Saturday, June 30, 2012

The two most important counters to the Obamacare as tax increase meme:

1: In the anti-injunction section of his ruling Roberts makes clear that the Congress did not intend for the penalty to be regarded as a tax. Anyone who uses this as a basis to claim that "Obama lied" about raising taxes are themsleves, lying. 2: It's a tax that NO ONE has to pay. The mandate is not a tax. The penalty is. It results in no ones taxes going up except in the rare event that they steadfastly refuse to provide for their own medical care. Furthermore the HCR law DOES include some taxes which the Republicans are respinning as affecting earners under 250K. But in each case, the claim is based on the actual payers of the tax passing them on to their customers as higher prices. This does NOT constitute a tax. People who claim otherwise are lying

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

SB 1070 falls.

No one covering the latest Supreme court ruling seems to be noticing this crucial point:
(2) It is not clear at this stage and on this record that §2(B), in practice, will require state officers to  delay the release of detainees for no reason other than to verify their immigration status.  This would raise constitutional concerns.   And it would disrupt the federal framework to put state officers in the position of holding aliens in custody for possible unlawful presence without federal direction and supervision.  But §2(B) could be read to avoid these concerns.  If the law only requires state officers to conduct a status check during the course of an authorized, lawful detention or after a detainee has been released, the provision would likely survive preemption—at least absent some showing that it has other consequences that are adverse to federal law and its objectives.  Without the benefit of a definitive interpretation from the state courts, it would be inappropriate to assume §2(B) will be construed in a way that conflicts with federal law.  Cf.  Fox v.  Washington, 236 U. S. 273, 277.  This opinion does not  foreclose other preemption and constitutional challenges to the law as interpreted and applied after it goes into effect.  Pp. 22–24.
In other words 2(B) stands if and only if in actual practice it is not allowed to be the basis to detain anyone.

Friday, June 22, 2012

It has become fashionable now that Obama has created a 'Dream Act by Fiat" for Republicans to complain that he 'didn't do anything about immigration" when the Democrats controlled Congress.

Senate Republicans Block DREAM Act for Illegal Immigrants"

Needless to say, this is a lie........

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Left on a techie thread.....

Every time I call a company have to navigate a seven layer maze in order to reach a human I am reminded that the entire rationale for the technology that businesses buy is to eliminate jobs. In a day and age when entry level positions simply don't exist, celebrating additional triumphs of robotic thinking strikes me as horribly misguided.