Roberts switched views to uphold health care law

[pjp]

Roberts switched views to uphold health care law

Longish but worth reading IMO.
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[notageek]

I was wondering when someone would bring this up. I read his reasoning, sounded like BS to me.
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[BoneKracker]

Changed his position? Could not adequately justify it? Was relentless?
Sounds to me more like he was extorted, blackmailed or bribed.
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[notageek]

Having said that, it is pretty hard to justify why universal healthcare is bad, when apparently everyone is getting coverage. It's a pretty tough position to go against.
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What looks like a cat, flies like a bat, brays like a donkey, and plays like a monkey?

[Muso]

[Muso]

[jonnevers]

[nomilieu]

I might as well jump in here with an Obamacare question:

Now, I haven't read the law (fuck, it's long, so who has?), but from what I hear, it's going to drop a tax/penalty on anyone uninsured.
So, if you can't afford insurance and don't qualify for Medicaid or any appropriate tax credit, wouldn't this legislation actually hurt you?

(I've been a bit lazy about keeping up with the details, as I'm not in a bind for insurance.)

[audiodef]

I've heard about the tax penalty thing. If this is true, then I am against this health care act, since I am for freedom, and the only freedom that matters is choice. I wonder what will happen to those who can't afford insurance and don't qualify for medicaid?

"Instead, the four joined forces and crafted a highly unusual, unsigned joint dissent. They deliberately ignored Roberts' decision, the sources said, as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate."

Why do we have tantrummy children as the top judges in this country?

"It required individuals to buy insurance or pay a penalty. Congress had never before in the history of the nation ordered Americans to buy a product from a private company as part of its broad powers to regulate commerce."

Considering that there is no real division (just a flimsy veil that fools nobody with a brain) between government and corporate, this has been a long time coming. Perhaps the health care act isn't designed by the government to be altruistic in any way, and it's just a way to start ordering Americans to buy stuff or else, in the guise of compassion. "Opponents argued that the law exceeded Congress' power under the Constitution..." I really can't see how anyone can say otherwise and not be anything other than psychotic fascists. I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing it.

"There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the Court - and to Roberts' reputation - if the Court were to strike down the mandate. Leading politicians, including the President himself, had expressed confidence the mandate would be upheld."

There is so much wrong with this statement, it's not even funny. Roberts is not here to worry about reputation. His job is to consider proposed legislation and compare it to the principles of the U.S. Constitution. What everyone else thinks be damned. That the president himself - "Mr. Hope" - wants to uphold a mandate ordering the public to buy something, should be the final straw on the camel's back of "oh, he was just left with a big mess to clean up". Come on, people. This guy is no better than Bush, and possibly worse because he rode in on a message of hope and now he's telling his constituents to get bent. While politicians are known for lying, he's topped them all with giant whoppers, and now he wants to make your life harder by forcing you to buy whatever he tells you to buy or else. You can't even pin this on Bush, Rove or Cheney. Obama is on the path to go down as the president who truly implemented the police state. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Obama is just part of whatever organization of world domination and stupidity Bush, Rove, Cheney et al. belong to.

This is why I don't bother with politics at all. The system is rigged in favor of those who believe the masses exist to be slave labor for a handful of people. We don't need to "vote for the right people". We need to tear it down and start over - IF this can be done by people with the wisdom to learn from the mistakes that have been made that have led to all this. I think essentially that will come down to having people in charge who insist on an educated populace with dim views of "reality shows" and "America's Top Model".

"Some even suggested that if Roberts struck down the mandate, it would prove he had been deceitful during his confirmation hearings, when he explained a philosophy of judicial restraint."

I'm just going to stare blankly at this idiotic statement for a moment and move on.

"Some informed observers outside the Court flatly reject the idea that Roberts buckled to liberal pressure..."

If "liberal pressure" means "you're going to make people buy stuff we tell them to buy or else", then I will never again call myself a liberal. In fact, I think I'll start right now. I'm not conservative. I'm not liberal. I'll just say I'm smart, or that I see through the bullshit - all of it. Why not? The words Democrat and Republic have been meaningless barks to me for some time already.

"They instead believe that Roberts realized the historical consequences of a ruling striking down the landmark health care law."

Nonsense. Either this is not what Roberts thought, or if he did, then Roberts is as crazy as the rest of them. No one sane thinks it's acceptable to force the public to buy something whether they want to or not. End of story.

"There was no doctrinal background for the Court to fall back on - nothing in prior Supreme Court cases - to say the individual mandate crossed a constitutional line. The case raised entirely new issues of power. Never before had Congress tried to force Americans to buy a private product; as a result, never before had the Court ruled Congress lacked that power. It was completely uncharted waters."

Excuse me while I burst out in a huge fit of cynical laughter. It's right there in the opening paragraph: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Let me highlight the relevant phrase: SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY. Please explain to me how "buy this product or else" is a "blessing of liberty".

"To strike down the mandate as exceeding the Commerce Clause, the Court would have to craft a new theory, which could have opened it up to criticism that it reached out to declare the President' health care law unconstitutional."

So? Your job isn't to care about this. Your job is to uphold the Constitution. The president isn't doing it. I'm sorry to see that instead of growing some backbone, you're merely following suit. Sheep are cute. You are not.

"Moreover, there are passages in Roberts' opinion that are consistent with his views that unelected judges have assumed too much power over American life, and that courts generally should take a back seat to elected officials, who are closer to the people and can be voted out of office if the people don't like what they're doing."

Correct-a-mundo, sir.

"Roberts surely could have gotten the liberals to join a decision that the mandate was similar to a 1942 Commerce Clause case involving a farmer who was producing wheat for his own use and had no intention of selling it. In that seminal case, the Court ruled the farmer's wheat production nonetheless affected Commerce, and Congress therefore could regulate it."

This is what I detest about any system in which participants are not voluntary participants. No one has the right to regulate anyone else's private affairs. Period. End of story. Get off my lawn. If I'm not hurting you and you stick your nose in uninvited, expect said nose to produce excess plasma. If it's not about respect, you got nothing.

"'People, for good reasons of their own, often fail to do things that would be good for them or good for society. Those failures - joined with the similar failures of others - can readily have a substantial effect on interstate commerce,' Roberts wrote in his opinion. 'Under the government's logic, that authorizes Congress to use its commerce power to compel citizens to act as the government would have them act.

'That is not the country the framers of our Constitution envision,' Roberts wrote."

Correct-a-mundo, sir. Everyone has the right to make their own choices. That many people do not have the wisdom to accept the consequences of their choices does not negate that right. Life is messy. We learn from our mistakes, if we learn at all.

"The fact that the joint dissent doesn't mention Roberts' majority was not a sign of sloppiness, the sources said, but instead was a signal the conservatives no longer wished to engage in debate with him."

Sure, go stick your heads in the sand when your tiny little brains can't stand their own ground. That sentence should read "...but instead was a signal the conservatives were massively insecure and did not have either the ethical courage nor the intellectual strength to uphold their own beliefs in the face of calm, reasoned opposition".

"The fragmentation of power produced by the structure of our government is central to liberty, and when we destroy it, we place liberty in peril," the dissent said. "Today's decision should have vindicated, should have taught, this truth; instead our judgment today has disregarded it."

I couldn't say it better myself.
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[pjp]