From Paben
The Wall Street Journal has an article about the Supreme Court’s consideration of the health care overhaul, and I thought it was a really well done article that included some legal history. Click here to read it.
The requirement in “Obamacare,” as it’s dubbed, that people have health insurance or pay a fee is the central dispute. It involves the power of the federal government versus powers reserved for the states, as well as the use of the Commerce Clause in the Constitution (in bold below):
(The Congress shall have the power) to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes
Today, the oral arguments in Washington, D.C., will focus on whether the court can hear the cause until 2014, when most of the law takes effect.
I’m really curious whether there are any Politics blog readers who like the mandate but don’t think it’s constitutional that the federal government imposed it, or whether there are readers who dislike it but think it is constitutional.
No Severance Clause?
“Are you serious?” Nancy Pelosi
“Interstate Commerce Clause” found in Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 3:
“To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;”
This is what James Madison had to say about it:
“Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the nonimporting, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged.” – Letter to Cabell, February 13, 1829
Therefore IMHO the supreme court will rule that the commerce clause was not ever intended nor does it give the federal government the right to mandate health care because the bottom line is:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The beauty and strengths of our constitution is the limits that it placed on the federal government.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
But AFY,
You have to be able to read 1st, a difficult local floating mental health tax question
“…and with Indian Tribes.”
Then Comes a Super Committee?
Scientific Thought?
“Where the disease is most deeply seated, there it will be slowest in eradication.”
Thomas Jefferson
“For openers, the ACA is subject to the law of unintended consequences. The law may proclaim that it protects patients when it in fact it restricts the health-care options of those it’s intended to protect. The ACA says that it will increase access to affordable care when in fact its endless mandates will drive up the cost of care. The false advertising of the ACA’s title conceals a wealth of difficulties with its internal design, which make its scheme unsustainable in the long run….
One unfortunate byproduct of the obsessive emphasis on the individual mandate—the requirement to have health-care insurance or pay a fine—is that it diverts attention away from the many other unsound provisions of the law. The Supreme Court need not fear that striking down Title I of the ACA will deny Americans needed health care. Rather, its implementation will have that effect…..
http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/112101
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
There are two fundamental questions with Obamacare, is it legal and is it good health care policy. In terms of the legal question the overarching issue is there anything that the Federal government cannot dictate. If the answer is that they can do anything they want then the question becomes mute (and by the way you will have no freedom in the end and the world will look a lot like the Hunger Games). If you believe that the Federal government cannot do anything it wants then the question becomes where do you draw the line. Those arguing that it is not constitutional are arguing that it has crossed the imaginary line and the Federal government has usurped too much power. This is a slippery slope and what the Supreme Court decides will be absolutely important for the future. For those arguing that it is perfectly within the right of the constitution then the next question is where then is the line that the Federal government cannot pass.
In terms of whether Obamacare is good policy or not is the other question. In the end it will never work as intended and will create far more problems than it solves. Romney has it right. You deal with this at the state level and let states experiment with different solutions, some will work and some will not, but that is far better than messing up the entire national health care system which is what Obama did. There is no way to feasible execute a national health care system for 330 million people without having the bureaucracy so enormous that it cannot solve any problem. Do we really want our health care system to be in the hands of 536 Washington DC politicians that cannot even manage some of the most basic tasks.
In my fevered imagination, the Roberts Court finds not only against “Obamacare”, but also against Wickard v. Filburn, returning the United States to an interpretation of Article 1, Section 8 more closely aligned to the intentions of the Founders.
But Dave,
Everyone love’s a democrat, hope and change, like Filburn
Penalizing the farmer, for farming? Or, today penalizing the doctor, for doctoring?
How do these quotas work, between a politicians ears?
Vote Justice Jackson and the New Deal, who then got a little busy in Germany a couple years later, cause and effect, where grey matter, has the smallest quota of all.
On May 19, 1941, the Secretary of Agriculture made a radio address to the wheat farmers of the United States in which he advocated approval of the quotas and called attention to the pendency of the amendment of May 26, 1941, which had at the time been sent by Congress to the White House, and pointed out its provision for an increase in the loans on wheat to 85 percent of parity. He made no mention of the fact that it also increased the penalty from 15 cents a bushel to one-half of the parity loan rate of about 98 cents, but stated that…
Because of the uncertain world situation, we deliberately planted several million extra acres of wheat. . . . Farmers should not be penalized because they have provided insurance against shortages of food…”
AIG, too big to fail, and where everyone thinks you can insure the uninsurable, proven in every democracy forever… ask Justice Jackson, about those German Health Care Quotas, 1945.
Obama was right on the individual mandate…before he was wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOaLLdpVzAs&feature=player_embedded
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Just in from CNN!
“This was a train wreck for the Obama administration. This law looks like it’s going to be struck down,” Toobin said on CNN. “All of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong.”
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/03/toobin-health-law-looks-like-its-going-to-be-struck-118811.html
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Verrilli had a bad day today: http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/solicitor-general-coughs-stumbles-stutters-throu
Sounds like someone did a voodoo curse on him!
That tongue thing (in The Devil’s Advocate) may work after all!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Every freaking Republican rallied for an individual mandate back in 1993 when Clinton was struggling to reform the health insurance industry.
But Obama isn’t what you’d call a legal scholar – at least not like our own in-house comment-squad.
Come on rubie,
Freakin is correct, however legal scholar is very questionable, for any government attorney R or D.
2 MR. CLEMENT: Justice Alito, that is exactly
3 the government’s argument. It’s an extraordinarily
4 illogical argument.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74543.html#ixzz1qPDVHUEo
JUSTICE GINSBURG: I thought — I thought
that Wickard was you must buy; we are not going to let
you use the home-grown wheat. You have got to go out in
the market and buy that wheat that you don’t want….
JUSTICE BREYER: I see the point. You can go back to, go back to Justice Kagan. Don’t forget her question.
JUSTICE KAGAN: I’ve forgotten my question.
(Laughter.)
MR. CARVIN: I — I was facing the same dilemma, Justice Kagan.
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Let me — let me ask a question I asked Mr. Clement. It just seems -
JUSTICE KAGAN: See what it means to be the junior justice?
(Laughter.)
From across the pond:
“Is the US Supreme Court about to detonate a thermonuclear bomb under this autumn’s general election campaign by striking down the core of the Obama administration’s healthcare reforms?
To listen to the legal pundits as they came blinking out of the hallowed halls of the US Supreme Court yesterday, this is now a very real possibility – and certainly far, far more of a possibility than anyone expected going into this case…..
But, whatever your position, one thing is clear: if the Supreme Court strikes down the ACA when it rules in June it would set the election on fire: humiliating Obama, giving Romney a rallying cry but above all emphasising just what is at stake in a general election…”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/100147403/if-the-us-supreme-court-strikes-down-obamacare-this-presidential-election-will-go-nuclear/
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
AFY–not denying any of that, but I think the Dems would use this as a rallying cry too. Lots of people do want affordable health care. Anyhow, doesn’t Massachusetts have an individual mandate?
Mass has an individual mandate, yes, under the US constitution it is constitutional for a state to do that, state rights allows for all the states to be incubators as solutions to our problems, that way if it’s a failure only one state gets stuck and not the whole nation, another beauty of our Forefathers gift of limited and separated government.
John no argument on the dems using healthcare as a rallying cry but IMHO single payer is a loser! The biggest damage done by the Supremes with a unconstitutional decision is of course to the O, instead of wasting so much time ramming his version of healthcare down the throats of anyone and everyone maybe that time would have been better spent improving the economy or building more pipe lines, don’t ya know!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Obama is nothing but a tool of Big Pharma. We don’t have “Health Care” in America, we have “Disease Care” Big Pharma doesn’t benefit when people get healthy and STAY healthy, they benefit when people get SICK and STAY SICK. So called “Obamacare” is a totalitarian SCAM that seeks to FORCE people to buy into a medical system that many do not BELIEVE IN. I’ll be DAMNED if the government is going to ORDER me to buy ANYTHING, especially insurance that I don’t WANT or NEED!!!
I’d rather spend my money on dietary supplements, on a gym membership, on a vacation to relax than to WASTE it on so called “insurance” that would pay for mainstream medical “services” that I neither want or need! My life was saved 35 years ago via a suppressed alternative medical approach called orthomolecular medicine after mainstream medicine almost KILLED me, and now this communist DICTATOR, this TRAITOR, who is more than likely a microchipped Manchurian candidate who definitly was not BORN here and is therefor not even ELIGIBLE to be President thinks he’s going to FORCE me to buy so called “Healthcare” insurance that would do nothing but enrich the coffers of Big Pharma while advancing the GENOCIDE Agenda of the United Nations as reflected in UN Agenda 21, the 40 Chapter blueprint for population control?
No WAY!!! If the Supremes fail to SCUTTLE this BALDERDASH, I’m OUTA HERE!! If the Supremes fail to SCUTTLE this piece of TRASH, and if this communist change agent is reinstalled on us via he Bilderberg Group or otherwise manages to continue to usurp the high office of the Presidency, I will LEAVE THE COUNTRY.
Gun Owners of America opposes so called OBAMACARE and so do I, for MANY reason, not the least of which is that it ATTACKS gun owners! I’m a member of GOA and also JPFO (Jews for the Protection of Firearm Ownership) even though I’m not a Jew, I remember what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto where the only Jew who survived were those who REFUSED Hitler’s order to DISARM.
Well I refuse OBAMA’s order to disarm, and that smarmy bastard is the next Hitler. Thats why they have swing gates at the Border crossings going into Point Roberts and into Blaine, have you noticed? They now have big yellow metal gates in place to totally CLOSE THE ROAD!! DHS and ICE have also just signed an open ended contract with ATK to buy 450 Million Rounds of .40 caliber ammunition—- see http://www.marketwatch.com/story/atk-secures-40-caliber-ammunition-contract-with-department-of-homeland-security-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-dhs-ice-2012-03-12
Meanwhile, Obama has just signed a new Executive Order that even a Democrat Attorney has termed “Martial Law Lite” https://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/a-democrat-lawyer-calls-obamas-executive-order-martial-law-lite/
Call me paranoid if you want to, but just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean the government isn’t out to get you!
The most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to HELP you!!!”
Stark and Paben: Doesn’t any of this seem newsworthy to you? I emailed you guys a week ago to discuss the brand spankin’ new swing gates in place at the Point Roberts and Peace Arch border crossings, and I told you about the contract ATK has with DHS and ICE for 450 Million rounds of .40 caliber ammo, and I told you about the Obamination’s new EO that even a Democrat termed “Martial Law Lite”, yet nary a PEEP outa either of you. What gives ‘eh? I’ve got the same complaint about Meg Olson the editor of the All Point Bulletin here in Point Roberts. Its high time so called journalists got on the STICK and started reporting the news that REALLY MATTERS!!!
While I’m on a roll, let me throw one more thing up on the wall for the benefit of the blind: check THIS out since we’re talkin’ about traitors here— how about the O man’s efforts to give 7 Alaskan oil rich islands to Russia via the State Department? I just called the Whitehouse Comments line to fuse the phone lines over ALL of this: http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/obamas-giveaway-oil-rich-islands-to-russia/ This man is a communist traitor from the darkest, most stygian depths of hell.
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