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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Monday, July 2, 2012

The Best of Alan Caruba

By Rich Kozlovich

Most of what will appear here has been Alan's clear observations about Obamacare, it's consequences and the ruling by the Supreme Court. The last post is as equally important to the economy as the Obamacare ruling but was lost in the shuffle.

SCOTUS's ruling on the EPA's right to govern the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere based on the Clean Air Act kind of reminds me of King Canute whose followers told him that;
"You are the greatest man that ever lived," one would say. "O king, there can never be another as mighty as you," another would insist. "Your highness, there is nothing you cannot do," someone would smile. "Great Canute, you are the monarch of all," another would sing. "Nothing in this world dares to disobey you."
Then, to demonstrate that there were limits to his kingly power he ordered the waves not to touch his feet as the tide was coming in. Although the likelyhood of this actually happening runs somewhere from zero to never, the lesson is a good one. As time goes by I am more and more convinced that those who have donned the black robes of omniscience and omnipotence of the federal judiciary are in reality the ideologues, political hacks, bottom of the legal intellectual pool that Larry Klayman describes in his book, “Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment”.  

CO2 is a naturally occurring gas and the amount of CO2 on this planet is fixed.  How much ends up in the atmosphere, the oceans, the ground is based on conditions that mankind has little influence over.  Mankind can't make it, can't regulate it nor can mankind control it.  It is an integral part of what makes this planet livable.   We also need to understand that throughout the Earth's existence the levels of CO2 have varied radically.  We are in a CO2 starved world right now, and we can't make more of it or control it.  We really do need to get that.  No matter how many  sycophants  in government, the media and in the green movement say otherwise.

Obama's Constitutional Crisis
In 1832, the threat of nullification by States that opposed tariffs on imported goods came close to bringing about a civil war. Thirty years later as cries for the abolition of slavery reached a fever pitch the War Between the States would begin. Today, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that found that the Affordable Health Care Act—Obamacare— is constitutional and thereby the law of the land. Republican Governors are lining up to say they will not obey it.

The Liar's Tax
The most singular aspect of Obamacare is the way Democrats, from the President on down, consistently lied about the fact that it was a tax. Interviewed by George Stephanopolos on ABC News, September 2009, Obama was asked if he rejected the criticism that it was a tax increase. “I absolutely reject that notion,” was his reply. No need to quote the others. They all lied. It took the Supreme Court and, in particular, Chief Justice Roberts, to call Obamacare a tax in the process of eliminating the Commerce Clause of the Constitution as a justification for imposing this burden on Americans.

As CNBC’s Larry Kudlow was quick to note, “Twenty new or higher taxes across the board are bad for economic growth, bad for job hiring, bad for investors, and bad for families,” adding that when “you tax something more, you get less of it.”…

What will emerge in the months between now and the elections is the fact that the Congressional Budget Office has projected that the implementation of Obamacare will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, an increase of $820 billion over the initial estimate when it was first signed into law. A nation already $17 trillion in debt can hardly welcome such news, nor absorb such costs…… Among the many new taxes buried in the 2000-plus pages of Obamacare, there’s a 2.3% excise tax on U.S. sales of medical devices that observers believe would prove to be a $20 billion blow to an industry that employs an estimated 400,000.

There’s a 3.6% surtax on investment income from capital gains and dividends on those earning more than $250,000. Obamacare imposes a $50,000 excise tax on charitable hospitals that fail to meet new “community health assessment needs”, whatever they are. There’s a $2.6 billion-a-year tax on drug companies. A 10% excise tax on indoor tanning salons. An $87 billion hike in Medicare payroll taxes for employees, as well as the self-employed.

What Just Happened to the Rule of Law?
Following the Obamacare decision, The Heartland Institute’s Maureen Martin, a Senior Fellow for Legal Affairs, said, “Today’s decision will go down in infamy. It marks the moment when we all lost our freedom because the Supreme Court drew a road map to guide those dedicated to imposing a totalitarian, statist government on the American people.” A Heartland colleague, Peter Ferrara, a member of the bar of the Supreme Court and a Senior Fellow for Entitlement and Budget Policy, said “The Supreme Court of the United States just endorsed the most fundamental dishonesty of our politics today. The President intimidated Chief Justice John Roberts like Hugo Chavez intimidates the Venezuelan Supreme Court. The rule of law is now dead. The American people have only one more chance now to save their country.” Heartland is a non-profit, free market think tank.

The Liars Have Triumphed
The Supreme Court decision on Obamacare confirmed that lies have triumphed over the Constitution. It also is a reminder that the Supreme Court is a political entity and a human one. Only the Justices who dissented from the majority decision on Obamacare were willing to take the heat. The majority ruled that the individual mandate under the commerce clause was unconstitutional, but gave Obamacare life as a tax. It was always a tax, but President Obama repeatedly told Americans that it was not until his administration’s lawyers went before the Supreme Court and admitted and argued that it was a tax. The lawyers on the Court agreed, the majority in effect saying that there is no limit to the ability of Congress to tax Americans.

The Other Judicial Decision
….It was a law passed in the dark of night and it embodies all the worst aspects of Socialism….. It was an 81-page decision, based in part on a 2007 SCOTUS decision that ruled 5-4 that the 1970 Clean Air Act empowered the EPA to regulate C02, even though that was never the original intent of the Act. It is a ruling that will permit the EPA to continue to wreak havoc on business and industry, large and small, based entirely on the greatest science hoax in history. As one observer said, “with a sweep of the pen the elite of the American legal system affirms that the Earth’s atmosphere simulates the glass barrier of a greenhouse.” Only the Earth’s atmosphere is composed entirely of gases.

CO2 represents an infinitesimal 0.038% of the atmosphere.

The other atmospheric gases are nitrogen at 78.084%, oxygen at 20.94%, argon at 0.934%, carbon dioxide, and trace elements at 0.002%.

My Take - In Brian Sussman’s book Eco-Tyranny he quotes from Michael Crichton’s “must read thriller, State of Fear” where he ‘likens the gases of the Earth’s atmosphere to a football field:
"The goal line to the 78 yard-line contains nothing but nitrogen. Oxygen fills the next 21 yards, stretching to the 99 yard-line. The final yard, except for four inches, is argon, a wonderfully mysterious inert gas useful for putting our electronic fires. Three of the remaining four inches are crammed with a variety of minor, but essential, gasses. And the last inch? Carbon dioxide. The equivalent of one inch out of a hundred-yard field! If you were in the stands looking down on the action, you would need binoculars to see the width of that line. And the most important point – how much of that last inch is contributed by human activities? The equivalent of a line as thin as a quarter standing on edge."

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