobs that Obama promised to save with billions in stimulus bailouts of state and local governments.  Those billions were taxed or borrowed from the private sector.
   
3. Count only private sector jobs beginning March of 2010, the first month of increase, a year after the stimulus was enacted.

In response this Chart compares the first 20 months of private sector job growth under the Obama Administration with the first 20 months of job growth after the deep recession of 1981-82. [Continued below the chart]

The data in this chart confirms the success of the Reagan approach:

• Tax cuts
• Deregulation
• Allowing insolvent businesses to be liquidated in bankruptcy

The current jobs crisis reflects the failure of the Obama approach:

• Some tax increases have already begun and further increases that will hit small business are scheduled to begin in 14 months;
• New ObamaCare mandates and regulations that are still being written will distress employers over the next three years;
• New financial regulations are restricting bank lending to small business;
• New environmental regulations are designed to restrict domestic production of oil and gas, increasing the price of energy;
• Bailouts of insolvent banks and companies at the expense of healthy businesses.

The difference between Regan’s results and Obama’s results is  even more pronounced than it appears in the above chart because the labor force is almost 40% larger today than it was in the 1980s.  To equal Reagan’s 8.2% private sector job growth would require an average increase of 539,000 jobs per month.   The 2011 average so far is 131,000 per month.

The next chart below tracks all jobs from the beginning of the Reagan recession and the beginning of the the most recent recession in 2008. [continued below the chart]

With his record of positive success to run on, Ronald Reagan won reelection in a 49 state landslide, the largest Electoral College majority in American history.  At this point Barack Obama only hope for reelection is a weak Republican candidate.

The chart tracks the number of self employed people and the unemployment rate from the Labor Department’s monthly and annual surveys.  It confirms what is obvious to anyone except the leftist academics, politicians and media personalities who are the “experts” President Obama cites in support of his economic schemes.  As the number of self employed entrepreneurs who create jobs diminishes, the unemployment rate goes up.  [Continued below the chart]

In 2007 self employed men and women accounted for about 5.4% of the total U.S. population.  Now, they’re about 4.5% of the total population of 311 million people.

These are the entrepreneurs, the owners of millions of small businesses that employ 1 – 500 workers each.

This tiny minority is responsible for creating and sustaining roughly half the jobs in America.

Government can’t make successes of failing businesses.  But Government can and mustrefrain from interventions in the economy that make it more challenging for small businesses to succeed.

The cumulative effect of decades of ever increasing regulation, a process that has accelerated over the past three years, especially with ObamaCare, is a barrier to starting and growing small businesses.

ObamaCare supporters, with no experience in business operations, insist that since most of the employer mandates of ObamaCare are not scheduled to take effect until 2014, it can’t be blamed for lack of job growth in 2011.  But it is.

Business with fewer than 50 employees are exempt from some of the more onerous provisions of ObamaCare, including the fine an employer will have to pay for not providing health insurance.  But to be exempt when those provisions start in 2014 the business must have fewer than 50 employees as of the beginning of 2013.  Thus, ObamaCare is a powerful and perverse disincentive to job creation right now.  It’s safe to say that some businesses are already making plans to downsize, to be under that 50 employee threshold by the end of 2012.

Politicians assess a regulation is “good” by estimating  the dollar cost of its implementation, as if that were the only cost.  But unlike huge corporations, small businesses can not absorb the cost of regulations and then make it up later with higher prices.  Small businesses can’t hire staff attorneys to interpret thousands of pages of bureaucratese.  Too often a new regulation forces a small business to set aside plans to expand or even to shut down.  The chart at the top demonstrates the cost of regulations to those who are not self-employed entrepreneurs.

The political-media establishment has decided that Herman Cain is a credible challenger who could defeat their President and derail their political agenda.

Back in 2008 when the media propelled him to national prominence various sources sent allegations of personal misconduct by Barack Obama to blogs and political websites.  The emails came to Liberty Works and some of the allegations appeared in an online video.  Even though we strenuously oppose Obama’s ideas and policies we’ve never repeated the allegations because they aren’t verifiable and frankly, we just didn’t believe them.  Anyone who runs for high office will, inevitably, be hit with baseless allegations.

While the Obama rumors have bounced around the Internet for three years, establishment media outlets have properly abstained from repeating them.  But Herman Cain is no Barack Obama.  Herman Cain opposes most of what the national media supports: an authoritarian, regulatory state, punitive taxation of “rich” small businesses, government run health care, etc.  So, rather than ignore salacious allegations against Cain, the establishment media, led by Politico.com went looking for dirt and found some folks willing to swing shovels.

Politico.com claims that two women who worked for the National Restaurant Association (NRA) say they were “sexually harassed” by Herman Cain when he was the NRA’s President, back in the 90s, and that their allegations were “settled” by paying them “five figure separation packages” to terminate their employment.  The women were “upset and offended” by “conversations filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature.”

Also, according to Politico.com, Cain was guilty of “physical gestures that were not overtly sexual” that made other women “uncomfortable.”

Predictably, the rest of the establishment media has piled on reporting the “news” that Politico.com has reported alleged sexual harassment.

Cain says one woman – not two – made a formal accusation 12 years ago but insists it was baseless and false.  The one person who would be best equipped to provide objective information was the association’s general counsel in the 1990s, and still is today.  He has declined to comment on the matter.

The chart compares recent GDP growth with the first nine quarters of the decade of strong economic growth, prosperity and job creation that began after President Reagan’s 1982 tax cuts and deregulation initiatives. [Continued below the chart]

In the third quarter (July, August, September) of 2011 Gross Domestic Product, the value of all the goods and services the economy produced, rose 2.5%, the Commerce Department reported.  This was better than the previous three quarters, but compared to typical post recession recovery periods it was disappointing at best.  Even President Obama’s Press Secretary, briefing reporters at the White House, agreed that 2.5% was unacceptable.

Over the past 50 years quarterly growth has averaged 3.2% but has always been above average during the initial quarters of recovery from recession.  This is the first post-recession period in 66 years, since the end of World War II, with such anemic growth.  The most visible result is the continuing tragedy of high unemployment.

The economy will not replace the millions of lost jobs until much more robust growth begins.

From the first day of his Administration President Obama and his advisers promised that the biggest Keynesian “stimulus” ever attempted, in the form of Trillions in deficit spending and massive government intervention in the private sector economy would somehow bring prosperity and jobs.  They promised 3.7 million additional jobs by the end of 2010.  Instead, there were 2.8 million fewer jobs.

If Keynesian stimulus worked as Obama and the progressives promised it would, America would now be enjoying prosperity with full employment and rising wages.  Instead this recovery from recession has significantly underperformed compared to previous recoveries, especially the Reagan recovery of the 1980s.  President Reagan’s strategy was to lower taxes, deregulate and allow liberty to work.

Presidents Reagan and Obama each inherited recessions that were similar in their length and severity.  By objective measures, including the unemployment rate, Reagan inherited a worse crisis in the 1980s than Obama inherited in 2009.  The current recession has become worse and longer lasting than the 80s recession because of government’s massive deficits and destructive interventions into the private sector economy.

The President has spent a month on the campaign trail trying to sell The People on his so-called American Jobs Act, yet another package of Keynesian borrowing and spending.  Once again, the same “economist” and media personalities who predicted dazzling results from the 2009 stimulus insist that if only recalcatrant Republicans would vote yes, Stimulus 2.0 would create millions of jobs.

The Bottom Line

As the chart shows, quarterly GDP growth is has been intolerable under the Obama-Keynesian approach.  There is no reason to believe that continuing to run massive deficits, threaten tax increases, hyper-regulate the health insurance business,  subsidize blue-sky “green” energy schemes and restrict the production of conventional energy will ever result in prosperity.

The urgent message in this GDP report  is clear.  Congress must put an immediate end to Obama’s Keynesian experiment.

Governor and candidate for the Republican nomination for President Rick Perry has twice made news in recent days with flippant remarks referring to speculation that President Obama was not born in the US and is therefore ineligible under the Constitution to be President.

Any candidate who claims identification with Conservatives or the tea party movement should refuse to be drawn into this controversy for two reasons:

1. The possibility that Obama was not born in Hawaii as he claims is simply too remote to take seriously.  He finally put a copy of his birth certificate on the internet for all to see, but predictably, the birthers claim it isn’t authentic.  At Liberty Works we’ve studied the matter and believe he was indeed born in Hawaii.  But even if, hypothetically, he wasn’t there is no agency or voice of authority with the credibility and universal respect to make a final determination that everyone would accept.  Thus there is simply no point in pursuing it even if one believes (and we do not) that he was foreign born.  Obama has more to gain than to lose if voters are distracted by an allegation that seems preposterous, can not be verified, is easily and credibly denied and thus looks desperate.
   
2. It constrains the Conservative/tea party/smaller government movement if our candidates to appear to be asking for votes based in part on the assertion that the incumbent was not born here.  Barack Obama must be defeated in 2012 because he represents a set of ideas and policies that are Unconstitutional, authoritarian, and require us to relinquish our liberty and our prosperity while failing to deliver the promised benefits.  The Congress has already passed legislation compelling us to live under some of those bad ideas.  Obama must be replaced so that legislation can be repealed, and we can become more free and more prosperous, not because some question his birth place.

Here in California we’re suffering from a lost opportunity to elect a governor who, like the governors of Ohio and Wisconsin, would have diminished the power of the entrenched political establishment that is systematically destroying our state’s economy.  Unfortunately, a majority of swing voters were persuaded that we should continue the ruinous business as usual in the state legislature by voting against Meg Whitman for Governor.   Why?  Because she had employed a maid who was an illegal alien  – in a state where almost everyone has been served by illegal landscapers, car washers, restaurant personnel, laborers and domestic help.

Next year will probably turn out to be America’s most consequential election since the Civil War.  If Obama and the Democrats prevail life in America will irrevocably change for the worse.  Eventually, everyone will have to rely on the grace of government bureaucrats for medical services.  Government will continue it’s drive to supplant the private sector in economic decision-making, reprising the failed results of all of history’s previous experiments in authoritarian economics.  And the ruinous deficit spending will roar ahead until the world finally refuses to loan the US government any more.

This election is too critical for the small government, pro-Constitution candidate to lose because swing voters perceive him – or us – to be trying to steal votes by questioning the authenticity of a fifty year old birth certificate on file in Hawaii.