Another Anniversary.... Another Nail in the Coffin of the Constitution...

This is the tenth anniversary of Kelo vs New London decision.  A testament to the progressive contempt for private property rights and the stupid and mindless conservative demands for judicial restraint.

As for Justice John Paul Stevens (who wrote the majority opinion), he remains unrepentant about his central role in the Kelo debacle. In fact, in a 2011 speech, Stevens lashed out at several of his critics, arguing that Kelo remains perfectly justifiable because it “adhered to the doctrine of judicial restraint” and was rooted in “Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ broad reading of the text of the Constitution—which allows the states the same broad discretion in making takings decisions that they possess when engaging in other forms of economic regulation.”

But why should the Supreme Court adhere to Justice Holmes’ distructive interpretation? Why not just follow the actual text of the Constitution? After all, Holmes is the same justice who once wrote, “a law should be called good if it reflects the will of the dominant forces of the community, even if it will take us to hell.”

Of course 80% of the population disagreed with the court’s decision…  I guess they just aren’t the dominant forces Holmes was talking about. Perhaps the general population isn’t at all what the string pullers of progressivism care ultimately about ….   I could only dream of setting up a ‘better use’ business that would put Justice Stevens on the street…(and actually seeing it happen)

Interestingly he blasted Roberts over the Citizens United ruling by saying : “The voter is less important than the man who provides money to the candidate,” he said. “It’s really wrong.” ….  While somehow finding that it is alright for the state to remove someone from their home and deliver it up to some other citizen (or well financed individual) who promises to deliver more taxes to the state … thus qualifying the state seizure as being ‘public use’.

Just for William/ Taylor Swift

What if Taylor Swift and other pop stars ran corporate America?  

Given Swift’s sound advice to Apple, they just might do better

Taylor Swift singlehandedly got Apple to pay royalties for all artists on its new music-streaming business.

By

Marek Fuchs

Columnist

What did you do on Sunday? Mow the lawn? Hit the beach? Have a cookout? Well, Taylor Swift took on the world’s biggest company, and won.” — The New York Post Threatening to leave Apple AAPL, -0.26% breathless or with a nasty scar, Taylor Swift brought about considerable change. A singer famous for songs that stick in your head like earworms, Swift wrote a Tumblr post Sunday that criticized Apple’s decision not to pay musicians — or anyone else involved in the creation of music — for songs sold on its new streaming site for an initial period. By Sunday night, Apple caved.
A singer once known as the Bard of Puberty got a corporate force with a market value nearing $1 trillion to smarten up. Just like that, Apple and its miserly ways were, as Swift once so eloquently put it, “never ever ever getting back together.”

What does it mean that a singer known for her “sick beat” could affect such — and I apologize ahead of time for the groaner — swift change?
It means that, as Bob Dylan once noted, “The times they are a-changin’.”
Perhaps, in fact, this even heralds an age in which pop stars dictate corporate policy and maybe even start doling out stock-trading advice. Considering the chuckleheads usually in charge of such guidance, how much worse can it get?
Let’s check. Forget Top 40; these are the top three pieces of advice already given by rock stars:

1. “It’s better to burn out, than to fade away” — Neil Young
Wall Street apparently takes this bit of advice as outright inspiration. Bank of America BAC, +1.12% Citigroup C, +0.81% J.P. Morgan JPM, +0.68% and Goldman Sachs GS, +0.48% have all acted heedlessly under the assumption that they are too-big-to-fade. When they burn, we always save them — so why isn’t it better to burn? It is as if in one lyric, Young gave Wall Street its guiding principle for the modern age. But that should not surprise. As Bruce Springsteen opines: “We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school.”
2. “And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile” — Talking Heads
Sure enough, every time oil prices tick down, Americans drop their Prius fixation and start turning back to those SUVs the size of Bolivia. According to the Talking Heads, General Motors GM, +0.69%  and Ford F, +1.44% stand to benefit. And how about Tesla TSLA, +0.03% with its high-priced electric cars, batteries and intergalactic travel? A Talking Head research report entitled “Burning Down the House” puts it quite succinctly: “We’re in for nasty weather.”
3. “The exodus is here” — The Who
There is probably no clearer a signal to leave the market before the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates than The Who’s call to action. After nine years of low rates, the high rates presumably coming in the fall will indeed bring about a “wasteland.” And Alan Greenspan is weighing in all over the place on our higher interest-rate future, even though he almost ruined our past? Roger Daltrey frames the appropriate response: “Who the f- are you?”
See? We’ve already put rock stars in charge of Wall Street, and Swift, as always, seems to say it best: “I’m dying to see how this one ends.”

John Kasich

The Republican Party Is My Vehicle, Not My Master

Yet another entrant in the presidential race  plans to run as his own

Ohio Governor John Kasich turned heads in political circles earlier this month when he announced the hiring of a pair of GOP operatives with checkered histories to run his presidential campaign.
John Weaver and Fred Davis were the strategists behind former U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman’s ill-fated 2012 campaign for the presidency. Before that, they worked for Sen. John McCain. But to those who know Kasich, their hiring made perfect sense—he’s planning to run a similarly unconventional campaign for the White House. “Here’s the thing you have to realize, the Republican Party is my vehicle, and not my master.”


Casting himself as a “change agent,” Kasich has overseen an economic revival in Ohio, and won re-election in the swing state by a 31% margin over a weak Democratic opponent. It was a sharp reversal from 2011—his first year in office—when Kasich’s poll numbers plummeted amid a failed effort to curtail the power of state public sector unions in an effort to control the state budget.
Kasich unsuccessfully ran for the White House in 2000, where he was edged out by another Bush’s well-funded campaign. “The issue was money-M-O-N-E-Y,” he told the New York Observer in 2001. Kasich now says he was too young that time around, pointing to support he is receiving from those who backed Bush over him in 2000.
He endorsed George W. Bush, calling him “a soul brother” for his support of compassionate conservatism, a theme at the center of Kasich’s campaigns. “I think that it’s important for the GOP, must most important for me to be able to talk about the kindness of conservatism,” Kasich says.


To that end, he defends expanding Medicaid under Obamacare, despite vigorous opposition from Republicans. “I’ve never thought anything about it. It was the right thing to do,” he says. “We’re helping the drug addicted, the working poor, the mentally ill. I didn’t see it as standing up to my party really, I just saw it as carrying out something that I thought was important for my state.”
A former investment banker, he has no regrets about his time at Lehman Brothers, but says he supports capital requirements for large banks. Kasich  opposes increasing taxes, but that he will not sign any pledges to that effect.


Time Magazine asked Kasich: What did you learn from standing up to some in your own party on Medicaid expansion?


 I’ve never thought anything about it. It was the right thing to do. We’re helping the drug addicted, the working poor, the mentally ill. I didn’t see it as standing up to my party really, I just saw it as carrying out something that I thought was important for my state. Here’s the thing you have to realize, the Republican Party is my vehicle, and not my master. My job is to try to figure out how to fix things, and I’m going to fix things as best as I can. I’m going to get a team together to fix things. And I can’t sit around and worrying what the heck the chairman of the Republican Party thinks about what I’m doing. I have to do what has to be done to bring improvement. What would I do? Say, oh well, the Republicans don’t like this therefor I shouldn’t do it. What kind of a government would that be. We’re not a parliamentary system.

Which woman should be on the $10 bill?

Susan B. Anthony / Lime Green

Betsy Ross / regular green

Rosa Parks / blue

Eleanor Roosevelt / purple

Harriet Tubman /orange

only Rhode island goes for Anthony in the Marketwatch straw poll

only Alaska goes for Rosa Parks.

otherwise looks like Betsy Ross is the clear favorite.

So we might get a woman who's contribution to America is actually only legend an story started by a grandson 100 years after it supposedly happened.