Civil Liberties, Health Care, Food Policies

Supreme Court Guts Due Process Protection

December 20, 2009

Naked Capitalism - Anyone who is arbitrarily declared a “suspected enemy combatant” by the president or his designated minions is no longer a “person.”

Reader Walter passed along this distressing sighting from Chris Floyd’s blog. American civil liberties were gutted last week, and the media failed to take note of it.

The development? If the president or one of his subordinates declares someone to be an “enemy combatant” (the 21st century version of “enemy of the state”) he is denied any protection of the law. So any trouble-maker (which means anyone) can be whisked away, incarcerated, tortured, “disappeared,” you name it. Floyd’s commentary:

After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president’s fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a “suspected enemy combatant” by the president or his designated minions is no longer a “person.” They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever — save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

It is hard to overstate the significance of this horrid decision. The fact that the Supreme Court authorized this land grab says we no longer have an independent judiciary, that the Supreme Court itself is gutting the protections supposedly provided by the legal system. Per Floyd:

In fact, our most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.

Now Floyd saw this mainly as an issue of the treatment of enemy combatants and Obama hypocrisy about torture, which is bad enough:

The Constitution is clear: no person can be held without due process; no person can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. And the U.S. law on torture of any kind is crystal clear: it is forbidden, categorically, even in time of “national emergency.” And the instigation of torture is, under U.S. law, a capital crime. No person can be tortured, at any time, for any reason, and there are no immunities whatsoever for torture offered anywhere in the law.

And yet this is what Barack Obama — who, we are told incessantly, is a super-brilliant Constitutional lawyer — has been arguing in case after case since becoming president: Torturers are immune from prosecution; those who ordered torture are immune from prosecution… let’s be absolutely clear: Barack Obama has taken the freely chosen, public, formal stand — in court — that there is nothing wrong with any of these activities.

Yves here. The implications are FAR worse. Anyone can be stripped, with NO RECOURSE, of all their legal rights on a Presidential say so. Readers in the US no longer have any security under the law.

Roman citizens enjoyed a right to a trial, a right of appeal, and could not be tortured, whipped, or executed except if found guilty of treason, and anyone charged with treason could demand a trial in Rome. We have regressed more than 2000 years with this appalling ruling.

Government Health Care: The Next Step on the Road to Tyranny and Slavery

December 19, 2009

Infowars.com - Democrats deceptively argue that health care is legal under the commerce clause of the Constitution. The commerce clause relates to business, not individuals, but the Democrats have skewed the original purpose and intent of the Constitution.

When asked to point out where in the Constitution authority is granted to force an individual — ultimately at gunpoint — to buy government health care, Speaker of the House Pelosi said: “Are you serious?”

It is said Obama was a constitutional professor at the University of Chicago Law School (even this is a lie — he was in fact “a senior lecturer,” not a professor), so we should assume he has at least some knowledge of the principles of the Constitution. Obama likely knows that the Constitution does not mandate Americans be forced into a contractual agreement with a private party for health insurance.

Apparently, like his predecessor, Obama regards the Constitution as little more than a goddamn piece of paper.

“Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress given the power to mandate that an individual enter into a contract with a private party or purchase a good or service,” explains the Heritage Foundation. No decision or present doctrine of the Supreme Court justifies such a claim of power.

Is it possible Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have not read Article I of the Constitution? It states that the government’s rights are limited. Article 1, Section 8 reads:

“The Congress shall have Power … To regulate Commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian Tribes.”

It does not say a word about health care. The federal government only has the power to regulate trade between itself, foreign governments, and the states. Period.

But then the government — including the Supreme Court — has chipped away at the Constitution for decades. Many of the most serious violations of the Constitution came under the reign of a supposed conservative Republican, George W. Bush.

The Democrat health care bill is merely the most recent and most egregious of those constitutional violations. Both parties – essentially the same party – excel at destroying our constitutional rights.

As recently as last week, there was hope this monstrosity in the Senate would die a natural death and hand a defeat to Obama and his big government statists in the House and Senate.

Now that senator Ben Nelson has sold his consent — for Medicaid money to Nebraska — it appears this bill will soon be a done deal.

In a few weeks, the federal government may be making your most important and private medical decisions. Get ready for health care on par with Cash for Clunkers.

Get ready to take the next step on the road toward government tyranny and slavery.

2010 Food Crisis Means Financial Armageddon

December 18, 2009

Market Skeptics - If you read any economic, financial, or political analysis for 2010 that doesn’t mention the food shortage looming next year, throw it in the trash, as it is worthless.

There is overwhelming, undeniable evidence that the world will run out of food next year. When this happens, the resulting triple digit food inflation will lead panicking central banks around the world to dump their foreign reserves to appreciate their currencies and lower the cost of food imports, causing the collapse of the dollar, the treasury market, derivative markets, and the global financial system. The US will experience economic disintegration.

Over the last two years, the world has faced a series of unprecedented financial crises: the collapse of the housing market, the freezing of the credit markets, the failure of Wall Street brokerage firms (Bear Stearns/Lehman Brothers), the failure of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the failure of AIG, Iceland’s economic collapse, the bankruptcy of the major auto manufacturers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler), etc… In the face of all these challenges, the demise of the dollar, derivative markets, and the modern international system of credit has been repeatedly anticipated and feared. However, all these doomsday scenarios have so far been proved false, and, despite tremendous chaos and losses, the global financial system has held together.

The 2010 Food Crisis is different. It is THE CRISIS. The one that makes all doomsday scenarios come true. The government bailouts and central bank interventions which have held the financial world during the last two years will be powerless to prevent the 2010 Food Crisis from bringing the global financial system to its knees.

So far the crisis has been driven by the slow and steady increase in defaults on mortgages and other loans. This is about to change. What will drive the financial crisis in 2010 will be panic about food supplies and the dollar’s plunging value. Things will start moving fast.

Early in 2009, the supply and demand in agricultural markets went badly out of balance. The world was experiencing a catastrophic fall in food production as a result of the financial crisis (low commodity prices and lack of credit) and adverse weather on a global scale. Meanwhile, China and other Asian exporters, in effort to preserve their economic growth, were unleashing domestic consumption long constrained by inflation fears; and demand for raw materials, especially food staples, was exploding as Chinese consumers worked their way towards American-style overconsumption, prodded on by a flood of cheap credit and easy loans from the government.

Normally, food prices should have already shot higher months ago, leading to lower food consumption and bringing the global food supply/demand situation back into balance. This never happened because the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), instead of adjusting production estimates down to reflect decreased production, has been adjusting estimates upwards to match increasing demand from China. In this way, the USDA has brought supply and demand back into balance (on paper) and temporarily delayed a rise in food prices by ensuring a catastrophe in 2010.

It is absolutely key to understand that the production of agricultural goods is a fixed, once a year cycle (or twice a year in the case of double crops). The wheat, corn, soybeans and other food staples are harvested in the fall/spring, and then that is it for production. It doesn’t matter how high prices go or how desperate people get, no new supply can be brought online until the next harvest at the earliest. The supply must last until the next harvest, which is why it is critical that food is correctly priced to avoid overconsumption, otherwise food shortages will occur.

The USDA, by manufacturing the data needed to keep supply and demand in balance, has ensured that agricultural commodities are incorrectly priced, which has lead to overconsumption and has guaranteed disaster next year when supplies run out.

The world is blissful unaware that the greatest economic/financial/political crisis ever seen is a few months away...

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