On Monday, December 7, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments concerning Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB).
While perhaps not as memorable as the “date which shall live in infamy,” this case has been called the most important “separation of powers” case in 20 years by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the dissenter in the 2-1 decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled for the PCAOB, prior to the case going to the Supreme Court for review).
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The Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, New York, has ruled against Columbia University’s plans to use eminent domain to develop a satellite campus in Upper Manhattan. This reflects one minor skirmish in the battle that has raged nationally ever since Kelo vs. City of New London was decided by the Supreme Court in 2005.
In his “A Summary View of the Rights of British America”, Thomas Jefferson made one last plea to King George to reconsider the path England was taking in its relationship with the American colonies. With elegance and eloquence, Jefferson laid the moral and political groundwork for life, liberty, and property:
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When ABC News asked if the “jobs summit” would make real progress or would just be “simply a glorified public-relations stunt,” it studiously avoided asking the real question: How can the prime movers that created the current economic “Great Recession” be expected to fix it?
For starters, where is the constitutional authority for the government to get involved in creating jobs, even if it could?
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In its attempt to glorify “the 10 who shaped the U.S. economy the most since 2000,” ABC News did a great favor for those interested in the interconnections among the “elite” who are impacting the current world economic and political scene.
Naturally, much was left unsaid about these “captains,” especially regarding their connections to the elite currently in charge. In order, then, here is a brief look at each of these “10 who shaped the U. S. economy”:
If Will Rogers didn’t say “Those who don’t read the papers are uninformed; those who do are misinformed,” he probably should have.
Witness this headline from The Wall Street Journal: “Jobs, Spending Bode Well for Growth.”
Compared to this from Bloomberg: “Orders for Durable Goods in U. S. Unexpectedly Fall.”
Or this from APNews: “Jobless claims off, spending up in sign of rebound.”
Finally, to confound the confusion, see this from the Denver Post: “Good news raises hopes that recovery won’t fizzle.”
How does one make any sense of it all? Dr. Kenneth McFarland (named America’s Number One Public Speaker by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce in 1965) once quipped that he had read so much about the harmful effects of tobacco and alcohol that he just decided to give up reading!
There is another option: dig deeper.
When Bob Schieffer of NBC News asked the rhetorical question: “…has going a trillion dollars in hock to one country [China] made us more secure?”, he was reminded of Everett Dirksen (Illinois Senator for nearly 20 years) and his famous comment: “…a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money!”.
The current account deficit, at the present moment, is over $12 trillion and climbing. About half of that debt is owned by foreign countries, most notably China (about $800 billion) and India (about $300 billion), with the balance owned by Japan, Germany, and others.
So what’s the big deal?
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We dont have to hire historians to see where deficit spending will take us. We have only to look around now. Since the end of World War II, some of history’s greatest national disasters have taken place right here in the Americas. North Americans used to laugh or shake their heads at the economies of the south that seemed always on the brink of collapse. Banana republics, we derisively called them. We’re not laughing now.
Here are some examples he provides of inflation lag time:
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The city of New London, Connecticut, fought for and won at the highest level permission to take private property from one person and give it to another. Now that victorious “person” (i.e., pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Inc.) is closing its New London facility and moving it to Groton. Was it all for naught?
Some think so.
While many questions about the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas by Major Nidal Hasan remain unanswered, there is one question for which there is a clear and unequivocal answer: Why didn’t the soldiers return fire?
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