Thomas Sowell has a new column out offering some context about the court rulings on ObamaCare and whether they qualify as "judicial activism":

"Judicial activism" is a term coined years ago by critics of judges who make rulings based on their own beliefs and preferences, rather than on the law as written. It is not a very complicated notion, but political rhetoric can confuse and distort anything.

In recent years, a brand-new definition of "judicial activism" has been created by the political left, so that they can turn the tables on critics of judicial activism.

The new definition of "judicial activism" defines it as declaring laws unconstitutional.

Having succeeded in preventing H&R Block and HSBC from offering refund anticipation loans, the left is now going after another tax preparer, Jackson Hewitt. A Bloomberg news article participates in the pile-on:

To qualify for a $1,561.22 loan at Jackson Hewitt, a taxpayer needs a minimum federal tax refund of $2,000. The finance charge is $61.22 with an estimated annualized percentage rate of 124 percent. There's an additional $49.95 in fees for the bank's administration and Jackson Hewitt's transmission, according to the signage in the office.

My favorite answer to the complaint about the annualized percentage rate came in a comment on an earlier post here about H&R Block:

At a recent social psychology convention, a group of 1,000 psychologists in attendance included only three self-identified political conservatives, John Tierney reports in a New York Times column:

Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) told the audience that he had been corresponding with a couple of non-liberal graduate students in social psychology whose experiences reminded him of closeted gay students in the 1980s. He quoted — anonymously — from their e-mails describing how they hid their feelings when colleagues made political small talk and jokes predicated on the assumption that everyone was a liberal.

More: "In a 2007 study of both elite and non-elite universities, Dr. Gross and Dr. Simmons reported that nearly 80 percent of psychology professors are Democrats, outnumbering Republicans by nearly 12 to 1."

Forty-one "prominent securities lawyers and professionals" have written to Congress asking that the Securities Exchange Commission be allowed to fund itself at whatever level it wants, without congressional appropriations or authorizations, the New York Times reports.

The Times's dispatch leaves out the doubtful constitutionality of this scheme and also omits the possibility that these "securities lawyers and professionals" who support the idea are hoping that SEC officials will remember their position and look kindly upon them then next time they have a matter before the commission. It's one thing to have the regulators captured by industry they regulate; in this case the industry seems to have been captured by the regulators.

President Obama spoke today at the Chamber of Commerce (the text is here) and one thing that was remarkable is how many of the businesses he mentioned by name are essentially his cronies. Here is the key paragraph:

Right now, businesses across this country are proving that America can compete. Caterpillar is opening a new plant to build excavators in Texas that used to be shipped from Japan. In Tennessee, Whirlpool is opening their first new US factory in more than a decade. Dow is building a new plant in Michigan to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles. A company called Geomagic, a software maker, decided to close down its overseas centers in China and Europe and move their R&D to the United States.

This YouTube video shows pretty effectively that President Obama's budget cuts aren't that much in the great scheme of things.

A couple of corrections are in order, though. First, in the section on entitlement spending — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — is the claim that President Obama couldn't cut that even if he wanted to. Not so — part of what a President does is try to get Congress to pass laws. These programs were created by laws enacted by Congress and signed into law by presidents, and the spending can be adjusted by laws, too. That was part of what Mr. Obama claimed to be doing in the health care law.

President Obama gave a pre-Superbowl interview to Fox News's Bill O'Reilly. Highlights:

Mr. Obama on the risk of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Egypt: "There are a whole bunch of educators and civil society in Egypt that wants to come to the fore as well." Yeah, if we could only put some college professors in charge there like we have a law professor in charge here, it'd work out great.

Mr. Obama on ObamaCare: "What the American people have said is, we want cost controls on health care." I don't recall the American people having said any such thing. The American people may be annoyed that their health care costs keep going up, but it's a big leap from that to government-imposed "cost controls." "Controls" is a big-government word, evoking Nixon's wage and price controls or a "command-and-control" economy.

The New York Times has an editorial noticing the debate over whether cities and states should be allowed to declare bankruptcy. "The latest pernicious idea, pushed by Newt Gingrich, Jeb Bush and several members of Congress, would allow the states to declare bankruptcy, for the principal purpose of tearing up union contracts and negating pension obligations," the Times says. "Though the bankruptcy proposal has not caught fire in Washington, it demonstrates that some conservatives are serious about experimenting with volatile new ideas."

Investors have "a $102 billion bet" on higher prices in silver and gold, Bloomberg News reports. It's interesting to think about what that money could do if it were invested in startup companies, or even in stocks and bonds of operating businesses seeking to finance expansion. As it is, the money finances some security guards at bank vaults, the operations and advertising of some ETF providers, and probably provides some incentives for some miners and scrap jewelry buyers. But in terms of financing economic growth and job creation, this is money that the federal government, by creating doubts about inflation risk and the value of the dollar, has in a way pushed off the table.

"U.S. to force Wall Street to defer half of bonuses," is the headline over a Reuters dispatch that begins, "U.S. regulators will propose on Monday that executives at the largest financial institutions have half of their bonuses deferred for at least three years as part of efforts to curb excessive risk taking, according to two people familiar with proposal. The proposal, to be unveiled at a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp board meeting, applies to top executives at financial companies with $50 billion or more in assets such as Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N)."

The New York Times celebrates President Reagan's 100th birthday by publishing in its Sunday magazine an interview with a filmmaker who says of Reagan:

He presented himself as the friend to Main Street America, and yet that aw-shucks persona ended up packaging policies and programs that were at times deeply injurious to the very people he swore to serve. After all, Reaganomics set in motion one of the largest wealth redistributions in American history, away from the poor and toward the rich.

This doesn't even make any sense. If the poor are really poor, they don't have a large amount of "wealth" to redistribute to the rich. The Times doesn't ask the filmmaker for any facts to substantiate the claim. Presumably the reference is to Reagan's tax cuts, and the assumption seems somehow to be that the money the government was taking in taxes from "the rich" somehow belonged to the poor until the government let the "rich" keep more of what they earned, but that's quite an interpretive leap.

The CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, Peter Schiff, rang the other day to offer his thoughts in response to the coverage here of another gold and silver company, Goldline. Mr. Schiff, who also has a radio show and who ran for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Connecticut, said his company sells $10 million to $20 million worth of gold a month, though not "numismatics," or rare or old collectible coins of the sort sold by Goldline.

The coverage here of Goldline, a big advertiser on conservative Internet, radio and cable television, was prompted initially by Rep. Anthony Weiner's plan for a congressional hearing targeting the company for what the congressman claimed were "aggressive sales tactics" to sell "overpriced gold coins." Goldline defended its practices and said it was being singled out for advertising on conservative shows.

One more point about weather and jobs: Canada, where the winter weather is as bad or worse as in the United States, added 69,200 jobs in January 2011, more than expected and more than America added. So blaming the weather for poor job creation in America just doesn't make sense. They have the same weather, or worse, on the other side of the U.S.-Canada border, and they seem to have managed to create jobs up there in January just fine.

Kudos to Mayor Bloomberg for standing up against those who want to outlaw Walmart in New York City. Reports the Wall Street Journal:

"This city should be open to business for anyone who wants to come here," Mr. Bloomberg said at a separate news conference. "You should let the marketplace decide."

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times both blame the weather for anemic job-creation numbers. "The U.S. economy added few jobs in January as stormy weather likely kept people out of work," is the way the Journal article begins. "Weather hurt U.S. Job Growth in January," is the headline over the New York Times article.