U.S. Supreme Court - Centralization of Power and Debt

[Reality Check]

The United States Supreme Court ruled this week on a case that had at it's heart the centralization of power, economic control and debt.

The Law commonly known as Obamacare was challenged on the grounds that it used the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution to require everyone in the United States to repeatedly ( annually ) buy a product from a private company, even if they did not want or need the product at the time of purchase. The challenge claimed that such a law exceeded the power of the federal government granted by the constitution of the United States.

Had this law been struck down, the trend toward ever more centralization of power and control of the United States economy in the federal government of the United States ( at the expense of the power of the individual citizens of the United States; and at the expense of the power of the sovereign states making up the United States ), would have been slowed and restrained by the Constitution.

Instead of the limiting effect that striking down this law would have had, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court created an entirely new and unique way to massively increase the centralization of power in the federal government of the United States.

The Chief Justice "discovered" a new taxing power of the federal government which allowed the federal government to tax anyone who did not buy a specific product from a private company, even if they had no need for the product and also no desire to purchase the product, of thousands of dollars a year and that said tax would only apply to people not purchasing a government approved product.

The federal law left standing ( Obamacare ) not only requires the repeated annual purchase of a product costing an ever increasing amount of money, but starting out in excess of $5,000 per year per person, but it also transfers control of 17% of the U.S. economy to the federal government.

The Obamacare law also creates a new debt obligation of the federal government by requiring the federal government to pay an ever increasing percentage of ever increasing costs of health care.

Of course the United Sates federal government is already borrowing 40 cents of every dollar it spends, so how long it can pay this new debt obligation, that will not even kick in until 2014, is an open question.

[John]

This is very far from clear. Roberts led the court in striking down
the use of the Commerce Clause to justify unlimited centralizing
federal power, a very signficant finding. By upholding the private
mandate on the grounds that it can be construed as a tax, he's opened
the door to further challenges, since there will be a lot of problems
structuring it as a tax in a constitutional manner.

On the other hand, as I've said from the beginning, the whole
health care act is a proposal of economic insanity, because it's a return
to President Richard Nixon's wage-price controls, which were an absolute
disaster for the nation.

** Obama's health plan, a proposal of economic insanity, appears to be losing support
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 25#e090725

[Reality Check]

This is very far from clear. Roberts led the court in striking down
the use of the Commerce Clause to justify unlimited centralizing
federal power, a very signficant finding.

With the greatest respect, I believe you may be reading more into the Supreme Court's decision than is actually there.

Please consider these facts:

1. The four dissenting Justices ( Kennedy, Thomas, Scalia and Alito ) expressly did not concur to a single part of Justice Roberts' opinion.

2. Only those parts of Justice Robert's opinion that all four of the so-called Liberal Justices ( Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotamayer and Kagan ) concurred with have established a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court. Those parts are the only opinions supported by a majority of the Supreme Court.

3. Ginsburg expressly excluded her self from concurring ( she dissented from ) that part of Justice Robert's opinion regarding the Commerce Clause.

4. The opinion of the court ( as opposed to the opinion of Justice Roberts ) expressly reversed the appeals court on the issue of the mandate being unconstitutional. The appeals court had said it was unconstitutional based on exceeding the Commerce Clause, but that decision of unconstitutionality by the appeals court was reversed by the United States Supreme Court.

5. If you read the PDF of the opinion of Justice Roberts on the Supreme Court website you will note the page headers are sometimes labeled the "Opinion of the Court" and sometimes merely "the Opinion of Justice Roberts". While the parts of the opinion do not exactly match page breaks, they do convey the general drift of which parts represented the opinion of the court vs Justice Robert's opinion. Unless it is spelled out in a foot note I did not read, the only way to tell which part, is which, exactly, is to read the partially concurring and partially dissenting opinions of Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotamayer and Kagan.

6. The five justice's in the majority reversed the appeals court decision that the mandate was unconstitutional. The only reason the five Justices in the majority could agree on doing that was on the basis of the new Congressional power to tax inactivity found by Justice Roberts, but to suggest that five Justices on the Supreme Court also concurred with Justice Roberts' opinion on the Commerce Clause is, in my humble opinion, reading way to much into the actual decision of the Supreme Court. Justices Kennedy, Thomas, Scalia and Alito expressly refused to concur with any part of Justice Roberts opinion. In addition Justice Ginsburg dissented from the Commerce Clause part of Justice Roberts' opinion.

A PDF of all the opinions can be found on the U.S. Supreme Court website here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11 ... 93c3a2.pdf

[Reality Check]

... Roberts ... opened the door to further challenges, since there will be a lot of problems
structuring it as a tax in a constitutional manner.
...

Again, with the greatest respect, I believe just the opposite is true.

Justice Roberts took it upon himself to rewrite the law regarding the mandate as a tax ( interpret the law ) in the manner that would get closest to what he interpreted the objective of the Congress was, and still meet constitutional muster. He spelled this out in great detail.

A penalty on inactivity is OK and can be considered a tax. A penalty that does not exceed the cost of actually buying the product is OK and can be considered a tax. So for example if you chose not to buy a $5,000 dollar computer, each year and every year, meeting the required government specifications for a minimum capabilities computer, then a penalty of not more than $5,000, assessed by the IRS, each and every year you chose not to purchase, that would still be a constitutional tax, not a penalty, according to Justice Roberts. A penalty even higher might be OK according to Justice Roberts, but, again according to Justice Roberts' opinion a penalty that large would clearly be a constitutional tax. This part of Justice Roberts' opinion was concurred to by five Supreme Court Justices and is now the "law of the land".

It is important to note that this "re-writing" ( or re-interpretation if you will ) of the law known as "Obamacare" has already been done by the Supreme Court and the law, as it stands now, is fully constitutional. Future laws that followed Justice Roberts explicit road map to constitutionality could have a similar mandate to purchase anything and they would also be constitutional, based on this new Supreme Court precedent.

The discussion of this part of the Supreme Courts opinion can be found in the text and the footnotes on pages 33 through 44 of those pages titled "Opinion of the Court" ( Foot Note 8 - starting on page 35 and continuing on page 36 - discuses the magnitude of the penalty being up to $4,800 per year causing no problem what so ever) the opinion can be found in the linked U.S. Supreme Court website PDF file: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11 ... 93c3a2.pdf

[John]

I defer to your deeper analysis.

John