Linda Greenhouse, "Law in the Raw": Slaw Through a Straw

And in the aftermath of Paul Krugman's inane opinion piece on Monday, we are blessed with yet another "objective" analysis from the op-ed page of The New York Times concerning the Affordable Care Act. In a Times opinion piece entitled "Law in the Raw," Linda Greenhouse writes of the US Supreme Court decision to grant certiorari in the case of King v. Burwell:

"These two provisions, part of a 900-page statute that was cobbled together without going through the usual House-Senate conference committee in which it might have been cleaned up, are the source of the confusion. The answer to the problem, as the Fourth Circuit panel found unanimously in the King case, is obvious. It’s a basic principle of administrative law that when a federal statute is ambiguous, courts defer to the agency’s interpretation — here, the I.R.S. regulation that makes the tax credits available without regard to whether the exchange is state or federal."

Okay, but is the Affordable Care Act "ambiguous"? John Steele Gordon's article in Commentary entitled "Paul Krugman at It Again" provides powerful evidence that the statute says exactly what it intended to say:

"[Krugman] writes, 'you can ask the people who drafted the law what they intended, and it wasn’t what the plaintiffs claim.'

OK, let’s do that and ask Jonathan Gruber, one of the main architects of ObamaCare. In 2012, long before this controversy arose, he was asked at a public forum about subsidies being limited to the exchanges set up by the states. He says that limiting the subsidies to state exchanges was entirely on purpose, in order to coerce the states into setting up the exchanges. 'I think what’s important to remember politically about this,' he says, 'is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits.'"

Jonathan Gruber? Why is there not a single mention of Gruber in Greenhouse's op-ed? Just this past week we learned of MIT Professor Gruber's take on Obamacare:

"This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass… Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not."

Obamacare was purposefully written in a "tortured way"? The "stupidity of the American voter" was "really really critical for the thing to pass"? "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage"?

Apparently, Greenhouse thinks none of the above has anything to do with a discussion of the Affordable Care Act's "ambiguity."

Yeah, right.

Paul Krugman, "Death by Typo": Krugman Versus the United States Judicial System

What happens when an economist engages in legal reasoning? Answer: Nothing good.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Death by Typo," Paul Krugman decides to weigh in regarding the decision of the US Supreme Court to grant certiorari in the case of King v. Burwell. King v. Burwell, whose determination could bar health care subsidies to Americans acquiring insurance via federal government exchanges, might have a serious impact upon the future of Obamacare. Krugman writes:

"[I]t now appears possible that the Supreme Court may be willing to deprive millions of Americans of health care on the basis of an equally obvious typo.

. . . .

Once upon a time, this lawsuit would have been literally laughed out of court. Instead, however, it has actually been upheld in some lower courts, on straight party-line votes — and the willingness of the Supremes to hear it is a bad omen.

So let’s be clear about what’s happening here. Judges who support this cruel absurdity aren’t stupid; they know what they’re doing. What they are, instead, is corrupt, willing to pervert the law to serve political masters. And what we’ll find out in the months ahead is how deep the corruption goes."

Unfortunately for Paul, this is not all about a "typo." Rather, this is about a statute categorically and systematically saying what it perhaps did not intend to say. See the excellent Washington Post article entitled "What the district court got wrong (and right) in Halbig v. Sebelius" by Jonathan H. Adler. See also John Steele Gordon's article in Commentary entitled "Paul Krugman at It Again," which provides powerful evidence that the statute says exactly what it intended to say.

To what extent is the US judiciary entitled to correct shoddy Congressional drafting? Let's wait to see the US Supreme Court decision. However, there is nothing extraordinary about courts determining the limits of statutory interpretation.

If there was a mistake written into the law, why can't Congress amend the statute? In this instance, the answer is simple: Obama can no longer find a majority in either house of Congress for this unpopular legislation.

Is this a matter of the willingness of the US judiciary "to pervert the law to serve political masters"? Sorry, Paul, I disagree. The United States is not a banana republic.

Paul Krugman, "Yes He Could": In Which Alternate Universe Is Krugman Living?

My jaw dropped last week when I heard Hillary declare that her Russian "reset" had been a "brilliant stroke" (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2014/06/maureen-dowd-when-will-hillary-let-it.html). Well, if you thought Hillary's audacity pushed the edge of the envelope, she has now been outdone by Paul Krugman, who, in a New York Times op-ed entitled "Yes He Could" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/opinion/paul-krugman-health-care-and-climate-president-obamas-big-deals.html?ref=opinion&_r=0), would have us believe that Obama has emerged as a stellar president. Krugman begins:

"Several times in recent weeks I’ve found myself in conversations with liberals who shake their heads sadly and express their disappointment with President Obama. Why? I suspect that they’re being influenced, often without realizing it, by the prevailing media narrative."

Obama's friends in the mainstream media, particularly those at The New York Times, are responsible for the declining popularity of the president? Yeah, right.

But more to the point, how does Krugman go about proving that "Mr. Obama is having a seriously good year"? Simple: Obamacare. Krugman would have us know that first-year enrollments are above projections, and people are paying their premiums. What happened to, "If you like your health care plan and your doctor, you can keep them"? Krugman obviously doesn't give a damn.

However, as an economist, Krugman should care about cost, and you will recall that in December 2009 Obama declared, "I made clear from day one that I would not sign a health insurance reform bill if it raised the deficit by one dime." However, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is no longer projecting that Obamacare will cut the budget deficit (see: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/06/12/obamacare_and_the_cbo_--_no_longer_giddy_122956.html) at a time when US national debt in now in excess of $17.5 trillion and climbing.

Regarding financial reform under Obama, Krugman writes, "although it’s much weaker than it should have been, is real — just ask all those Wall Street types who, enraged by the new limits on their wheeling and dealing, have turned their backs on the Democrats." In a word: Poppycock! Under the very nose of Krugman's beloved Obama administration, high frequency trading is sucking the life blood from the economy, and meanwhile Obama's failure to reinstate the Uptick Rule provides hedge funds with the ability to manipulate share prices in any direction (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/08/maureen-dowd-summers-of-our-discontent.html).

Foreign policy? Where do I even begin? Iraq? Syria? Libya? The Ukraine? Crimea? China? The world has come to know that Obama's "red lines" are drawn with washable Crayons.

And that's not all. The scandal involving the targeting of conservative organizations by the IRS has resurfaced owing to a purported "computer crash," causing the IRS to "lose" the emails of Lois Lerner, former Director of Tax Exempt Organizations. However, as noted by John Steele Gordon at Commentary (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/06/15/are-lois-lerners-emails-really-lost/):

"The reason it may is because there are very good reasons to doubt the idea that these emails are irretrievably lost due to a simple crash of a personal computer’s hard drive. For one thing, downloading an email from an email server does not cause the email to be deleted from the server itself. And a lawyer in the Department of Justice, who understandably wishes to be anonymous, reports that government email servers are automatically backed up every night. So both Lerner’s computer and the email server would have had to crash for these emails to have been lost. That would be some coincidence."

Needless to say, The New York Times is doing its best to ignore this story.

Benghazi? This "bogus" scandal is very much alive after Ben Rhodes's email, suppressed by Obama and friends, came to light and revealed the administration's "goal":

"To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy."

Yes, he could? In fact, it couldn't get much worse, and we are left to wonder in which alternate universe is Krugman living.

Paul Krugman, "The Big Shrug": Where Is Tanzania?

Later this month, Obama will be traveling to Tanzania. Now I know that many of those who read this blog are professors, doctors, psychologists and law makers, but honestly, if I were to give you a map of Africa this very moment, how many of you would be able to pinpoint Tanzania? Frankly, if you wanted to get lost for a week or so, as scandals swirl around you, it sounds like a pretty good place to disappear, and this is where Obama will be traveling at the end of the month. Moreover, were it not for the fact that Tanzania, as noted by Dana Milbank in a Washington Post opinion piece entitled "Obama’s ill-advised visit to Tanzania" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-obamas-ill-advised-visit-to-tanzania/2013/06/07/397b00fa-cf88-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html?hpid=z2), "has been in a multiyear diplomatic dispute with the United States over human trafficking," Tanzania might be a wonderful place to weather out the PRISM, Verizon, Benghazi, AP/Rosen and the IRS storms.

But let us not forget that in addition to PRISM, Verizon, Benghazi, AP/Rosen and the IRS, there is also the "small" matter of America's stagnant economy and an unacceptable level of unemployment.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Big Shrug" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/opinion/krugman-the-big-shrug.html?_r=0), Paul Krugman asks:

"So how, in those long-ago days, would we have reacted to Friday’s news that the number of Americans with jobs is still down two million from six years ago, that 7.6 percent of the work force is unemployed (with many more underemployed or forced to take low-paying jobs), and that more than four million of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months?"

Me? I would say that Obama has done an awful job of managing the economy since becoming president - yeah, I know, he inherited it from Bush. But heck, it's been more than four years since Bush departed, and Obama's name isn't even mentioned once in Krugman's op-ed.

Krugman concludes:

"The tragedy is that it’s all unnecessary. Yes, you hear talk about a 'new normal' of much higher unemployment, but all the reasons given for this alleged new normal, such as the supposed mismatch between workers’ skills and the demands of the modern economy, fall apart when subjected to careful scrutiny. If Washington would reverse its destructive budget cuts, if the Fed would show the 'Rooseveltian resolve' that Ben Bernanke demanded of Japanese officials back when he was an independent economist, we would quickly discover that there’s nothing normal or necessary about mass long-term unemployment.

So here’s my message to policy makers: Where we are is not O.K. Stop shrugging, and do your jobs."

"Policy makers" should do their jobs? Is Obama a policy maker? Or is he simply someone who is told by his closest senior advisers of disasters after the fact, so that he can claim that he read about them like the rest of us in the newspapers?

Whom in Washington would Krugman have shower additional federal stimulus upon the economy? The EPA? It can of course bankroll more Solyndras, but also note newly surfacing allegations of EPA discrimination against conservative organizations as described by John Steele Gordon in Commentary (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/06/10/now-the-environmental-protection-agency/#more-826874). The IRS? They can make more "Star Trek" movies and continue hosting lavish conferences costing millions of dollars. Or perhaps, the NSA, which is doing its part to heal the economy by building a new $2 billion facility in Utah, where it will store and process details concerning your telephone and Internet activity.

US unemployment remains at a disastrous level, but who is ultimately responsible for championing a recovery? At the moment Obama can be found with China's Xi Jinping in a desert retreat named Rancho Mirage (see: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-xi-latest-leaders-escape-california-desert-retreat-070547701.html). Later this month, after reemerging from this mirage, Obama can be "found" in Tanzania.

Good luck to the unemployed and underemployed among us.

Paul Krugman "Coins Against Crazies": Just Who Is Crazy?

"Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point.

. . . .

It’s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it’s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details."

- Paul Krugman, "Confronting the Malefactors" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefactors.html), October 6, 2011

Paul Krugman is just chock full of wonderful ideas, including his past advocacy on behalf of Occupy Wall Street. Today, in a New York Times op-ed entitled "Coins Against Crazies" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/opinion/krugman-coins-against-crazies.html), Krugman acknowledges that the US federal government's "revenue has fallen far short of spending," which in turn has demanded constant raising of America's debt ceiling. Regarding the debt ceiling, Krugman writes:

"If we were to hit the debt ceiling, the U.S. government would end up defaulting on many of its obligations. This would have disastrous effects on financial markets, the economy, and our standing in the world. Yet Republicans are threatening to trigger this disaster unless they get spending cuts that they weren’t able to enact through normal, Constitutional means."

Heaven help us if there should ever be spending cuts . . .

Which brings Krugman to a proposal that the federal government should mint a platinum coin to eliminate Republican meddling with Obama's spending spree:

"Here’s how it would work: The Treasury would mint a platinum coin with a face value of $1 trillion (or many coins with smaller values; it doesn’t really matter). This coin would immediately be deposited at the Federal Reserve, which would credit the sum to the government’s account. And the government could then write checks against that account, continuing normal operations without issuing new debt.

. . . .

[I]t’s the president’s duty to do whatever it takes, no matter how offbeat or silly it may sound, to defuse this hostage situation. Mint that coin!"

Ah, yes, the stuff that Nobel Prizes are made of.

However, as observed by John Steele Gordon, writing for Commentary (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/01/09/the-trillion-dollar-platinum-coin/):

"Platinum is currently selling for about $1,590 a troy ounce. So a $1 trillion coin would weigh 26,221 'troy tons,' which might present a bit of a transportation problem getting from the mint to the Federal Reserve. There is also the problem that nowhere near that much platinum has ever been mined since the metal first came to the attention of chemists in the 1740s. Last year a grand total of 211 tons was mined worldwide, almost all of it from South Africa, Russia, and Canada.

. . . .

So could the Treasury mint a coin, say the size of a silver dollar, out of platinum, and simply inscribe it $1,000,000,000,000? To do so would be indistinguishable, in a practical sense, from sending over new bonds with the face value of $1 trillion, as the coin would have an intrinsic value that would be only the tiniest fraction of a trillion dollars. That would violate Congress’s sole power to borrow money."

Mint the coin? I'm certain world financial markets would highly appreciate this stunt, which could cause instant collapse of the American economy.

But heck, why go to the trouble of minting a platinum coin when an autographed picture of Obama, inscribed with the amount of $10 trillion, should do the trick?

Thanks, Paul. Keep those lucid ideas coming!