I haven’t been this nervous…
…about a pending SCOTUS decision since Bush v. Gore.
And back then I was on the other side.
[ADDENDUM: It occurs to me that I need to explain why I feel this degree of nervousness.
It’s not about Obamacare, although that does matter to me. But whatever way the Court rules, the ultimate fate of Obamacare will be determined by the upcoming election. If the Democrats are victorious, Obamacare can be easily fixed to eliminate the individual mandate and call it a tax, if need be. If Republicans take control, the bill can be repealed or unfunded, even if SCOTUS decides to uphold its constitutionality tomorrow.
I’m far more concerned with the precedent the Court will set regarding the further expansion of the Commerce Clause. If the Court fails to declare a federal mandate of this type unconstitutional, that would be an enormous triumph for “progressives”—far beyond the momentary victory of the Court’s upholding Obamacare.]
I do not believe in the religion of politics.
So, while I think that Obamacare is bad and unnecessary legislation, I’m not putting much credence into the notion that the SCOTUS decision will impact my life in any particularly important way.
I want less of everything from the government. In that respect, I hope the Court dumps this pantload of government intrustion into our lives.
But, I have very little faith that Republicans are committed to limited government, so I’m not expecting salvation from either side.
I will resist the urge to party if I get want I want. As soon as the Republicans get their chance, I will watch them like a hawk. They like big government, too.
SWOOP DOWN AND CLUTCH THEM IN YOUR TALONS.
Depends. If it’s upheld, it becomes a rallying cry again and maybe (destractors of Romneycare notwithstanding), it sweeps him into office along with the rest of the Republicans, so that they could really repeal the law and put in place more market-based (and constitutional) reforms that preempt any more of this nonsense. But if it’s repealed, it’s a good thing, but if not in its entirety, the framework is left in place to do a lot of mischief. It’s basically like a vampire- we have to stab it in the heart and burn its body. It’s not clear to me that a partial SC victory will do that and may actually inhibit its total repeal.
I’m in my happy place.
http://www.popcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/palin-with-bear.jpg
Don’t you like the killer look in her eyes?
here, this will make you MORE nervous…
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/protesters-show-up-to-rally-against-karl-rove-but-cant-all-say-who-karl-rove-is/#ooid=53ZWo4NTqTYO1xxkYB8vpSS4Ipign7kJ
holmes: see my addendum to the post.
Neo: Ah, yes, agreed.
Perhaps the best outcome is actually for the mandate to be overturned, but the rest of the law to remain intact. Then Republicans still have the rallying cry that brought in the 2010 wave.
“I’m far more concerned with the precedent the Court will set regarding the further expansion of the Commerce Clause. ”
That’s the key. If inaction is defined as commercial activity, there is no limit to the power of the central government over the individual. The U.S. will be changed forever.
Mr Frank,
IMO it’s not just inaction defined as cmmcl activity; that’s scary enough. As one justice noted (Kennedy, I think) it’s about Congress having the right to create commerce just for the privilege of regulating it. Couple that w/ Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity scheme and they could mandate what you have on your dinner table just to create the opportunity to regulate it nationwide.
I agree with your concerns about the commerce clause as it has been misused to expand central control and justify the unjustifiable. If SCOTUS rules to uphold the individual mandate under the ruse of the commerce clause I pledge to drop my insurance coverage and refuse to buy insurance. Come to my door and tell me otherwise punk boy president.
There was a focus group (about 30 people) on Hannity’s show tonight. Two thirds of them voted for Obama in 2008. Only about a tenth of them will vote for him in 2012. Why? Because of the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacre. What don’t they like? Too complex. The mandate – if they can order you to buy insurance they can order you to do most anything. It doesn’t actually address the cost of health care. It makes it more difficult for doctors to treat their patients. Etc.
No matter what comes from SCOTUS tomorrow, the majority of people do not like or want this bill. It is going to be abolished or changed for the better, if the voters have anything to say about it. (And I think they do.)
What did the panelists suggest as change? Tort reform. Portability of policies. Use of HSAs. More transparency in prices. Opening more storefront clinics for ease of access for routine treatments. Etc. (Where have I heard those ideas before?)
After watching that group, I am sleeping well tonight. Call me naive, but I think the voters, even former Obama voters, are against this law – big time.
It shouldn’t be. That’s the whole idea behind having a Constitutional Republic and not a Democracy. The idea that anything and everything “comes down to elections” is the rallying call of a limitless Democracy – which we are not supposed to be living in!
You lost me. The Indonesian Imbecile and his junta argued before the Court that the Individual Mandate should live precisely because it IS A TAX, which is exactly what they screamed it wasn’t during that whole illegal, unethical, and idiotic perversion of our systems they used to force it through … after it was killed 6 times. I’m not sure what your point is, here. It is being argued as a tax and would laughably be upheld as a tax.
If ObamaCare is upheld – any of it – then it doesn’t matter who wins the election and what they decide to do. The Republic will be gone forever. It will just be a small matter of time for it to be official. Of course, with the Fed holding a $3 trillion balance sheet, which must be reduced at some point (bringing such pain that people have NO IDEA) and with the chaos, depression and dislocations that that brings you can bet your butt that the American public will experience another psychotic break (as happened in 2008) and will just vote in another raft of America-hating dems who will tear every last foundation away. End of story. America wiped away.
If our Constitution is meaningless – which is all that one could surmise if any part of this offensive, un-American, and crazy expansion of the power of the feral government into all of our lives (far outside of ANY Constitutional bounds) is left to stand – then we have been reduced to a run-of-the-mill unstable Democracy that will be subject to the whims of the public and the idiots put into power. We will have no Supreme Law, only a day-to-day existence that knows no history and no limits on government intrusions.
No. If any part of this utterly offensive piece of garbage is ruled “Constitutional” … if the SCOTUS decides that the mandate has to go but they can read through over 2000 pages of legislation (that none of the Congress Critters who voted for it ever read) and can formulate all new law based on what the SCOTUS thinks then this is not a nation I have any desire to be stuck in. If the mandate is upheld, it’s even worse.
The fact that so many, ostensibly on the right, are talking about “elections” righting un-Constitutional wrongs as if they can replace Constitutionality is the saddest thing I encounter these days.
Of course, this was always the difficulty of maintaining a Constitutional Republic that defined very limited federal government. Limited positions don’t attract good people, since those with talent like to go into fields where their only limits are their talents and abilities. No genius wants to be a Senator who is not there to let his genius run free but to use his intelligence to identify when he and his colleagues are outstripping their Constitutional limits. Such limited positions only attract the mediocre and the control-freaks who look to go and break the limits, thereby accessing the nearly unlimited power of the wealthiest and most powerful organization that has ever existed on Earth. This is the tale of entropy and why maintaining a Constitutional Republic is so much more difficult than anything else. By the time it becomes apparent that the best have to involve themselves in limited government, just in order to restore those limits … it’s generally too late.
The forces of destruction (unleashing limitless feral government power, in this case) are far easier to find and appeal to than the forces of maintenance (no one likes to perform maintenance and no one likes to spend their lives doing the maintenance). There is no parity between left and right on this. They are not mirror images of each other any more than taking down a building is the mirror image of maintaining it. And destroying a building is easy. Anyone can do it. Just by ignoring the little repairs that are constantly needed … it will eventually fall. This is entropy. This is what Benjamin Franklin implied with his, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
progressoverpeace: the argument mounted by the Obamacare defenders that it is a tax was advanced in the court case precisely because, if the tax argument is accepted, the bill would almost certainly be constitutional. SCOTUS may reject the tax argument, however, because the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress explicitly said (in order to pass the bill) that it was NOT a tax. The Court may say that it can’t be both; it’s either one or the other. Obamacare advocates can’t claim it’s not a tax for one purpose and claim it is a tax for another purpose.
And of course, if it were held to be a tax and its constitutionality is upheld, then they wouldn’t need to pass it again as a tax, would they? When I say “pass it as a tax,” by the way, I don’t mean exactly and precisely as it’s written right now. It would be tweaked, of course. I’ve read a number of proposals (don’t have time to find them right now) explaining how that could be done.
neo-neocon, I understand that. For that reason this case never should have gotten past the first hurdle in court, being thrown out at the start and the government lawyers who argued that should have been sanctioned for lying to the court. But they weren’t and this case went the distance … with the tax/not a tax argument even disappearing from the public debate.
What I didn’t understand about your point was that the SCOTUS letting the individual mandate survive would automatically relabel it as a tax, since that would be the basis for it alleged Constitutionality.
BTW, it is still un-Constitutional even if one accepts that the individual mandate is a tax (which it clearly isn’t). The federal government is not allowed to just tax anything it wants. Limits on the federal government apply to limits to its taxation policies, too. The federal government is not allowed to affect un-Constitutional policy merely by coercing it through a “tax”.
neo-neocon, perhaps I am a bit confused by what you meant with “If the Democrats are victorious”. I took that to mean that the Individual Mandate is upheld. I must have gotten that wrong, I guess.
If you meant that only the Individual Mandate is struck down but the rest is upheld (even though the dems intentionally left the severability clause out) then I would refer to the latter part of my comment, in that that would mean that there is no Constitution left, anyway, and you can kiss it all good-bye. The intrusion of the federal government into individual health insurance and health care goes far beyond a mere forcing of everyone to buy government approved health insurance. That very centralization, itself, is un-Constitutional and un-American.
progressoverpeace: by “if the Democrats are victorious” I meant if they keep the White House and regain control of the legislature. I was referring to victory in the election.
As for the rest, Congress can pass laws that we don’t like but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are unconstitutional. Some people, however (I don’t know whether you’re among them), don’t think a that federal income tax, or Social Security, or Medicare are constitutional, and Obamacare would be another step down that road.
The law of the land, the Constitution, is not difficult to understand and requires no law degree from Harvard to comprehend. It has been demeaned, abused, and ignored for many moons. If we do not return to the rule of law soon, we will face civil war 2. I fear that possibility, but I fear continuing down the road of the last 100 years more than I fear the bloodshed that a renewed civil war would bring.
Too many lines have been crossed with no consequences. The day of consequences approaches unless we begin to change the course of the ship of state under the rule of law.
Melodramatic, perhaps, but that is what my hara tells me.
I see. Seeing how it was shoved through the last time, I doubt they would be able to get it done, again. Keep in mind that what ended up being ObamaCare was the Senate bill (which was never intended to become law but was only an intermediate bill used to get past one more Senate vote – hence the talk of DemonPass and the like in the House) which became the d facto bill after Scott Brown’s election killed any further chances of passing anything in the Senate. Unless the dems got total control of everything I find the idea of them passing this steaming pile again to be extremely remote. Barky setting off on EOs and other tyrannical tactics is, of course, expected – should America really call it quits and vote him in again.
The federal income tax is Amendment XVI, which makes its Constitutionality tautological. As to SS and Medicare, I don’t consider them Constitutional at the federal level, but then anyone who can call FICA a “tax” is stretching the definition of that word well beyond reason. What other “taxes” have we ever had where future government services are dependent on past payments and quantity of “taxes”? I can’t think of a one. One can more sensibly call the Empire State Building a “chair” because someone can sit on top of it.
As to the “General Welfare” term (or the “Good and Welfare” term, as per the former dem judiciary chair) which tends to be the lynchpin upon which all leftist schemes eventually come to rest (after they’ve blown by the Commerce Clause) you know what James Madison (the father of the Constitution) said about it:
“With respect to the words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
“I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
It all begins when someone or group of someones decides they know what is best and convinces 50.01% to vote accordingly. That is why democracy unchecked results in dictatorship.
Amazingly how fragile liberty actually is, when an innocuosly looking loophole in the law can allow federal government to usurp almost unlimited power to coerce citizen to obey its every whim. And how poorly general population understands this. In a free society everybody takes liberty for granted and never seriosly consider that one day all this can go to wolves. No tanks on the streets are needed for imposition of tyranny – only several words in the law added or omited.
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Sergey – That’s why it behooves the liberals, and some Republicans as well, to have the education of their children dumbed down to the point that they have no idea what the Constitution really says or means. I have diaries from my grandmother in the early 1900’s; her writings, vocabulary, and penmanship would far surpass those of most teenagers today. She didn’t even complete high school.
Here in my mountain home in New Mexico, I have several liberal neighbors…all from California originally.
This morning, I have my American flag at the ready for hanging out on my front porch. If Obamacare is not upheld, I will fly it in their face. If it IS upheld, I will fly it half mast.
Nancy Pelosi informed us that Congress needed to vote for Obamacare in order to find out what was in it- i.e., vote for it so you can read it. When Obamacare went to the Supreme Court, the Demos wanted the Supreme Court to vote for Obamacare without reading it.
Romney must demonstrate LARGE stones soon. The court’s judgment today–no matter what side–is a time to hammer home the fact that the Dems pushed it through without one Republican vote. Ridiculous that a law of this vastness & depth would become fact without anyone besides Dems.