But how the majority arrived at their decision is very interesting: basically, they rejected the Obama administration's argument that the Individual Mandate (requiring all citizens to purchase health insurance) was constitutional under the Commerce Clause and took it upon themselves to declare it was constitutional if it is considered a tax, which they (the majority on the Supreme Court) decided it was. From Scotus Blog via Instapundit:
In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding. . . . Yes, to answer a common question, the whole ACA is constitutional, so the provision requiring insurers to cover young adults until they are 26 survives as well.And here's the catch: when arguing for ObamaCare, the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress who pushed this act swore up and down that it was not a tax. In fact, they knew that if it were called a tax, there was no chance at all that it would be approved in Congress. So, now we find out more about Nancy Pelosi's famous statement that "we've got to pass this bill to find out what's in it".
Again via Instapundit and Reason, here is new conservative hero, Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA):
“In selling Obamacare, Congressional Democrats and President Obama assured the American people that it was not a tax. Today, the Supreme Court ruled it was, in fact, a tax. This tax was imposed on the American people amidst an extended recession and is one of the many reasons our economy remains stagnant under President Obama’s leadership."But, my friends, all is not lost. As Ace says regarding this case,
...but remember, it was only Plan B, and we had little confidence in it until this past March.Let's do it.
Plan A was always to win the Senate and the White House and flush this piece of shit down the toilet through reconciliation.
The whole opinion is here with the dissenting opinion starting around pg 120 http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf
ReplyDeleteI don't have the ability to fully articulate the magnitude of the impact that this decision will have on every American's lives in the coming years. This completely redefines the relationship between the individual and the government. This redefines the size and scope of the powers of the government. The government now has the ability to punish or reward individual's behavior. Combine this with Obama's recent actions on immigration and the coming economic reset, and one can see that America is rapidly headed towards having a very different type of country.
This is the largest tax increase in human history according to Rush Limbaugh. I didn't see any actual numbers to back this claim up.
On the politics, I heard that this ruling is acutally bad for Obama's relection chances. But even if Obama is replaced by the socialist Romney and Obamacare is completely repealed by the same man who created and implemented the precursor to Obamacare and who as recently as 2009 said that he would keep the good parts of the bill, the precedent that this ruling by the supreme court will have far reaching consequences on individual liberty in the coming years. Anything short of another revolution will not take America off the road that we are on.
People really need to start educating themselves about history and economics, and they need to not be afarid to believe in things that seem impossible. Now is the time to prepare yourself mentally for the new world that is headed our way.
Stop the bickering! We here at RTP's are firm constitutionalists. We must stick to our foundations. If this is constitutional then we must stand by it.
ReplyDeleteComrades! Join me and report any violators who do not fully comply with this law!
It of course doesn't need to be said that just because a law is constituional doesn't mean it's a good law, Eighteenth Amendment for example.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Jeff on the severity of this law, but Romney says he will repeal on his first day in office. So, we need to get him elected.
Obamacare is not even the real problem. Obamacare will be gotten rid of. The case law precedent that has been set is the real problem.
ReplyDeleteI was kidding when I gave my support to Obamacare by the way.
ReplyDeleteI don't consider this law as constituional.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing at this point the Republicans chose the creator of Obamacare to be their candidate.
As Sarah Palin said " Obama lied. Freedom died." or something like that.
This creates vast-new-unlimited powers for congress. This day will be remembered to future historians hundreds of years from now as the day that freedom reached a major, one of several, mortal wound and was a pivitol moment that will mark the decline of the world into tyranny and the beginning of a new age. In light of the massive U.S debt of around 50-100 trillion dollars, I can easily see this precedent being used in the future to force Americans to buy U.S. treasury notes, or in other words our debt, or face a tax.
This law was sold to the public as a new right/freedom from having to worry about having acess to health care. As Hayek notes: "Indeed, it could almost be said that wherever liberty as we know it has been destroyed, this has been done in the name of some new freedom [or right] promised to the people."
The swing vote was put on the bench by a republican president.
ReplyDeleteI expected you were ToeJamm, but as Administrator, I felt it was my duty to make sure all our lurking viewers (some might call them The Fans) knew that ObamaCare was not loved on this blog!
ReplyDeleteI was going to do an update, but I can't do it from 'work', so I'll do as comment. After some time to analyze the decision, a number of conservative and semi-conservative writers are praising Justice Roberts' Decision as a stroke of genius reining in Big Government liberals attempts at government expansion using the Commerce Clause. They aren't saying we should be happy about the law, but that the way Roberts twisted it, and denied the use of Commerce Clause to justify is a sea-change in the abuse of this clause.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Will - ObamaCare Ruling a Substantial Conservative Win
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/commerce-361220-mandate-court.html
Charles Krauthammer - Roberts Rules To Avoid The Appearance Of Politics In His Court
http://news.investors.com/article/616497/201206281813/roberts-ducks-another-bush-gore-with-court-ruling.htm
Sean Trende - The Chief Justice's Gambit
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/06/28/the_chief_justices_gambit_114646.html
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ReplyDeleteFrom everything I read, Roberts expanded the powers that the government has on a massive scale. He did not reign in big government. The American people were lied to and deceived. The law was not written as a tax and when asked if it was a tax Obama denied it. Roberts rewrote the law so that it could be found constitutional. There is not anything good in what happened here. It is a massive defeat for liberty and the concept of limited government.
ReplyDelete"Look, if the chief justice of the Supreme Court is gonna say that it's his job to find every way possible to make sure that the act remains constitutional as opposed to throwing it out, then you got to do that. You've got to find the act constitutional. You've got to do whatever you can to make sure the act is sustained or survives. Well, let me translate that for you. What that means is it is now the self-appointed role of the Supreme Court to find ways to uphold unconstitutional laws and regulations. In which case, we don't need a Supreme Court. The Congress can now just pass anything, if this is gonna be consistent from the court. If whatever they pass, the court's gonna bend every which way possible to find it constitutional -- including rewriting it, which is what happened. You talk about activism? By Justice Roberts stretching as far as he can to make sure he's not called an activist, he ends up being the most activist judge on the Supreme Court I can recall since Brennan or Douglas! For crying out loud, he just rewrote it, in order to save the act. It is their job to uphold unconstitutional laws and regulations? That's a new one on me. I thought in Marbury v. Madison, the court assigned to itself the role of determining whether laws were constitutional or not. Apparently Marbury v. Madison is out now, and Roberts v. America is in. In which case, the court's role is to find any way possible, without limits, to uphold unconstitutional law."
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/06/29/marbury_v_madison_is_out_and_roberts_v_america_is_in
I'm not sure how he even found this thing to be a tax. A tax has to be levied by the government and contribute to state revenue. How does paying insurance companies contribute to state revenue?
ReplyDeleteConservatives everywhere are trying to spin this as a good thing. "The conservative base is rallying!", "Obama got caught raising massive taxes!" "Surely this will help the conservatives win and then we can repeal this thing!"
What if Obama wins? Imagine how shitty shit will be. I was prepared for this thing to get shot down and he would still win. If this law stands (which it has) and Obama wins, we are screwed.
We are screwed even if Obama looses because the prescedent has already been set. A system necessary for total control over the lives of Americans is almost completely set up waiting for a crisis to fully activate it. The government controls the banking industry, 1/6 of the economy through health care, the majority of the auto industry, the energy industry, it has the ability to take complete control over the internet, the ability to detain an American citizen indefintely without trial, to assinate Americans, it controls the education system that indocrinates Americans, the student loan business, and now the ability to force Americans to engage in an activity or behavior that the government demands, and the list could go on and on. All that is needed is a crisis--an economic one is not that far off down the road-- to fully engage this system.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-supreme-court-and-natural-law
"In lieu of the upholding of the Affordable Care Act, it’s now worth asking what the U.S. government can’t do to Americans. As of right now, a sitting president can call for the indefinite detainment and execution of both citizens and non citizens alike with no due process. The band of thieves known as Congress can force the public to purchase a good or service and order its goons to read private communications without prior consent or knowledge. The dollar is constantly inflated to the benefit of major financial institutions, thus destroying the purchasing power of the money Americans are forced into using. The American people are no longer afforded their rights to their property, privacy, or own lives. Those discretions are currently in the hands of the various marionettes of Washington. Whether it is occupied by outright fascists or closet socialists, the state has no regard for liberty in its incremental quest for omnipotence."
We are not screwed if we take back Senate and Presidency. But only if we do those two things. I am convinced that Republicans will know what they've been elected to do.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that this is do or die for our country this November though.
Good editorial in the Wall Street Journal arguing against the people I link to above:
ReplyDeletehttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303561504577496603068605864.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
It should be read in its entirety, but summary paragraphs:
Chief Justice Roberts's ruling is careless about these bedrock tax questions, and they are barely addressed by either the Court's liberal or conservative wings. His ruling, with its multiple contradictions and inconsistencies, reads if it were written by someone affronted by the government's core constitutional claims but who wanted to uphold the law anyway to avoid political blowback and thus found a pretext for doing so in the taxing power.
If this understanding is correct, then Chief Justice Roberts behaved like a politician, which is more corrosive to the rule of law and the Court's legitimacy than any abuse it would have taken from a ruling that President Obama disliked. The irony is that the Chief Justice's cheering section is praising his political skills, not his reasoning. Judges are not supposed to invent political compromises.
"It is not our job," the Chief Justice writes, "to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices." But the Court's most important role is to protect liberty when the political branches exceed the Constitution's bounds, not to bless their excesses in the interests of political or personal expediency or both. On one of the most consequential cases he will ever hear, Chief Justice Roberts failed this most basic responsibility.
The concept of freedom and limited government are screwed even if the Republicans take back the senate and the presidency. The precedent is already set with this rulling. In terms of where the republican party will take America in the long term run, there is no difference between the deomcracts. The sooner people wake up to this reality the better they will be able to position themselves to be successful in the new paradigm that is headed our way. The Republicans at best will repeal parts of Obamacare and not move towards decreasing the role of government in the health care industry, they might take a few steps back after obama took two miles forward but the there will be a net gain towards more government involvement. Obamacare is the natural result to be expected from decades of government involvement in the health care industry, known as the crisis of intervention.
ReplyDeleteThe republican party has already shown that it does not have the political will or desire to make the necessary changes to change the direction that America is headed as evident with the debt ceiling issue. I believe that if Romney loose in Novemeber or when he shows that he is a liberal and not willing to make the tough decesions, there will be calls for a third party.
At least it will be fun to watch all of the fat Americans get upset when the goverment starts making it unafforadable or banning foods that are deemed unhealthy. Maybe there will be a lot of fat people rioting in the streets. And it will be good that there will be a lot less fat people. And it will be fun to watch people be shocked who think that all of this is impossible because it sounds crazy. This could never happen anyways.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57464549/roberts-switched-views-to-uphold-health-care-law/?pageNum=4&tag=contentMain;contentBody
"Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court's four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama's health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations. "
"The conservatives refused to join any aspect of his opinion, including sections with which they agreed, such as his analysis imposing limits on Congress' power under the Commerce Clause, the sources said."
"Instead, the four joined forces and crafted a highly unusual, unsigned joint dissent. They deliberately ignored Roberts' decision, the sources said, as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate."
"Some of the conservatives, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, deliberately avoid news articles on the court when issues are pending (and avoid some publications altogether, such as The New York Times). They've explained that they don't want to be influenced by outside opinion or feel pressure from outlets that are perceived as liberal.
But Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As chief justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the court, and he also is sensitive to how the court is perceived by the public.
There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the court - and to Roberts' reputation - if the court were to strike down the mandate. Leading politicians, including the president himself, had expressed confidence the mandate would be upheld."