Posted on 06/28/2012 4:23:55 PM PDT by SoFloFreeper
There are eerie parallels between today's decision and a legendary case from Thomas Jefferson's time.
Earlier today, the Supreme Court, by a narrowly divided vote, upheld the individual mandate, a key component of President Obama's signature piece of legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Obama supporters are letting out a collective sigh of relief, as most observers expected the mandate -- and possibly the entire Act -- to fall after the oral argument. Conservatives are conversely upset that Chief Justice Roberts -- the deciding vote in the case -- snatched defeat for conservatives from the jaws of victory, given that there were four votes to strike down the Act in its entirety.
(Excerpt) Read more at m.theatlantic.com ...
Go read the dissents from the conservatives on the court.
The only solution to limit the governments power to tax us. It is used as a form of punishment to hard working people. The government has proven that unlimited power to do anything will be abused by them and with the welfare state seeming to be the most powerful. The only thing to do is limit their power to enslave us.
The government should never police the people. It is the people who need to police the government and one way to do that is to limit power. I do not care what it takes. An R by your name has proven to be a liability anymore. None of those creatures can be trusted with that kind of power.
btrl
btrl
Gullibility not only on our side. The lefties have no clue what has happened either. But tell them you can’t wait for President Palin to tax non-ownership of firearms, and they might get a clue....
BUt that’s not Robert’s job. He took an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to affect politics/elections. He and the other four failed to uphold the Constitution. He is a disgrace for writing this majority decision.
This article is interesting, especially in light of a thought that popped into my mind this morning as I was listening to the reports and initial rants against Justice Roberts. I was shocked and dismayed at the ruling and thinking derogatory thoughts about Roberts, whom I’ve seen as a conservative.
And then I got this thought popped into my mind: “Something else is at play here. Roberts is setting something up that is currently hidden.” And I had a sense of calmness afterward about the decision.
This article that Roberts playing a larger political game than is obvious at first glance at the ruling seems to me to be a possibility of the thought I got. Or it may be nothing at all other than a desparate subconscious wish for an over turning of Obamacare and his re-election defeat.
I respect the four who dissented and I would have been perfectly happy if Roberts had stayed with them. I do not disagree with what you quote from them.
You, however, are
flat
out
wrong
in
the specific thing you wrote, namely that Roberts invented a new taxing power.
He
did
not.
Didn’t realize you jumped in on what I wrote to someone else. He was flat out wrong in the specific thing he wrote to me. You stuck your nose where it don’t belong. He was wrong in that specific point and I was not wrong to tell him so and your citing the dissent is
IRRELEVANT to the point at issue.
Don’t post if you don’t want others to comment on them.
The poster you replied to wrote:
“Roberts just invented the most pernicious new precedent for vastly expanded Federal power since the New Deal. Congress can now call any regulatory penalty under any circumstance a tax and it will now be upheld under Congress’ unlimited taxing authority.”
The poster was 100 percent correct, never claimed Roberts invented a new taxing power, and you are still flat wrong.
If you read the dissents you will see the difference between a penalty and a tax explained in relation to this ruling.
Is Congress' power to tax really unlimited? For example, if Congress passed a $10,000 per-gun, per-year tax on firearm ownership (effectively making gun ownership impossible for a majority of the citizenry) would that be a legitimate tax function of the Congress, a violation of the Second Amendment, or both?
The line of argument in the article is interesting. I hope it is true.
Roberts today destroyed the Constitution. It's the worst decision of my lifetime. Worse than Roe. It might be the most evil decision since Dred Scott. And that lead to the civil war. And that's where we're headed.
Oh, I agree with you wholeheartedly. Their job and their oath of office is to do just that, uphold and defend the Constitution.
I just wonder who managed to get the mushrooms into his food chain during the last week or so.
Roberts did not invent any expansion of taxing authority. The virtually unlimited taxing authority of Congress has existed since Hamilton won the debate.
The limits on taxing rest with the People, not the Constitution.
I addressed a SPECIFIC point.
On
that
specific
point
you
are
wrong.
“Of course in many cases what was a regulatory mandate enforced by a penalty could have been imposed as a tax upon permissible action; or what was imposed as a tax upon permissible action could have been a regulatory mandate enforced by a penalty. But we know of no case, and the Government cites none, in which the imposition was, for constitutional purposes, both. The two are mutually exclusive.
[....]
In a few cases, this Court has held that a ‘tax’ imposed upon private conduct was so onerous as to be in effect a penalty. But we have never held – never – that a penalty imposed for violation of the law was so trivial as to be in effect a tax.”
Check out that damning “never” in the second paragraph. Alito, Scalia and Kennedy agree with me - or rather I agree with them. You're welcome to disagree. But that puts you with Roberts and rest of the liberals. In the old Constitution, Congress had the power to tax just about anything, but only if it called it a tax. As of yesterday, we have a new Constitution: one that allows Congress to concoct any sort of regulatory framework they desire so long as some sort of monetary penalty is associated with it, because that penalty is now a tax and thus permissible under Congress’ power to tax. Some conservatives think that they won some sort of victory because the decision places limits on permissible acts under the Commerce Clause. I say who cares? Roberts’ decision has rendered the Commerce Clause a dead letter.
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