Bernanke says demand too weak to bring down jobless rate

11

hours

ago

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke speaks during the 2012 Economic Policy Conference of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE).

By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer

Consumers are not spending enough and businesses are not investing enough to put a big dent in unemployment, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Monday.
For the past year, hiring trends have been encouraging; in the past three months, the economy has added roughly 250,000 jobs per month. But the jobless rate remains stubbornly high at 8.3 percent and long-term unemployment remains stuck at the highest levels in more than 50 years.
Some economists have blamed part of the shortfall on the impact of globalization and rapid advances in technology that have made many jobs obsolete, leaving workers with outdated skills and not well-matched to the jobs that are open.
But Bernanke said at a meeting of the National Association for Business Economics that slack demand may be the bigger cause of the weaker-than-normal hiring more than two years into a recovery.
“The fact that labor demand appears weak in most industries and locations is suggestive of a general shortfall of aggregate demand rather than a worsening mismatch between skills and jobs," he said.
After nearly two years of job gains, private payroll employment remains more than 5 million jobs below its previous peak, Bernanke noted. “The jobs shortfall is even larger when increases in the size of the labor force are taken into account,” he said.
Bernanke’s speech kicked off a two-day meeting of NABE devoted to discussions about whether government policies are doing all they can to get the pace of job growth and the broader economic recovery back on track.
The annual conference is exploring the government response to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression – and how well current policies are helping convert a feeble U.S. recovery into another period of sustained economic growth.
Though the economy has perked up, Bernanke is among those who believe demand from consumers and businesses may not be strong enough to keep the expansion going. Last week, he told a group of George Washington University students that the pace of spending and investment is still too sluggish to sustain the recovery. The Fed chairman noted that consumer demand remains weak relative to its level before the Great Recession and that other contributors to economic growth including borrowing and trade have declined.
"Consumer spending has not ... recovered. It's still quite weak relative to where it was before the crisis," Bernanke said in the second of four lectures he is giving to GWU students this month. "We lack a source of demand to keep the economy growing."
Until those demand forces kick in, the economic outlook will depend heavily on government fiscal and monetary policy, which consists mainly of the Fed's efforts to keep the cost of borrowing low.
Following the financial Panic of 2008, Congress and the White House, beginning in the last days of  the Bush administration, rushed to stimulate the economy out of recession with tax cuts and heavy spending to bail out banks and prevent the U.S. auto industry from cratering. Those policies are widely believed to have helped prevent the onset of another Great Depression, but they added to an already swollen national debt. Now the debate has turned to the question of how soon and how aggressively the government should cut spending, raises taxes or use some combination of both to balance the federal budget.
Like most questions put to economists, there’s not much agreement about whether Congress and the White House are getting it right. Opinion is pretty well split along Goldilocks lines: about a third think taxes and spending are more stimulative than they need to be to get the economy moving again on its own; another third think taxes and spending are too restrictive to help boost growth; and a third think current fiscal policy is just right.
Like most businesses and voters, though, the group generally thinks the tax code is ready for an overhaul. Most think it’s a good idea to continue giving consumers a little extra money to spend with the current payroll tax break, at least though 2012. A smaller majority also think it’s a good idea to continue providing emergency jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, although they also think those benefits might keep the unemployment rate higher than it would otherwise be.
Though fairly evenly split on fiscal policy, the economists give the Fed fairly good marks on monetary policy. A slight majority agree that Fed policy is “about right,” and most expect interest rates to remain at current rock-bottom levels for at least the rest of this year. They also generally believe the Fed did the right thing with its massive purchases of bonds to try to hold down interest rates on long-term loans like mortgages. But most say that policy has run its course and shouldn’t be renewed with more bond-buying.

                                              Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

CNBC's Steve Liesman has a preview of Fed chair Ben Bernanke's comments on the current state of the labor market.

BP spill culprit for heavy toll on coral, study finds

Suspicions confirmed; 'it was like a graveyard of corals,' scientist says

NOAA and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute via AP

This October 2010 photo provided by Penn State University shows the arms of a brittle starfish, red in color, clinging to coral damaged by the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico.

By CAIN BURDEAU

updated 3/26/2012 4:21:55 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS — After months of laboratory work, scientists say they can definitively finger oil from BP's blown-out well as the culprit for the slow death of a once brightly colored deep-sea coral community in the Gulf of Mexico that is now brown and dull.

In a study published Monday, scientists say meticulous chemical analysis of samples taken in late 2010 proves that oil from BP PLC's out-of-control Macondo well devastated corals living about 7 miles southwest of the well. The coral community is located over an area roughly the size of half a football field nearly a mile below the Gulf's surface.
The damaged corals were discovered in October 2010 by academic and government scientists, but it's taken until now for them to declare a definite link to the oil spill.
Most of the Gulf's bottom is muddy, but coral colonies that pop up every once in a while are vital oases for marine life in the chilly ocean depths. The injured and dying coral today has bare skeleton, loose tissue and is covered in heavy mucous and brown fluffy material, the paper said.
"It was like a graveyard of corals," said Erik Cordes, a biologist at Temple University who went down to the site in the Alvin research submarine.
So far, this has been the only deep-sea coral site found to be seriously damaged by the spill.
On April 20, 2010, the well blew out about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, leading to the death of 11 workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and the nation's largest offshore spill. More than 200 million gallons of oil were released.

"They figured (the coral damage) was the result of the spill, now we can say definitely it was connected to the spill," said Helen White, a chemical oceanographer with Haverford College and the lead researcher.
She said pinpointing the BP well as the source of the contamination required sampling sediment on the sea floor and figuring out what was oil from natural seeps in the Gulf and what was from the Macondo well. Finally, the researchers matched the oil found on the corals with oil that came out of the BP well.
Also, the researchers concluded that the damage was caused by the spill because an underwater plume of oil was tracked passing by the site in June 2010. The paper also noted that a decade of deep-sea coral research in the Gulf had not found coral dying in this manner. The coral was documented for the first time when researchers went looking for oil damage in 2010.
The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists said that they have gone back to the dying corals by submarine since 2010, but that they are not ready to talk about what they've seen at the site.
However, Charles Fisher, a biologist with Penn State University who's led the coral expeditions, said recovery of the damaged site would be slow.
"Things happen very slowly in the deep sea; the temperatures are low, currents are low, those animals live hundreds of years and they die slowly," he said. "It will take a while to know the final outcome of this exposure."

BP did not immediately comment on the study.

The researchers said the troubled spot consists of 54 coral colonies. The researchers were able to fully photograph and assess 43 of those colonies, and of those, 86 percent were damaged. They said 10 coral colonies showed signs of severe stress on 90 percent of the coral.
White, the lead researcher, said that this coral site was the only one found southwest of the Macondo well so far, but that others may exist. The researchers also wrote in the paper that it was too early to rule out serious damage at other coral sites that may have seemed healthy during previous examinations after the April 2010 spill.
Jerald Ault, a fish and coral reef specialist at the University of Miami who was not part of the study, said the findings were cause for concern because deep-sea corals are important habitat. He said there are many links between animals that live at the surface, such as tarpon and menhaden, and life at the bottom of the Gulf. Ecosystem problems can play out over many years, he said.
"It's kind of a tangled web of impact," he said.

Pharmacies deter teens from Plan B, study shows

11

hours

ago

A new study finds that pharmacies often offered inaccurate information when they thought 17-year-old girls were seeking emergency contraception such as Plan B One-Step.

By Linda Carroll

 Even though it’s legal for 17-year-olds to get the so-called morning-after pill, a new study shows that pharmacy employees often dole out the wrong information, telling the teens they’re not allowed to have the drug.

An undercover survey found that many of the pharmacies that told girls they were too young to get emergency contraception offered correct information when a doctor called seeking the pill for a 17-year-old patient, according to a report in the latest issue of the journal Pediatrics.

“I was shocked that 19 percent of 17-year-olds were told they couldn’t get the medication at all,” said Dr. Tracey Wilkinson, the study’s lead author and a general pediatrics fellow at Boston Medical Center/Boston University School of Medicine.

“That’s like one in five. And I think if you told an adolescent once that she couldn’t get the medication, she probably wouldn’t call another pharmacy. It would be the end of her attempts.”

Wilkinson’s study was aimed at evaluating the real-world availability of Plan B One-Step and other emergency contraception drugs, which are available without prescription to girls and women starting at age 17. Girls younger than 17 require prescriptions to obtain the medication.

Proponents say that using emergency contraception could prevent half of all unplanned teen pregnancies. Each year in the U.S., nearly 750,000 girls ages 15 to 19 become pregnant, and about 85 percent of those are unplanned, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

For the new study, researchers posing as either a 17-year-old girl or a doctor seeking help for a 17-year-old girl called every pharmacy in each of five U.S. cities asking about the availability and accessibility of emergency contraception.

All callers asked questions from a script. The first question was whether the pharmacy had the medication in stock -- 80 percent of the 943 pharmacies said they did. Next, the researcher posing as a teen asked if she could get the drug, while the researcher posing as the doctor of a 17-year-old patient asked if the patient could get the medication.

There was a huge disparity between the answers given to the teens and those offered to the physicians, with 19 percent of the 17-year-olds being told that they couldn’t get it under any circumstances, compared with only 3 percent of the physicians.

The next question was asked only by teen callers who had been told a 17-year-old could get the morning-after pill: “My friends said there is an age rule [regarding access without a prescription] -- do you know what it is?”

Pharmacy employees answered that incorrectly 43 percent of the time.

The researchers can’t say anything for sure about the motivation behind the misinformation because that wasn’t part of the experiment. It might be partly explained by the fact that the doctors in the study tended to get actual pharmacists on the phone while “teens” often got lower-level pharmacy employees who might have been less informed about the FDA rules. The researchers found that, in general, teens were put on hold more often and that they spoke less often to pharmacists.

It’s also possible that the misinformation was given on purpose by pharmacy employees who didn’t want to dole out morning-after pills to 17-year-olds.

“It’s a controversial topic," Wilkinson said. “It shouldn’t be, but it is. And anything with controversy heightens a person’s personal beliefs.”

Indeed, the topic has been so controversial that it forced a showdown in December over whether to make the drug available without prescription to girls younger than 17. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius invoked her authority to overrule the recommendation of a Food and Drug Administration center and the agency's head, Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, who supported the move.

Wilkinson hopes the new study will raise awareness about the problem of pharmacists dispensing inaccurate information.

“This was disappointing,” she said. “I hope this study will instigate some sort of change on all fronts, for teenagers, pharmacists, staff and also clinicians.”   
  
Related stories:
Plan B won't be available OTC to younger teens, HHS says
Bioethicist: Plan B ruling trumps good science with bad policy

Supreme court unlikely to delay Obama healthcare ruling

By Joan Biskupic and James Vicini

WASHINGTON | Mon Mar 26, 2012 5:59pm EDT

(Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday appeared prepared to decide the fate of President Barack Obama's sweeping healthcare law soon, rather than delaying for years a ruling on the mandate that Americans buy insurance or pay a penalty.

In the first of three days of historic arguments, the justices voiced doubt that a U.S. tax law requiring that people pay first and litigate later should postpone a ruling on the legal challenge to the president's signature domestic legislative achievement.

At the core of the healthcare law, signed by Obama in 2010, is a requirement that people obtain health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty. The question on Monday was whether people can challenge this so-called individual mandate before paying the penalty and seeking a refund.

The Obama administration and the challengers - including 26 of the 50 states - agreed that the case should be decided now. One of the four U.S. appeals courts that ruled on the law prior to the case going to the high court held that the tax law barred the challenges until the penalty was paid. The justices then appointed an outside private lawyer to argue that position.

The nine justices, five appointed by Republican presidents and four by Democratic presidents, plan to hear up to six hours of arguments over three days. They are expected to rule on the case by late June.

The law was passed by Congress when both the Senate and House of Representatives were controlled by Obama's fellow Democrats. The court's consideration of the fate of the law presents high stakes for Obama as he campaigns for re-election on November 6.

U.S. conservatives revile the law, denouncing it as unwarranted government intrusion into the lives of Americans, and the Republican candidates battling to become their party's nominee to challenge Obama have promised to try to repeal it.

In Monday's arguments lasting 89 minutes, justices across the ideological spectrum asked skeptical questions about whether the penalty was indeed a tax. If not deemed a tax, then the justices can move forward to decide the merits of whether the law is constitutional.

"Here, they did not use that word tax," liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said, referring both to lawmakers who crafted the legislation in Congress and to their intent.

Another liberal Democratic appointee to the high court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also expressed skepticism. "This is not a revenue-raising measure because, if it's successful, nobody will pay the penalty and there will be no revenue to raise."

Conservative Antonin Scalia was also among those justices who suggested by his questions that allowing the case to go forward would not broadly undercut federal tax policy.

'NO PARADE OF HORRIBLES'

"There will be no parade of horribles," Scalia said, noting that lower court judges would be able to determine when to make exceptions to the usual rules governing general tax penalties and law.

Chief Justice John Roberts, the leader of the conservative majority, observed that the court's past cases cut in both directions and that it was unclear that the case could not go forward.

The law, intended to transform healthcare for millions of people in the United States, has generated fierce political debate. Republican opponents of the law say it will financially burden states, businesses and individuals.

The law has been viewed as the crowning achievement of Obama's domestic legislative agenda, but challengers say Congress exceeded its constitutional power to regulate commerce with the individual mandate.

They argue that government should not force people to pay for a product they have opted against. Critics said it could lead to a wide array of other requirements such as eating broccoli, joining gyms, or buying American-made cars.

The Obama administration counters that virtually every person will need medical care and that those who shun insurance put a disproportionate burden on the system. It defended the law as a response to a national healthcare crisis.

Underscoring how the issue has divided Americans, hundreds of supporters and opponents marched outside the white-marble Supreme Court building across from the U.S. Capitol. People lined up 72 hours in advance to try to get one of the few seats open to the public.

Supporters chanted "We love Obamacare," embracing a term opponents have used to deride the law. One protester against the law, Sally Oljar of Seattle, said: "The day hasn't come when the government can force me to buy a damn thing."

The courtroom, which holds about 400 people, was packed with lawmakers from across the street in Congress, prominent attorneys, top Obama administration officials and those who paid others or waited themselves over the weekend to get a seat in the public gallery.

Among the officials watching in the courtroom were two of Obama's Cabinet members - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who is charged with implementing much of the law, and Attorney General Eric Holder, the head of the Justice Department which has been defending the law in court.

Also present in the courtroom were Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, an outspoken critic of the law, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has led the challenge to the law by the states.

Outside, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum called a news conference to promise that if elected, he would get Congress to pass a law eliminating Obama's healthcare overhaul. Obama is seeking re-election on November 6.

In the United States, annual healthcare spending totals $2.6 trillion, about 18 percent of the annual gross domestic product, or $8,402 for every man, woman and child.

In the markets, the Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payor index of health insurers was up 2.6 percent in mid-day trading, outperforming a roughly 1 percent rise for the broader market.

Shares of large insurers, such as UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint, were up more than 2 percent, while shares of hospital chains HCA Holdings and Community Health Systems also rose more than 2 percent.

MOMENTOUS SESSIONS

The arguments recalled past momentous sessions, such as the 2000 presidential election dispute between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore and the 1974 Watergate tapes case that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.

The tone of the session was serious as lawyers and justices invoked heavy phrases about jurisdiction and statutory construction. One moment of levity arose when attorney Robert Long noted the healthcare law, which runs to 2,700 pages, was not "a perfect model of clarity," drawing laughter in the courtroom.

Long, appointed by the justices to argue that the case should be delayed, said that federal law "imposes a pay first, litigate later rule that is central to federal tax assessment and collection."

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, the administration's top courtroom lawyer, urged the justices to decide the merits of the dispute. "This case presents issues of great moment," he said.

Representing the challengers, lawyer Gregory Katsas, argued the case can be decided. "The purpose of this lawsuit is to challenge a federal requirement to buy health insurance. That requirement itself is not a tax."

Eight of the nine justices took part in the vigorous questioning. Only Justice Clarence Thomas, who has not asked a question from the bench for more than six years, said nothing.

On its website the Supreme Court posted the audio of the oral argument as well as a transcript, here

Analysis: Why high court may uphold healthcare law

By Joan Biskupic

Fri Mar 23, 2012 3:22pm EDT

(Reuters) - Conventional political wisdom holds that the Supreme Court, scheduled to hear a challenge to President Barack Obama's healthcare law beginning on Monday, is likely to strike it down on partisan lines. The court's Republican appointees enjoy a 5-4 majority.  


But a review of lower court rulings by conservative judges, subtle signals from individual justices, and interviews with professors and judges across the ideological spectrum suggest that presumption is wrong - and that the court will uphold the law.

Not that conservative court-watchers like to broadcast such a view in this combustible atmosphere.
"It's almost like they're confessing to some secret vice when they say they don't think (the law) should be struck down," said former Court of Appeals Judge Michael McConnell, a George W. Bush appointee who now teaches at Stanford Law School, referring to some fellow conservatives.

Several legal experts who do not necessarily favor the law, but bet it will survive, point to the decisions of two leading conservative federal appellate judges who already have sided with the Obama administration. The core of its healthcare law is a requirement that most people in the United States buy insurance by 2014.
In decisions upholding that so-called individual mandate last year, those judges stressed the classical conservative regard for judicial restraint and deference to Congress. While they wrote that the healthcare law might be flawed as a policy matter, they said decisions on how to reform the system were best left to legislators.

By contrast, three conservative judges who rejected the law took what some critics said was a more activist approach and said they were compelled to strike down the law because it exceeded congressional power. One invoked the 18th-century Boston Tea Party, in a decision widely viewed as a salute to the modern-day Tea Party movement's advocacy of less government involvement in people's lives.

In an interview, Appeals Court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, who was appointed to the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, by President Ronald Reagan, spoke of the philosophical division among Republican appointees to the federal bench.

"There's a real tension now in conservative ranks between those who want to use (the Constitution) to limit the scope and size of federal government," Wilkinson said, "and those of a more traditional strain of conservatism that believes that these epic battles should be left to the political branches to fight out."

Wilkinson, who was on George W. Bush's short list for the Supreme Court, has not presided over any of the challenges to the healthcare law that have made their way through courts.

But he suggested in a recent book on constitutional theory that the law was valid, subject to Congress' power to regulate commerce in the states: "The idea that Congress is constitutionally disabled under the commerce power from regulating activity affecting one-sixth of the national economy strikes me as a heavy lift." Healthcare spending totals more than 17 percent of gross domestic product.

TWO LIKELY CANDIDATES

If the four liberal justices vote to uphold the law, as legal analysts overwhelmingly predict, only one of the conservatives would be needed to make a majority. One likely candidate is Chief Justice John Roberts, who is generally seen as a more traditional conservative.

A 2005 appointee of George W. Bush, Roberts has often deferred to Congress. Most notably, he voted with liberals in a 2010 decision that endorsed congressional authority to require "sexually dangerous" prisoners to remain in state custody after completing their sentences. That decision in United States v. Comstock is among the cases the Obama administration relies on to defend the individual mandate.

Another conservative justice who could defy political-based assumptions is Anthony Kennedy. More than any current member of the court, he has straddled the middle and been the swing vote when the liberal wing has prevailed. That was seen as recently as Wednesday, when he joined the four liberals and wrote the decision extending the constitutional guarantee of effective legal assistance to defendants at the plea-bargain stage, not just at trial.

Kennedy's decisions relating to Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce - which will be key to the healthcare case - have been mixed. But in recent years, he has ruled for broader federal authority. In 2005, for example, Kennedy with four liberal justices - and conservative Antonin Scalia - declared that federal law trumped state policy allowing the cultivation of marijuana for medical use. That decision expansively interpreted federal commerce power and has become a major component of the Obama administration's legal defense of the healthcare law.

The Obama administration highlights that ruling, Gonzales v. Raich. In what some court watchers see as an attempt to speak to Kennedy, administration lawyers even quote him in a separate case where he voted to strike down the federal law at issue - banning guns at local schools - but stressed in his opinion that Congress had great regulatory power in national markets "to build a stable national economy."

CHALLENGING A MANDATE

At the heart of the healthcare law signed by Obama in March 2010 is the mandate that people buy insurance or face a tax penalty. That requirement is intended to bring more healthy people into the medical system, to share costs and offset the burden the uninsured put on the system when needing emergency care.

The challengers, 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business, say such a mandate wrongly forces people who have opted out of the insurance market to spend money for a policy and, as a constitutional matter, exceeds Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce.

The Constitution gives Congress authority to regulate commerce "among the several states" and the Supreme Court has expansively interpreted that over the years to cover a range of local activities that affect a broader national market.

After the Supreme Court agreed to take up the healthcare litigation last November, many political commentators predicted the law was doomed, based partly on the makeup of the bench.

The nine justices often divide along ideological and even partisan lines, particularly in cases involving social policy questions such as racial discrimination, abortion rights and campaign finance. On the conservative side are five Republican appointees, Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. On the liberal wing are four Democratic appointees, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Unlike the 5-4 social policy cases, the healthcare dispute involves a structural question of the Constitution's grant of federal power.

The decisions of the two lower court judges who sided with the administration could provide a roadmap. Both Jeffrey Sutton, of the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, Circuit, and Laurence Silberman, of the Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., Circuit, are highly respected conservatives who have worked closely in the past with current justices.

In separate rulings last year, Sutton and Silberman found that Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce could cover the individual insurance mandate. Most people will eventually enter or affect the insurance market, they observed.

Sutton, a former law clerk to Scalia and Ohio solicitor general appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, wrote that "time assuredly will bring to light the policy strengths and weaknesses of using the individual mandate as part of this national legislation" and that any determination on whether it stands should be left to Americans' "political representatives, rather than their judges."

Silberman, a Reagan appointee who was a colleague to four of the current justices when they were on the D.C. Circuit, stressed that judges must "presume that acts of Congress are constitutional" and he cited opinions by Roberts and Kennedy in his decision upholding the individual mandate.

The conservative judges who voted against the law, on the other hand, were more ardent in their analysis and language.

In his decision invoking the Boston Tea Party, a forerunner to the American Revolution, District Judge Roger Vinson, based in Florida, wrote: "It is difficult to imagine 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."

District Judges Henry Hudson in Richmond, Virginia, and James Graham, sitting with the 6th Circuit appeals panel, called the healthcare law "legally stillborn."

AVOIDING CONTROVERSY

Other considerations suggest Roberts as chief justice might be inclined to uphold the law. He has spoken generally about the benefit of avoiding split decisions that could hurt the court's reputation and legacy in the American mind. In an interview with C-SPAN soon after he was appointed, Roberts said, "I think the most important thing for the public to understand is that we are not a political branch of government."

Roberts "seems sensitive to how he and the court are perceived," said Lawrence Baum, an Ohio State University political science professor who has studied judicial behavior.

Baum said Roberts and his fellow conservatives were likely aware of lingering criticism from the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision, ending the recounts in the Florida presidential election dispute, and in the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, lifting restrictions on corporate and labor money in elections.

"Given the decisions in which the court favored what are perceived as Republican interests," he said, "I think that at least some of the conservative justices welcome opportunities to appear to be above partisanship."

Several legal analysts also suggested that Roberts and Kennedy would seek to avoid a confrontation over a sitting president's signature domestic achievement. Law professors note that the Supreme Court has rarely voided a central plank of the president's agenda, the major exception being the early years of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.

"This is not an ordinary law," said Akhil Amar, a law professor at Yale University who believes the healthcare law to be valid. This is a trademark piece of legislation."

Related News

Obama healthcare law faces high court hearing
                   Fri, Mar 23 2012
Analysis: Investors weigh chaos as high court reviews health law
                   Thu, Mar 22 2012
U.S. top court backs landowners, limits power of EPA
                   Wed, Mar 21 2012
Few options if top court strikes part of health law
                   Tue, Mar 20 2012
 Top court rejects state damages in medical leave case
                   Tue, Mar 20 2012
Insight: Behind the healthcare-law case: The challengers' tale 
                   Wed, Mar 14, 2012
Factbox: U.S. healthcare by numbers 
                    Mon, Mar 26, 2012

Analysis & Opinion

• Top U.S. judges may drown out healthcare debate
• America’s Wild West gun laws

 

Morning Joe: A different look

  Joe and country singer Lyle Lovett live in Studio singing Joes' original song

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Lovett sings from recent album 'Release Me'  a song written by wm. moore in 1928

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Obamacare: The reckoning

 

View Photo Gallery —  Both supporters and opponents of the Affordable Care Act are organizing efforts to raise support for their respective sides when the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the health-care law in late March.

 

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: March 22

Obamacare dominated the 2010 midterms, driving its Democratic authors to a historic electoral shellacking. But since then, the issue has slipped quietly underground.
Now it’s back, summoned to the national stage by the confluence of three disparate events: the release of new Congressional Budget Office cost estimates, the approach of Supreme Court hearings on the law’s constitutionality and the issuance of a compulsory contraception mandate.

Cost:
 
Obamacare was carefully constructed to manipulate the standard 10-year cost projections of the CBO. Because benefits would not fully kick in for four years, President Obama could trumpet 10-year gross costs of less than $1 trillion — $938 billion to be exact.
But now that the near-costless years 2010 and 2011 have elapsed, the true 10-year price tag comes into focus. From 2013 through 2022, the CBO reports, the costs of Obamacare come to $1.76 trillion — almost twice the phony original number.
It gets worse. Annual gross costs after 2021 are more than a quarter of $1 trillion every year — until the end of time. That, for a new entitlement in a country already drowning in $16 trillion of debt.

Constitutionality:
 
Beginning Monday, the Supreme Court will hear challenges to the law. The American people, by an astonishing two-thirds majority, want the law and/or the individual mandate tossed out by the court. In practice, however, questions this momentous are generally decided 5 to 4 — i.e., they depend on whatever side of the bed Justice Anthony Kennedy gets out of that morning.
Ultimately, the question will hinge on whether the Commerce Clause has any limits. If the federal government can compel a private citizen, under threat of a federally imposed penalty, to engage in a private contract with a private entity (to buy health insurance), is there anything the federal government cannot compel the citizen to do?
If Obamacare is upheld, it fundamentally changes the nature of the American social contract. It means the effective end of a government of enumerated powers — i.e., finite, delineated powers beyond which the government may not go, beyond which lies the free realm of the people and their voluntary institutions. The new post-Obamacare dispensation is a central government of unlimited power from which citizen and civil society struggle to carve out and maintain spheres of autonomy.
Figure becomes ground; ground becomes figure. The stakes could not be higher.

Coerciveness.
 
Serendipitously, the recently issued regulation on contraceptive coverage has allowed us to see exactly how this new power works. All institutions — excepting only churches, but not excepting church-run charities, hospitals, etc. — will be required to offer health care that must include free contraception, sterilization and drugs that cause abortion.
Consider the cascade of arbitrary bureaucratic decisions that resulted in this edict:
(1) Contraception, sterilization and abortion pills are classified as medical prevention. On whose authority? The secretary of health and human services, invoking the Institute of Medicine. But surely categorizing pregnancy as a disease equivalent is a value decision disguised as science. If contraception is prevention, what are fertility clinics? Disease inducers? And if contraception is prevention because it lessens morbidity and saves money, by that logic, mass sterilization would be the greatest boon to public health since the pasteurization of milk.
(2) This type of prevention is free — no co-pay. Why? Is contraception morally superior to or more socially vital than — and thus more of a “right” than — penicillin for a child with pneumonia?
(3) “Religious” exemptions to this edict extend only to churches, places where the faithful worship God, and not to church-run hospitals and charities, places where the faithful do God’s work. Who promulgated this definition, so stunningly ignorant of the very idea of religious vocation? The almighty HHS secretary.
Today, it’s the Catholic Church whose free-exercise powers are under assault from this cascade of diktats sanctioned by — indeed required by — Obamacare. Tomorrow it will be the turn of other institutions of civil society that dare stand between unfettered state and atomized citizen.
Rarely has one law so exemplified the worst of the Leviathan state — grotesque cost, questionable constitutionality and arbitrary bureaucratic coerciveness. Little wonder the president barely mentioned it in his latest State of the Union address. He wants to be reelected. He’d rather talk about other things.
But there’s no escaping it now. Oral arguments begin Monday at 10 a.m.

Court signals it will decide constitutionality of health care mandate

9

hours

ago

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Health care overhaul supporters rally on the sidewalk outside ongoing legal arguments over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on March 26 at the Supreme Court.

By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer

Updated at 3:10 pm ET:  After the first day of oral arguments in challenges to the landmark 2010 health care law, it seems clear that Supreme Court will not let a procedural tax issue stand in the way of deciding the constitutionality of the law.
“If there were any members of the court who were looking for an off ramp – who did not want to decide this case now during an election year, this would have been the way to go,” said NBC's Pete Williams after hearing the first day's arguments. But “none of them seem to want to take that,” he said.
At issue Monday was a law called the Anti-Injunction Act. Does that law require that those who challenge the penalty for failing to buy insurance actually pay the penalty first? That won’t occur until 2015, after the insurance purchase requirement takes effect.
The question hinged on the justices accepting the contention that the penalty is effectively a tax.

                                                                                                                                       

AUDIO ONLY: The Supreme Court takes up the fate of the Obama administration's overhaul of the nation's health care system. Listen to the entire oral arguments from day one.

After hearing Monday’s argument, Williams reported that “there didn’t seem to be a single member of the Supreme Court that bought that argument.”
“I don’t believe there’s a single justice on the court who believes that it’s a tax. End of that question. So we’re obviously going to go on to the main event which is the individual mandate which will be argued tomorrow,” Williams said.
Monday’s argument was the prelude for the main event: Tuesday’s two hours of argument over whether Congress has the power to require that almost every American purchase health insurance.
Solicitor General Donald Verrilli told the justices, "This case presents issues of great moment, and the Anti-Injunction Act does not bar the Court's consideration of those issues."

Read the transcript of Monday's oral argument

One justice, Samuel Alito, focused on the apparent inconsistency in the government's argument that the penalty is not a tax, under the terms of the Anti-Injunction Act -- and yet the government also will claim in Tuesday's oral argument that when Congress created the individual mandate and the penalty for failing to buy insurance, it was acting under its constitutional power to tax.

Art Lien/AFP/Getty Images

This courtroom sketch by Art Lien shows Solicitor General Donald Verrilli speaking to Justice Antonin Scalia on March 26, 2012 as he argues his case before the Supreme Court.

Verrilli said, "Congress has authority under the taxing power to enact a measure not labeled as a tax ... ."
In a question to Verrilli, Alito said, "Today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax. Tomorrow you are going to be back and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax. Has the Court ever held that something that is a tax for purposes of the taxing power under the Constitution is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act?"
Verrilli replied, "No, Justice Alito, but the Court has held... that something can be a constitutional exercise of the taxing power whether or not it is called a tax."

Click here to listen to that exchange between Verrilli and Justice Alito

He said, "the nature of the inquiry that we will conduct tomorrow is different from the nature of the inquiry that we will conduct today. Tomorrow the question is whether Congress has the authority under the taxing power to enact it" and the precise words used in the law don't have a crucial effect on that question.
At least two justices, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, seemed to accept the government's contention that the penalty was not a tax, with Ginsburg saying "this is not a revenue-raising measure, because, if it's successful, they won't -- nobody will pay the penalty and there will be no revenue to raise"

Click here to listen to that exchange between Long and Justice Ginsburg

Since the plaintiffs challenging the ACA had not made the Anti-Injunction Act argument, the justices appointed lawyer Robert Long to argue for the position that no one can file suit against the ACA’s individual insurance mandate until after the penalty on those who fail to buy insurance has been assessed.

Art Lien/AFP/Getty Images

This courtroom sketch by Art Lien shows attorney Robert A. Long speaking March 26, 2012 as he argues his case before the Supreme Court.

As soon as President Barack Obama signed the ACA into law, several states and private organization filed suits to overturn it, arguing that the Constitution gave Congress no power to force people to buy insurance.
Long pointed out in his brief that the text of the ACA says the penalty imposed on people who don’t purchase health insurance shall be “assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes” -- so it is effectively a tax.
Long also said if Congress had wanted to create an exception to the Anti-Injunction Act in this case it would have done so when it passed the ACA in 2010.

 Related: Individual mandate will be in Supreme Court spotlight

He argued that for the Supreme Court to decide now on the constitutionality of the ACA “would be contrary to the policy that courts avoid deciding constitutional issues unless it is necessary to so do.”
nd it would premature, he said, for the court to act since it’s possible that Congress “could amend or repeal the Affordable Care Act at some point before penalties are assessed and collected, beginning in 2015. An amendment (to the law) could avoid the need for this Court to decide the constitutional issue presented in this case.”

 

Supreme Court takes up healthcare (2:08) 

Mar. 26 - President Barack Obama's sweeping healthcare overhaul goes before the U.S. Supreme Court. Deborah Lutterbeck reports.

But despite those arguments there’s tremendous pressure on the high court to resolve the uncertainty over the health care overhaul now -- since many of the provisions of the law are interrelated and the court itself has created the expectation that it will finally settle the constitutional issue.

Recommended: Health care ruling could send fight back to Congress

Arguing the case on Monday for 90 minutes were Long, Verrilli, and former Assistant Attorney General Gregory Katsas, now in private practice, representing the state of Florida and other states and the National Federation of Independent Business.
NBC's Pete Williams contributed to this report.

Thousands march in protest to Florida hearing on Trayvon Martin slaying

6

hours

ago

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By NBC News and msnbc.com staff

Updated at 5:26 p.m. ET: Thousands of people streamed through the streets of Sanford, Fla., on Monday to demand that authorities prosecute the man who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin one month ago.
The protesters were on their way to a special meeting of the City Commission at the town's Civic Center that began at 5 p.m. ET, where members were to hold a hearing on the killing of Martin, who was unarmed, by George Zimmerman, 28, a neighborhood watch volunteer. (Among the marchers and the speakers was the Rev. Al Sharpton, host of MSNBC-TV's "PoliticNation.")

The shooting of Martin, who was black, by Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, has led to similar rallies across the country. Martin's family, meantime, has made multiple media appearances pushing for Zimmerman's arrest.
But for the first time on Monday, Zimmerman's account of the shooting, corroborated by witnesses, were reported — details that make winning a conviction "more difficult than a normal criminal case," according to the special prosecutor reviewing the case for Florida Gov. Rick Scott.
The Orlando Sentinel, quoting unidentified "law enforcement authorities," reported that Zimmerman told police that Martin knocked him down with a single punch and slammed his head into the sidewalk several times before the shooting — an account that police said witnesses have corroborated.
Zimmerman said he was walking back to his SUV when Martin approached him from behind, according to the Sentinel's report, which Sanford police confirmed Monday afternoon.

---

The two exchanged words before Martin decked him with a punch to the nose and began beating him, Zimmerman told police. He said he then shot Martin in self-defense.
Witnesses said they heard someone cry out in distress, some of them telling NBC News and other news organizations that it was Martin. But police sources told the Sentinel their evidence indicated it was Zimmerman.
One witness told police he saw Martin pounding Zimmerman on the ground. This witness was certain it was Zimmerman who was crying for help, the Sentinel reported.
When police arrived less than two minutes later, Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose and had a swollen lip and bloody lacerations to the back of his head, the newspaper reported. Police said Zimmerman wasn't badly injured and didn't seek treatment until the next day.
ABC News reported separately that Zimmerman told police that Martin also tried to take his gun.
In a statement, Sanford police said the Sentinel's report was "consistent with the information provided to the State Attorney's office by the police department." It didn't address the ABC report.
Zimmerman's attorney, Craig Sonner, has said he could invoke Florida's "stand-your-ground" law, which provides significant leeway for people to use deadly force if they feel their lives are in danger.
Meanwhile, Angela Corey, the special prosecutor, told ABC News that means "the state must go forward and be able to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. ... So it makes the case in general more difficult than a normal criminal case."
Other new information that emerged Monday also appeared to complicate the case. Although toxicology tests on Martin's body were still pending, a spokesman for his family confirmed to NBC News that Martin was suspended for 10 days from Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School in Miami for possession of an empty marijuana baggie.
The disclosures added up an attempt to assassinate Martin's character, said Ben Crump, an attorney for Martin's family.
At a news conference, Crump alleged that police were "attempting to demonize and blame the victim by releasing bits and pieces of an ongoing investigation to build Zimmerman's claim up."
"Very clearly, whatever Trayvon Martin was suspended for had absolutely no bearing on what happened on the night of February 26," he said, adding that Martin "wasn't suspended for anything violent or criminal."
"If he and his friends experimented with marijuana, it's still completely irrelevant," Crump said.
As the City Commission hearing approached, there were these other developments:

• The Smoking Gun, a website that tracks criminal cases and document filings, reported Monday afternoon that Martin's mother, Sabrina Fulton, filed two applications last week for trademarks on her late son's name.

Fulton is seeking marks for the phrases "I Am Trayvon" and "Justice for Trayvon," according to filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In both instances, Fulton is seeking the trademarks for use on "Digital materials," namely, CDs and DVDs featuring Trayvon Martin," and other products.

• Sanford City Manager Norton Bonaparte announced that Capt. Darren Scott would serve as interim police chief during the investigation, NBC station WESH of Orlando, Fla., reported. Police Chief Bill Lee stepped aside last week as criticism over the lack of an arrest mounted across the country. 

Following is the full text of the statement Monday confirming The Orlando Sentinel's report by the Sanford, Fla., Police Department:

In response to the recent article in the Orlando Sentinel, the information was not provided to the media through an authorized source at the Sanford Police Department, but possibly by a leak from within the department. The information in the article is consistent with the information provided to the State Attorney's office by the police department.
"We do not condone these unauthorized leaks of information," said City Manager, Norton Bonaparte, Jr. "Acting Chief Scott will be doing an internal investigation within the Sanford Police Department as this type of action compromises the integrity of the law enforcement agency which has pledged to uphold the law".
Mr. Bonaparte stated that disciplinary action including possible termination will be taken against anyone found to have leaked the information.

Roxanne Garcia and Tom Winter of NBC News and Miguel Llanos of msnbc.com contributed to this report by M. Alex Johnson of msnbc.com.

3/26/12 Cases 2011-2012 Term Supreme Court

Click the links below to check out all the briefs, and other legal papers pertaining to each case.

Merit Briefs,  Amicus Briefs (In Support of Respondents, In Support of Petitioner),  Other

Legal briefs are used as part of arguing a pre-trial motion in a case or proceeding.

Merit briefs (or briefs on the merits) refers to briefs on the inherent rights and wrongs of a case, absent any emotional or technical biases

Amicus briefs refer to briefs filed by persons not directly party to the case. These are often groups that have a direct interest in the outcome.

Amicus curiae

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

An amicus curiae (also spelled amicus curiæ; plural amici curiae) is someone, not a party to a case, who volunteers to offer information to assist a court in deciding a matter before it. The information provided may be a legal opinion in the form of a brief (which is called an amicus brief when offered by an amicus curiae), a testimony that has not been solicited by any of the parties, or a learned treatise on a matter that bears on the case. The decision on whether to admit the information lies at the discretion of the court. The phrase amicus curiae is legal Latin and literally means "friend of the court".



 Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida, Docket No., 11-398 (Minimum Coverage Provision)

 Argument Date: Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Questions Presented

Beginning in 2014, the minimum coverage provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat. 119, amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-152, 124 Stat. 1029, will require non-exempted individuals to maintain a minimum level of health insurance or pay a tax penalty. 26 U.S.C.A. 5000A.
The question presented is:
1. Whether Congress had the power under Article I of the Constitution to enact the minimum coverage provision.

Dept. of Health and Human Services v. Florida, Docket No., 11-398 (Anti-Injunction Act)

Argument Date: Monday, March 26, 2012

Questions Presented

Whether the suit brought by respondents to challenge the minimum coverage provisions of the Patent Protection and Affordable Act is barred by the Anti-Injunction Act 26 U.S.C. §7421(A)


National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, Docket No., 11-393,
and
Florida v. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Docket No., 11-400 (Severability)

Argument Date: Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Questions Presented in Severability

Congress effected a sweeping and comprehensive restructuring of the Nation's health-insurance markets in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat. 119 (2010), as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-152, 124 Stat. 109 (2010) (collectively, the "ACA” or "Act"). But the Eleventh Circuit and the Sixth Circuit now have issued directly conflicting final judgments about the facial constitutionality of the ACA's mandate that virtually every individual American must obtain health insurance. 26 U.S.C. § 5000A. Moreover, despite the fact that the mandate is a "requirement" that Congress itself deemed "essential" to the Act's new insurance regulations, 42 U.S.C. § 18091(a)(2)(I), the Eleventh Circuit held that the mandate is severable from the remainder of the Act.
The question presented is whether the ACA must be invalidated in its entirety because it is non-severable from the individual mandate that exceeds Congress' limited and enumerated powers under the Constitution.


Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services, Docket No., 11-400 (Medicaid)

Argument Date: Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Questions Presented

1. Does Congress exceed its enumerated powers and violate basic principles of federalism when it coerces States into accepting onerous conditions that it could not impose directly by threatening to withhold all federal funding under the single largest grant-in-aid program, or does the limitation on Congress's spending power that this Court recognized in South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987), no longer apply?

Oral Argument - Audio Supreme Court 3/26/12

Department of Health and Human Servs. v. Florida
Docket Number: 11-398-Monday
Date Argued: 03/26/12
Play Audio:

Media Formats:

MP3	Download	Play
Windows Media	Download	Play
RealAudio 10	Download
Transcript (PDF)	View(below)

  To download file:

• From Windows XP/Vista/7 - Right click the "Download" link and select "Save Target As..." or "Save Link As..."
• From Mac - Press Ctrl key while clicking the "Download" link, or just right click the link if you have a double button mouse, and select "Save Linked File As..."mm  

11-398-Monday  Supreme Court Testimony 3/26/12  Affordable Health Care Act

• Filings in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
• Case Distribution Schedule
• Delivery of Documents to the Clerk's Office
• On-Line MERITS BRIEFS
• Special Master Reports