The debate about healthcare coming from the Democrats is steeped in purposeful misdirection on one hand and a complete lack of any real knowledge about what Obamacare will even do on the other. It is also a major overreach on a federalism level which is why it is hard to understand why more people aren't talking about the Healthcare Compact plan (healthcarecompact.org).14 states have already signed onto it and has even been signed into law in two of them, Georgia and Oklahoma.
Of course, the problem is that we are expected to believe that Obamacare -- which is essentially a nationalized healthcare policy -- will work just fine on a national level. Despite that history has proven over and over again that centralized planning simply does not work, most especially with something as unwieldy and complicated as healthcare.
It doesn't help that we are not being told the truth by those pushing Obama’s plan, either. Many times the president has claimed that with Obamacare you can "keep your health care plan” if you like it, you can keep your doctor if you like him. This, however, has been generously called a "questionable" promise. And that isn’t the only untruth coming from Obamacare supporters.
Just this week it was revealed that as much as 30% of the businesses in America that offer their employees healthcare plans will stop that practice once Obamacare kicks in. This number is likely low, too, as once bigger businesses start to jettison their healthcare plans it will start a snowball rolling down hill that will gather up nearly every other business with it.
Even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is compromised at this on in the debate. The CBO has just hired an Obamacare pusher straight from the White House to become the CBO's deputy assistant director in its Health and Human Resources (HHR) Office. This woman, Melinda Beeuwkes, has been an advocate of Obamacare, worked to push Obamacare in Obama's administration, and has been a large donor to Democrats and Obama both.
Yet the CBO thinks this woman can provide, "objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget." This does not fill one with confidence that even the CBO can be unbiased.
It seems fairly clear at this point that America has been sold a bill of goods with Obamacare and no holds are barred to push its unpopular and ineffective policies. So, what is to be done?
The Health Care Compact is an interstate compact – which is simply an agreement between two or more states that is consented to by Congress – that restores authority and responsibility for health care regulation to the member states (except for military health care, which will remain federal), and provides the funds to the states to fulfill that responsibility.
The idea here is that the states will band together and share resources. They will cooperate with regulatory efforts, share demographic data, and insurance information to assist their own legislatures to better respond to the healthcare needs of their own citizens.
Importantly, the compact will assist states to make healthcare decisions locally as opposed to having healthcare decisions made in far away Washington D.C. In fact, this limited government, local control concept is exactly the sort of idea that fits perfectly with the ideas of our founders. It is the perfect 10th Amendment-style idea.
As I said, two governors have already signed the compact into law. When he signed the bill in his state Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia said, "a large majority of Georgians believe that we here are better equipped to manage our state’s health care needs than a one-size-fits-all plan under Obamacare."
Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin also signed onto the compact. She did so because she felt Obamacare did not meet the needs of her state. She felt that Obamacare failed because it did not "give states more flexibility to design and implement health care programs to fit the specific needs of their citizens."
This Health Care Compact idea is intriguing and is well worth a try before we are inundated with the travesty that is Obamaare built of socialist ideas that have been proven to fail over and over again.
I urge you to contact your state senators and state representatives and encourage them to get on board with The Health Care Compact immediately. Providing states with the authority for their own federal health care dollars is a clear solution to Obamacare.
In an odd turn of events, former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz thinks that anyone that criticizes GM is not only "mis-informed" but insists that those "foaming ideologues" that criticize the car giant are "damaging the Republican Party."
It is interesting that an executive in the company derided as "Government Motors" is trying to direct attention away from his minders in the Obama administration and toward the opposing party, and just before a general election at that.
It is also interesting to see Lutz defending GM as the "future" of the car business. Lately GM has not been turning out the sort of products that puts the company at the head of much of anything.
For one thing, value seems to be an area where GM is in the back of the pack. James B. Stewart of the Wall Street Journal's SmartMoney.com found late in April that car shoppers don't find GM to have much value to its products.
"Indeed, value was a theme I heard over and over," Stewart wrote, "a reminder that high gas prices and malaise about the economy are having a profound effect on consumers, even the auto buffs who tend to populate car shows. This struck me as a marketing challenge for GM. Much as many shoppers seemed to like the GM offerings, nearly all of them cited models they deemed better values elsewhere at the show."
If GM is the future of the auto industry as Lutz claims, its products are going to have to give customers the value they are looking for. Thus far they aren’t.
Speaking of the high cost of fuel, GM did seem to lead the field in one area. As Reuters recently reported, it led in inaccurate fuel gages.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on its website it opened a preliminary investigation covering Chevrolet Trailblazers, GMC Envoys, Buick Rainiers and Saab 9-7s from model years 2005-2007 after receiving 668 complaints alleging inaccurate fuel gauge readings.
Those models ranked as some of the worst in value, safety, and/or reliability, and gas mileage. As David Freddoso quipped, "Thank goodness we put up $80 billion to bail out GM and Chrysler. They are now building such wonderful cars that they have achieved total dominance of the Forbes "Worst Cars on the Road" list…"
Still, Vice Chairman Lutz wants to label anyone that sleights GM as a "foaming ideologue" for doubting the company. One wonders if his spin is merely bluff or something else?
The university is awarding Al-Jazeera with its journalism award for the Arab-centric mid eastern "news" it has produced. Al-Jazeera is apparently being recognized for "singular journalism in the public interest."
"Al Jazeera English has performed a great service in bringing the English-speaking world in-depth coverage of the turmoil in the Middle East," said Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.
So, once again we have a leftist American university turning its back on America this time to award its top honors to a foreign TV service whose goal includes the daily denunciation of the United States of America.
One has to wonder if there were awards given by American universities for the Nazi Party's newspapers or radio broadcasts during WWII? Were there great American awards given the U.S.S.R.'s Pravda or Izvestia during the Cold War, even? Yet here we are in the middle of a war between freedom, liberty, and democracy and the backwards, oppressive forces of radical Islam that Al-Jazeera represents and our publicly supported university is giving great awards to supporters of our enemy.
This is typical of the vapid thinking of the Democrat Party and America's liberals. To them we are the evil that plagues the world. To them we are the monsters. To liberals our enemies need to be awarded and recognized as the better side of the argument.
Last week, Bill O'Reilly tackled this topic and made some great points.
At the Detroit Economic Club today, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tried to claim the auto bailout is a success.
It certainly doesn’t seem like a success for the taxpayers. GM stock is about $30 today, and unless it gets up to $54, the taxpayers lose money on the deal. Why would it go up? You want to fight high gas prices by buying a Volt? How does $41 grand a pop sound? And still GM loses money on every one it sells even at that price. Not only that but we are seeing that government subsides for electric cars is good tax money wasted in any case.
It doesn’t get any better. Worldwide, U.S. cars aren’t selling worth beans and domestically, GM is lagging because people who hate the bailouts won’t support it with their car-buying dollars any more than they did with their votes last year when they kicked out every incumbent they could find who’d been for it. And GM still has all its old problems, too, like those big fat union pension obligations. Sadly, nothing that caused GM’s financial trouble has been fixed.
But the spin continues. Last December, Geithner said the auto bailouts were “investments,” which “will show a positive return, not a negative return.”
As the 2010 midterms proved, the people know better. They know government can’t run an automobile company and they know the deal was mostly political payback to the UAW, the biggest culprit in why GM and Chrysler were in trouble in the first place -- not that company execs did themselves proud, either.
People didn’t believe Geithner when he said we’d make money on the deal, and they were right. Today’s speech was more of the same, and it still won’t fly.
Geithner, Obama and the rest of the gang that brought us this monstrosity may or may not actually still think they kept the economy from chaos by the bailout, but they’re just believing their own scare tactics if they do.
As George Mason University Professor Todd Zywicki pointed out in depth, a normal bankruptcy would have worked just as well. Sorry, Timmy. Your spinning wheel is getting us nowhere.
GM, Obama's favorite federally owned car company, was thrilled to report in March that sales figures for the Chevy Cruze helped put the company on the fast track to success but it wasn't the best news when the wheels began to literally fall off the Cruze causing a recall of GM's "success" story.
As we will remember, last November Obama proclaimed GM a great success story, one that justified his raging fever for bailouts. This March GM buttressed Obama's glowing account by reporting rosy sales figures in which the Chevy Cruze made a big appearance. Then GM reported that the Cruze and the Malibu accounted for "98,950 sales – roughly one of every four Chevrolets sold in the first quarter."
But let's not break out the champagne too soon because only weeks after GM celebrated sales of the Cruze, at least one steering wheel popped off in transit. It's a literal case of the wheels coming off GMs success story.
In one case, a Chevy Cruze owner was driving 65 MPH on a highway when her steering wheel broke right off. With her in the car were her young son and her own elderly mother. None were hurt fortunately.
Now GM is recalling 2,100 cars in hopes of preventing another such unfortunate accident.
GM reported that it had traced the defect to a relatively small number of cars that had initially had the wrong steering wheel installed. When the error was discovered, at least in the case of the one car noted above, the replacement wheel was not installed properly. Regardless a recall was initiated.
None of this is good news for GM as the company's market share has been experiencing a steady decline over the last few years.
A few days ago I wrote about how the Obama administration has stuffed the upper echelons of management at General Motors with government lackeys who have no experience in the auto industry and how Obama's government will lead GM to ultimate failure. Today we see yet one more step toward GMs ruin with government plans for subsidies that the taxpayers will end up paying for.
The Washington Times' Kerry Picket reports that some Democrats and the geniuses Obama put at the top of GM, much derided as "Government Motors," are proposing that taxpayers be tapped to foot the bill for tax credits and rebates for customers that buy the failed Chevy Volt.
Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow has proposed legislation known as the Charging America Forward Act (S.298) that will give federal cash rebates of $7,500 to anyone that buys the Chevy Volt.
The Department of Energy claims that this rebate program idea is somehow just like the Cash For Clunkers program. But this couldn't be more different.
First of all, this program is only for one car model, the Volt, not just any car model. It isn't likely that the program will stimulate the greater economy. Secondly, the Chevy Volt is a failing model. thus far in 2011 GM only sold 602 Chevy Volts. The Volt's month-to-month sales were down between January and February, too. Sales went from 321 in January to 281 in February.
The fact is that these thousands of dollars of rebates will not do much good and will cost far more in administrative costs than it is worth doing. Not to mention that it will keep GM manufacturing a car that no one seems to want. The latter is the worst part of this as GM will continue putting resources to a failed model to sustain Obama's green initiatives despite poor sales.
This is further evidence that GM is now a political body and not a car manufacturer. It is also further evidence of the seeds of failure being deeply planted in one of the nation's largest corporations.
I am here in sunny Houston, Texas attending the opening night of the True The Vote Summit and what a night it has been. We heard some inspiring speeches for this sold out event, saw some interesting attendees, and met an awful lot of great folks.
It has been thrilling to see several hundred handpicked Tea Partiers and local concerned citizens from 27 states here to learn how they, too, can stop vote fraud in their own districts using the methods learned the hard way in 2010 by the King Street Patriots here in Harris County, Texas.
You might recall back in Sept. of 2010 when the KSPers discovered an ACORN guy that had registered over 23,000 fake voters for the 2010 elections here in Texas. That was only the beginning of their efforts to root out vote fraud in one of the most corrupt Democrat controlled areas in the state.
Tonight we heard from True The Vote Chief Catherine Engelbrecht, former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, the Heritage Foundation's Hans Von Spakovsky, ACORN Whistle blower and American Majority Rep Anita MonCreif. All gave us spellbinding tales of vote fraud and how important it is to stop. Also in attendance was former Senate candidate from Alaska Joe Miller, RNC Chair candidate Saul Anuzis, and many others.
Tomorrow we'll hear from John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, J. Christian Adams who blew the whistle on the Obama administration's refusal to prosecute the Black Panthers in Philadelphia, and the boss himself Andrew Breitbart -- and I even get some podium time to speak on using new media.
What follows is the encapsulated thrust of the messages we heard tonight.
Catherine Engelbrecht
Head of The King Street Patriots and True The Vote Catherine Engelbrecht
The night began with a few words from the chief cook and bottle washer of the King Street Patriots and the True The Vote effort, the Texas dynamo Catherine Englebrecht.
She warned us that, "across the country we have an epidemic low level of Americans participating at the polls." This is one thing that TTV is aimed at solving. To get Americans interested in the process is their goal.
"The underpinning of True The Vote is not the 'sizzle' of vote fraud," Engelbrecht said, "but it's the integrity of our voting process and that is the key focus."
The one thing that concerned me most was the fact that so many people have said that they just accept fraud as a part of the system. The underpinning of our system is the integrity of the vote, that our voices are heard.
Engelbrecht told us that those that the King Street Patriots invited to speak at this summit of concerned citizens were chosen, "because they each represent a small piece of the troubles that vote fraud and the system is facing."
The next speaker was ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief, herself a tireless advocate for a fair, balanced, and free election process. And she knows exactly how crooked the left is in its efforts to initiate vote fraud, too. She used to work for ACORN and saw it all first hand.
Anita MonCrief
MonCrief spoke and told us of her history with ACORN where she discovered that they spent $28 million in 2004 from people like George Soros to register voters yet it was all fraud. "It was all smoke and mirrors," she said. ACORN was picking up fake ballots from fraudulent voters numbering in the thousands in hopes of pushing John Kerry over the top. When that didn't work they ramped it up even bigger for 2008.
In 2008 that effort worked. "ACORN is not just one organization," she warned us. "There are over 300 organizations that came together to put Obama into the White House in 2008.
Some of the things Anita saw would have violated the RICO statutes if anyone bothered to prosecute ACORN for its fraud.
ACORN also doesn’t really care about “the little people” and that is one of the main reasons she turned against the crooked organization. Each and every year ACORN employees are going to jail for vote fraud but ACORN would always successfully pawn this fact off as the fault of "rogue employees," MonCrief marveled. ACORN never backed up the people they hired and always threw them to the wolves. And all these lower level employees were lied to, told that they deserved things from the government because of slavery or evil white oppressors. Then if they didn't buy that line, ACORN just paid them off to do the left’s bidding.
MonCrief told us that the machinery of our system is such that when it is close it only takes a few votes here and there to pull the election in the left's direction. And we need to stop this left-wing, vote-stealing engine.
But MonCrief had a ray of hope for us. "They are terrified of what we are doing with True The Vote because this is the first time they have faced this sort of opposition. What you are doing here is something the left never thought the right could get done."
Hans Von Spakovsky
Next up was Hans Von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Elections Commission and the Justice Dept., a man who saw mounting fraud first hand. He's also seen the Clinton and Obama administrations refuse to prosecute it.
Von Spakovsky told us some hair-raising tales of Democrat administrations that ignored endemic fraud throughout the country. But he also warned us that courts and prosecution can't "fix" the system.
It is important not just to vote but to protect the integrity of the whole system. Criminal prosecution is simply not enough stop vote fraud it takes us all to get involved.
Like Anita, Von Spakovsky told us that it is in close elections when voter fraud is most useful for the left. And they flood the field with fraud in hopes of being ready for those close elections.
He also spoke on how successful voter ID laws have been. They are just common sense. But he also told us that the left's argument against these laws is built on outright lies.
The claim that photo ID would depress the minority vote is unproven by the facts on the ground. In Georgia and Indiana -- the two states with the toughest ID laws -- the voter photo ID laws showed record turnouts were not prevented in the 2008 primary when Obama ran for president. Voting doubled for minorities in many of these areas. Indiana has the strictest voter ID law in the nation, yet in 2008 the voters quadrupled in the sate in 2008 with the photo ID law in place.
"The most important thing you can do to stop this," Von Spakovsky said, "is to work as an election judge in elections. If you are an election judge you can stop this fraud at the source. If you do that you are doing the best thing to protect the integrity of our election system."
We want to make sure that EVERYONE who is eligible to vote gets to vote. But was also want to make sure that the votes of those eligible voters don't have their vote stolen by fraud and that their votes count.
Finally we heard from former Senator from Minnesota Norm Coleman, a man who understands vote fraud intimately because he lost his seat in the senate by endemic Democrat vote fraud.
Norm Coleman
First of all, Coleman was very pleased with the efforts of TTV.
True The Vote is moving in the right direction. You are helping decide what is happening at the polls and this may seem a small thing but it is a great thing. The political games played with our elections should be of concern to every American.
Coleman gave us two examples where a single vote made a history changing difference, both involving himself. When he was elected as a Senator George W. Bush was able to put through the candidacy of John Roberts as Supreme Court Chief Justice. Previous to Coleman's election, Robert's nomination died in committee. Roberts got in because Coleman became the one Republican Senator at the time that encouraged Bush to push the nomination again. One vote put John Roberts at the Supreme Court. Not but a few years later when Coleman lost to Al Franken due to massive vote fraud, Obamacare was passed with the one vote of Franken, the 60th supermajority vote. That one vote gave us Obamacare.
"One vote counts and we need to make sure the votes are legitimate," he said.
Coleman told us the horror story of Minneapolis. In 19 districts in Minneapolis there were more votes than actual voters and that sort of vote fraud elected Franken to the Senate.
He wrapped up with some recommendations on how we can fix this system.
What can you do to make sure that the vote has integrity. Number one, pass a voter ID law. Voting is the most important part of the underpinning of our nation. Folks died to insure that all Americans could vote. Aren't we making a mockery of those that died to insure a legal, fair election by allowing massive vote fraud?
Coleman reminded us of a stark reality. In some places, he said, in order to use a credit card at a McDonald's you need a photo ID. “If you need a photo ID to buy a Big Mac you should need a photo ID to vote,” he insisted.
Another way to ensure the integrity of the vote is to get more of us to the polls as election judges. Election judges "are on the front line making sure that the elections are true and fair," Coleman said. "That is why I am humbled at what True The Vote is doing. You will put these judges on the front lines."
Whatever you do, do something. More directly do your part! I'm asking you to sacrifice just some of your time on election day. NOW is the time to start this because 2012 is coming soon. Do your part to keep this great republic vibrant.
Senator Coleman finished up by saying we should live our lives as if the world is in a balance and our own actions will tip the scales. As patriots we should do our part to make sure our system is a fair and free process.
More reports tomorrow evening after the training sessions and other speakers.
Senator Norm Coleman and Warner Todd Huston
SFormer GOP Senate Candidate for Alaska Senate Joe Miller picking the drawing winner
The Obama Administration has proclaimed TARP and the subsequent bailout for General Motors a great success. US Treasury Deputy Timothy Massad recently said, "Where we are today shows that the program, by any reasonably objective measure, was a success." But is GM, now much derided as "Government Motors" the success that Obama says it is? Facts don't argue in Obama's favor.
First of all, we must dispense with the whole idea that a benevolent Obama played sugar daddy to "save" GM and did so without too much meddling with the company. Despite the claims that it is "back" and back in private hands, We The People still own 33% of GM. But government ownership is deeper than the a mere calculated percentage. You see, GM’s Board and its CEO were all placed in their positions by Obama, his czars and advisers. Worse, none of them have any experience at all in the auto industry.
Obama’s GM CEO, Dan Akerson, is not a "car guy" -- as he himself admitted. Akerson's experience is as a Wall Street hedge fund operator not an auto industry exec. He was also a player at the politically connected Carlyle Group and was the firm's Managing Director.
Being a hedge fund guy, Akerson is much more familiar with short term, high risk investing practices as opposed to the long term thinking needed to run a car company.
[Akerson] was until May of 2008 Chairman of the Board of Hawaiian Telecom - the company declared bankruptcy just seven months after his departure. He was also the CEO of XO Communications when it went bankrupt in December 2002.
The government's efforts inside and outside of TARP have sown the seeds for the next crisis and, unfortunately, last year's 2,319-page Dodd-Frank Act does nothing to fix these problems. Treasury must be more transparent regarding TARP. The real myth that the Treasury secretary should dispel is that TARP is a big win for the taxpayer.
These failures are the same sort of endemic problems that the administration has instilled in GM.
As Seton Motley noted in his Washington Examiner piece, none of the people running GM placed there by governments have experience in the sort of long term thinking that a car company needs.
Running a car company requires LONG-term thinking. Determining the right cars to design, make and bring to market is chess, not checkers. You don’t plan quarter-to-quarter or even year-to-year – you plan YEARS out in advance.
Just so. Yet none of the people Obama placed at GM have any of this expertise. Just as the bailout mentality has merely sowed the seeds for the next collapse, Obama's GM appointees are just setting up the company for a fall later and all at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.
Patriots and activists from 23 states are about to gather together on March 25 and 26 in Houston, Texas to attend the True The Vote Summit, an effort to make "true" the electoral system in every polling place in the country, to stop voter fraud, and to quash the intimidation of voters. Organizers hope to make sure that we again have free and fair elections.
A local Harris County activist group named The The King Street Patriots built the True The Vote Summit upon their experiences of attempting to “true” the 2010 election in Harris County, Texas.
Back before the recent election, the KSP got together to try and find out what sort of shape the voting rolls were in Harris County, Texas were. What they found was shocking. Due to its investigation, an ACORN organizer was exposed for having registered over 23,000 fake voters in the county. The story made national news.
With that success under their belts the KSPers and their chief Catherine Engelbrecht decided to step it up a notch. And so, during the 2010 midterm election, the group set out to organize citizen poll watchers to monitor every polling place in Harris County. The goal was to make sure that what went on in each polling place followed the letter of the law, was free of cheating and fraud, and was open and welcoming for every voter.
The attacks on the True The Vote Summit have also continued unabated by the left today. So we know how the left is worried about this movement. Vote fraud is almost exclusively practiced by Democrats and left-wing activists in this country, so an effort like this threatens their operations.
Despite all the attacks they underwent, the King Street Patriots were buoyed by their success in stopping vote fraud during the 2010 elections and with that experience to guide them they now want to offer their assistance and to relay the tools they’ve developed to stop vote fraud to any and every state in the union. The result is the True The Vote Summit to be held March 25 and 26 in Houston, Texas.
According to the event website:
Election fraud attacks the heart of our political system and threatens our rights as citizens.
When True the Vote began monitoring elections last fall in Houston, we were shocked at the fraud we discovered. Precinct judges often failed to check voters IDs, and some even filled out ballots to “help” people vote. These violations are just the tip of a very large and ugly iceberg.
If you are one of the millions of Americans outraged by corruption at the highest levels of our nation’s government, then you can help us stop fraud where it begins – at the polling place, in the precinct where you live, in the streets of your city.
If you care enough to help, contact us today to become part of our action plan. A commitment of just a few hours is all it takes to help restore truth and integrity to our elections.
Appearing to speak at the True The Vote National Summit will be New Media Mogul Andrew Breitbart, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, former Dept. of Justice attorney and Philadelphia Black Panthers whistleblower J. Christian Adams, ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCreif, former FEC commissioner Hans Von Spakovsky and others.
If you are ready to do your duty as an American to, as in Ben Franklin’s warning, “have our Republic and keep it” make haste to sign up to join the True The Vote Summit this month.
One of the issues that many conservatives have focused on is
our out of control court system and the constant judicial overreach that occurs
therein. Here we have yet another case of a court insinuating itself into an
area in which it previously never had purview and if this decision stands it
will open our courts to a flood of court shopping that will turn our legal
system further down the wrong road.
At least since the forced busing case of 1971 and the Roe v
Wade abortion case, conservatives have been complaining about judges taking
undue powers unto themselves. For decades these power mad judges have been
expanding their reach to control our lives until even our state and federal
legislatures have seemed to give up their rightful role as lawmakers. Once
again we have a judge that has reached beyond his proper role.
The case in question is Marshall
v. Marshall and, yes, once again Anna Nicole Smith is going before
the U.S. Supreme Court -- and from beyond the grave at that. The reason a Smith
matter is again before the SCOTUS four years after her death is because one of
her cases was decided by a federal bankruptcy court in California on reasons
that had nothing at all to do with technical bankruptcy rules. The case before
the SCOTUS would determine if the bankruptcy court acted properly.
If you'll recall, Anna Nicole Smith took her wealthy,
departed husband's estate to court claiming that he'd made a verbal promise to
give her millions of dollars and part of his estate upon his passing. But
Marshall's extensive, detailed estate plan did not mention her at all so when
she initially brought her case before a Texas Probate court, she lost. Not
surprisingly when Smith realized she would not be satisfied with the outcome in
Texas she and her legal team began shopping for courts that would give a
favorable decision. She found that in a federal bankruptcy court in California.
Despite that the Marshall estate plan made no mention of
Smith and despite that the plan was letter perfect to the law, California
bankruptcy Judge Samuel L. Bufford had sympathy for Anna Nicole Smith and ruled
in her favor. Essentially this bankruptcy judge based his decision on personal
injury to Smith as opposed to using technical bankruptcy laws to make his
decision.
Bufford was accused of breaking two rules. First, he took a
case despite that the “probate exception” rule required that the case stay in
Texas and second he took the case even though it wasn’t a “core matter” for a
bankruptcy proceeding.
California's Ninth Circuit Court, a court much derided as
the "Ninth Circus" for finding "penumbras" at every turn, ruled
that the bankruptcy judge was wrong agreeing that the California case shouldn’t
have been called because the case was a Texas matter.
The “probate exception” part of this case already went
before the SCOTUS and the high court sided with the bankruptcy judge. But the
Ninth Circuit did not rule on the “core matter” part of the case and that is
the part that is going back before the Supremes.
This year the highest court in the land will be tasked with
deciding if Judge Bufford had a right to hear the case even though it was not a
“core matter” for his court, even though he basically had no proper
jurisdiction. This case will rule on whether or not bankruptcy judges can stray
from the closely delineated rules of bankruptcy law and take cases tangential to
traditional bankruptcy.
Of course bankruptcy courts have nothing to do with personal
injury issues. Further they shouldn't. But if the California bankruptcy judge
is upheld this will open our legal system to a spate of court shopping that
will undermine bankruptcy laws all across the land.
Imagine how hard it will be to plan your estate if a federal
bankruptcy judge can give your money away to someone you don't want to reward
simply because the judge feels he has the right to wander from the technical aspects
of the law and instead enter into territory that has nothing at all to do with
the rules he's supposed to be observing. Worse, imagine that someone looking to
steal away your estate can take his meritless case to any court in the country,
any court that is sympathetic to his case.
It would be a disaster, for sure.
So, we as conservatives should want something we almost
never want. That would be for California's Ninth Circuit Court decision to
reverse Bufford to be upheld. Bankruptcy Judge Samuel L. Bufford's ruling must
be affirmed as wrongly decided.
If Bufford is upheld our courts will spin even further out
of control. That is something that none of us should want.
I am here in sunny Houston, Texas attending the opening night of the 
