RUTHFULLY YOURS

Former President Obama suggested he will focus his post-presidency on redistributing wealth, emptying prisons, and sabotaging the economy with carbon-emission controls, during his televised return to the national stage yesterday.

Obama reiterated the politically tone-deaf radical policy priorities of his presidency in a speech at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. (A transcript of Obama’s relatively brief oration is available here.)

In a statement preceding a roundtable discussion with students, Obama said:

The one thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is that yes, we confront a whole range of challenges from economic inequality and lack of opportunity to a criminal justice system that too often is skewed in ways that are unproductive to climate change to, you know, issues related to violence. All those problems are serious. They’re daunting. But they’re not insolvable.

“What is preventing us from tackling them and making more progress really has to do with our politics and our civic life,” Obama said. “It has to do with the fact that because of things like political gerrymandering our parties have moved further and further apart and it’s harder and harder to find common ground. Because of money and politics.”

Of course, in blaming “political gerrymandering” – an irrelevancy – he got to leave out the social polarization and ethno-cultural balkanization he encouraged while president, along with his crusade to inject more and more money into politics while pretending to do the opposite.

So what Obama failed to mention was just as interesting as what he did get around to saying.

If I set out to accomplish a task, I have to start with the basics. What is the job? What steps are involved? The list goes on. The same concept applies to ObamaCare. It’s broken. Whether we repeal it or fix it, we have to start with foundations. In other words, as Herman Cain notes, we have to ask the Right Questions.

Paul Ryan didn’t ask any of the right questions. And the very first one is simple: “What is our objective? Do we want to make health insurance affordable, or do we want to make health care affordable?” Put differently, do we want to guarantee a subsidy for the health insurance companies, or will we put patients first?

Health insurance is a subsidy to health insurance companies, because it has preferred status in the tax code. Taxpayers get a tax break for supplying health insurance companies with profits. That means that insurance companies will spend breathtaking amounts of money to support legislators who protect their profits. Legislators will respond by creating bigger tax incentives to buy health insurance, and the cycle will continue. Health insurance is a classic example of the Law of Subsidy in action.

The Law of Subsidy: Every time you subsidize something, you get more of it, and it gets more expensive.

Nobody asked, “Does health insurance improve health?” Had they asked, they would have learned that for the general population, health insurance does not improve health. The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment showed that:

“Medicaid coverage resulted in significantly more outpatient visits, hospitalizations, prescription medications, and emergency department visits. Coverage significantly lowered medical debt, and virtually eliminated the likelihood of having a catastrophic medical expenditure. Medicaid substantially reduced the prevalence of depression, but had no statistically significant effects on blood pressure, cholesterol, or cardiovascular risk. Medicaid coverage also had no statistically significant effect on employment status or earnings.”

Notice that there was essentially zero overall effect on health. Insurance did reduce individual financial risk, and that’s what insurance is supposed to do. But because of a 20 percent increase in use of medical resources, it substantially increased overall cost, suggesting that there may be better ways to protect individual finances.

Where did that excess money go? Providers! Insurance is a subsidy to the health care industry. Since this was Medicaid, it took taxpayers’ hard-earned money and gave it to insurance companies, doctors, and hospitals. We didn’t get to decide whether to use (and pay for) their services. The money was taken from us and given to them. And it did no good for poor patients.

The case of a Bible verse on a desk is not the same as prohibition of head gear. In my view if you permit a yarmulke, then you have to permit a turban, and a hijab and Rastafarian dreadlocks …it is a slippery slope. rsk

Should Americans be prohibited from practicing their faith while serving in the military? The Supreme Court ought to take up Sterling v. U.S., which presents exactly that question. Around 2013, the plaintiff, Lance Cpl. Monifa Sterling, had displayed a Bible verse above her desk. It was a message from Isaiah: “No weapon formed against me shall prosper.” That small act of religious devotion mattered to her, but the military considered it inappropriate. Her superiors ordered her to take it down. When she refused, the quotation was removed by a superior. Lance Cpl. Sterling was court-martialed and discharged from the Marines, in part for her refusal to remove the biblical message.

Her story bears a striking resemblance to a lawsuit that I took to the Supreme Court in 1986. Several years earlier I had joined the U.S. Air Force, intending to serve my country while continuing to practice my Orthodox Jewish faith. As part of that faith, I always covered my head with a yarmulke. I did so for many years while in uniform, and without complaint.

That is, until I encountered a vindictive military lawyer in 1981 who disliked an element of my expert testimony at a military hearing. He made a formal complaint about my wearing a yarmulke while in uniform. My commander subsequently ordered me to remove it. When I refused, I was threatened with a court-martial. Whether my commander was motivated by personal animus, bigotry or simple narrow-mindedness, I cannot say. He outranked me and would not tolerate any longer my minority religious practice.

I filed a lawsuit, Goldman v. Weinberger , and took it to the highest court in the land. But the Supreme Court ruled against me, 5-4, and deferred to the military’s stated interest in uniformity. Four justices dissented, arguing that the military had no good reason to quash the religious freedom of a serviceman who wanted to follow both his God and his country. I thereafter decided to leave the military.

In 1993 Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, to protect believers like me. The law guarantees that men and women in uniform can exercise their faith freely except in the rarest of cases: when the military can prove that a compelling interest is being pursued in as narrow a way as possible. CONTINUE AT SITE

Plaintiffs lawyers have a business model built around litigation tourism, suing in state courts known for friendly verdicts and big jury awards. The Supreme Court hears a pair of cases Tuesday that could upend this violation of federalism and due process.

In Bristol Meyers Squibb v. Superior Court of California, the Justices will consider whether some 600 plaintiffs who live outside California can sue the New York-based company in the Golden State by joining 86 local plaintiffs. The plaintiffs, who allege injuries related to the drug Plavix, sued in California because of its plaintiff-friendly reputation. (The other case, BNSF Railway v. Tyrell, concerns a similar play in Montana.)

The Constitution’s Due Process Clause says no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” which protects defendants from being dragged into courts for improper claims. In Tuesday’s cases the claims filed have no connection to the state court exercising jurisdiction, a practice the High Court has already rejected.

In 2014 the Justices ruled in Daimler v. Bauman that for a court to have jurisdiction a lawsuit must be filed where a company is headquartered or uses as its main place of business. The same year in Walden v. Fiore, the Court held unanimously that “[f]or a State to exercise jurisdiction consistent with due process, the defendant’s suit-related conduct must create a substantial connection with the forum State.”

Yet the California Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in 2016 that California courts had jurisdiction over the Plavix lawsuits though the alleged injuries didn’t occur there, the company isn’t incorporated there and Plavix isn’t made there. The California judges, in willful disregard of the U.S. Supreme Court, said the state had jurisdiction because the company did a lot of business there. By that standard nearly any business could sue in California.

Justice Kathryn Werdegar noted in dissent that allowing a lawsuit with such a tenuous connection to the state “threatens to subject companies to the jurisdiction of California courts to an extent unpredictable from their business activities in California” and extends jurisdiction over liability claims “well beyond our state’s legitimate regulatory interest.” This violates a basic tenet of federalism. Justice Werdegar offers the High Court a road map to enforce its precedents and rein in the trial bar.

Congress returns to work Tuesday, funding for the government runs out Friday, and seemingly all of Washington is promising high drama and an epic budget battle. Don’t fall for the hype. A more accurate term for this week’s scuffle is Freud’s shutdown, because the stakes aren’t much higher than the narcissism of small differences.

Congress is debating a stopgap omnibus that will last through Sept. 30, which is presumably when the next fake crisis will arrive. For now, talks between Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are deadlocked over funding for President Trump’s Mexican border wall, the Pentagon and Obama Care subsidies. But the politics on both sides are hotter than the policy details. Democratic obstructionism and Mr. Trump’s hyperbole are becoming an unvirtuous cycle.

Take the White House demand for funding border security. “The Democrats don’t want money from budget going to border wall despite the fact that it will stop drugs and very bad MS 13 gang members,” Mr. Trump tweeted over the weekend, while Nancy Pelosi averred Sunday that Democrats won’t approve a penny for this “immoral, expensive, unwise” exercise.

The House Minority Leader has a point that completing the wall—652 miles of the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border are already fenced—would be wasteful and unnecessary. The full project would run $15 billion to $25 billion, and there are better uses of scarce taxpayer dollars than antagonizing a neighbor.

Then again, the White House request is for all of—$1.5 billion. About $500 million would finance immigration enforcement with the balance going to the wall. This is pocket change in the $3.9 trillion federal budget, and in practice it might pay for logistical planning, site reviews and perhaps building a couple miles of fence after years of federal and state permitting and Nimby opposition.

Yet Mr. Trump is portraying these fiscal peanuts as the coming of the “great, great wall” he promised. Democrats have decided they’ll defy him anyway—though they know his policy is more moderate than his rhetoric and they were ready to spend $40 billion to militarize the border in the failed 2013 immigration bill.

Democrats have thus set up a game of political chicken, and Chuck Schumer has an eight-vote Senate margin to filibuster a deal. Either they box Mr. Trump into a retreat that demoralizes his voters, frustrates a White House impatient for legislative success, and energizes the progressive base. Or maybe their true goal is to force a partial shutdown that they can blame on Republicans.

Refusing to negotiate adds to disorder in Washington, which benefits Democrats, and a government work stoppage that Democrats caused would amplify the media narrative that Mr. Trump and the GOP can’t govern. Democrats think they can retake the House in 2018, and they’ll campaign as the party that at least knows how to run the joint.

Republicans have offered to compromise by passing an appropriation bill for a corner of ObamaCare in return for the border $1.5 billion and a defense supplemental bill of about $30 billion. So-called cost-sharing reduction subsidies offset out-of-pocket insurance costs for some individuals, and their spending formula was included in the 2010 law.

The US citizenship or naturalization test consists of two components, the civics test and the language test. The government has a preparatory website which has a list of vocabulary words needed for the language test. There are only 64 words or phrases needed to be learned to become an American.

With many of the words being proper names like “George Washington” and “Flag Day” and still more of the words being prepositions like “of” and “in” and “on”, it is very easy for someone to study for this test, pass easily, and yet lack the vocabulary to even understand “See Spot Run.”

There’s even a helpful guide to phrases the government interviewer may say that are not on the 64 word list:

Come! Sit!

Even doggies don’t need this helpful guide.

But immigrants who only learn the 64 words needed to pass the exam will be clueless when an inteviewer waves to them with their hand and asks them to come with them, unless they have this guide, or a well trained cocker spaniel to interpret hand gestures for them.

To pass the test, all you have to do is to correctly read aloud one out of three sentences, and write one out of three sentences correctly. That’s right, if you read or write two out of three easy sentences incorrectly, you can still become a citizen!

It’s no wonder the test has an over 90% pass rate.

But if that’s still too difficult, don’t worry, there are some exceptions for people over the age of 50 and people who can claim they are mentally challenged. They may not have to take the test at all!

I always wondered why ballots have to be in Spanish and other languages. If a person becomes a citizen, shouldn’t the citizen be able to read the ballot in English? Now I know why. Unless the ballot says things like “Where George Washington on Independence Day?” or “Abraham Lincoln has many senators”, immigrants may not understand it.

What key words in English do you think immigrants should understand?