Small business lobby joins challenge to health law

The nation’s most influential small business lobby is joining a court challenge to President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, arguing that Americans cannot be required under the Constitution to obtain insurance coverage.

The National Federation of Independent Business will announce Friday it is joining a federal lawsuit filed in Florida by 20 state attorneys general and governors, NFIB President Dan Danner said in an interview.

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A groundswell of opposition to the law from small business owners prompted NFIB’s decision to join the court challenge, said Karen Harned, a senior lawyer for the group. “The second the law was signed, NFIB was hearing from its members: ‘What are you all going to do about this?’,” said Harned. “So we hunkered down. We looked around. This state attorneys general lawsuit made the most sense for us. It’s the only one that has a national presence.”

Tea party wins victory in Utah as incumbent GOP senator loses bid for nomination

The national “tea party” movement toppled its first incumbent Saturday as long-serving Sen. Robert F. Bennett was defeated at the Utah Republican Party’s nominating convention, the most powerful demonstration yet of the anti-Washington tide that is altering the nation’s political landscape.

Bennett, seeking a fourth term after 18 years in office, became the first sitting senator to fall in the ideological battle being waged in his party. Although he has long been viewed as a reliable conservative with deep Mormon roots, Republicans rallied behind two other candidates — neither of whom has held political office — who will compete for the nomination at a June primary.

National tea party organizers embraced the victory as a major first step toward returning the Republican Party to its conservative foundations of limited government and low taxes. (Read more from washingtonpost.com)

Kagan: Government should decide if free speech is good for society

Freedom of speech, religion and other First Amendment issues are likely to be among the most visible during the coming Senate confirmation hearings on President Obama’s nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court.

As an illustration why, consider this quote dug up by the First Amendment Center’s David L. Hudson, who found it in a government brief signed by Kagan in United States v Stevens: “Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs.”

The case concerned a statute that made it criiminally unlawful to depict animal cruelty. The Court rejected Kagan’s reasoning, but had the justices accepted her assertion, it would have effectively repealed the First Amendment’s protection of speech and replaced it by granting government the authority to decide what speech should be permitted. (Read more from washintonexaminer.com)

How Changes in Accounting Standards Threaten Your Freedom

This is the most exciting discussion about accounting I’ve ever heard.

There is a confluence of interest leading to:

– our surrendering the power to establish accounting standards to an international body
– top down enforcement of standardized accounting standards
– devilish details which will tax businesses even more — Obama’s budget already project over $50 billion in increased tax revenue
– less transparency for international corporations — which will likely be an excuse for the government to take an even bigger policing role in the future
– even more obstacles for small businesses who want to compete with big corporations
– a lower standard of living

The interests are as follows:

– Academics who like things standardized and centralized, and think, like Lenin, that the entire world should be run like the post office
– International accounting firms who will make a bundle as the world
– The government who will be able to wrest even more wealth from the people who actually produce things
– International corporations who will have yet another government-imposed advantage over small businesses

(Listen at RadioFreeMerket.com)