Former Gitmo prisoner: How I see America

LONDON ? Moazzam Begg makes an unlikely former terrorism suspect. Soft-spoken, gentle-mannered and with a slight build, the British-born 43-year-old is open to tough questions and does not flinch when pushed on his alleged links to international terrorism.

The father of four is of Pakistani descent and is the U.K.?s best-known former Guantanamo Bay prisoner. (The U.S. Department of Defense held a total of nine detainees of British descent at Guantanamo Bay at one time; all have been released from detention). ?

After he was freed from the U.S. base in Cuba in 2005, Begg wrote a book about his experiences, ?Enemy Combatant: The Terrifying True Story of a Briton in Guantanamo.? The book details how he says he was treated by the Americans in one of the most notorious prisons in the world and how his love for his family kept him sane.

?I didn?t think I was going to get through it, I didn?t think there was any light at the end of the tunnel,? he said, ?but one becomes accustomed to the fear? and you resign yourself to your fate.?

---

?

Three years in custody
His fate turned out to be three years in high-security detention, first in Kandahar and Bagram in Afghanistan and then at Guantanamo. The claims made against him were many: being an al-Qaida member, recruiting others to terrorism, providing support and financing, training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan and training others.

Despite this, he was never charged. After his release, Begg accused the British government of complicity while he was in American custody, and received an out-of-court settlement in 2010.

Now living in Birmingham, in central England, he emphatically denies allegations of links to terrorism. ??

?I never fought with al-Qaida or the Taliban or have been a member of either,? he says, ?and I think the Americans clearly know this after being held by them and being interrogated over a hundred times.?

Yet he still cuts a controversial figure. Around the U.K., opinion is divided on whether he was a man jailed for crimes he did not commit or if he does have the ties to terror groups the U.S. alleged before being released without charge in 2005.

NBC News speaks with citizens from around the globe, asking the question, 'What Does America Mean to You?'

Alleged torture
Some consensus, though, has emerged ? that he was a victim of human rights violations in the form of being illegally detained and tortured, allegations denied by the U.S. government.

When I ask about the alleged torture, it?s the only time during our interview that he loses his cool.

??I was punched and kicked,? he said. ?Soldiers cut my clothes off, they shaved my hair and beard forcibly, they took pictures of me naked, dogs frightened me, they interrogated me naked; that was torture.?

He also says he saw two men beaten to death and heard the sounds of a woman screaming next door that he was led to believe was his wife.

He says some of his worst moments, though, came from much less dramatic circumstances. He spent most of his time in solitary confinement, he says, in a small cell with no natural light with no meaningful contact from his family and nothing to read. He says that with no end in sight he got very depressed and looked forward only to sleep.

?A lot of decent Americans?
During this time, I ask him, did he start to hate the people who were responsible for his incarceration?

No, he says immediately, because help came from an unexpected quarter: His guards became his saving grace. They would talk to him, give him food and snacks when he was hungry, and provided valued snippets of information about his?family, his legal case and news from around the world.

?There are a lot of decent Americans who did things for me which I will remember for the rest of my life,? he says. ?And we are still friends to this day.?

In fact, he says, some of the guards have since visited him at his home in England, adding that they?ve apologized for his treatment and that he has forgiven any role they played in his detention.

He says the resentment he does harbor is focused on the U.S. administration and its actions in the world.

?No friend of American foreign policy?
??I am no friend of American foreign policy and I think it needs to be resisted in every way legal,? he said, citing drone attacks in Pakistan, the Abu Ghraib atrocities and U.S. policy in Somalia as examples. ?The U.S. has developed a position in the world that is very difficult to draw back from.?

Today, Begg is not allowed to enter the USA and displays some rare but measured anger when he speaks about it. ??

?I have never been to America but it has been to me,? he said. ?It has shown me a face of itself that I didn?t know existed, and that face included extraordinary rendition, false imprisonment, kidnap, torture and the abuses of basic human rights.?

He also argued that President Obama?s failure to close Guantanamo has been a big mistake, calling it ?a recruiting sergeant for radicalism.?

Begg told me he still suffers flashbacks and nightmares from his time in detention. But he said he focuses his energies as director of CagePrisoners, an organization fighting for the rights of prisoners held around the world in the name of the ?war on terror.? ?

This story is part of a series by msnbc.com and NBC News?"What the World Thinks of US". The series aims to check the pulse on current perceptions of America's global stature during the election year and ahead of our annual Independence Day.

Share your thoughts about this story and our series on Twitter using?#AmericaMeans?'

Stories in the series:?

How I see America, from a former Gitmo prisoner

Bye, bye, GI: Deep impact for many Germans as US troops downsize

Post-revolution Egypt to US: Stay out?

Iran's dentist to the stars offers views on US

For many Pakistanis, 'USA' means 'drones'?

One man's mission: Promote Chinese patriotism in the face of Western onslaught

In South Africa: 'My head says China is number one, my heart says America'

Not all Thais are Gaga about America

Family moves from the Bronx to Jerusalem, but US remains land of 'liberty and freedom'

Palestinian: US supports 'an apartheid system that is suffocating us'?

Afghans are 'no different from any American

Source: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/02/12524780-how-i-see-america-from-a-former-gitmo-prisoner?lite

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FACT CHECK: Buyer beware in health debate

FILE - In this Thursday, June 28, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, after the Supreme Court ruled on his health care legislation. The victory will help define Obama's legacy. However, if Obama does not win a second term in November, he risks losing both the law and the core of his legacy. (AP Photo/The New York Times, Luke Sharrett, Pool, File)

FILE - In this Thursday, June 28, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, after the Supreme Court ruled on his health care legislation. The victory will help define Obama's legacy. However, if Obama does not win a second term in November, he risks losing both the law and the core of his legacy. (AP Photo/The New York Times, Luke Sharrett, Pool, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama promises nothing will change for people who like their health coverage except it'll become more affordable, but the facts don't back him up. Mitt Romney groundlessly calls the health care law a slayer of jobs certain to deepen the national debt.

Welcome to the health care debate 2.0. As the claims fly, buyer beware.

After the Supreme Court upheld the law last week, Obama stepped forward to tell Americans what good will come from it. Romney was quick to lay out the harm. But some of the evidence they gave to the court of public opinion was suspect.

A look at their claims and how they compare with the facts:

___

OBAMA: "If you're one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance. This law will only make it more secure and more affordable."

ROMNEY: "Obamacare also means that for up to 20 million Americans, they will lose the insurance they currently have, the insurance that they like and they want to keep."

THE FACTS: Nothing in the law ensures that people happy with their policies now can keep them. Employers will continue to have the right to modify coverage or even drop it, and some are expected to do so as more insurance alternatives become available to the population under the law. Nor is there any guarantee that coverage will become cheaper, despite the subsidies many people will get.

Americans may well end up feeling more secure about their ability to obtain and keep coverage once insurance companies can no longer deny, terminate or charge more for coverage for those in poor health. But particular health insurance plans will have no guarantee of ironclad security. Much can change, including the cost.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the number of workers getting employer-based coverage could drop by several million, as some workers choose new plans in the marketplace or as employers drop coverage altogether. Companies with more than 50 workers would have to pay a fine for terminating insurance, but in some cases that would be cost-effective for them.

Obama's soothing words for those who are content with their current coverage have been heard before, rendered with different degrees of accuracy. He's said nothing in the law requires people to change their plans, true enough. But the law does not guarantee the status quo for anyone, either.

So where does Romney come up with 20 million at risk of losing their current plans?

He does so by going with the worst-case scenario in the budget office's analysis. Researchers thought it most likely that employer coverage would decline by 3 to 5 million, but the range of possibilities was broad: It could go up by as much as 3 million or down by as much as 20 million.

___

ROMNEY: After saying the new law cuts Medicare by $500 billion and raises taxes by a like amount, adds: "And even with those cuts and tax increases, Obamacare adds trillions to our deficits and to our national debt, and pushes those obligations onto coming generations."

THE FACTS: In its most recent complete estimate, in March 2011, the Congressional Budget Office said the new health care law would actually reduce the federal budget deficit by $210 billion over the next 10 years. In the following decade, the law would continue to reduce deficits by about one-half of one percent of the nation's gross domestic product, the office said.

The congressional budget scorekeepers acknowledged their projections are "quite uncertain" because of the complexity of the issue and the assumptions involved, which include the assumption that all aspects of the law are implemented as written. But the CBO assessment offers no backup for Romney's claim that the law "adds trillions to our deficits."

___

OBAMA: "And by this August, nearly 13 million of you will receive a rebate from your insurance company because it spent too much on things like administrative costs and CEO bonuses and not enough on your health care."

THE FACTS: Rebates are coming, but not nearly that many Americans are likely to get those checks and for many of those who do, the amount will be decidedly modest.

The government acknowledges it does not know how many households will see rebates in August from a provision of the law that makes insurance companies give back excess money spent on overhead instead of health care delivery. Altogether, the rebates that go out will benefit nearly 13 million people. But most of the benefit will be indirect, going to employers because they cover most of the cost of insurance provided in the workplace.

Employers can plow all the rebate money, including the workers' share, back into the company's health plan, or pass along part of it.

The government says some 4 million people who are due rebates live in households that purchased coverage directly from an insurance company, not through an employer, and experts say those households are the most likely to get a rebate check directly.

The government says the rebates have an average value of $151 per household. But employers, who typically pay 70 to 80 percent of premiums, are likely to get most of that.

___

ROMNEY: "Obamacare raises taxes on the American people by approximately $500 billion."

THE FACTS: The tax increases fall heavily on upper-income people, health insurance companies, drug makers and medical device manufacturers.

People who fail to obtain health insurance as required by the law will face a tax penalty, although that's expected to hit relatively few because the vast majority of Americans have insurance and many who don't will end up getting it. Also, a 10 percent tax has been imposed on tanning bed use as part of the health care law. There are no other across-the-board tax increases in the law, although some tax benefits such as flexible savings accounts are scaled back. Of course, higher taxes on businesses can be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices.

Individuals making over $200,000 and couples making over $250,000 will pay 0.9 percent more in Medicare payroll tax and a 3.8 percent tax on investments. As well, a tax starts in 2018 on high-value insurance plans.

___

OBAMA: "Because of the Affordable Care Act, young adults under the age of 26 are able to stay on their parents' health care plans, a provision that's already helped 6 million young Americans."

THE FACTS: Obama is overstating this benefit of his health law, and his own administration knows better. The Department of Health and Human Services, in a June 19 news release, said 3.1 million young adults would be uninsured were it not for the new law. Obama's number comes from a June 8 survey by the Commonwealth Fund, a health policy foundation. It said 6.6 million young adults joined or stayed on their parents' health plans who wouldn't have been able to absent the law. But that number includes some who switched to their parents' plans from other coverage, Commonwealth Fund officials told the Los Angeles Times.

___

ROMNEY: "Obamacare is a job-killer."

THE FACTS: The CBO estimated in 2010 that the law would reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by roughly half a percent.

But that's mostly because the law will give many people the opportunity to retire, stay at home with family or switch to part-time work, since they will be able to get health insurance more easily outside of their jobs. That voluntary retreat from the workforce, made possible by the law's benefits, is not the same as employers slashing jobs because of the law's costs, as Romney implies.

The law's penalties on employers who don't provide health insurance might cause some companies to hire fewer low-wage workers or to hire more part-timers instead of full-time employees, the budget office said. But the main consequence would still be from more people choosing not to work.

Apart from the budget office and other disinterested parties that study the law, each side in the debate uses research sponsored by interest groups, often slanted, to buttress its case. Romney cites a Chamber of Commerce online survey in which nearly three-quarters of respondents said the law would dampen their hiring.

The chamber is a strong opponent of the law, having run ads against it. Its poll was conducted unscientifically and is therefore not a valid measure of business opinion.

___

Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Jim Drinkard contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2012-07-02-US-Health-Care-Fact-Check/id-5069e801e9294999a7086f24f7d31046

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Head-on crash in Wyoming kills 5, injures 4

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/head-crash-wyoming-kills-5-injures-4-042445151.html

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Blake wins 200 meters, goes 2 for 2 vs Bolt

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) ? When the latest upset that wasn't really an upset was over, Yohan Blake put one finger to his mouth and looked toward the stands ? as if he were asking the crowd to simmer down.

No such luck there. The Jamaican fans were ecstatic. They now have not one, but two gold-medal prospects for the sprints at the London Olympics.

Blake made it 2 for 2 against world-record holder Usain Bolt, winning the 200 meters at the Jamaican Olympic trials Sunday in 19.80 seconds to edge Bolt by 0.03.

When they crossed the line, Bolt was the first one to approach his training partner and buddy and give him a big bear hug. Moments later, though, the World's Fastest Man was down on the ground, getting his right hamstring stretched out, while Blake was basking in an understated celebration. For nearly a minute, he simply paced back and forth in front of the packed grandstand, letting all those fans soak in the sight of their new national champion.

"I'm not surprised, because I was working real hard," Blake said of his back-to-back wins. "And I know Usain will work hard as ever. It's up to me to keep working hard and keep my form going into the Olympics."

The win came two days after Blake, the reigning world champion at 100 meters, beat Bolt in the 100 by running a personal-best 9.75.

That was a shocker, but there were explanations ? most notably the terrible starts Bolt got off to throughout the 100 heats and in the final, to say nothing of any doubt that might still linger over the false start that scratched him from worlds last year.

Bolt has always considered the 200, which better suits his lanky 6-foot-5 frame, his real work. And now, indeed, he has work to do there, as well.

As they approached the finish, Bolt was grimacing ? or was that the hint of a frustrated smile? ? as he looked to his left to see what very few thought possible earlier this week: Blake beating him to the line for the second time in three days.

"I can never be discouraged," Bolt said. "I'm never worried until my coach gets worried, and my coach isn't worried, so I'm OK."

Said Glen Mills, who coaches both runners: "Usain, he has the experience, the ability, he has been there already. He might be a little off at the moment, but I'm sure when the time of delivery comes around, he'll be on top of his game."

The clock is ticking. As of Monday, there were 33 days until the start of the men's 100 heats at Olympic Stadium.

In the women's 200, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce ran a personal best 22.10 seconds to also complete the 100-200 sweep. She'll be joined by Sherone Simpson and two-time defending Olympic champion Veronica Campbell-Brown.

Fraser-Pryce took the world by surprise four years ago when she won the 100 at Beijing. Her next act could be this 200, her second-best event, where she beat Simpson with lots of room to spare, a 0.27-second margin.

"I'm still learning, you know," Fraser-Pryce said.

Bolt is supposedly beyond the learning stage. But now, the guessing game figures to take on Olympics-sized proportions.

Blake, Bolt and Mills all conceded that Blake came into these trials in better shape than the man whose marks ? 9.58 and 19.19 ? sit atop the record book.

So, was Bolt genuinely just coasting through into this weekend in front of all his home fans, making sure he made it, getting ready to defend his Olympic titles? Is his conditioning not up to snuff, and if so, is there time for him to get there? Or, might he be hurting, as it appeared when he was getting his leg worked on while lying on the track?

"I don't want to get into that," Bolt said. "I was just working (the leg) around for a few moments to get myself back together. I'm not far off. I can get it done."

Blake will be making his first trip to the Olympics, which can be a daunting prospect. After these pair of benchmark victories, he sounded ready for more work, not a celebration.

"It leaves me to get back into training," Blake said. "It's not over. I still have the Olympics to go."

On the other hand, if Bolt was feeling any sense that he had it made ? well, he no longer has to worry about that.

He said Sunday's race was lost in the curve ? the same curve Blake has been watching Bolt run for the past several months in practice, picking up tips, learning the nuances.

"I was very sad with my turn, it was awful, but I've been working more on the 100 meters," Bolt said. "I can't blame it on that, though. Just have to get my things together and get it done."

After Bolt's bad curve, he came into the straightaway with a deficit. Finally, over the last 50 meters, the Olympic champion started closing.

Like a racecar driver catching a glimpse of something lurking in his rearview mirror, Blake could see Bolt making up ground out of the corner of his eye.

The best ones know how to close things out.

"I felt him on my right-hand side. No need to panic," Blake said. "I just stayed focused."

___

Associated Press Writers Pat Graham in Eugene, Ore., and David McFadden in Kingston contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blake-wins-200-meters-goes-2-2-vs-005939152--oly.html

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Rate scandal may claim Barclays chairman

By Avril Ormsby and Steve Slater, Reuters

?LONDON -- Barclays Plc Chairman Marcus Agius is set to quit on Monday as the interest rate rigging scandal takes its first major scalp and threatens to widen to other banks, raising questions about the involvement of the Bank of England.

Agius, chairman at Barclays for 5-1/2 years, is expected to resign on Monday, a person familiar with the matter said.

Pressure has built on CEO Bob Diamond and Agius to quit following a $453 million fine for Barclays by British and U.S. regulators last week for submitting inaccurate submissions on the Libor interest rate.

A key conversation held in October 2008 that was last week highlighted in documents about the scandal was between Bank of England (BoE) Deputy Governor Paul Tucker and Diamond, people familiar with the matter said.

Some people at Barclays mistakenly believed the bank had been granted permission to submit artificially low Libor estimates after that conversation, the documents released last week showed.

Barclays has admitted it submitted artificially low estimates of its borrowing costs from late 2007 to May 2009 because it thought rivals were doing the same and its higher submissions made it look troubled.

The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement of facts document released after the fine that a conversation between a senior BoE official and a senior Barclays official on October 29, 2008 had encouraged the bank's submissions to be low.

The DoJ document said as the substance of the conversation was relayed to other Barclays' employees, some mistakenly believed they had been instructed by the BoE to lower Libor submissions.

Barclays has also admitted that some of its traders attempted to manipulate the setting of the London interbank offered rate (Libor), which is used worldwide as a benchmark for setting prices on about $350 trillion of derivatives and other financial products.

More than a dozen other banks are being investigated in the long-running global probe by authorities in North America, Europe and Japan, including Citigroup , HSBC , UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland , and analysts and bankers expect more big fines.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Source: http://marketday.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/01/12511094-barclays-chair-to-quit-as-interest-rate-scandal-widens?lite

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Las Vegas family's dream home a casualty in New Harmony fire ...

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Amy Beattie and her father, Bruce Beattie, find some of his burnt tools in the charred remains of Bruce's home Friday, June 29, 2012 in New Harmony."This was going to be his retirement home," said Amy Beattie.

New Harmony ? Bruce Beattie surveyed the wreckage of what used to be his home with sad and frustrated eyes while embracing his tearful daughter.

The Las Vegas resident said he believed it would only be a matter of time before a wildfire consumed his dream home, but the end came sooner than anyone, including himself, expected.

Beattie?s New Harmony neighbors called him Wednesday night after they noticed the rapidly spreading fire creeping closer to his home.

Then his friend, a Cedar City pilot, called to report that Beattie?s home, perched high on the side of a southern Utah mountain, was no more.

But Beattie stubbornly held out hope.

"Of course I didn?t want to believe it," he said Friday, as he returned to try to salvage whatever he could before looters could beat him to it. "After he sent me the picture, there wasn?t much hope left."

Little survived the devastating blaze.

By Friday, the same blaze that claimed Beattie?s home had destroyed six others, 22 outbuildings and numerous vehicles. It also injured one firefighter, who was expected to recover. It was about 70 percent contained by noon Friday, but patches of already charred brush threatened to re-engulf the neighborhood.

Dozens of firefighters remained at the scene of the more than 1,800 acre blaze, trying to prevent winds from stirring burned embers trapped beneath scorched debris into another raging inferno. Among those were Taiga Rohrer, a fire management officer with Zion National Park, bulldozer driver Ryan Southwick, of Kanab, who works in North Kaibab National Forest, and spotter Nick Hasty of Texas, who has relocated to the region for the summer.

The three men were positioned on one flank, close to a neighborhood, in an effort to ensure no other homes became causalities of the inferno.

story continues below

Rohrer said Wednesday night firefighters came face-to-face with 50- to 100-foot-tall flames and an unpredictable wind that kept pushing the fire in different directions.

"It was tough to get ahead of it," he said.

Southwick, aided by Hasty, his spotter, drove his bulldozer parallel along one of the flanks, clearing potentially flammable brush out of the way in an effort to keep the fire from getting any larger. Facing thick smoke, a pitch black night, an uncertain fiery path and firefighters on the ground fighting to stop the blaze, Hasty and other spotters helped direct the dozers? paths and ensure no firefighters were inadvertently run over.

"There?s a lot of trust that?s needed," Hasty said, noting that the first hours of a fire are the most dangerous for fire crews because communication is still being established and hundreds of firefighters are trying to get organized.

In all, about 200 firefighters responded to the New Harmony blaze, saving dozens of structures from annihilation.

And for many, including firefighters, there was a small glimmer of hope. Firefighters said those residents who ensured they had "defensible space" around their properties were able to help fire crews save their properties even though they had been safely evacuated hours before the fire even approached their homes.

"It?s obvious [from] some of the houses in here that?s what saved them," Rohrer said. In some cases flames burned mere feet from a home, before turning away.

Next Page >

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/54406120-78/fire-beattie-firefighters-blaze.html.csp

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Legal Gimmickry Rescues Obama | Right Wing News

Despite the celebrations among Democrats, yesterday a majority of Supreme Court justices ruled that the Constitution does not allow the government to force Americans to buy health insurance. However in providing the swing vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) Chief Justice John Roberts broke with the four other justices who shared that view by declaring that the methods chosen to get individuals to buy insurance were not penalties but taxes. He declared that the?government wasn?t legislating behavior, but simply taxing it. In reaching this tortured decision he erred by declaring the penalties to be taxes and then compounded the mistake by classifying them as ?indirect taxes? that are not imposed on individuals. Apparently Roberts feels that these two wrongs will make a right. But his mistake will cost this country dearly.

The Obama administration admits that because the law makes it illegal for insurance companies to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions it eliminates the incentive for healthy people to buy insurance. Any rational healthy person would simply forego expensive insurance until they were old enough or sick enough to actually need it. Since insurance companies need the money they make from healthy people to compensate for the money they lose from sick people, the plan would collapse if the government did not devise a mandate that would convince or compel all individuals to buy insurance.

In selling the plan to the public, President Obama repeatedly claimed that these burdens were penalties, not taxes. In addition to the stated intent of the lawmakers,?the standard legal definitions that separate taxes from penalties make it clear that the new financial burdens are penalties, not taxes. A tax is an exaction to raise revenue. If its primary purpose is to compel behavior then it is considered a penalty.

But Roberts argued that since the ?tax? on not buying is lower than the actual cost of insurance, then the penalty will not force anyone to buy. He did not specify a level at which the ?tax? would become determinative thereby becoming an unconstitutional penalty. However, since Congress can raise the tax anytime it wants, the mechanism is already in place for it to do exactly what the Supreme Court ruled it can?t. Does Roberts expect to review the case every time Congress raises the penalty? The fact that Roberts feels that the penalty is ineffective is irrelevant. It is not the Court?s job to judge the efficacy of legislation, just its constitutionality.

Robert?s conclusion that the Federal government can?t require that people buy health insurance but can impose a tax on those who don?t is a distinction without a difference. After all, if the tax was high enough, individuals would have no choice but to comply. It has been clearly established that Congress can?t do with the tax code what it lacks the constitutional authority to do with legislation. That is why the Constitution had to be amended in order to ban the sale of alcohol. Prohibition would have been much easier to achieve by simply raising alcohol taxes sufficiently to eliminate its sale. But such a tax would have been unconstitutional. The same principal applies to health insurance. Congress can?t simply use taxes to force Americans to buy health insurance.

Even if you buy Robert?s logic that the penalty is a tax, he still should have ruled it unconstitutional because all direct taxes, except income taxes as described by the 16th Amendment, must be apportioned. The government?s power to tax is not absolute. Taxes fall into two classes, direct and indirect, and there are specific rules for each. Alcohol and tobacco taxes are indirect taxes, and are subject to the rule of uniformity. You only pay them if you buy the products, and you do so indirectly through the merchants who sell them. If you do not buy the products you pay nothing.

However, the only way to avoid paying the tax for not buying health insurance is to buy a product that you do not want. So either way you pay. And since the taxpayer pays the tax directly to the government, it?s a direct tax, which must be apportioned by state according to each state?s percentage of the nation?s total population.

Roberts allowed the government to free itself from this straightjacket by redefining the meaning of a direct tax. He asserted that the tax for not buying health insurance is indirect because it affects not all Americans but only those who fail to buy health insurance and who have sufficient income to pay.? But the percentage of people who are subject to a tax has nothing to do with the class to which it belongs. The 19th Century income tax was declared unconstitutional because it was an unapportioned direct tax. The fact that less than 2% of the population was initially subject to it was beside the point.

As with Prohibition, to impose an unapportioned direct income taxes on individuals the government had to pass the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. It should have to do it again for a direct tax on those who fail to buy health insurance.

The Supreme Court has ruled (incorrectly in my opinion) that estate and gift taxes fall into the category of indirect taxes, even though they are paid directly to the government. The court ruled that these are not direct taxes on individuals, but excise taxes levied on the privilege of giving gifts or bequeathing property. They could try to apply the same twisted logic to health insurance, but it would be quite a stretch to classify the right not to buy health insurance as a privilege.

In the final analysis, since the court ruled that the government cannot force Americans to buy health insurance, and that the stated purpose of the Affordable Care Act is to do precisely that, it is clearly unconstitutional, regardless of the legal trickery the court used to declare otherwise.

If the government had tried to slip an unconstitutional penalty by the Court by disguising it as a tax, then Obama may have been on the wrong end of yesterday?s decision. Instead he chose a losing argument but Roberts found a loophole to uphold it anyway. Despite his stated preference for restraint, this is the ultimate in judicial activism. This awful ruling makes it more evident that the ballot box provides the only remedy for freedom loving Americans.

Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital and host of the nationally syndicated Peter Schiff Show, broadcasting live from 10am to noon ET every weekday, and streaming at www.schiffradio.com.

For in-depth analysis of this and other investment topics, subscribe to?Peter Schiff?s?Global Investor?newsletter.?CLICK HERE?for your free subscription.

Source: http://www.rightwingnews.com/column-2/legal-gimmickry-rescues-obama/

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