Google Art Project
http://www.googleartproject.com/http://www.googleartproject.com/Video: Restricting the Government’s Chokehold on Health Care
Chapman University law professor Dr. John Eastman discusses the implications of limiting the government’s control in health care.As Good As One Could Expect: Notes on Judge Vinson’s Opinion of Obamacare
Amy Peikoff writes in her blog, Don't Let It Go, on Judge Vinson’s 78 page opinion in which he held that Obamacare was unconstitutional:[...] When I first read the opinion, I was not pleased. I was not pleased that Vinson began by using an Originalist approach; I was not pleased that he seemed to concede the propriety of treating the Constitution as, in effect, a "living" document; I was not pleased that he implied that the Supreme Court could -- in fact that he seemed to invite them to -- eliminate the activity/inactivity distinction. I feared that the Supreme Court might just decide that, in our modern commercial age, yada, yada, yada, an economic decision can constitute "activity" for purposes of the Commerce Clause, and that Vinson hadn't done enough to prevent this. I found his basic argument -- that, given the current state of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, if this law were to be upheld, no real distinction could be made between the "individual mandate" and anything else Congress wanted to make people do, and therefore, if this law were to be upheld, our government would no longer be a limited one whose powers are enumerated -- terribly unsatisfying. But today, after sleeping on it (even if only for a few hours), and having a brief interchange with an actual Constitutional Lawyer, I realize that my expectations are unrealistic. This is about as good as one could expect.First, even if Vinson were an Objectivist, his job would be to apply the law, as it exists, to the facts of the case before him. Thus, even if he rejected the Originalist approach, he would still be stuck with the language of the Commerce Clause itself, plus all of the horrible precedent expanding Congress's powers under that clause. Especially given that Vinson is a district court judge, it seems the best he can do is to explain why, in the context of this binding precedent, Obamacare goes too far, and is therefore unconstitutional. So, given that I've concluded this was Vinson's assignment, is there something significant he could have done that would have been more satisfying to me? I did find his expressing "reluctance" in striking down the legislation to be annoying. I mean, at least he needn't be reluctant! He is, after all, assuming he is right, saving us from a government whose powers are no longer enumerated and limited, right? He should be glad about this! I also was annoyed that he seemed to be inviting the Supreme Court, twice during the course of his opinion, to reformulate its Commerce Clause jurisprudence in a way that allows them to uphold this legislation. However, what I realized today is the only significant thing I found missing was some sort of argument as to why it must be an activity that Congress regulates under the Clause. I wanted some sort of positive justification for the activity/inactivity distinction. It was no good to just hang one's hat on the idea that, if you get rid of this distinction, Congress could do whatever it wants. I needed more!What sort of argument could one provide?Find out in her enlightening post, Notes on Judge Vinson’s Opinion.
Obamacare: Null and Void
From Judge Rules Health Care Law Is Unconstitutional:A U.S. district judge on Monday threw out the nation's health care law, declaring it unconstitutional because it violates the Commerce Clause and surely reviving a feud among competing philosophies about the role of government.Judge Roger Vinson, in Pensacola, Fla., ruled that as a result of the unconstitutionality of the "individual mandate" that requires people to buy insurance, the entire law must be declared void.[...]"While the individual mandate was clearly 'necessary and essential' to the act as drafted, it is not 'necessary and essential' to health care reform in general," he continued. "Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void."
Audio Lecture: The Morality of Exchange in the Ancient World
On Friday, January 12, 2011, Dr. John Lewis -- at the invitation of Professor Michael Munger and the support of the Thomas W. Smith Foundation -- gave a lecture for the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at Duke University: “The Morality of Exchange in the Ancient World.”You can listen to this lecture online here: http://michaelmunger.com/Lewis1-21-11.mp3Tax Reparations…for the Rich?
Forbes.com has just published the latest column by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, which looks at the role class warfare rhetoric is playing in the debate over taxing the rich.Americans, historically, have not been envious of wealth. The predominant attitude has been: let a person make as much money as he can, provided he earns it. The reason class warfare rhetoric has been effective of late is because the practitioners of class warfare have largely succeeded in painting the rich as unproductive parasites.[...] if we’re talking about the creation of wealth in a division of labor economy, the most productive Americans don’t benefit the most: They contribute the most. Thirty years ago, if you were a shop owner, you spent a large chunk of your time poring over inventory, keeping your books, clinking away at your calculator, double checking your numbers, and going through enough correction fluid to whitewash a fence. But thanks in large measure to software pioneers like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, most of those tasks now take a fraction of the time, can be performed far more accurately and have become so simple that you can probably delegate them to an entry-level clerk. You gave Bill Gates a few hundred bucks; he gave you a better life.Super-wealthy Americans — men like Gates, Warren Buffett and Fred Smith — are predominantly thinkers and innovators who succeeded by contributing new ideas to the productive process. Not just new inventions, but new methods of organization, marketing, worker motivation and production, distribution and finance. That’s to say nothing of the fact that wealthy people are the primary contributors of capital to the economy — the factories, tools and technology that make the average American worker hundreds of times more productive than his Third World counterpart.This is what John Galt, the fictional character in Ayn Rand's best-selling novel, Atlas Shrugged, called the "pyramid of intellectual ability" :
In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the “competition” between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of “exploitation” for which you have damned the strong. [Atlas Shrugged]You can read the entire op-ed here.