Conservative versus Fascist

There are people one can debate with, and sense that no matter how one wins or loses the debate, that one is arguing with someone with integrity. And then there are folks like Mark Thiessen who don't even understand what scoundrels and serial prevaricators they are. These are folks who've been trained to make a case and will make that case, sans culottes, no matter how immoral or brazenly materially partisan and then claim that they are arguing "principles." That explains why Thiessen can't understand "Why are Republicans so awful at picking Supreme Court justices? Democrats have been virtually flawless in appointing reliable liberals to the court. Yet Republicans, more often than not, appoint justices who vote with the other side on critical decisions."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-a-thiessen-why-are-republicans-so-awful-at-picking-supreme-court-justices/2012/07/02/gJQAHFJAIW_story.html

I'm not even a Republican and I can understand why that whine is just a whine and is not even true, because justices, who have any integrity, vote based on principles, and just because one disagrees with a policy doesn't mean that the principle is unconstitutional. Roberts made a principled argument, and Roberts doesn't get to make law from the bench. That is a conservative principle. Had he sided with the majority, especially Scalias nasty, partisan, and explicitly unjudicial dissent, he'd have been behaving in an unprincipled manner. My complaints about the "Gang of five" aren't with their conservatism but with their unprincipled decisions in giving tyrannical rights to corporations. I can't fault either Roberts or Thiessen for not being conservative enough. This was a case where Roberts actually applied conservative principles for a change. Thiessen doesn't get this.

Republicans may hate Romney-Obama care, but 90% of its ideas are from their side of the aisle. Most of us unabashed Democratic Socialist Rupublicans who believe in the principle of the commonwealth would prefer a simpler single payer system with democratic controls and less private tyranny. That would be consistent with my principles, and both are constitutional; these are policy differences not constitutional issues.

But Thiessen, and other "movement republicans" who can unabashedly argue for the morality of torture after serving a President who attacked the immorality of the practice and who stone-facedly claimed "we don't torture", and who can argue for the prosecution of persons who failed to prosecute him for his role in conspiring to commit war crimes, has trouble understanding the distinction between principled conservatism, and unabashed fascist partisanship. Advocating Torture and authoritarian methods makes him a Fascist, not a conservative. And that is why he's confused. The ability to turn on a dime is one possible tell that a person is fascist rather than principled. Thiessen and the Bush Administration used Saddam's use of torture of his enemies as part of their moral condemnation of Saddam Hussain.

I could become a conservative. I could never be a fascist. The question is a question of consistent principles. Thiessen just doesn't get it. He writes:

"Why is the Democratic record so consistent while the Republican record is so mixed? For one thing, the whole legal and political culture pushes the court to the left. Conservatives are pariahs if they vote against the left on certain issues. But if they cross over to vote with the left, they are hailed as statesmen. There is no penalty for voting left, but there is for voting right."

What penalty for voting right? Justices are supposed to vote on legal principles, not their partisan leanings. The court has frequently split on other than 5/4 basis, and in the past one could never predict the line up because each judge had a unique judicial "flavor" that could be counted on to create different line ups depending on the issue. Kagan's predecessor was famous because her views tended towards liberty, in that she could frequently ally with the more libertarian members of the court. Thiessen wouldn't know a principled decision if it hit him in the arse. He claims that there is no penalty for declaring liberal principles -- but liberal principels are the law of the land and there really ought to be a penalty for lying about ones principles as all four of the Bush appointees did. Not only did Kagan affirm that abortion is the law of the land, so did the conservative judges, because it is the law of the land. Thiessen can't even avoid spinning when whining.

"In her 1993 confirmation hearings, Ginsburg declared the right to abortion “central to a woman’s life, to her dignity” and was confirmed 96 to 3. Breyer declared abortion a “basic right” and was confirmed 87 to 9. Imagine if a conservative nominee said the opposite? His or her confirmation battle would be a nuclear war."

It sure would be a nuclear war, and some of these judges have said these things that Thiessen mentions since confirmation after denying them under oath. Should they be impeached? Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy know sophistry when they see it, but what Roberts, wrote, if it was sophistry, was based on conservative principles:

“To say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it.” This, they said, “carries verbal wizardry too far, deep into the forbidden land of the sophists.”

That argument is sophistry. The government wrote the mandate, the mandate holds individuals responsible to buy insurance or pay a fine. This power is under the necessary and proper clause and taxation authority. That is just fact, not sophistry. Sophistry is what Thomas, Alito and Scalia were trying to do in shooting down a law on the grounds that they don't like it so it must be unconstitution. All these people are experts at sophistry and that is one problem with our legal system. Our lawyers are trained to be able to argue both sides of any question and so are perfectly willing to forget about core principles when applying the law. Does the Affordable Health Care act deal with commerce? yes. Does it regulate commerce, yes. Is it constitutional, yes. Movement conservatives wanted to impose law through the supreme court, it's they trying to rewrite the law by striking down congresses enactments. It's not their job and Roberts understood this principle that Scalia too often forgets. He understood it this time at least. Maybe he'll figure out that the Supreme Court should not be legislating legalized bribery or the purchase of the Government eventually.

Thiessen doesn't understand principle. That's been obvious since before he left the Bush Administration. The torturers apprentice wants to sound like a conservative, but he's just a wannabe fascist. Some of the most famous Supreme Court justices in history, during the Roosevelt Administration, (such as Justice Douglas) got on the nerves of progressives by voting against their legislation on conservative legal principles. The two subjects overlap, and our current justices are not their caliber, but Thiessen's arguments also lack a grasp of history.

A Corrupt Court Part II

All things considered, Thursday was almost a tolerable day for the Supreme Court. It doesn't change my opinion about the court, but it does leave me appreciating the intelligence of Judge Roberts, who wrote an opinion upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, despite his feeling that it is bad policy. And indeed his decision left this open for readjudication, if and when someone actually pays the parts of the act that refer to revenues. His reason for not ruling those parts invalid was:

The Anti-Injunction Act provides that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person,” 26 U. S. C. §7421(a), so that thosesubject to a tax must first pay it and then sue for a refund.

So he left it open that this could be re-adjudicated later. He also left it open that the individual mandate could be re-adjudicated later as well:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS concluded in Part III–A that the individual mandate is not a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Pp. 16–30.

He states:

The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce.

So prohibiting the purchase of Marijuana is a valid regulation of interstate commerce, but ordering folks to purchase insurance is not valid? Despite the fact that George Washington ordered males to buy muskets and join a militia, or that the Government required Seamen to buy insurance, during the Washington/Adams terms. Ginsberg's dissent notes:

In 1790, the very first Congress — which incidentally included 20 framers — passed a law that included a mandate: namely, a requirement that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen. This law was then signed by another framer: President George Washington. That’s right, the father of our country had no difficulty imposing a health insurance mandate.

So, I'm not happy with Roberts decision, but I love the concurrence and partial dissent:

The Framers understood that the “general Interests of the Union” would change over time, in ways they could not anticipate. Accordingly, they recognized that the Constitution was of necessity a “great outlin[e],” not a detailed blueprint, see McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 407 (1819), and that its provisions included broad concepts, to be “explained by the context or by the facts of the case,”Letter from James Madison to N. P. Trist (Dec. 1831), in 9Writings of James Madison 471, 475 (G. Hunt ed. 1910).“Nothing . . . can be more fallacious,” Alexander Hamilton emphasized, “than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from . . . its immediate necessities. There ought to be a CAPACITY to provide for future contingencies[,] as they may happen;and as these are illimitable in their nature, it is impossible safely to limit that capacity.” The Federalist No. 34, pp. 205, 206 (John Harvard Library ed. 2009). See also McCulloch, 4 Wheat., at 415 (The Necessary and Proper Clause is lodged “in a constitution[,] intended to endurefor ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.”).

As usual it is the so-called "conservatives" who are being activists:

Rather than evaluating the constitutionality of theminimum coverage provision in the manner established byour precedents, THE CHIEF JUSTICE relies on a newlyminted constitutional doctrine. The commerce power does not, THE CHIEF JUSTICE announces, permit Congressto “compe[l] individuals to become active in commerceby purchasing a product.” Ante, at 20 (emphasis deleted).

And she quotes Raiche, where the Same judges criticizing the Affordable Care Act, insisted on the Government having the right to raid Medical Marijuana even when legal in the State where the raid occurs. Finally she seems rather grateful that despite the Chief Justices fabrications and innovations they can agree with him:

For the reasons stated, I agree with THE CHIEF JUSTICE that, as to the validity of the minimum coverage provision, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the EleventhCircuit should be reversed. In my view, the provision en- counters no constitutional obstruction. Further, I would uphold the Eleventh Circuit’s decision that the Medicaid expansion is within Congress’ spending power.

So we breathe a sigh of relief. But we still need to do something about these activist and oligarchic judges.

sources and References:

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2012/04/19/founding-fathers-passed-health-insurance-mandates/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/29/supreme-court-health-care_n_1635973.html

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf

A Corrupt Court

Why the Montana Decision shows that the Court is Corrupt, not merely mistaken.

The Supreme Court Doubles Down by Ignoring the facts

I actually don't have that much trouble with the police checking folks immigration status when they arrest someone, so I don't have much trouble with the Arizona decision that allows the law to mandate a check of immigration status. What I do have trouble with is the corrupt reaffirmation of the corrupt Citizens United decision. Presented with clear evidence that, in actual fact, the power of corporations to use money to quash the speech of everyone else is a corrupt exercise of the power to bribe, corruptly influence, intimidate, and oppress, the supreme court reaffirmed its decision in the Citizens United by striking down Montana's law -- which had been created to stop the takeover of the state by Mining companies over 100 years ago.

Justice Breyer's Dissent

The minority kept their dissent short because they knew that the corrupt majority was dead set on continuing their perjury. The dissent notes:

"In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court concluded that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” 558 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 42).

Breyer States:

“I disagree with the Court’s holding for the reasons expressed in Justice Stevens’ dissent in that case.”

As Justice Stevens explained,

“technically independent expenditures can be corrupting in much the same way as direct contributions.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at67–68).

Breyer Continues:

“Indeed, Justice Stevens recounted a “substantial body of evidence” suggesting that “[m]any corporate independent expenditures . . . had become essentially interchangeable with direct contributions in their capacity to generate quid pro quo arrangements.”” Id., at ___ (slip op.,at 64–65)."

Saving Japan Review

Surviving Fukushima

Christopher Noland has created a documentary about the Fukushima disaster that is worth people watching, whether they are Japanese or not: http://survivingjapanmovie.com/. His documentary details what he found when he came to Japan to help with the cleanup after the March 2011 disaster.
Christopher Noland found in Japan a nightmare world where palliative measures and coverups substituted for evacuation of the people in the area and where folks are still being subject to radiation exposure through food and from breathing the air. He's not a wealthy documentarian and could use the money, so anyone interested in finding out more should pre-order his DVD so that he can fund his further efforts.
For more information:

https://www.facebook.com/SurvivingJapan

http://www.fukushima311watchdogs.org/
http://www.king5.com/news/cities/everett/Documentary-shows--160466835.html

Bait and Switch attacks on Keynesian Economics

Keynesian Economics is still under attack by the right. And I have to confess that for a time I bought some of the arguments. One of the opening arguments was that somehow the STAGFLATION of the late 70's and early 80's was the fault of officials applying Keynes ideas and that Keynesian economics had no theoretical model for dealing with STAGFLATION, and that what they did apply was counter productive. According to the straw argument Keynesians didn't think that inflation could be fought by raising unemployment -- and that that failed. It was a straw argument. I remember the contrary, since I was in one of the last cohorts who studied Keynesian economics. It turns out that Keynesian economics had prescriptions, but that they weren't being followed in the 70's and eighties anymore than they are followed now.

Paul Krugman's most recent piece pretty much dredges up the truth -- Keynesian was discredited with lies.

Paul writes:

"I’ve been writing about how macroeconomic reality under Ronald Reagan didn’t actually match the myth, and many people are inevitably upset. And one of the things they tend to bring up is the hoary old myth that the 80s success in taming inflation was somehow a terrible shock and surprise to Keynesians, who had no explanation.

"This is, as it happens, completely wrong: what actually happened in the 80s was, quite literally, a confirmation of the validity of textbook Keynesian economics."

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/reagan-and-inflation/

Paul says:

The two leading undergrad macro textbooks at the time were Dornbusch-Fischer and Gordon, both with first editions published in 1978. (Gordon has a retrospective (pdf) on all this, which tells me something I didn’t know: in both cases the analysis drew on a handout presented by Rudi in 1975). Both books presented an adaptive-expectations Phillips curve, in which inflation depended both on the unemployment rate and on lagged inflation, which was supposed to determine expectations:

Inflation rate = -α(u – NAIRU) + Lagged inflation rate

where u was the unemployment rate and the NAIRU was the non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment.

Krugman writes:

And what did this approach predict about disinflation? It said that if policy makers were willing to impose a period of very high unemployment, they could bring inflation down — and that even if unemployment then fell back to the NAIRU, inflation would stay down.

Dornbusch-Fischer, which declares on p. 421,

We should not be surprised if the level of output and the inflation rate move in opposite directions at some stages of the adjustment process.

And of course Paul is preaching to the choir when he writes;

That is, we should not be surprised by the very thing that supposedly shocked, surprised, and refuted Keynesian economics.

Keynesian theory never had the holes in it that it was accused of.

The truth, which Gordon has been trying to get out, is that 1978-vintage macro has actually done very well these past three decades. Unfortunately, a couple of generations of economists have never seen that stuff.

I've been feeling a lot of "I told you so" after years of "I'm warning you." But my warnings, and those of others like Krugman who actually have integrity have been falling on deaf ears. Those studying the subject have followed alternative realities manufactured because they validated the extractive and gambling approaches that big business and big banks prefer to follow.

The paper he cites offers this summary:

"The paper resurrects “1978‐era” macroeconomics that combines non‐market‐clearing aggregate demand based on incomplete price adjustment, together with a supply‐side invented in the mid‐1970s that recognizes the co‐existence of flexible auction‐market prices for commodities like oil and sticky prices for the remaining non‐oil economy. As combined in 1978‐era theories, empirical work, and pioneering intermediate macro textbooks, this merger of demand and supply resulted in a well‐articulated dynamic aggregate demand‐supply model that has stood the test of time in explaining both the multiplicity of links between the financial and real economies, as well as why inflation and unemployment can be both negatively and positively correlated." (page 1 http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/economics/gordon/GRU_Combined_090909.pdf

The Real Problem

I hear people railing against corporations, but that is not the real problem. The problem is that much of our governance is through privately owned corporations, who constitute a plutocracy and govern much of our lives for "private Separate Advantage" which is part of the very definition of Tyranny as explained by John Locke:

John Locke defined tyranny as “…the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to; and this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private, separate advantage.”

We have badly constituted governance of our business, where folks are regularly defrauded, swindled and taken to the cleaners by unscrupulous governors and their employees. That is what needs to change. We need corporations that are governed on democratic republican principles, that can be trusted, operate for the common good, with common sense, and with common decency; and that are overseen by common citizens.

The real issue in our world is do we want a society where, as the queen learned from John Locke, polity is founded on mutual trust, and a sense that any property is a trust from G-d, the community, and for our progeny — or do we want an animal society where the top dogs rule and dog eat dog is the norm? This debate goes all the way back to the Glorious Revolution in Britain where the British resolved their issues with Royalty by enforcing the principles of the commons: right to common access to common property, common law, common sense, and common decency. Our own revolution was just the next phase of this old debate, and was influenced by the bloodiness of the French Revolution. We are in an ongoing, mostly spiritual, struggle to define ourselves as either brute and perishable beings or beings who can rise above our beginnings, redeeme ourselves and make some good out of our lives.
I see this ongoing debate in my religious life, my work life, and in my personal life. Common sense is surprisingly hard to come by or to sustain.

Introduction

I just got into this blog. I'm going to use it for economic and political writings.