Nurse Rachet
US stocks sag on healthcare rule, euro dips — “(Reuters) – U.S. stocks fell on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Obama administration’s healthcare overhaul law … U.S. healthcare sector stocks were generally weaker after the ruling, while stocks that stand to benefit from more government business rallied.” The WSJ has a discussionon where the dollars will go. Experts are divided on the effects of the law.
More money will flow to “pharmaceutical companies, doctors, hospitals, the people they employ, and even insurers,” said Joseph White, Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and chair of the Department of Political Science at Case Western Reserve University. …
IT services companies that can take health-care information and turn it into actionable data will benefit, Mr. Birkmeyer added …
“This is a real-money loser for manufacturers,” said Gerard Anderson, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“Medical-device companies will hire fewer people.” In addition, the health-care law will help usher in a different reimbursement model, where providers may get paid on a per-member, per-year basis, rather than the traditional fee-for-service model …
That may cause surgeons–who formerly had no reason to care about implanting a $5,000 hip from a U.S. manufacturer–to choose less-expensive models from an overseas manufacturer, resulting in a potential loss of U.S. jobs, Mr. Birkmeyer said. …
Some studies show a lot of newly hired health care workers — as many as 5.6 million — will immediately become part of the Obamacare program — “4.6 million of these empty positions will require postsecondary education, like a bachelor’s or master’s degree.” That many employees dependent suddenly on the system it will be difficult for any post-Obama administration to roll the program entirely back.
Government programs are like a ratchet. Once they are created they can never be shut down. Long after the paper letter has been mailed it is possible that the US Postal Service will still be in operation.
One possibly unintended consequence of the health care law is the creation of a vicious circle in which health care insurance costs bankrupt companies even as a new class of employees who are dependent on their now missing taxes are being created.
Certainly the existing laws will create step-traps for companies who will seek to operate under the sweep of its provisions. Since ome requirements apply “only to firms with more than 49 full-time employees” some firms may refusing to expand beyond that number or make part time employment the norm even if they would have done otherwise without the regulations.
Another effect might be to drive people who don’t want to participate out of the system.
the penalty for not signing up for insurance, $750 a year, is too small relative to the cost of health care coverage — about $5,500 a year. Because insurance companies are required to take all applicants, healthy people (especially the young) would be wise to pay the penalty rather than buy the insurance. This makes the pool of insured individuals sicker and more costly, on average, and their premiums will higher. With higher premiums, more people will choose to pay the penalty, and a downward spiral will unfold.
The main selling point of government health care was that it would “bend the cost curve”; and make things more affordable. It may do that by transferring the burden of who pays. But in reality none of the European health care systems have been able to prevent more and more money from being spent on their systems. A study by the Economist summarized the European experience showing health care costs as a percentage of GDP.
|
|
2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
|
Denmark |
9.1 |
9.3 |
9.5 |
9.7 |
9.8 |
9.9 |
10.0 |
10.3 |
11.5 |
|
France |
10.2 |
10.5 |
10.9 |
11.0 |
11.1 |
11.0 |
11.0 |
11.1 |
11.8 |
|
Germany |
10.4 |
10.6 |
10.8 |
10.6 |
10.7 |
10.6 |
10.5 |
10.7 |
11.6 |
|
Netherlands |
8.3 |
8.9 |
9.8 |
10.0 |
9.8 |
9.7 |
9.7 |
9.9 |
12.0 |
|
UK |
7.2 |
7.6 |
7.8 |
8.0 |
8.2 |
8.5 |
8.4 |
8.8 |
9.8 |
The unanswered question is if that if you can stop it where does it end up? More to the point where does it end up when European states are running out of money?
Having “reformed” their health care systems all of studied countries have embarked on a yearly tinkering of each system. “All five healthcare systems, however, have one commonality that transcends the specifics of structure. Each of their governments has engaged in repeated, substantial reforms for more than a decade. “We have had the most healthcare reforms in the world,” says Professor Dr Norbert Klusen, CEO of Techniker Krankenkasse, a German insurer, tongue-in-cheek.” Gotta bend that cost curve.
Ultimately “reforms” on a static economic base involve rationing. Given a fixed or slowly growing pie, the only way to make it go around as populations age and chronic diseases become expensively manageable is to either limit treatment or pare it down. The UK Independent writes that “more than 30 NHS trusts could be forced to merge, devolve services into the community and make job cuts as part of a radical restructuring of hospital care across England.”
Yesterday the Department of Health said it considered 21 hospitals to be “clinically and financially unsustainable” and in need of radical restructuring.
However, the list did not include another five foundation hospitals – run independently of the Department of Health – which are also considered to be failing financially. A further five foundation hospitals also have severe financial problems.
In the end health care provision is not independent from the ability of an economy to sustain it. If government gets to the point where it stunts the economy, then government itself cannot collect the money it promised to the voters. The United States may still be fortunate in being able to observe whether or not the European health care systems are viable in the long run.
And if not, there’s always Switzerland, the refuge of last resort.
Anyone who has ever traveled in Switzerland cannot help but to have remarked upon the overwhelming tranquility of the country. But this tranquility is illusory. As John McPhee writes in La Place de la Concorde Suisse, a rich journalistic study of the Swiss Army’s role in Swiss society, “there is scarcely a scene in Switzerland that is not ready to erupt in fire to repel an invasive war.” With a population smaller than New Jersey’s, Switzerland has a standing army of 650,000 ready to be mobilized in less than 48 hours. The Swiss Army, known in this country chiefly for its little red pocketknives, is so quietly efficient at the arts of war that the Israelis carefully patterned their own military on the Swiss model. You’ll understand why after reading this outstanding book. …
“The Swiss have avoided fighting a war for almost 500 years. To preserve that enviable record of peace, they maintain one of the world’s largest armies, on a per capita basis. This paradox . . . is the core of McPhee’s engaging La Place de la Concorde Suisse.”Jack Schnedler, Chicago Sun-Times
“‘Switzerland does not have an army,’ says one of John McPhee’s informants in La Place de la Concorde Suisse. ‘Switzerland is an army’ . . . McPhee put his reader inside Switzerland with elegance and insight.”—Jonathan Steinberg, The New York Times Book Review.
Maybe one day politicians will discover that the best way to have a viable health care system would be to have a growing economy. Now that would be a radical idea.
Belmont Commenters
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
I see today’s decision as a triumph for the individual mandate – and it is dangerous.
The high road against the individual mandate is to oppose all individual mandates.
The low road against the individual mandate is to pass a bill that penalizes any person who does not buy a product that is morally loathsome to leftists. It could be guns. It could be a book written by Milton Friedman. It could be a bottle of Jack Daniels! The point would be to find some product that leftists hate and then enforce an individual mandate for that product. Of course, it would be done in the name of the “public good”.
The problem we face with the individual mandate is that it opens up a huge realm of pork barrel politics that is “off the books”. The courts may call it a tax, but since this tax does not register in the governmental budget, legislators will claim it isn’t a “tax” at all. A tax that is not seen in the budget becomes increasingly easy to levy. Not only that, but states, cities, counties, and townships can now also levy individual mandates too. A state could levy a fine against any person who does not buy a duck hunting license, or against any person who does not buy “medical marijuana” — or a laptop. A school board could impose an “individual mandate” for every taxpayer to buy the school textbooks – or face a heavy fine.
Congress – and state legislatures – will almost certainly face a series of log rolled individual mandates. Pork Barrel – met Hog Heaven!
I disagree with Alexis. It is premature to characterize this front of the larger war we’re in. And pessimism’s tug need not go unmet.
We’re framing the battleground for a repeal right now. And Robert’s “bipartisan” court theatrics has helped in enormous ways.
If the question is put squarely in front of Americans’ state Representatives in their august body, naked without the fig-leaf of ‘not-knowing’ the specifics of the tax (no one can credibly state they “don’t know” what’s in the ACA now), there’s no way they will vote to affirm the tax increases. Not at this juncture.
This vulnerability, abetted by the moribund trajectory of the global economy, is another indicator that Obama’s reelection faces an uphill battle. And it suggests Alexis’ gloom is perhaps early and unwarranted.
i guess the supreme court is not really a supreme court.
why would anyone go to the supreme court anymore for any case to be resolved.
both the arizona case and now the health case, what a mess this court has made of each one.
confusion, confusion.
so arizona can’t protect it’s border from illegals, but it is against our laws for them to be here illegal. so arizona’s law enforcement cannot enforce our laws, according to the supreme court decision.
so it is not ok for the American people to be forced to buy obamacare thru an individual mandate thru the commerce clause, but it is ok to force the American people to pay a tax for not buying obamacare because it’s a tax!
i now know what it is like living in the twilight zone!
This may be the straw that broke the camel’s economic back. I recall that there were articles a few weeks ago speculating how congress was going to spend the “windfall” it received if Obamacare was repealed (ignoring the fact that a lot of that money has been spent already and the revenues received have been less than expected.) But, if some pols were counting on a Deus-ex-SCOTUS to bail them out of their 6-years-service-for-10-years-taxes hell, they have been disabused of that notion by now. The economy is still not getting any better, hiring will not pick up until the oppressive Obama regime is gone, there is still that massive party from a couple of years ago to pay for and the bills are just starting to arrive.
A hundred years ago Progressives took credit for breaking up the Standard Oil Monopoly. Now they have created the Substandard Health Care Monopoly. At least it was legal to compete against Standard Oil. I don’t recommend trying to keep against Substandard Health Care (there’s got to be a catchier name. SubHealth?). There are laws!
In American Health Care the Progressives have taken over a going concern that is service oriented. That won’t change immediately but it will change. In a decade we will have groping in the exam room — after you waited all day to get in there.
Say goodbye to innovation. We now have bureaucrats in charge and they hate change.
While the forms of business may survive there will be no businessmen or entrepreneurs involved. They will all be Administrators working for DC and political cronies posing as entrepreneurs.
Within twenty years the entire US healthcare system will be a huge and horrendously expensive patronage swamp. Chicago writ large. Greece to the tenth power. If Roberts is still around he might write a minority opinion saying they cannot force you to go into a hospital — because that’s how they’ll be getting their patients when you more likely to catch your death than catch a cure.
The vote to hold the Attorney General in contempt, like the Supreme court’s decision, has effects on two levels. The first is within the framework of the constitutional powers; and the net-out is mixed, but advantage the big staters. The passage by the Supreme Court of individual manadate is effectively the American version of the Beveridge report, the founding document of the Welfare State in the United Kingdom.
The contempt vote is far less significant as legal precedent, but that take us to the second level of effects. Both the SCOTUS and contempt vote have the identical effect of polarizing the citizenry. People are bound to feel strongly about this one way or the other.
Where the SCOTUS analogy to Beveridge fails is in two regards, in which the polarization is relevant. First, the British Labor party in 1945 was sailing into the postwar economic boom. And Labor was re-elected in 1950.
The conditions today are arguably the reverse. Today welfare states the world over are failing catastrophically. Whereas the British Welfare State of 1945 was mounting a rising tide, the welfare state concept of 2012 is going straight into the teeth of a probable depression or worse.
Thus, the combination of overreach and collapsing props mean, at the very least, a period of political disturbance that will exceed perhaps by a large margin, the divisions of the 1960s. If the Euro sinks and contagion spreads, or if Europe simply continues its weakness and the Middle East its murderous ways, the question is where on earth Obamacare is going to get the money to feed its new legions?
The probable answer is there is nowhere to find it.
Therefore there is nothing on the horizon but more contentious division, more polarization and more intense conflicts. The administration is giving away everything that isn’t nailed down. To illegal immigrants, or favored groups or to Big Government. That might have worked in a boom. It is unlikely to produce anything except tension — and lots of it — now.
In that regard #6, I can’t help thinking of Dred Scott and Justice Taney. In fairness that nettlseome issue could not be settled by Taney or any Supreme Court.
Indeed it was problematic for a while whether it could be settled at all. The problem was too fundamental. Hence Dred Scott simply stoked the fires, not put them out. Ultimately the US must either become a preserve of the unlimited special interest state or one of limited government.
Nor is the problem confined to the United States. It is the global issue of the present day, the very one which underlies the current crisis. Can the world live under institutions “too big to fail”? Or must something change.
Roberts could not split the difference even if he were Solomon himself. Eugene Volokh writes:
That may be true. It is also irrelevant. The liberals will not see it that way and in practice will not operate according to that philosophy. They will see is as a launch authorization. In contrast, most conservatives will not look at Robert’s decision through Volokh’s prism. Instead, they will see Roberts as a Judas.
The law is nuanced. The issues dividing the world today, however, are not legal issues. You are for one side or against it. That is to say, like Dred Scott, the current problem that the court tried to fix, in its broader context, admits only of a political solution. That is unfortunate, but that seems inescapable.
Roberts could not solve this for history. History, as expressed in the political events of the next few years, will have to fix it for themselves.
I do not think we can reverse engineer the system.
The problem is we Americans have come to expect a certain level of service and the medical system has adapted to that particular demand curve. Granted that the supply side of that is chaotic and complex to the point where it can only be managed on the micro economic local level. I have been one of those providers for near all my working life and still do not understand it. Really I do not want to. I just want to keep providing for patients and yes we need a new CT scanner when the new ER goes up next year and I will push for that because I do not worry about the extra cash because the bean counters will reject the idea anyway if it is too expensive. We have both done our jobs and we will get a pretty good refurbished upgraded one anyway. That works for me.
I was talking with an Israeli a few years ago. They have some of the best medical centers and research on the planet and it is a socialized system. He told me something like “yes you can go and be taken care of. But we do not so much as you Americans.” it is not altruism he is talking about, rather a culture in which minor problems, say a lump near your knee which is not causing a big issue, are mostly self limited and people just deal with it themselves.
The best docs I have worked with have experience working in places with limited resource. They use simple diagnostic tools like physical exam to diagnose rather than rushing to an MRI or something like that. That is not the case here.
Demand here is unlimited. Everyone wants the best and latest when it is you or someone close. Me too.
For me it is just ‘what do you want me to do and what do I have to work with’ the rest is politics. If the voters pick something medicine will still happen with the resource available. At the end of the day everyone has to get paid.
The biggest problem I see is the plan is too complex for the voters to understand. I am in the business and cannot foresee what will happen. The suits above me who deal with this stuff for a living do not really understand and cannot predict the consequences of this complex law.
So choose wisely voters. Pick people you think you can trust.
Re: Switzerland and her standing army of citizens:
Allen West should immediately introduce a bill requiring every able-bodied individual in the United States not currently on active duty in the military or in the police to purchase, register and maintain a M1 Grand rifle (with an ample supply of ammo) in accordance with the Second Amendment’s requirement for a well-regulated militia. All able-bodied citizens must discard 100 rounds of 30-06 annually on a licensed practice range, and maintain records of said practice for five years. In addition, every able-bodied citizen must register with the local militia and drill with said militia at least four times a year, and maintain proof of the drills and registration. Other than physical and mental impairment, no American citizen will be exempt from the Militia Mandate, I mean tax. Failure to comply will result in a $2500 annual penalty. Partial compliance will result in lesser penalties being assessed. Funds raised from the penalties will be used to fund those less fortunate individuals wishing to comply with the Militia Mandate, I mean tax. Let’s see if the Liberals like it when we start passing mandates we think necessary that they would abhor.
Rotten legislation by Congress upheld by a rotten SCOTUS decision. Good thing these can’t result in a civil war. Oh wait…..
Obama wants to be the new FDR, presiding over the completion of the New Deal. And that is how this will be portrayed–the last great entitlement program finally established, the last castle of Mr. Moneybags breached.
Unfortunately for Obama, he isn’t working with FDR’s demographics, FDR’s low starting level of entitlement spending, or even FDR’s forthright commitment to direct government intervention.
The “entitlement” goes to pharmaceutical companies and re-jiggered insurance entities. The government role is money-bundler and enforcer, not financer–telling in and of itself. Unlike Social Security and Medicare, the increased costs of Obamacare kick in immediately, and there is no young demographic pyramid to divide up the burden.
The dog made a running leap and caught the car.
What John Roberts did is contemptible. There is no reason to get exercised about Elena Kagan. She is just a nearly out of the closet communist hack. Roberts knows better. You have to belong to a nation before you can betray it. First you have to betray yourself before you can betray your nation. Obama and Kagan can offer to be strapped onto a polygraph secure in the knowledge that their loyalties have not changed.
If Roberts enters a business the proprietor should throw him out. It is hard not to believe that he was “got to.” How was he coerced? Some secret scandal used for blackmail or a threat to a loved one? When that happens to some Bookkeeper or local politician we can feel Pity even when demanding Justice. For a man with Roberts’ responsibilities there can be no excuse.
Me thinks that the economy is well on it’s way to a second tanking. Europe and China first, then us. That coupled with an atrocious Obamacare albatross around his neck should send Buraq Hussein way down in the polls.
Come October, those neatly crafted Martial Law powers Buraq had crafted for himself, will look mighty tasty now he knows he has Roberts and five secure votes on SCOTUS to back him up. Hey, an October Revolution has a nice commie ring to it!
steveaz:
I wish you well in your strategy. I greatly hope my pessimism is unwarranted.
The problem I see is that the Individual Mandate is a monster that will continue to be unleashed even if Obamacare is fully repealed. Yes, we need to vote. Yes, we need to watch our elected officials. However, the cat is out of the bag – the Individual Mandate as an idea is out there and the temptation for public officials to levy de facto taxes that are off the books will be amazingly great, especially when confronted with silver tongued lobbyists.
Given how the Individual Mandate is based upon precedents from the 1790’s, the question we are facing is constitutional. Repealing Obamacare may work, but it looks like “Whack-A-Mole” – the Individual Mandate will come back over and over until it is defeated constitutionally. Right now, even socialized medicine would be an improvement over Obamacare because the Individual Mandate allows legislatures to hide their taxation within mandates that are outside of the official budget.
I think we need an amendment to our Constitution to ban the use of the Individual Mandate at all levels of government. If something is worth buying for the public good, let the government buy it with tax revenue; the alternative is the government giving us an ever-expanding shopping list of things we are required to buy.
Volokh should read the dissent.
Mirengoff at Powerline did the same thing, he read the majority opinion and found it not unreasonable, clearly without reading the dissent which explains clearly, to those who need the explanation, why it IS unreasonable, or even if reasonable, entirely WRONG.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/06/what-chief-justice-roberts-said-about-the-individual-mandate.php
Hayward at Powerline does much the same, saying:
“putting aside Roberts’ reasoning about how the mandate can be shoehorned into the taxing power (which no one disputes would have been a valid basis for Obamacare),”
But the dissent DOES dispute that it would be a valid basis for anything, as it is a tax on *not* doing something, and the majority *just* agreed that is not an allowed move no matter how good your intentions. Then they allowed it. I mean, OMG.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/06/a-defeat-but-its-not-over-or-roberts-rules-of-disorder.php
–
I can blather a lot (more), but there’s nothing more that needs to be said other than what is already in the dissent, and to consider just how the majority could be not just wrong but SO wrong, including the chief justice.
Just to add secondhand what I gather was Ginsberg’s rationale, since Congress COULD have passed a gigundo tax and spend bill to provide “free” healthcare to all, ANYTHING he does instead must be legal, too.
“Could have” in constitutional terms, apparently. I wonder, is there no constitutional barrier to unreasonably high taxes, even with the best of intentions? A 200% income tax, a 100% wealth tax? It could certainly be argued, I daresay it’s a weak reed to base any conclusion on, and even if I overstated (harumph) Ginsberg’s argument, apparently she found Obamacare superior to a gigundo tax and spend bill because it is so much more market oriented (!?!?!), these strike me only as complex rationales for inaction, that might get you a gold star in law school but absolutely reek as supreme court opinions.
Alexis @ 1 I think you make some great points. The Roberts decision opens many new avenues for sticking to the taxpayer, pork and cronyism. That is just one of the reasons why it is so ill considered and as you say- dangerous. And also why Roberts is so despicable when he clearly knows better.
Along the same lines, anyone familiar with big city politics will know the ‘pay to play” scheme. But I think his Imperial Highness, Buraq Hussein, and friends may have envisioned taking this abominable scheme to a whole new level, something along the lines of ‘pay to live” where only the connected, those in the approved victim classes, and those who are ready and able to pay up in a big way will get the necessary life or death care when it really counts.
Big city politics and big city hospital care often now are horribly bureaucratic and opaque. Just think of the opportunities for payola to get that kidney transplant or that heart bypass. And of course, there will be the mandatory politically correct affirmative action guidelines. Convicts to the front of the line right now!- and you white people- you go to rear of the bus and stay there.
Apparently those people do not seem to understand that if a person cannot afford it, they cannot afford it, no matter what anybody calls the payment. People that are struggling to pay their student loans while working at a retail store because that’s all they can find are not going to be able to afford to pay the individual mandate tax. Period. Taking it out of their check as a tax just means that they cannot afford to work. People with a mortgage, two kids in daycare, and a car payment cannot afford it. People on a fixed income–which is anybody that can’t find another job–can’t afford it. What can they choose not to pay? Their vehicle payment? Their house payment? Car insurance? Groceries? The daycare center?
I don’t think the completely out of touch people in the government sector know how much the people in the private sector are struggling to try to keep paying their bills.
Wretchard @7: Election have consequences; every single one of them. No one should ever forget this. None of this would have happened except for the election in 2008 – particularly the Congressional elections. The Court has returned the ACA to the political arena after having fleshed out a bit more of Congress’ Article 1 powers; there ACA was created, and there it can be modified or repealed. Even if Congress has been granted greater power than one would like, and it’s not clear it has, Congress is still a creature of the People and ultimately answerable to the People. The Constitution doesn’t make change easy, but change, even radical change, is possible – as events have made clear – and what has been done can be undone.
My comments are on the previous post as well. Still following all the opinions, interviews, etc. via internet, radio and tv – there is a new pulse about future Supreme Court nominations – as many as three possible (maybe more) for the next president – the uproar now is about the lack of true knowledge re Chief Justice Roberts… okay, is anybody besides me hearing the echo of how Obama became president – everybody put their dreams on him and no true vetting – now, they accuse Chief Justice Roberts of being a traitor – if we, as the electorate, do not do our job, we get what we get – and, frankly, I believe Chief Justice Roberts called it – the dissenting Justices pointed to exactly how to counter the follow on.
This idea that the Roberts decision was somehow conservative or showed conservative tendencies is pure poppycock.
John Roberts was just following in the tried and true footsteps of such Luminaries of Institutional RINO Republicanism as Colin Powell, John Mc Cain, Richard Lugar, John Warner, Lisa Murchowski, Mitch McConnell and yes, Mitt Romney, who normally will talk in conservative terms and make you think they are actually conservative, but when the chips are down, and they feel the timing is right for the big score, will stab conservatives in the back without remorse. In fact, Buraq Hussein has even dabbled in that technique of wrapping his marxist ideas in conservative rhetoric. It’s just a despicable con by a despicable person.
The RINO stab in the back at a really big crunch time is the big ticket for tremendous, lasting media adulation, and fame. John Roberts is now legendary. Why, he saved Obamacare. He’s the talk of the Washington. Chris Mathews already has tingles for him and the New York Times is already lauding him. I’ll bet his invitation to Sally Quinn’s next cocktail party is already in the mail. Whether Obamacare is repealed or not, John Roberts has already earned a lifetime of Progressive admiration.
Roberts no longer has to hang with those boring, patriotic tea partier types; now that he has come out, he gets to hang with the coolest of the cool. Guys like this often lie in wait a long time just for the right time to spring their treachery. He played the conservative for decades, without ever really helping conservatives, just waiting to make his move. This move was deliberate – don’t give him the benefit of the doubt that he was somehow only trying to limit this decision to the political sphere. He wasn’t and this decision of his deals another heavy body blow to the law’s constitutional integrity.
What is likely to happen is MASSIVE civil disobedience in regard to paying this ‘tax’.
What are the IRS gonna do? Arrest everyone?
More than likely, if this monstrosity remains, there will ‘quietly’ be
lots and lots of ‘waivers’. Welcome to eurabia.
for Charles Krauthammer view
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-why-roberts-did-it/2012/06/28/gJQA4X0g9V_story.html
12 Blast – “What John Roberts did is contemptible. [Elena Kagan] is just a nearly out of the closet communist hack. Roberts knows better.”
I wouldn’t try guessing what -ism they follow, since they are all on the same team anyway. Says Roberts:
The Supremes’ role is to legitimize having a role. They do this by dressing up, showing up, and acting aloof or engaging at all the right moments. Or at the wrong moments is equally fine.
But imagine a decision so wrong and outrageous that it actually undermines their authority. None of them are really that foolish, so one could guess this was almost Roberts’ intention today and that the show isn’t over… Figuring this is merely a break-for-our-sponsors and to go buy concessions – they wouldn’t leave General Zod as President in a movie called Superman 2.
Maybe one day politicians will discover that the best way to have a viable health care system would be to have a growing economy.
……
Here a chart of US deficits since 1950. What it shows is that after the late 70′s US federal deficits have been growing steadily bigger.
http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spending_chart_1950_2017USb_13s1li111mcn_G0f
Here is a chart of US oil production vs consumption. What this chart shows is that the gap between US oil production and consumption has been steadily widening since the late 1970′s. (In the last couple years the gap has shrunk because of biofuels and more oil production)
http://www.planbeconomics.com/2011/06/15/chart-introducing-the-structural-oil-deficit/
Put the two together and it seems pretty clear that the best way to get the government out of structural deficit is to change from being an oil importer to an oil exporter.
If that’s the case why did Reagans big deficit years produce a growing economy while Obama’s big deficit years have produced little or nothing. Obamacare is one of the reasons for Obama’s poor performance but the second reason is high oil prices. High oil prices only started in 1973 with the first OPEC oil embargo. Why did reagan’s deficits result in a booming economy. The reason is the deficits had nothing to do with the booming economy. On the one hand reagan cut taxes and reduced regulations. But on the other hand, the Saudis out of fear of innovations in the green river basin and elsewhere that might make the US oil independent–drilled oil like crazy and crushed the price of oil. Cheap gas is pure oxygen to an economy. Cheap oil jolts the GNP upwards. Why? On the one hand cheap gas works like a tax cut for consumers. On the other cheap gas goes jolts upward the productivity of workers–because the cost per unit of doing anything goes down. The more productive workers are –the more they are worth. Therefor the more they can be paid. Salaries go up. On the third hand the oil industry and its attendant chemical industry — invests many billions of dollars into the economy.
Saudi efforts back in the early 80′s forced the closing of the green river basin drilling efforts. But there are several companies in other parts of the world who have moved the technology forward since then. And experimental efforts have continued in the Green River basin such that there have been three different reports in the last ten years that have said oil could be got from oil shale there for from 20-30 dollars a barrel with current technology.
The importance of the green river basin is that it is generally reported that there is more oil there in the form oil shale than in all the rest of the world combined.
Half the cost of mining the oil shale is the cost of electricity because they use electricity to cook the oil out of the rock.
Thorium nuclear reactors collapse the cost of electricity to 1/4 current costs. When those become available in 5-10 years–they’ll collapse the cost of oil still futher.
What does this have to do with the federal government? Most of oil shale in the green river basin is on federal lands. The rand corporation reports that At 100@ barrel federal tax receipts from green river basin oil will come to 60 trillion. That’s with a T. With oil at $30@barrel federal tax receipts would come in at 18 Trillion. That’s with a T.
Green River basin oil shale comes in addition to and on top of the shale oil fracking revolution in the USA.
You can pay down some some serious debts with this kind of money.
This is one of the talking points in my ebook which is available for free for download at Amazon on Friday June 29. Hmm actually that’s now if you’re on the east coast of the USA. (If you don’t have a kindle reader–that’s also available for free download to your desktop or laptop.)
The name of the ebook is
Collapsing Water and Energy Costs: How Bill Gates [Or You!] Can Create the Inventions That Spark the Next Industrial and Agricultural Revolution.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0089Z7V6Y
Blast From the Past @ 12 said:
“It is hard not to believe that he was “got to.” How was he coerced? Some secret scandal used for blackmail or a threat to a loved one? When that happens to some Bookkeeper or local politician we can feel Pity even when demanding Justice. For a man with Roberts’ responsibilities there can be no excuse.”
I went through the same thought process. Again, I’m amazed that Obamacare was not overturned. As I earlier mentioned, my initial reaction was of having been deceived by confirmation bias. However the belief that Obamacare was finished was widely held by many including liberals. There was general despondency amongst the left after the SCotUS question and answer session concerning Obamacare.
There has been some commentary on the Internet that John Roberts’ legal opinion was hastily changed at the last minute. Also it was clear from Obama’s behavior yesterday that he had inside information about the decision before it was formally announced. However I can not imagine any sort of coercion that could be applied against a Supreme Court justice that could have forced Roberts to a bogus decision. For the sake of argument, assume that Obama threatened to kill one of John Roberts’ children. I believe Roberts immediate reaction would have been to go public about the threat and then as a Supreme Court justice, order a federal officer to protect his family and recommend impeachment proceedings against Obama.
A third world tyrant can coerce a judge but I do not believe it is possible in the United States.
What’s frightening about the Switzerland analogy is how the country is physically wired to self-destruct in the event of invasion. Yes, you read that right: bridges, tunnels, even mountainsides are already filled with dynamite and other explosives, so that in the event of an invasion, all infrastructure will be destroyed and only option left for the enemy’s boots on the ground will be, well, you get the picture.
Two related posts about it:
http://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/various-forms-of-lithic-disguise.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/06/switzerland_nat.html
So what would it look like if our legal/political/financial system were wired to self-destruct? Or, is that mechanism simply called “math” like Wretchard has been saying, and we’ve been witnessing the self-destruct sequence in slo-mo for some time now?
Ad Council promos via Health and Human Services now air hourly on AM and internet radio advocating the ACA, and do you know, it’s free! Using tax payer money to promote socialism. I hate Ad Council ads; they’re all badly done and hectoring.
Other people have covered some of main objections. I’ll just make several points.
1. As W’s #7 obliquely notes via the Volokh Conspiracy, the fix was in and probably applied within a few day or weeks. Roberts was probably was going to side with Scalia but caved to pressure from the Obama Administration. Roberts re-writes his opinion into a word salad. He quickly turns “penalty” into “tax” on a number of instances. Alternatively, if you read Scalia’s dissent it reads like a draft of the majority and is coherent (but is now the minority). This form of pressure stinks of rote corruption at the highest level.
2. Social Security was sold by FDR to people as a “pension plan”. I believe it got into the court system and it was “renamed” a tax. It was difficult for the courts to justify forcing people to pay into a federal pension that they did not need or want. The result of that tax is a bankrupt system that is now replaced by the ‘ObamaTax’. Both of which are highly expansive and open personal medical information to entities on a wide scale for generations to come (both for children and adults alike).
3. As a tax it will only expand the number of “government administrators” who administer said tax (and leak sensitive personal information). This tax is a red-tape wrapped micromanaged waste of taxpayer money. In short this “tax” will probably become the largest tax in US history. The damage to the economy will be enormous. This is exactly the opposite of what we need. It must be reversed.
This evening, around 7:30, one of CNN’s newsreaders, a blonde, was shrilling that “many say Obama has been UNLEASHED!” by the Scotus decision.
God help us all.
These states choose to live a lazy, indolent life, free from trouble and inconvenience, and to rely upon fortuna rather than their own virtù; for seeing that there is now such a proportion of virtù left among mankind that it has but little influence in the affairs of the world—and that all things seem to be governed by fortuna— they think it is better to follow her train than to contend with her for superiority. — Machiavelli
Liberals thought the SC would deligitimize itself by striking down Obamacare. Instead, they’ve delegitimized themselves by upholding it in such a tawdry, befuddled, asnine manner. But that fits with the entire history of this pile of crap law.
This one law – Obamacare – may just encapsulate nearly everything wrong with our political class. First, it’s a stupid idea, something that won’t solve any problems and only create more, so it’s pursued by our politicians. A bunch of corporations are coerced into supporting it by the promise of a payoff, which doesn’t come. A handful of senators refused to vote for it without getting special kickbacks for their states, completely contrary to any decency or established notions of justice. Congress is able to ‘pass’ it despite strong public opposition only by ignoring anything approaching a democratic process. Remember, a House bill that had absolutely nothing to do with health care but had already been voted on by the House was snatched up and the contents completely replaced by the Obamacare law. Then when Scott Brown won the MA senate seat and the Dems no longer had enough votes to pass it in the Senate, they didn’t even bother to take a vote on it but simply “deemed” it passed anyway via a conference committe. So it’s a “law” that wasn’t really voted on by either chamber of Congress, which woun’t have made any difference anyway becasue I’m pretty sure at least two thirds of it hadn’t really be written at that point anyway. Then Obama signs it and…
Now the Supreme Court says it’s unconstitutional the way it was passed, but if it had been passed a different way it could have been constitutional (which isn’t really true anyway, because if you call it a tax, what kind is it? Not an income tax, or a property tax or an excise tax. It’s certainly not a sales tax – it’s really an anti-sales tax since you only pay it if you don’t buy something.) so we’ll let it stand.
But I guess it all makes sense in the end, since congress never really knew what it was they passed without really voting on it and whatever it was wasn’t constitutional so we’ll substitute something else for it that isn’t really constitutional either but we’ll pretent it is… It’s been a three-card monte game, a bait and switch, a profoundly dishonest endeavor from soup to nuts.
This is a farce. Our entire government has become a farce. No represenation, no adherence to rules, standards, agreements, contracts. Nothing respectable, admirable, or – frankly – any longer tolerable. D.C. has stuck it’s middle finger up and declared themselves outlaws.
“This vulnerability, abetted by the moribund trajectory of the global economy, is another indicator that Obama’s reelection faces an uphill battle. And it suggests Alexis’ gloom is perhaps early and unwarranted.”
Keep telling yourself that.
“For the sake of argument, assume that Obama threatened to kill one of John Roberts’ children. I believe Roberts immediate reaction would have been to go public about the threat and then as a Supreme Court justice, order a federal officer to protect his family and recommend impeachment proceedings against Obama.” How about ALL his children? And his wife? I think you are giving Roberts credit for more courage then he has so far displayed.
Any complaints from Roberts would go through the Department of Justice. A guy name Holder. Got charged yesterday.
No, historians will see yesterday as the start of the second American civil war.
No election will be held this November.
The only way to get 0bama out of the White House is with a Battalion sized assault, after about a 30 minute bombardment and with solid CAS. Even that might not work, since it will be U S Marines defending the White House.
I fly my flag every day. I have an elderly neighbor down the street who is a veteran, and whenever I see him, he thanks me for flying the flag.
I don’t particularly want to do it any more. If I continue to fly it, it will be just for him. But otherwise I’ll just be going through the motions.
I’m thinking of flying it upside down on what used to be called “Independence Day” but I’m worried that I will only call attention to myself and get me put on a list somewhere.
25. Eggplant
A third world tyrant can coerce a judge but I do not believe it is possible in the United States.
And that is precisely why they can get away with it. Sturgeon’s Law in operation:
“It ain’t what you don’t know that kills you. It’s what you know that ain’t so” – Theodore Sturgeon
The ultimate arbitor is the electorate – which is as it should be. The issue is now as clear as day. The people of this nation will now decide, via their ballots in November, whether or not this nation will become a centralized, European-style social democracy ruled from the top down. The power to determine the fate of the nation has always been in the hands of the people. This coming election will determine if the majority wish to retain that power.
Sto@32, Not the Marines I know
I agree with scory@35. The SC ruled this way for a reason, putting power back into the hands of the people instead of trying to be final arbiters of decision – 9 black robed wise men(and women) acting as kings. That’s why the left was so hell-bent on securing the SC for their side – simply because they believe that with a majority of the nine kings, they can finally implement their ideology.
Punting it back to Congress gives the people a chance.
Or are you that afraid that your side is not going to win in November? That there are simply too few Americans who agree with you, who believe strongly in your cause, that they will abandon Romney, for all his faults, to defeat. That the racial spoils system and the closet reverse racists will have their day, voting along racial blocs in all contravention of logic, simply on tribal instincts. That you won’t have enough on the ground legal clout and watchers to report voter fraud, and besides, the Department of Justice will likely toss out your complaints anyway.
Hmmm… looks like you guys have a very tough uphill battle to fight.
The frog needs to wake up and notice what’s happening, and this will help a lot. We have lost our understanding of what rights are, where they come from, and how we should exercise them.
Wretchard’s reference to Dred Scott is apt. The problem then and now is moral and philosophical. Was a person a piece of property or not? That could never be resolved politically, because it was not about pragmatics but but about right and wrong, truth and error.
The progressives have thrown us into another moral cesspool, like the one that held slavery. Relativism has permeated our schools, art and literature, our day-to-day interpretation of our experience, and our sense of who we are.
So yesterday we found out that it’s really true: anything, absolutely anything goes.
The lack of awareness of the absolute ALWAYS results in the ascension of the will to power as the supreme arbiter. That’s why we call it the tyranny of relativism.
We simply must resurrect a culture in which the existence of right and wrong hold sway, that we are not cowed into submission and kept silent by those who think everything is a matter of opinion and perspective.
We need to relearn, as a culture, what the founders meant by self-evident truths and inalienable rights – and why they are worth dying for. And that means that we, here and elsewhere, are going to have to get much better at apologetics.
The enemy here is ignorance and thoughtlessness and arrogance on a grand scale. The only way to cut the Gordian Knot here is by disseminating, defending, and maintaining a firm faith in the truth.
And from now on, nobody with an Obama sticker on their car gets to park on my property.
Assuming, of course, there IS an election in November. You are assuming there is an election in November because there has always been an election in November. Every two years.
While past performance is an indicator of future performance, it is never a guarantee of the future.
Imagine, if you will, there is no election in November. For any one of thousands of reasons.
Roberts was betting it all on one last toss of the die, not knowing the game was over before he picked up those die.
Richard was correct about the Obama Care decision being the Equal of the Dred Scott decision. So now we still have a modern version of John Brown at Harpers Ferry and then a Fort Sumtner to go. With the increase in communications and travel speeds, I don’t expect it to take years between events.
Amerika is switching to Socialist mode, which means life is about to get short, brutish and mean. I don’t expect the citizens to take that well.
http://thomaslegion.net/civil_war_marines.html
The War between the States almost destroyed the Marine Corps. A large part of the Marines joined the rebellion. The Army, always desperate for bodies, wanted the rest. They narrowly missed being disbanded. The current leadership knows the history. The U.S. Marines, in the case of a civil war, will do what is best for the US Marines.
The Constitution was designed to be lawyered over. The First amendment guarantees every citizen the right to argue (lawyer) over the Constitution. Each side in the upcoming civil war will be able to argue at length why they are supporting the constitution and why the other side is a bunch of filthy traitors that needs hanging.
Notice I didn’t say BOTH sides. There will be at least 4.
Once the initial despair at the Arizona and Healthcare decisions passed, I decided to engage in three courses of action:
One–For the first time in my life, I will be contributing money to a specific candidate (rather than cause) at the federal level. Small as that contribution will be, I think Mitt Romney will need every dollar. I’d give to those in my senate and house races as well, but they seem to be solidly Republican without my help.
Two–I will do less lurking and more speaking whenever a public forum presents itself–Tea Party, Town Council, County Supervisors, School Board, etc. However, I’ll probably still keep comments to a minimum here. Just as I’m about to write a response, one of y’all will express my view more forcefully and articulately. Or, as sometimes happens, help me clarify or change my thinking.
Three–I will be buying a handgun for personal and property defense. Living in Arizona, we seem now to be outside the protection of the feds, and the Feds won’t let the state enforce the law. My wife and I are friends with several people who have lived through the violence and intimidation by those in the drug trade on the other side of the border, and we are acquainted with many more. Making the border even more porous than it has been will, I believe, eventually invite increased levels of violence and intimidation here.
After reading this thread, I’m considering a letter to Governor Jan Brewer, suggesting (only partially tongue in cheek) that as a matter of public safety all Arizona citizens be mandated to purchase firearms and firearm training. I’ll include RWE suggestion from last thread that we be given a tax credit for the amount of the firearm or for the non-compliance tax assessed to non-purchasers.
For those of you arguing to take it easy on ol’ John Roberts, there is this matter of the Anti- Injunction
Act. From Byron York via Ace:
“Before getting to the heart of the case, the justices first wanted to deal with what seemed to be a side issue: Was the penalty imposed by the individual mandate in Obamacare a tax? If it was, the case would run afoul of a 19th century-law known as the Anti-Injunction Act, which said a tax cannot be challenged in court until someone has actually been forced to pay it. Since the Obamacare mandate wouldn’t go into effect until 2014, that would mean there could be no court case until then.”
Got that? Obamacare could not be ruled upon if it was a tax. But in the end that’s what it turned out to be according to our “strict contructionist” John Roberts.
More from Byron York:
“At the same time, everyone knew that the next day, when Verrilli planned to argue that the mandate was justified under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, he had as a backup the argument that it was also justified by Congress’ power to levy taxes — in other words, that it was a tax.
Justice Samuel Alito saw the conflict right away.
“General Verrilli, today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax,” Alito said. “Tomorrow you are going to be back, and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax. Has the court ever held that something that is a tax for the purposes of the taxing power under the Constitution is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act?”
“No,” answered Verrilli. ”
The ol’ switcheroo. That ‘s just great. Real jurisprudence at it’s best.
For those of you like Scory and Wobbly Guy who think that this issue should rightfully should be decided in Congress, remember our Senate Majority Leader, that defender of all things rights and just within our nation, Mitch McConnell, would not allow any, and I mean any bill, to come to Senate floor if it had anything to do with repealing Obamacare during this last session of Congress. Why it might hurt Harry Reid’s feelings. And you think Mitch is going to change his stripes now?
The Senate is full of perfumed, pampered RINO’s who have shown repeatedly that they don’t want to be bothered in the slightest by the concerns of those foolishly unfashionable Tea Partiers and their now derided concerns (among the ‘smart’ set) of Liberty and the Constitution. The reality is that the chances of repealing Obamacare are very dim . Sure, since Obamacare is now a tax, cloture is not technically necessary, but that probably won’t stop the Institutional Pubs from grabbing any fig leaf they can for their traitorous treachery and their vile submission to the whims of the Left.
The Constitution was meant to be a check on unfettered mob rule and the perils of populist skullduggery of the Obama/Roberts kind. The Constitution is what has kept America on an even keel these past two hundred years, and now Roberts has seemingly stripped away another Constitutional bulwark against unjust decrees and dictatorial rule.
41. Unsk: The Constitution is what has kept America on an even keel these past two hundred years, and now Roberts has seemingly stripped away another Constitutional bulwark against unjust decrees and dictatorial rule.
“It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” – Roberts
In other words, take responsibility for your country. Don’t ban shows to stop your kids from watching them. Don’t re-elect a President who just enacted the largest tax increase in the history of planet Earth.
George Will, as some here, sees a silver lining:
“The court held that the mandate is constitutional only because Congress could have identified its enforcement penalty as a tax. The court thereby guaranteed that the argument ignited by the mandate will continue as the principal fault line in our polity.
The mandate’s opponents favor a federal government as James Madison fashioned it, one limited by the constitutional enumeration of its powers. The mandate’s supporters favor government as Woodrow Wilson construed it, with limits as elastic as liberalism’s agenda, and powers acquiring derivative constitutionality by being necessary to, or efficient for, implementing government’s ambitions.
By persuading the court to reject a Commerce Clause rationale for a president’s signature act, the conservative legal insurgency against Obamacare has won a huge victory for the long haul. This victory will help revive a venerable tradition of America’s political culture, that of viewing congressional actions with a skeptical constitutional squint, searching for congruence with the Constitution’s architecture of enumerated powers. By rejecting the Commerce Clause rationale, Thursday’s decision reaffirmed the Constitution’s foundational premise: Enumerated powers are necessarily limited because, as Chief Justice John Marshall said, “the enumeration presupposes something not enumerated.”
…By sharpening many Americans’ constitutional consciousness, the debate has resuscitated the salutary practice of asking what was, until the mid-1960s, the threshold question regarding legislation. It concerned what James Q. Wilson called the “legitimacy barrier”: Is it proper for the federal government to do this? Conservatives can rekindle the public’s interest in this barrier by building upon the victory Roberts gave them in positioning the court for stricter scrutiny of congressional actions under the Commerce Clause.
Any democracy, even one with a written and revered constitution, ultimately rests on public opinion, which is shiftable sand. Conservatives understand the patience requisite for the politics of democracy — the politics of persuasion. Elections matter most; only they can end Obamacare. But in Roberts’s decision, conservatives can see that the court has been persuaded to think more as they do about the constitutional language that has most enabled the promiscuous expansion of government.”
42. Teresita & 41. Unsk
“It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political
choices.” – Roberts
Yes it is. This is absolute semantic sophistry and BS wrapped in unmitigated gall. It is most certainly their job to do just that when those political choices contravene the Constitution, just as it’s their job to protect the people from the political choices/actions of their elected representatives when they enact unconstitutional laws.
The whole “raison d’etre” of the Constitution is to protect the people, and it’s inherent in the reasons laid forth for the establishment of all three branches of the federal government, thus Protecting “the people” is an inherent subset of protecting the Constitution.
The correct response to Roberts and all those who make this argument is simply “read the damn Preamble” to the Constitution.
Thank you Teresita for your #42.
Those of us on both sides of the aisle who worry about a “tyranny of the Judiciary” can sleep easier with the Roberts Court.
An observation RE threads on this topic: as I read through my favorite blog thread today I imagine I’m witnessing a careful vivisection of America’s political circus in real time. Roberts’ decision is paring the matured Republican citizen-steward, as identified by her staid applause of Roberts’ maneuvres, from the media-centric, bull-horn totin’, shoot-from-the-hip, political prognosticators.
This is a healthy exercise. Because what we call “politics” is, in America’s dynamic democracy, like a chameleon. Ours is encrusted under a leathery, ABCNBCMSNBCCBSnytap-secreted integumen that, just like the skin on the frog you dissected in high school, separates easily from the lower muscles and bone with just a few judicious swipes of the scalpel.
I’d like to see more of this from our Soops!
Do not credit Roberts with some super smart reasoning. By not sending ACA back to the legislature, where laws are made by the elected representatives, his extra-Constitutional judicial rewrite of the law has grievously wounded the Constitution, the Court, and the Republic.
Andy McCarthy puts what Roberts did in a criminal law context. If a defendant is wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death, the appeals court cannot say “OK, the evidence is not sufficient to convict for murder, but the sentence stands because the defendant could have been prosecuted for racketeering if that charge had been included in the indictment.”
Substitute Commerce Clause for General Welfare Clause, and that is exactly what Roberts did. To say that Roberts has put the issue in front of the voters is nonsense. The voting is done. The ACA is law. Citizens of the United States can be fined (and their property confiscated for nonpayment) for being left handed, fat, Republican or Catholic – whatever Congress says is for the General Welfare.
Pelosi called us all idiots by saying that calling the mandate a tax is just “Washington talk.” Just like you tell a 5 year old that serious issues are adult talk. Sad part is that she’s right. We are idiots.
There are two excellent and uplifting (for conservatives) articles over at American Thinker. I’m not a lawyer but they seem convincing.
Looks like the biggest part of the ruling has gone relatively unnoticed. The Roberts Court has effectively rolled back a century of abuses of the Commerce Clause in a way that will stand for at least a generation. And, it looks like there is a 5-4 SCOTUS majority that has broken with the prevailing jurisprudential take on the enumeration of powers.
Larry Solum explains:
“For many years, some legal scholars had advanced an alternative reading of the key cases uphold New Deal legislation. On this alternative reading, the New Deal decisions were seen as representing the high water mark of federal power. Although the New Deal represented a massive expansion of the role of the federal government, it actually left a huge amount of legislative power to the states. On the alternative gestalt, the power of the federal government is limited to the enumerated powers in Section Eight of Article One, plus the New Deal additions. These are huge, but not plenary and unlimited.
Today, it became clear that four of the Supreme Court’s nine justices reject the academic consensus. As Justice Kennedy states in his dissent joined by Scalia, Thomas, and Alito:
“In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety.”
The alternative gestalt is no longer an outlier, a theory endorsed by a few eccentric professors and one odd justice of the Supreme Court. And because Justice Roberts believes that the mandate is not a valid exercise of the commerce clause (but is valid if interpreted as a tax), he has left open the possibility that there is a fifth justice who endorses the alternative gestalt.”
The central issue of our times:
The power to tax is the power to enslave.
For what are you willing to be a slave?
For what are you willing to enslave others?
Pass it on. Claim it as your own.
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2012/06/slavery.html
I’m having a hard time understanding how some BC readers could actually believe this is a victory in any way. Even if you think this will curtail Commerce Clause abuse (I’m skeptical that it will restrain future legislatures), the power to tax for any reason, or no reason at all, has just been given the green light. So now that’s the new fig leaf for every arrogation of power? Happy days are here again! Good thing we’re such a free people! This Independence Day is going to be awesome!
Wretchard was right in his title. This is just another turn of the ratchet leftwards.
42 @Teresita
Yes it is his job. We are not supposed to be functioning in a democracy. The whole point of enumerated powers, checks on the government, and a separation of powers is to control usurpations of citizen’s rights by overreaches of the other two branches. Just because 50% + 1 vote for tyranny is not supposed to make it the law of the land. What is the point of the Supreme Court otherwise? I guess just to be a imprimatur of legitimacy on a farce of a political process now. Sure glad that Roberts can hold his head high at all of those Beltway cocktail parties.
45 @steveaz
Consider me pleased not to be part of your “mature” self-selected group. Please explain how this is not Tyranny of the Judiciary when Roberts essentially inserted language that was not there in order to uphold this abortion of a “law”? For purposes of the Anti-Injuction Act, this wasn’t a tax, which gave SCOTUS authority to rule, but then once that hurdle was crossed, all of the sudden it is a tax (although as far as I have seen, “tax” is never mentioned in the text and it was specifically defended as not being a tax). No sir, no judicial overreach at all there.
Please explain how this is not Tyranny of the Judiciary when Roberts essentially inserted language that was not there in order to uphold this abortion of a “law”? For purposes of the Anti-Injuction Act, this wasn’t a tax, which gave SCOTUS authority to rule, but then once that hurdle was crossed, all of the sudden it is a tax (although as far as I have seen, “tax” is never mentioned in the text and it was specifically defended as not being a tax)
Agreed. The proper thing to do is send it back to Congress and say “as it is, this does not pass muster, this is why it’s wrong and how to fix it.”
I also don’t understand this preference for Constitutional pass vs. fail. What I mean is, there was a majority that agreed Obamacare fails under the Commerce Clause. Congress cannot do this based on that clause. Yet it’s OK under another area, so it’s ok? Is it not still, as we speak, in violation of the Commerce Clause? Why is that not a problem?
So if I steal your car but I don’t break any traffic rules doing it, it’s ok to steal your car? I don’t understand how a Constitutional violation goes away because it fits under one area while violating another. Wouldn’t any legislation, ever, fall under that rubric? If I wrote a law to confiscate guns, it wouldn’t violate the First Amendment, would it? So we’re good to go?
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/29/army-officials-say-shooter-killed-superior-officer/
I looks like the military is starting to sort itself out.
I am pessimistic that this will all turn out to be anything but a disaster. A number of posters have pointed out the absurd laws our elected officials could implement using Roberts logic to mandate activity e.g., buy GM cars, guns, etc.). The general consensus among thinking people is that this new entitlement will just accelerate the coming bankruptcy of the US. After all, economically Obamacare is just another entitlement. When added to SSA, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements the government does not have the money to cover the costs. Sure they can print it but eventually that doesn’t work either.
So, where is the stash? We all know the answer, and unfortunately Roberts just gave our elected representatives simple and legal way to steal it. A while back Wretchard wrote about an idea that has been bouncing around in the crazy far left economic world for a number of years. It has never gained any traction because there was no simple way to implement it. It was always thought to be radical and legally specious. That is until Roberts found a way to justify taxing negative activity.
So here is what I fear is coming. If memory serves me correctly, there is about $7 trillion of cash tied up in various types of retirement plans. To protect the integrity of retirement assets from those fat cat Wallstreet types, and make sure that rubes like me (who dutifully saved and invested my money because I knew social security was a Ponzi scheme) are not hurt by the risky free market, we will be required to hold 50% of retirement assets in US government bonds. After all, government is in the business of mitigating all the risks in life. If you don’t agree to putting 50% of your assets in those “good-as-gold” government bonds, you can just pay the tax or penalty or whatever the government has decided to call it because Roberts just told us that is perfectly legal. I could never have imagined the SCTOUS would give our elected representatives the road map and legal cover for the US to become Argentina. I feel sorry for my children.
“Is it not still, as we speak, in violation of the Commerce Clause? Why is that not a problem?”
Not a constitutional lawyer or scholar, but I think the CC can grant constitutionality to some fed action but need not be satisfied by everything the fed gov. does. Looks like congress could pass an alien invasion defense fund tax if it wanted to.
Bolo, even if you don’t buy the upside arguments, it’s hard to see how, in an realistic scenario, ACA is anything other than both the “high” water mark and waterloo of liberalism. We’re fighting about something that is unworkable, to begin with, and still assailable on many fronts. Further fiats from any source would be met with wholesale rebellion.
Tarnsman -
It is Garand after John Cantius Garand inventor of the officially designated United States Rifle, Caliber .30, M1. There is also a Carbine model.
The Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) is your gateway to purchasing the M1 or M1 Carbine.
I’m with those who don’t completely buy the upside arguments of this ruling. After all, what does it say about the condition of the nation when even the Chief Justice of the USSC, instead of issuing a straightforward ruling, thinks it’s necessary to use a cleverly sneaky rationale that really doesn’t settle anything?
I’m having a hard time understanding how some BC readers could actually believe this is a victory in any way. Even if you think this will curtail Commerce Clause abuse (I’m skeptical that it will restrain future legislatures), the power to tax for any reason, or no reason at all, has just been given the green light
Exactly. If Roberts “gutted” the Commerce Clause so it couldn’t be abused any longer, it doesn’t matter one damn bit since he at the same time empowered the 13th Ammendment with everything and more that was ever claimed under the Commerce clause. Closed the window and opened the door…
What a mess.
As one who lurks and learns, I am amazed at the amount of gloom being expressed here. I suggest the following:
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/06/a_good_day_for_2.html
Nothing really helpful here, hodgpodge of ancedotes tied to nothing….for example:
It’s one thing to talk about the butterfly effect when describing how a butterfly in China can cause a hurricane in the US…it’s totally ass-backward to try to predict hurricanes in the US by looking at butterflies in China!
Let’s just say its a given that a US manufacturer makes a $5,000 artificial hip and a foreign one makes one for $2,500. There is no health care financing regime where a lot of pressure won’t be put on the US manufacturing firm and the only regime where that may not be a problem would be one of strict protectionism. If I worked for such a company, I’d worry about my job not matter what the SC ruling was.
Likewise:
Some studies show a lot of newly hired health care workers — as many as 5.6 million — will immediately become part of the Obamacare program
What exactly does this mean? You just graduated, you’re a doctor or nurse. You’re going to make a living providing services to patients who will either pay you with their own cash, with insurance, or with gov’t provided insurance like Medicare or some combination of all of the above. That would be the case whether or not Obamacare held up last Thursday.
The part about failing to bend the curve is interesting but does suffer from lumping together radically different systems. The UK, which has the ultimate single payer is lower than France and Germany which have extensive private insurance systems….and all countries are lower than the US both before and after Obamacare.
I think the problem is the assumption that the curve should be bent. Why should the % of GDP spent on health care *not* grow? Living longer and living healthier is a pretty good thing and to the degree health care can provide that most people will want to spend more money on it. Other things we can spend money on, video games, cell phones, fancy ‘artisan’ foods, have a lot of possible pleasure to offer but given the choice between living in slightly less pain for five years from ages 70-75 but having to make do with a slightly less *new* ipad or getting the ipad 25 or whatever they will have when I’m 70..I’ll probably choose less pain.
Finally,
“With a population smaller than New Jersey’s, Switzerland has a standing army of 650,000 ready to be mobilized in less than 48 hours.”
That’s nice but do we really think if the Swiss slashed their military by 50% next year Germany, Italy, and France will pounce with a combined invasion force? And do what? Confiscate ski resorts and beautiful scenary? At least in modern history I think the primary reason Switzerland isn’t invaded is that there’s nothing to gain from invading Switzerland and a lot of nice things to gain by *not* invading Switzerland.
JMH -
This is as many have stated over and over again. Our own Subotai Bahadur. Ann Barnhardt Many of us.
The Marxist Revolution happened in 2008. Just now are the sheeple noticing their republic is dead.
wow&flutter –
You will be severely under-armed. May I suggest:
Mossberg 500 in 12ga. – $180 from Sports Authority
Mossberg ATR in .30-06 or .270 WIN w/3×9 scope- $299 from Sports Authority
SIG SAUER P250 .40 S&W Modular Pistol – $399.99 from Sports Authority
This is the minimum.
Add a Ruger® 10-22 .22 LR Semiautomatic Rifle – $239.99 from Sports Authority
Add a Ruger® Mini 14 Ranch Rifle in .223/5.56NATO for two-legged varmints and close quarters
This all plus ammunition is less than $2500. Ammunition is best purchased on-line for the least expensive prices.
Dworkin Barimen
Me, too. It is now part of case law that the Federal Leviathan can levy a tax for NOT acting, partaking in commerce or following their random mandates disguised as “Law”. Freedom died in ’08 and was interred in it’s grave 6/28/12.
Bolo @ 52 – I had not thought of that but you are correct. The Leviathan now has the methodology to steal x% of their choosing of the wealth of the nation at will. All they have to do is impose a tax for not acting. Again.
“It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” – Roberts
But Roberts contradicted this in practice both the day before with the Arizona ruling and dthe day after in his Stolen Valor Ruling. Seemingly on both thoswe straddling days, protecting the people for the consewquences of their political choices was exactly what he chose to do. And thus he give thje lie to his whole sorry, dishonest, and dishonorable charade.
Stoicheion may be correct about the possibility of threats, which need not be direct and heavy-handed to be intimidating. Conbsider the intimidating consecuences of the murky circumstances of Vince Foster’s demise, and the notorious “list of 46 deceased Clinto associates”. Ypou don’t have to know the truth to be unsettled and dissuaded. Regardless if you have the honor of being Chief SCOTUS, special backbone is mandatory, just as physical courage is required of a military commander.
#15 Josh says “But the dissent DOES dispute that it would be a valid basis for anything, as it is a tax on *not* doing something, and the majority *just* agreed that is not an allowed move no matter how good your intentions. Then they allowed it. I mean, OMG.”
But, we DO now have a tax on not doing something.
We have a tax on NOT making charitable contributions.
We have a tax on NOT paying mortgage interest.
We have a tax on NOT having children.
We have a tax for NOT having business expenses.
Etc.
This just expands the range of things (possibly to infinity)that we may be taxed for not doing.
Oh, by the way, is the cost of paying a speeding ticket deductible on my Federal taxes? After all, it is only a tax on NOT driving under the speed limit.