Author: David S. White

US Supreme Courts come and go – some take on names: the
Warren Court; the Burger Court; some are remembered for their role in the 2000
election, some for their more recent role in the Citizens United case, which cleared the way for infinite amounts of
corporate and union money to find its way into political coffers, both large
and small.  Anybody who says they know
where and how all of the loose ends of that last one will tie up, is kidding
you . . .

But, we learned last week, in the process of the Supremes’
announced June decisions – I call them the Supremes with no disrespect
intended; Motown hits still play in my head decades after Diana Ross and the
Girls’ heyday; nor did I make up the name – that the First Amendment has a few
new twists and turns that nobody in particular really contemplated. 

Or, perhaps it is me who was caught napping. 

In reversing a healthy percentage of the Federal Court of
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s decisions (something over 70% this year;
nothing special, really), the Supremes reminded us all who it is that has the
last word. Including in the reversals was California’s criminal law against
peddling violent and gory video games to children (the under-eighteen crowd).

If Congress is looking forward to their annual Summer Recess,
they had better think twice, and then a third time.  We are told that we shall hit the National
Debt Ceiling in early August.  The closer
we get, the more nervous we are making international investors. 

Want to see our interest rates rise?  Do nothing. 
Want to risk international fiscal chaos? Do nothing.

The IMF has released a statement urging the most expeditious
raising of the National Debt Ceiling. 
Confronting the unthinkable – our government will be unable to pay its
bills – why are we playing this insane game of Chicken?  Half a Billion dollars of our Debt has to be
rolled over in early August – how do we expect to borrow more money if we
default, or, and here’s the critically important part, if we even make
investors think that we even could
default on our National Debt.

Glued
to my Talking Heads TV programming last Sunday night, when news that OBL had finally
been hunted down and killed, fittingly, like
the dog he was, one, only marginally relevant thought kept yelling inside
my head.  That great scene in the old ‘I
Love Lucy’ show, where Ricky comes home, and realizes the latest crazy thing
which Lucy did, and sputtering, returns with the immortal line: "Lucy, You’ve Got Some ‘Splainin’ to Do!"

But,
as I watched the unfolding story, one which became instantly immortal and will
go down in the annals of our country’s decades-long battles with terrorist attackers,
all I could think of was that it is Pakistan who has ‘some ‘splainin’ to do . .
. . BigTime!

According
to the Center for American Progress,
Pakistan has received in aid from the US since 9/11/2001, some $7.89 Billion in
military assistance (reimbursement, actually) for their ‘help’ in our efforts
to hunt down and kill the terrorists who attacked our country and killed nearly
3,000 ordinary people trying to live through another day in their lives, as
well as to protect the US from further such attacks.  During the same period, the US also gave
Pakistan some $3.1Billion in ‘economic and development assistance,’ including
food aid.  That’s not all; before the
Cold War interposed some barriers, the US also gave Pakistan nearly $2Billion
between 1953 and 1961, a quarter of which was ‘military assistance.’  That was back when a Billion was still an
incredibly large number, mind you. 
That’s a whole lotta love, of the green folding kind, that the US has
shown to Pakistan; and, in return . . . .?

BREAKING NEWS: 

I am an unabashed ‘Media Junkie,’
but the last months have been incredible, over-the-top excitement, even for
me!   Big Screen TV’s must now, and
hereafter, be sold with an accompanying, never-emptying, box of Kleenex
attached.

After watching 24/7 on our big
screens and on our computers, the governments of almost the entire Arab world
begin to topple, one by one like dominoes, beginning in mid-January (yes, my
son is finally home safe from his two-month work stint in Dubai), the
unbelievably tragic Biblical Trifecta of Horror befell Japan, and we all sat in
awe of Mother Nature and her non-stop, real-time fury.   The heartbreaking Japan story pushed the
Mess in Libya off the Media’s front stoop for only a few days, however.  Last week, incredibly, the UN, US, and our
newly cobbled-together Coalition of Allies (including 2 jets from Quatar!)
combined for a show that we watched something unprecedented (since the year I
was born) happen, with jaws dropped .

We have spent last Friday and this past weekend glued to our
TV’s, pasted to the internet with mass anxiety rising like a Saturn rocket from
it’s launch pad, and the news from Egypt is so bad that adjectives fail.  Mubarak, the now embattled BeAll&EndAll of Egypt’s government
for several decades; the lynchpin to keeping the peace between Egypt and our
closest Middle East ally, Israel, and; the recipient of annual Billions of US
aid (from my taxpayer pocket and yours, too) and our very best weaponry, is now
a Dead Man Walking, or so say the many TV Talking Heads and cyber-pundits.  Did I forget to mention that he was also a
brutal dictator (sorry Joe Biden, you got that one wrong), employing his
dreaded security police (no over-used Nazi comparisons here, folks) to torture
and intimidate – until they all disappeared at some point Friday (our time),
leaving the most educated populace in the Middle East to literally fend for
themselves with knives and clubs to protect their loved ones and property.  Gun control advocates, please take note of
what happens when chaos descends on civilized society – we can all recall the
’92 LA Riots, where similar things happened and whole neighborhoods, like my
own hillside one, were left without police and fire protection for a couple of
days – Police and Fire Dept. officers came door to door to tell us to keep our
weapons handy if we had any because we were on our own.

The sheer fright factor here cannot be over-emphasized.  If you think I am overstating what is going
on in Egypt, you haven’t been paying attention.

The horrific multiple murders of
this past weekend are echoing all over the landscape this week.  So many questions are everywhere you look in
our supercharged 24/7 Media right now. 
These include: 1) how Congressmen and -women, Judges, and indeed all
elected officials, can continue to go out among the citizenry (as they must)
without risk of their lives; 2) how to detect (and weed out for immediate
treatment) precisely which dangerously unstable members of our 300+ million
population are ticking time-bombs, capable of such hair-trigger and senseless
destruction of human life, and; 3) last but never least, what changes need to
be made to avoid more senseless deaths in this frenzied time in which we live.

Arizona has the most liberal gun
laws in the nation.  This article is not
about gun control.  Deranged people who
are bent on killing, will kill whether or not more statutes are enacted to
‘control’ gun ownership.  It is like
throwing rocks at airplanes.

If you are reading this, then we
have all, once again, survived the year-end holiday season.  As I write, the 112^th Congress is
finding where the bathrooms are located and the rain has finally stopped
drowning California, after going on to set blizzard records back East and
inundating Manhattan in more snow than I (and most people) have ever seen
there.  Everybody has now returned to
their office or workplace or place of business and all are waking up to the
bills piled up late last year, rolling up their sleeves, and plunging back into
the fray.

Later today, the job numbers come
out.  Breaths are being held.  Fall indicators seemed to say that retail did
better than in years prior and that even some jobs may finally be in the
process of re-materializing, though year end employment numbers are always a
bit suspicious due to holiday season temporary hiring, and other exotic
economic factors which would put you right to sleep if I began listing them
here.

So, is it finally over?  Can we come out of our bunkers now and get
back to business as usual? Is the long, national nightmare of what they are now
calling the Great Recession (still not the dreaded D word, for obvious reasons)
finally now in the rear view mirror and can we finally get back to business for
this new, sci-fi sounding year of 2011? 
If you grew up like me as a Boomer, you may remember the 50’s
predictions that, by the year 2000, we would all be commuting in those flying
Jetsons’ cars. 

Monday morning’s news started this
week, the last full one before the year-end holidays end this year, off with a
bang.   The 42-page Memorandum Opinion of
USDC Judge Henry E. Hudson, sitting in the Eastern District of Virginia,
Richmond Division, was issued and filed Monday morning.

In what can only be called a
stunning blow to the Obama Administration, Judge Hudson’s Memorandum Opinion
holds only a portion of the massive Health Care Legislation (officially titled
the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," but known by many simply as
"Obamacare") to be unconstitutional – the essential, and controversial,
ingredient in the legislation which requires millions to buy health
insurance.   Judge Hudson’s Opinion calls
this the "pivotal enforcement mechanism" of this "health care scheme," (again,
known officially as the "Minimum Essential Coverage Provision," or simply,
Section 1501 of the Act.)

News lately has featured some
stories, which the average reader may have missed, about a legal procedure
which is becoming more common during this economic firestorm – the
‘Clawback.’  It sounds like another Freddy
Krueger horror flick, but it’s actually quite an interesting development
for us to consider here.

While we are busy preparing for and
enjoying this year-end holiday season, the Trustee of Bernie Madoff’s Estate,
Irving Picard, has been quite busy.  Picard faces a filing deadline in the Madoff Bankruptcy
Case after which he cannot file any more ‘Clawback’ actions, so here they come.

First, Picard has been suing
‘victims,’ of Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme – that is, the ones who did not lose money,
but, instead, who received those payments, year in and year out, at annual
performance rates that simply did not make sense – the ‘lucky winners,’ if you
will.  But, who complains when checks
arrive?!?   The double-whammy, of course,
is that those same ‘victims,’ (one must be careful in using that word) also
paid income taxes on the monies represented by those checks, income taxes for
which some are now seeking refunds since Madoff really didn’t make any
investments amid all of his elaborate con game. 
One financial pundit has called it the "Bernard Madoff recovery
sweepstakes."