Health Nannies Afoot

A bill in Congress would give the FDA power to all but ban tobacco in the US. It is an apple pie type bill. (If a senator opposes the bill it looks like he or she favors lung cancer in teenagers). It has passed both houses and awaits conference on minor differences.

Apparently Congress is going to ignore the sensational benefits prohibition of liquor had, and prohibition of drugs still has.

When this passes, me and your next door neighbor will become criminals, dealing with smugglers to get tobacco. Don't bullshit me with how easy it is to quit, etc. I don't wish to. No more than you wish to quit reading crappy novels, watching American Idol, drinking beer, or whatever your vice is.

Next on the agenda will probably be a bill to impose fines on people deemed overweight. Skinny people think if they pay taxes they have the right to control others.

First they came for the drinkers, then the potheads, then the cigarette smokers, and later for the pizzeria patronizers. It was only a matter of time before they came for ...

I don't want to spoil it.

Just because you believe in health care for all Americans, and I do, doesn't mean you get a free pass to tell anyone how to live or to insist they live like you do.

Most of the business of the Supreme Court is not about interpreting the Constitution.

It is about interpreting laws made by Congress. Why would they even need interpreting? In part because they are made of words, and people do not agree on what words mean, especially when one meaning causes a company to lose millions and another for them to make millions. The other thing is that Congress often has trouble passing laws, and ends up passing them knowing there are ambiguities. It's the only way to get them passed and a controversy out of Congress' hair, so they can go back to getting re-elected. They expect the SCOTUS to fill in the blanks. Just like singers covering a popular song put their own gloss on it.

In filling in the 'spaces' in Congress's laws it is unavoidable that the SCOTUS—and the thirteen courts of appeal below it—makes policy. As an example, what does a Justice do when the patent law grants an inventor a monopoly on his or her invention, and the anti-trust laws try to bust up monopolies? Well, you try to balance inventor rights against those of customers and other manufacturers. That makes policy. There are also cases when what is needed is to figure out how to mold the words of a law to carry out Congress' purpose. Only 100 senators and 435 Reps did not have a common purpose. Again, the courts of appeal and the SCOUTS make policy.

In maybe 10% of its cases the SCOTUS has to make something of the Constitution. That short body of words is very pithy and usually does not do much more than write in brushstrokes. It is not possible to "just interpret" the document, because there is not so much document there. Therefore, there are two schools of thought. "Strict constructionists" try to figure out more than 200 years later what the drafters had in mind. (Sometimes they are called "textualists" and strict construction" is taken to mean the same as "conservative.") Of course, there were 39 signers, and they were not of one mind. The other school, which has only pejorative names, believes in trying to interpret the scanty words in modern contexts. Who, for example, would seriously claim that words carried over the internet, or even by phone or telegram, are not covered by the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech and press? Still, neither was even dreamed of when it was approved.

In short, most of what you will hear the next few months as the Senate debates Judge Sotomayor's nomination will be political malarkey from both sides. Remember that a person's political philosophy before taking a Supreme Court robe is often no good predictor of what is to come.

We should buy more, a little more

It's time for Americans to buy more, but not a lot more. David Smick, in a 5/24 Op-Ed, says improvements in the economy depend on consumers, especially wealthy ones, starting to spend again. Excessive spending is part of what got us in trouble.

The past two decades or so, we have gone from about 60% of the non-military economy being consumer buying, to about 67%. We did this while dropping our average savings rate a tad below zero. That is, we borrowed, buying plasma TVs, SUVs and stuff like that. Now we have flipped to a savings mode.

That is a reaction to current financial troubles, but the stock market bottomed in early March, a measure of how we feel generally. We will start to spend, but we should go back only to the 60% level, and save some money. In turn, that money can be turned by the banks into bond loans to states and cities, so over the next twenty or more years they can repair the sewers, water lines, roadways and schools which, ignored, are literally rotting.

Just like the Interstates and the school construction of the 1950s through 1970s, this construction will provide jobs, provide great infrastructure to undergird the economy, and be paid for gradually by those who in the future use the facilities. The savings will provide for retirements when needed. Just a small change in buying and saving will do the trick.