Here's Why the Chief Justice Ruled the Way He Did

I think it was one of the most brilliant political and judicial moves of our time.



Chief Justice John Roberts is a conservative, Republican judge, right?



1. He invalidated the "Commerce clause" as a legal pretext for requiring people to buy health insurance. He also got the four most liberal judges to sign on to this. It is the first time, this court has begun to put limits on the expansion of the federal governemnt through the commerce clause.. That is now set in legal concrete.

2. He allowed the mandatory purchase of health care insurance as a "tax". Since the four liberal judges never met a tax they didn't like, it was no big thing for them to agree. Plus, they were getting the health care they wanted. But if you calculate all the mandate purchases as new "taxes" (now LEGALLY defined as such), Chief Justice Roberts just handed the Republicans a campaign issue that only Santa Claus or a Chief Justice could have given them. $5hundred BILLION in new taxes (legally defined as such) under Obamacare. 75% of which will be extracted from Mr. Obama's precious Middle Class. On the other hand, since the Republicans are also the party of morons, they may be too dense to realize what just surreptitiously fell into their laps. He created a target rich environment for Republican strategists (assume any exist). All of the promises, "won't raise one dime", all the insistence by the Obama people that the mandate was not a tax, but a regulation through the commerce clause, now the issues are cost and taxes--assuming some people are smart enough to see that.

3. Recognizing that probability,, he even cast a little more light by saying the court doesn't exist to protect people from electoral consequences--that if they don't like what is going on, there is a little something called the ballot box 131 days away.

Total brilliance.

Lisa Brown's Vagina

In another crude attempt to illustrate a "war on women", the Honorable Lisa Brown, State Representative in Michigan (the southeast corner of course), and several colleagues ran through a "Vaginal Monologues" histrionic staging in the state legislature (I wonder if crippling unemployment is running a distant second to such weighty issues as State Rep. Lisa Brown's vagina concerns).  I do think Lisa Brown is due for some congratulations, however.  When I googled her name and the word "vagina", the first TWENTY sites ALL EXCLUSIVELY listed Lisa Brown and her vagina.  There is MOST CERTAINLY some sort of distinction in that accomplishment.  Maybe there is an internet award that goes to the person who can best link their name to a sexual organ in a google search.
I will say one thing about State Representative Lisa Brown, compared to that smirky, scamp stooge, Sandra Fluke, she's a BABE!

I am afraid he is absolutely on target

Steve Gunn: 'The Amateur' apt title for president who just doesn't get it

Published: Wednesday, June 13, 2012, 10:22 AM

By Steve Gunn | The Muskegon ChronicleThe Muskegon Chronicle
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AP FILE PHOTOTraders gather at a post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange June 1, 2012. The stock market suffered its worst day of the year Friday after a surprisingly weak report about hiring and employment cast a pall of gloom over the U.S. economy.

Now we know why the job market continues to sag.
President Barack Obama clearly doesn't understand the fundamentals of the American economy, or perhaps he just doesn't want to accept them.
We all gasped last week when Obama uttered the unbelievable words, "The private sector is doing fine." A lot of out-of-work Americans would like to see evidence of that.
Obama went on to argue that our biggest employment crisis is in the public sector, meaning he thinks we need more government jobs. Our government is nearly $16 trillion in debt and he wants to spend more money to put more people on the federal payroll.

Steve Gunn

This poor guy is barking up the wrong tree.
Government employees only comprise about 10 percent of our national workforce. The vast majority of jobs are, and always have been, created by private companies. Simple logic suggests that the health of the private sector should be the president's main concern.
And remember, the public sector can't be healthy unless the private sector is thriving. A healthy business community produces most of the tax revenue that allows government to expand and hire more bureaucrats. When the private sector is struggling, the public sector will necessarily follow.
Are you following this, Mr. President? Didn't they cover this stuff in your economics classes at Harvard?
What's really disturbing about Obama's comment is that is demonstrates his fundamental distaste for our capitalistic economy, which has consistently given us the highest standard of living of any large, developed nation on earth.
Obama wants to expand government at the precise moment we need to shrink it, balance the budget and significantly decrease our national debt. If less money were wasted in Washington, D.C., and our state capitals, more would be available for investors to work their magic and create the real jobs we desperately need.
The private sector creates wealth. The public sector is a parasite that sucks its lifeblood from the private sector. Yet the president is more concerned about the health of the parasite. His economic theories are backward at best, and he needs to be replaced before we all suffer the permanent consequences.

What if Moore had written "The Amateur?"

In 2004, when President George W. Bush ran for re-election, radical filmmaker Michael Moore produced "Fahrenheit 911," a documentary harshly critical of the Bush administration's policies. The media made a very big deal of out that film, much of which was later discredited as a partisan hack job by the incredibly biased Moore.
Now we have another expose about the alleged shortcomings of an incumbent president, and it's selling like hotcakes. "The Amateur," an inside look at the dysfunctional and disappointing Obama presidency, has reached No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
But I can't find any reference to the book in mainstream newspapers or television news. It's as if it doesn't exist. Perhaps the author should call Moore and ask him how he manages to get full media attention for his attacks on Republicans. This couldn't possibly be a case of liberal media bias, could it? Of course not, because the media insists there is no such thing.
But I suppose it really doesn't matter. Millions of Americans have discovered this interesting book without the help of the media. They should have plenty of eye-opening reading this summer.

What did the president know?

Americans like tough presidents who aren't afraid to confront our enemies and take action when necessary.
Aside from approving the killing of Osama bin Laden, Obama has been an embarrassingly weak foreign policy president. He's the architect of our poorly timed retreat from the war on terror, which I believe we will come to regret. He's the leader who refuses to address the growing threat posed by Iran's nuclear program.
But the president apparently does pick and choose which terrorist leaders will be targeted by unmanned drone military aircraft. That sounds pretty tough, doesn't it?
The problem is that the drone program is classified information. We're not supposed to know much about it, Obama's death list, American cyber attacks on Iran or the existence of a double agent who helped foil a terrorist plot aimed at the U.S.
Yet somehow the media got all of those stories -- right in the middle of an election year.
Now the president's own attorney general, Eric Holder, is investigating whether the White House itself leaked the information to friendly reporters to make the president look like a ruthless commander-in-chief. But who in the White House might be responsible?
Or, phrased another way, what did the president know about the leaks, and when did he know it? This could become an interesting story line by the time the election rolls around.









Steve Gunn, a former Chronicle staff writer, is the communications director of Education Action Group. He adds a local conservative voice to our columnist lineup. Write: Muskegon Chronicle, 379 W. Western, Suite 100, Muskegon, MI 49443.

Compensation in America: A View from Japan

“It really is a mystery for us to watch your system and see what is happening to the American worker.  Their pensions are disappearing and they are being made to take more out of family support for things like health care.  In the meantime, American CEOs are taking in record levels of salaries and compensation.  And when they leave, even if the company is a disaster, they have golden parachute deals to take with them.  We have to resign in disgrace and dishonor.  Some of our CEOs have even committed suicide because of the extent of the damage to the companies”

The speaker was an 86 year old Japanese Chairman and CEO.  He started his company 51 years ago, collecting and distributing waste metal in Japan at the end of World War II.  His transportation for pick-up and delivery was his bicycle.  I have been honored to know him for more than twenty years.

He is a tough, but fair minded CEO who is normally enthralled by things American, but it was clear that the recent news about the compensation package of the Exxon CEO, totaling in the ga-zillions, had set this Japanese executive off.

It is hard for my acquaintance to understand why the Chair and CEO of Toyota Motors earned just less than a million dollars per year and the CEO of Exxon was getting hundreds of millions of dollars per year while “Americans are experiencing pain at the gas pumps.”

The situation is hard for me to understand as well.  I have heard it estimated that since 1993, the compensation levels of American CEOs have increased by 543%.  Can we, in turn, readily point to American companies that have exhibited bottom line performance that approaches that figure?  I seriously doubt it.

 This same executive had made a courtesy call on me about ten years ago when a major area employer had announced the layoff of several hundred workers.  His question, given the events of the day, was very simple.

“What sacrifices, he asked, did management undertake before they pushed all this pain down to their workers/”

Very little I had replied at the time.

The somewhat obscene levels of compensation for American executives come at a time when the average person is being squeezed for health care costs and retirement benefits.  It contributes to a climate of growing mistrust about corporate America. 

It is fashionable among many corporations and businesspeople to complain about government regulation, but it is precisely egregious behavior such as compensation levels on the part of corporations and businesses that invites regulation.  Restraint and moderation, in times when all of us are being asked or told to sacrifice, is a good way to show we are all on the same side.

I do not wish to leave the case understated.  Even though the Chair and CEO of Toyota Motors may be compensated at levels far below American counterparts, there are plenty of “perks” to deaden the pain.  But, when we start talking about individual compensation packages that annually total hundreds of millions of dollars, those “perks” are pretty anemic.

It gets even more difficult for a community to appreciate what the employer community contributes when good works are swallowed up in a media frenzy about greed and corruption in corporate America.

Global competition requires continuous hard work and sacrifice.  Any CEO should know this.  That CEO should also know that success will most likely come when all human resources share in the sacrifices and share in the victories.