I have to admit; I called this one completely wrong, and have been doing so for almost three years.
  When Obamacare was first proposed by the Democrats, herded by Nancy the Red Pelosi and Dingy Harry Reid, I forecast – loud and often – that the mandate that people buy health insurance or face financial penalties imposed by the government would never pass judicial scrutiny. How could it? What in the Constitution empowered the government to force people to buy products or enter into contracts to purchase certain services?

Well, in a terrible decision handed down today by the Supreme Court Jesters, we found out. According to the majority opinion, written by the Chief Justice (John Roberts), it turns out that the government has the power to pretty much regulate any behavior they want, as long as their enforcement mechanism is called a “tax”.

 In the Supreme Court case of McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819, Daniel Webster made the argument, with which Chief Justice John Marshall agreed, that “the power to tax is the power to destroy” and overturned Maryland’s tax on banks. In today’s decision, however, Roberts wrote that the “power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits”, in direct contradiction to the man generally considered to be this country’s greatest Chief Justice.

How he comes to such a conclusion is entirely beyond me, and defies all reasoning and common sense. The tortured rationalizations in Roberts’s controlling majority opinion rely on two absurd contentions:

1. That a tax penalty isn’t enforced by imprisonment, and

2. the tax penalty isn’t “onerous”.

Well, refuse to pay the tax and see whether or not you end up in prison. And what may not be “onerous” to Roberts – with his six-figure income and government benefits – may well be “onerous” to a couple of young married kids barely squeaking by while juggling a mortgage and car payments while underemployed – if employed at all – in this terrible economy.

According to Roberts, the government is perfectly within its rights to use tax law to “encourage” certain behaviors, and discourage others. So… what can we anticipate moving forward?

How about “weight penalties”? If your body mass index (BMI) exceeds certain levels, or if your weight falls outside certain arbitrary parameters for your height as set by the government, can you expect a “tax surcharge”? Why not?

How about a “tax surcharge” for smokers? After all, the government, in the interest of cost control for the “public obligation” of controlling healthcare costs, now has a vested interest in your behavior.

How about a “tax surcharge” if you had a traffic ticket that year? Hey… that’s “risky behavior”, and you could incur “healthcare costs” if you get in an accident, right?

What about if you want to buy a foreign car? The government has determined that the American car industry is “too big to fail”, and therefore if you “choose” to buy a foreign car, you’re contributing to the risk that American auto makers will fail. So I guess you should pay a “tax penalty” for not buying American. Don’t laugh.

Way back when the hysteria about second-hand smoke was taking place I predicted that if the penalties being considered against tobacco companies ever passed into law we’d ultimately see similar actions taken against other unpopular behavior, like fast food consumption. People laughed.

Well… look around you. Laws against trans-fats in foods (bye-bye, flavor), Bloomberg’s limits on soft drink sizes in New York, pate banned in Commiefornia, San Francisco’s ban on Happy Meal toys at McDonald’s, on and on and on.

The reality is that the endorsement of the mandate by the Supremes opens the door for government to regulate virtually every aspect of human behavior through the abuse of the power to tax.

Justice Marshall was completely right; in this case, the power to tax has completely destroyed the right of free choice.

© Brian Baker 2012

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“The Buck Sure Doesn’t Stop HERE!”

The Truman presidency has been mythologized in many ways. Time and faulty human memory have worked to make the man somewhat of a legend, and as one of the characters in the movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” noted, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”.

But one thing you have to hand to the man: he took responsibility for everything that took place under his administration. As the sign on his desk said, “The buck stops here”, and he meant it.

Contrast that to the current occupant of the Oval Office, the amateur who refuses to take responsibility for anything that’s happened during his utterly incompetent administration.

As I noted in my last essay, very shortly after his inauguration, in an interview with Matt Lauer, Obama stated, “… I will be held accountable. You know, I’ve got four years. A year from now, I think people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress. But there’s still going to be some pain out there. If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

Big words. How do they stack up to reality, you ask? Well… let’s take a quick look, shall we?

The Economy: Four years ago, one of the very few issues Obama actually took any kind of definable stand on was the economy; how bad it was and how he’d “fix” it. That was actually what the Lauer interview was all about.

But what have we heard for the last three years (at least)? “Blame Bush”. It’s all “Bush’s fault” or the fault of “my predecessor”. It's not my fault. The buck doesn't stop here. The dog ate my homework. Where's that accountability he bragged about to Lauer?

One of two things happened: Either he was truly ignorant of what his prediction entailed - in which case he was just plain unqualified for the job - or he lied.

Gas Prices: When he took office a gallon of gas was about $1.87; now it’s over $4.00 out here in Greeceifornia. And, of course, the constant refrain is that the President doesn’t “control” gas prices. While semantically true, the President does control key policies that have a direct effect on gas prices, primarily policies which affect availability, which – according to the irrefutable law of supply and demand – directly determine what oil, and therefore gasoline, are going to cost.

Quite simply, the more there is of something, the less it’s going to cost. Scarcity is what drives up price.

This President has done everything in his power to block domestic access to the absolute ocean of oil upon which we sit, plain and simple. But he won’t acknowledge that; oh, no! It’s always someone else’s fault: Iran, the Saudis, world oil markets, speculators, the e-e-e-e-vil oil companies … everyone under the sun except him. But the reality is that he’s the one person standing in the way of allowing this country to do the one thing that would entirely solve the problem: letting us drill, baby, drill!

Solyndra: Of course, one of the big reasons Obama continues to block domestic oil extraction is his worship at the altar to the myth of “alternate energy”, from which we got the boondoggle funding of solar manufacturer Solyndra to the tune of over $500 million, after which they promptly went bankrupt.

Naturally, it was simply another “blame Bush” moment. It seems the Bush people had considered that same funding… but what Obama had failed to mention was that they also had decided Solyndra wasn’t a sound company in which to make that investment, so this one ended up being another egg-on-the-face moment for the ObaMessiah. But ya gotta give him props for trying, right? After all, “the buck doesn’t stop here!”, at least if he can help it.

He didn’t even learn from that debacle, repeating it with SunPower and even doubling down, wasting over $1.2 Billion and “creating” all of 15 jobs from a company over $820 Million in debt.

Obamacare: His “signature” (and just about only) piece of legislation, which is hugely unpopular with the people and on the verge of being ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Of course, that’s not his fault. That will be due to the “partisan” nature of those Justices who decide against it. I guess the ones who find for it aren’t “partisan” somehow. “Partisanship” only seems to be a feature of those who don’t agree with Obama (and liberals in general, apparently. Evidently, leftists are never “partisan”. They must be “principled”).

Bottom line: “The buck doesn’t stop here! It’s the ‘partisan’ Justices.”

Gridlock: Always the fault of the other party and their obstructive “partisanship”, of course. The buck doesn’t stop with Obama. It’s the fault of the GOP. Naturally.

It doesn’t matter that his own party had complete control of Congress for the first two years of his presidency and could pass absolutely anything they wanted. Somehow or another, the GOP was still at fault. Now, of course, the GOP has control of the House, and so it’s their fault that his proposals go nowhere. Not that anything’s really changed; even when his own party controlled everything, they didn’t bother to pass a budget, even though they didn’t need one single GOP vote to do so. And it doesn’t matter that ObaMessiah’s own budget proposals have been killed in the Democrat-controlled Senate by his own party.

The buck doesn’t stop here. It’s the GOP’s fault.

Rancorous political tone: Which, of course, only refers to things said by his opponents. When he calls his political opponents “enemies”, that’s not rancorous, of course. Because the buck doesn’t stop here. When Bill Maher calls Sarah Palin a “c***”, that’s not “rancor”, and Maher’s $1 Million political donation is happily accepted.

Operation Fast And Furious: Early in his presidency Obama tried to gin up a case that gun laws were too lax, allowing thousands of guns to “leak” across the border into the murderous hands of the Mexican drug cartels, leading to thousands of deaths. Hence Operation Fast And Furious was born.

It turned out that those guns were being “walked” across the border through straw purchases as part of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tax and Firearms (BATF) operation purportedly in place to trace and apprehend the end users of those very guns. Only problem was, the BATF lost track of those guns, the Mexican authorities were never informed of this operation, lots of people died – including at least one US Border Patrol agent named Brian Terry – and thousands of guns (enough to arm an Army battalion, literally) ended up in the hands of Very Bad Guys.

When this whole debacle came to light, we saw Operation The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here come into being in a major way. It seems that no one of any authority ever had any knowledge of any such program. It must have been devised and implemented by gremlins. Maybe Santa’s Helpers decided to gift the drug cartels or something, because this whole operation seems to have appeared out of thin air, with no one in charge, or knowledgeable, or having given authorization, or overseeing it, or answerable for it.

The BATF is part of the Justice Department, of which Attorney-General Eric Holder is in charge… except it seems that the guy “in charge” isn’t informed of critical operations, at least according to Holder. The buck doesn’t stop with Holder, the man in charge of his department.

And, of course, Holder reports to Obama, who doesn’t even seem to acknowledge that there’s an investigation by Congress going on about this issue. Utter silence. Because, of course, the buck can’t stop at Obama’s desk if he closes his eyes and refuses to even acknowledge it. His silence is deafening.

The last time I saw this kind of stonewalling was during the Watergate era. A lot of people lost their jobs – including a sitting President – and several went to prison.

White House leaks: Over the last couple of weeks secrets concerning highly-classified military and intelligence operations have been leaked to the press. The only perceptible beneficiary of those leaks would be Obama himself, as the leaked material seems to be of a nature that would enhance his being perceived as a decisive and tough “war leader”, beneficial during an election year, particularly for an incumbent with big problems to overcome on other issues (maybe like those outlined above? Just sayin’…).

The only way secrets of that nature could be accessible would be if someone very high up – at White House level – leaked them.

Of course… “the buck doesn’t stop here!”, according to the White House.

Of course it doesn’t. No responsible President or his minions would purposefully leak information that could lead to the deaths of agents working on our nation’s behalf in foreign and hostile countries, simply to enhance his political prospects. The idea’s unthinkable… right?

I even had to laugh at that one myself, and I knew it was coming…

“The Buck Does Stop HERE”… Except It Really Doesn’t: In his desperation to try to cobble together a winning coalition and secure a second term, Obama came out in favor of same-sex marriage a few weeks ago. For his die-hard supporters, that seems to be a little too late on the issue, easily pegged as a cynical ploy to try to regain the LGBT vote that supported him so enthusiastically last time and has been so disappointed by his performance to this point.

More importantly… who cares what a presidential candidate thinks about what is essentially a state issue: the definition of marriage? That varies from state to state, as is proper. So he’s grabbing the buck where it’s irrelevant.

And doing the same thing with his announcement this past week that he’s going to grant work permits to illegal aliens who meet certain criteria. Sorry, Obama, you don’t have the power or authority to do that. You’re sworn to uphold the law as passed and enacted by Congress. Nowhere in the current law is there any authority to take it upon yourself to determine who is and who is not allowed to get work permits as an alien. You have to abide by the law as written and properly passed and enacted. And lawsuits have already been filed against you to address your actions.

Which is particularly ironic in that he had his Justice Department minion Holder file a lawsuit against the State of Arizona over its SB1070 law, which allowed its own police forces to help enforce federal immigration law. Their law was enacted on the premise that the feds weren’t effectively enforcing the extant laws. And here he is, proving their point.

The problem for the ObaMessiah is that he’s not Emperor; he doesn’t get to pick and choose what laws he’s going to have his administration enforce. He’s sworn to enforce the laws on the books as written and lawfully enacted.

So, in this case grabbing that buck he tries the rest of the time to avoid simply doesn’t wash. It’s easily and accurately perceived as nothing more than an attempt at cheap populism aimed at a very specific voter demographic.

Bottom Line: Except when he gets it wrong, as in the amnesty and same-sex marriage issues, not only is Obama’s slogan “The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here!”, it’s “Buck?... What Buck?”

I indict Obama for dodging responsibility for his actions and the actions of those who work for him; of world-class hypocrisy; for speaking out of both sides of his mouth; for illegal arrogation of power to himself in violation of the US Constitution; and for just basically being the lousiest President since… ever.

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Mom’s Armenian, born and raised in Iran where my dad met her after WW2. She’s a post-war bride, an immigrant who did the whole Ellis Island thing, got her US citizenship, and became a productive member of society, raising two young kids alone when she became a widow at a young age while working her tail off to provide them a good standard of living.

Like many (if not most) immigrants of her era, she’s politically conservative, subscribing to the traditional American values that made this country a Mecca for them. But over the last few election cycles, as health issues have affected her mobility, she’s become much less politically active, by which I mean she hasn’t voted in the last few elections.

When I visited her we talked politics, as is usual. She’s very concerned about the direction Obama has taken this country, and the implications of his policies and how they’re affecting our economic soundness, as well as our standing in the world community; so much so that she has determined to cast her vote in this election come November. Each time, she asks me how I assess the status of the race, and what I think the outcome will be.

Each time, I tell her that in my opinion, if the election were held today, I think Obama would handily lose. Further, that contrary to the popular wisdom and polling data, I think it could well be a landslide of Reaganesque proportions. And that barring any unusual event between now and November, I don’t think Obama has a chance.

I then point out to her that she, herself, is a great example of the dynamic that’s in effect. She’s so motivated to see him gone that she’s more engaged in the political scene than she’s been in almost two decades, and is bound and determined to make her voice heard. And because of that, she’s a great example – a bellwether – of what’s ahead in November as so many other people just like her – people who aren’t normally involved directly in the process – get themselves to the polls to get rid of the amateur/socialist in the White House.

Most of the current polls indicate a very tight race, with Obama sometimes in the lead, and sometimes Romney. But don’t let those polls fool you; there’s a dynamic in this country I haven’t seen since 1980, when the polls showed Carter with the lead over Reagan, right up to end of the campaign, when the only poll that matters – the actual vote results – ushered Reagan into the White House with a 49-state landslide victory. I well remember the absolute shock (and outrage!) of the newscasters of the time when they were announcing the election results, and that Reagan had won.

In 1976 Carter’s campaign for President revolved around the country’s disaffection for anything Nixon, including his policies and his replacement, Gerald Ford. Carter was the “not Nixon” candidate. By 1980, he’d demolished the economy, inflation was through the roof, interest rates on loans were at record highs, property values had crashed, there were gas lines at the pumps as prices soared, we’d lost our international prestige, and Americans had been held hostage in Iran for over a year.

In 2008 Obama’s campaign for President revolved around the country’s disaffection for Bush and his policies. Obama was the “not Bush”; McCain was tarred as being “Bush 3”. And now, in 2012, he’s demolished the economy, the country’s in debt to its hairline, gas prices are at record highs (having over doubled since he took office), credit card interest rates are at record highs, property values are in the doldrums, right along with our international prestige, our national credit rating has been downgraded for the first time in history and is in danger of being so again, and he’s perceived by large segments of the populace as having run rampant over the Constitution with such programs as Obamacare and his penchant for abusing the Executive Order power to make laws not properly enacted by Congress.

In 1980 Carter had lost the enthusiastic support of much of his base, and energized his opponents by his actions. In 2010 Obama finds himself in exactly the same position. Again, remember my Mom; she’s going to vote for the first time in many years just to get rid of the guy.

That’s what’s going to make the difference this year, and why I’m predicting that – barring unforeseen major events – we could very well see another landslide this year.

In 2009, shortly after he took office, Matt Lauer interviewed Obama, and he had this to say: "One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. You know, I've got four years. A year from now, I think people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress. But there's still going to be some pain out there. If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition."

I think he predicted that one correctly. Probably a first for him. Let’s all do our best to make his at that time arrogant prediction a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 © Brian Baker 2012 

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