Late in the fall of 1988 the accounting firm, Coopers & Lybrand (C&L), won a competitive award to construct a computer system that collected the monthly security and loan information relating to Ginnie Mae’s mortgage-backed security program. As a C&L consultant with a math major and a Wharton M.B.A., I was put in charge of testing the system as it was being developed.

The interpretation of the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution has been a wild ride with serious implications. The clause grants Congress the power to “regulate commerce . . . among the several States”. For decades it has been used to justify the federal government’s regulation of certain aspects of the economy. Recently, ObamaCare legislated the individual mandate, which will fine people for not obtaining health insurance beginning in 2014. The administration points to the Commerce Clause as their Constitutional right to impose the individual mandate and referred to the fine as a “tax” in court to defend the action as government’s “power to lay and collect taxes”.

Yet there is an even easier and more efficient way for government to collect tax revenues: a Fair Tax; a single broad national consumption tax on retail sales to replace all federal income taxes. A Fair Tax would be collected by merchants and then distributed to the government. Imagine it: a world with no tax returns for individuals, only for retail businesses. It sounds so simple. Surely it wouldn’t work, or wouldn’t produce enough revenue, or somehow make the United States fall to her knees, right? Well, no actually, simple works just fine in this case.

Existing home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, dropped 27.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million units in July from a downwardly revised 5.26 million in June, and are 25.5 percent below the 5.14 million-unit level in July 2009.

Where is Howard Beale when we need him?  Two years into the Greatest Recession Since the Great Depression (GRSGD) and our financial leaders are still telling us that we need to be patient while waiting for our economic recovery.

Rand Paul just cannot catch a break in the media. It all started after his primary victory over Trey Grayson when he told Rachel Maddow he philosophically disagreed with one out of the 10 titles to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he was pretty much tarred and feathered constantly for an entire week of 24 hour news cycles.

Mortgage debt in the United States (currently more than $10 trillion) has grown to the point that it is nearly the same size as our national debt (in fact, a few years ago, U.S. mortgage debt actually successfully passed our national debt), and it has only been as a result of the new Administration’s debt spending that our national debt has regained the lead in the race to see which can account for the highest amount of our economic debt.

Peter Schiff just lost the Republican nod for US Senator in Connecticut. If someone ever embodied the antithesis to the nation’s current approach, it is Schiff.

Today however, the Obama administration is facing lawsuits from 21 states over the mandate. So how do they defend it? Under the taxing powers of Congress of course.

Currently, public initiatives offer free, or heavily subsidized, birth control in some states through organizations like Planned Parenthood. With most state budgets in the tank, these options may not be there forever. Some religious groups scoff at the idea of publicly-funded birth control as it flies in the face of their spiritual beliefs; and more seriously, public financing for abortion. We can save abortion for another day, however, it’s safe to say you won’t find too many public health experts on the platform that distributing birth control is a bad idea.