One weakness, Rajjpuut sees, is that some of the states are talking about Commerce Act challenges rather than direct Constitutional challenges or challenging on both issues. This is a major mistake. The court has always been reluctant to screw around with the Constitution but might very well jump at a chance to modify the Commerce Act. Since bankruptcy of all 50 states is at stake, Rajjpuut suggests every bullet be fired and instantaneous reloading take place.
As it stands the provisions of Obamacare that force individual states to take over a much augmented Medicaid and a very much augmented state role in paying for Medicaid are almost certain to bankrupt all 50 of the states with the possible exception of Texas (which has special doctor-friendly and insurance-friendly laws in place) by 2020 or 2022 at the latest. This much you already know if you’re a loyal reader of Rajjpuut’s Folly here or at TownHall.com . . . Listening to Fox News the other night was quite enlightening . . . .
The United States is not some single monlithic entity called “America” but rather a federal system of government with the national government holding some important dominion over 50 semi-autonomous states. The Bill of Rights of the Constitution is sort of like a protective armor designed to negate much of the potentially most objectionable power grabs that the national government (acting upon the states and upon the individual citizens) might attempt. Perhaps the least appreciated and little understood of all the Bill of Rights’ ten amendments is the 10th and last amendment which limits the power of the national government just to assume powers willy-nilly a la Obama and his czars and Obamacare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10th_Amendment
The 10th Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The main reason the states will have a powerful case arguing against the provisions of Obamacare that will bankrupt them is that like so much of what Barak Obama has done his so-called “reforms” under Obamacare are merely commandeering the state legislature’s role in every one of the 50 states for federal purposes which always in the past the Supreme Court has labeled “unconstitutional.” In a nutshell the key question is this: “Should the U.S. Government be allowed to pass laws and programs and force the states to pay for them?” If you wanted a stronger form of the question, “Can the federal government be allowed to pass laws, then force the states to pay for them and bankrupt the states?”
This question about the U.S. Congress regulating state governments has been asked many times and always the answer has been a resounding, “NO!” In Obamacare, as the law now exists, Congress has told the states to modify their health care regulation; they must surrender some areas of health care regulations; and they must spend state taxpayer money in the exact manner that the U.S. Congress is telling them to spend it. The U.S. Congress is removing all self-determination and discretion from the state governments in the health care arena.
Napolitano is also no lover of FDR, for the same reasons he criticizes Obama. But he would surprise virtually everyone by saying that when it comes to “constitutional fidelity” the least loyal to the provisions of the constitution was Abraham Lincoln. “He waged war on about half the country, without authority for that in the Constitution, a war that killed 700,000 people if civilians are included. Obama is already close to Lincoln and has surpassed FDR in stepping on the Constitution. Ol’ Rajjpuut has known plenty of southerners who blanched at the term the “Civil War” and preferred to call it “The War of Northern Aggression" as they had been taught in their schools” but from a N.J. judge that’s gotta be a surprise . . . .
Back to Obamacare, the judge continues: “the states have had a role in health care delivery for 233 years, a big role since about 1920, and a huge role since Medicaid was passed in 1965, there is no precedent for the federal government to just move in there. I predict that the U.S. Supreme Court will invalidate major portions of the law the president just signed.” However, according to Napolitano, the bad news is that many of the laws provisions will not be "challengable" until 2014 when they’d go into effect. In any case, the Judge says it takes the average court case four years to pass through the system to reach the Supreme Court. “You’re talking abut 2018 which is eight years from now.
Rajjpuut, of course sees a cleaner, better world and has a better way, the thing to do is for 38 states (the 3/4 necessary for citizen creation of a new amendment to the Constitution) to pass an amendment repealing Obamacare and all its provision, eliminating all the 159 new federal bureaucracies created by the law, and unhiring all 1,650 new IRS agents required by the law. This is the single most magic action awaiting the TEA Party's commitment. There has never before been an Amendment created for the Constitution, this is the TEA Party's divine purpose if ever there was one!
Other points raised by the Judge include . . . .
The federal government lacks constitutional authority to order citizens to purchase healthcare insurance or fine them for not doing so.
The sweetheart deals still in the Obamacare law are definitely unconstitutional. The Gatorade exception, Louisiana Purchase and others “create a very unique and tricky constitutional problem (they violate the equal protection clauses and equal process clauses) because they treat some citizens differently from others” based upon the state they’re living in “so these benefits or bribes whatever you call them” force people in other states "to pay for the benefits of states that pay less.”
The U.S. Constitution created the federal government and it was “not created to right every wrong, but rather to operate only in the seventeen specific, discrete areas where the Constitution empowered it to act.”
One of the more objectionable parts of the law was that a takeover of the student college loan industry was added into the bill so that students taking out loans could partially fund Obamacare. Included in the law was an exception so that a congressional member’s bank (he partially owns it, Rajjpuut believes) could still stay in the student loan business.
Exempting union members from so-called “Cadillac taxes” on expensive health care insurance policies while imposing a direct tax on other citizens is “outright discrimination” and unconstitutional.
“This health care legislation will prove that the UNlimited government folks are WRONG in a very direct and in-your-face way.”
A group very much in tune with Judge Napolitano is the recently-emerged TEA^^^ Party (acronym: Taxed Enough Already) which buys his arguments 100% and seeks to find fiscal-conservatives to back this November. One strong reason for the great distress of TEA Party members: Obama's budget initiatives carried into the future have been shown by the Congressional Budget Office to increase the National Debt to Gross Domestic Product ratio from an alarmingly high 53% to an incredible 90+%. The last nation to embark willingly on such a plan was Japan in the late 80's and early 90's. Today Japan, once thought of as an economic super power, faces a debt/GDP ratio of 192% and her glory days are far behind her.
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
Voters across the nation feel closer to the Tea Party movement than they do to Congress according to the latest Rasmussen poll. 52% of U.S. voters believe the average member of the Tea Party movement has a better understanding of the issues facing America today than the average member of Congress while only 30% believe that those in Congress have a better understanding of those key issues. 47% think that their own political views are closer to those of the average Tea Party member than to the views of the average member of Congress. On this point, 26% feel closer to Congress. 46% of voters say that the average Tea Party member is more ethical than the average member of Congress. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say that the average member of Congress is more ethical. There is a wide divide between the tiny Political Class and Mainstream Americans on these questions. Seventy-five percent (75%) of those in the Political Class say that members of Congress are better informed on the issues. Among Mainstream Americans, 68% have the opposite view, and only 16% believe Congress is better informed. By a 62% to 12% margin, Mainstream Americans say the Tea Party is closer to their views. By a 90% to one percent (1%) margin, the Political Class feels closer to Congress.
March 12, 2010 – While most Americans are focused on defeating Obama’s plan to nationalize our health care system, the President has been 