Occupy Wall Street ?

Watching them every moment.

Insurance, taxes, and snow

Tea Party Shadows Health Care Ruling: “It is difficult to imagine,” Judge Vinson, of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., wrote in a central passage of his 78-page opinion, “that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place.” Supporters of the health care act — which Judge Vinson invalidated after ruling it was unconstitutional to require citizens to buy health insurance — saw in the language a deliberate nod to the Tea Party movement. Government can mandate that all drivers must have insurance in order to drive; how is that so very different?

The Return of the Cranky Mayor: After a short, uncharacteristic stretch of empathy and contrition from New York City’s chief executive following the Blizzard Brouhaha, the moody mayor re-emerged on Wednesday morning, ready to sass. The setting was the Blue Room at City Hall, where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was asked why municipal employees were being penalized for not showing up to work during a snowstorm last week — even though the city instructed most of them to stay home. Sympathetic he was not. I hadn't noticed that the Mayor had stopped being cranky.

The Paradox of Corporate Taxes: Of the 500 big companies in the well-known Standard & Poor’s stock index, 115 paid a total corporate tax rate — both federal and otherwise — of less than 20 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of company reports done for The New York Times by Capital IQ, a research firm. Thirty-nine of those companies paid a rate less than 10 percent.

Outrageous! Let's have hearings

Various estimates have the past weekend's storm having dumped between 15 and 20 inches of snow on NYC. Now that outrage is flowing as freely as beer at a tailgate party, the estimates are reaching higher. In step the politicos: Mayor Bloomberg finally admitted that the storm was more than a mere inconvenience (to a rich man with a limo what else would it be?), and now other politicians are seen an opportunity to posture and glower.


Criticism of the city’s response to what has been called its sixth-largest storm has been widespread and top-to-bottom, from the man on the street to Christine M. Quinn, the City Council speaker, who announced hearings regarding the cleanup, which she called “unacceptable.”

Hearings? To determine what? For anything more than to allow politicians to appear indignant in front of the cameras?

Supreme Court debates shift to the left

From left, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan in the justices' conference room before Kagan's investiture ceremony. (Steve Petteway / Supreme Court / December 26, 2010)


For most of the last two decades, Supreme Court conservatives led by Justice Antonin Scalia dominated the debates during oral arguments. They greeted advocates for liberal causes with sharp and sometimes caustic questions, putting them on the defensive from the opening minute. But the tenor of the debate has changed in recent months, now that President Obama's two appointees to the court, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, have joined the fray and reenergized the liberal wing.  Gone are the mismatches where the Scalia wing overshadowed reserved and soft-spoken liberals like now-retired Justices David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens. Instead, the liberals often take the lead and press attorneys defending the states or corporations.


New York toughness has met New York toughness, and N ew York toughness has changed the balance, one again.

Five years ago, then- President George W. Bush strengthened the court's conservative wing when he named Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the court. Smart and capable, they had an immediate effect by combining with the senior conservatives to shift the law to the right on several fronts, most notably on widening the flow of money into politics. Obama almost certainly had a similar goal in mind, but from the opposite political perspective. Since October, the court seems to have shifted subtly, judging by the arguments, during which the justices grill the lawyers in an attempt to resolve their own doubts or win over an undecided vote. One thing, however, already is clear. Attorneys can expect to be grilled by conservative and liberal judges for years to come.

McWeasel

Today's front page of the New York Daily News castigates the Senator from Arizona, that purported patriot.

Ailing Ground Zero hero: Sen. John McCain said he 'can't help' on Zadroga bill before weaseling away is one story.

and a column  Heroes of 9/11 hear you loud and clear, Republicans; next time they should turn and run

New York Liberal (yea!)

Elena grew up to become dean of Harvard Law School and President Obama’s solicitor general, and if the Senate confirms her after hearings that begin on June 28, she would be the 112th justice of the United States Supreme Court. But before all that, she was the middle child in a New York family whose intellectual dynamism and embrace of liberal causes provide a window onto the social milieu and culture that shaped her.