Five lingering threats to ObamaCare

The origination lawsuit is still working its way through the DC Circuit Court.

I don't expect Roberts to overturn on this one either, because technically, the bill originated in the House and that will be his escape clause.

However, the true Constitutional issue is whether bills just act as numbered generic containers originating in either chamber, or whether "origination" includes the original content of the bill. Is a House bill, amended in the Senate to remove its title and all of its content and then replaced with entirely new Senate content, still considered a House-originated bill?

What's at stake is the plenary power of each chamber. The Senate has "advice and consent" and treaty ratification power that the House does not. The House has revenue origination and impeachment power that the Senate does not. If the Senate is allowed to gut an ordinary House bill with revenue content of its own making, then it has usurped a Constitutionally separated power of the House.

Roberts opened up this quagmire when he first legislated that the individual mandate penalty was a tax, something that nobody argued. In order to defend that decision, Robert now has to strip the House of its unique revenue origination power.

Mr. Balls and Strikes would be personally shredding the Constitution to pieces. My guess is that we'll never see Sissel v. United States Department of Health & Human Services leave the DC Circuit Court, just to protect Roberts' pretzel.

-PJ

: )

Here’s what the schemers have in mind for killing off conservative strength (the Left’s bench is empty and their local and state organizations aren’t supplying new socialist blood). So.......”fair vote.”

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2779/1

“...........Population migration across the past few decades has re-colored the nation into blue urban districts and red rural districts, introducing a structural bias favoring Republicans even if up through 55% of the popular vote goes to Democrats. For the party in a district whose general election victory is all but a foregone conclusion, primary elections increasingly favor extreme candidates whose voters are more likely to turn out than moderates. With primary turnout declining to all-time lows in most states in 2014, it leaves this key power to our most partisan voters. Once in office, representatives feel loyalty pressure to vote along party lines, as the winner-take-all dynamic plays out even further. Consequently, these basic structural attributes happen to be conferring outsized power onto the far right.

........... A fair and elegant solution addresses the structural flaw through the creation of multi-member “super districts” assembled from, say, three to five adjacent single-member districts. A recent Washington Post editorial, “Blending red and blue,” concurs. With multi-member districts, the contentious issue of geographical district boundaries simply goes away because the district boundaries themselves go away.

A further structural refinement called Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) enables voters to elect their super district representatives as a group by ranking them in order of preference. RCV gets rid of the need to resort to strategic voting to game the two-party system and expands the power of voters elect a representative. With RCV voters simply vote their true preferences, thereby eliminating any fear of “spoiling” or vote splitting among similar candidates that may undesirably benefit a dissimilar candidate. Every vote counts, and voters are no longer constrained by where they live but are free to engage by how they think. FairVote has created an excellent infographic and website that help explain multi-member districts and RCV.

Many city governments in the United States, including Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Oakland, have already successfully implemented RCV. Meanwhile, Maine will hold a referendum next year to adopt RCV for all congressional and state elections.

Multi-member districts and RCV find broad support among both progressives and conservatives. See, for example the recent article by self-identified conservative and National Review writer Reihan Salam, “The Biggest Problem in American Politics: Forget gerrymandering. Here’s what we need to fix to ensure truly fair elections.” And the recent op-ed by self-identified progressive Katrina vanden Heuvel of the Nation magazine, “We Need a Fairer System for Choosing House Members.”.............................

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