Posted on 11/19/2014 5:12:10 AM PST by Servant of the Cross
At the time of this writing, six “Gruber videos” have been released and “gone viral,” as they say in YouTube land. These are the videos of course, in which “Obamacare architect” Jonathan Gruber lets the cat out of the bag on the process of enacting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, aka The Greatest Consumer Fraud Perpetrated on the American People, Ever.
Of the many Gruber quotes burning up the internet, I was especially struck by this one, to which Charles Krauthammer refers in a recent article:
Gruber said, the bill’s authors manipulated the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which issues gold-standard cost estimates of any legislative proposal: “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes.” Why? Because “if CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.” And yet, the president himself openly insisted that the individual mandate – what you must pay the government if you fail to buy health insurance – was not a tax.
Obviously, writing a bill “in a tortured way” to prevent scoring the individual mandate as a tax is to admit that the individual mandate is, in fact, a tax.
But the Gruber did something else, too, which was to trigger a memory of another, earlier quote (emphasis mine, citation omitted):
In answering that constitutional question [of whether the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is a tax], this Court follows a functional approach, “[d]isregarding the designation of the exaction, and viewing its substance and application.”
Such an analysis suggests that the shared responsibility payment [i.e.¸ the individual mandate] may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
yes, verbal gymnastics...intellectual gymnastics too - he was trying to be too smart by half.
Interesting take.....I’ll chew on it.
I always felt that Roberts had really given the GOP a way to get the whole law overturned, because a tax must originate in the House, and this one didn’t.
I thought GOP leaders missed their big chance (whether intentionally or not).
as far as I am aware there are no limits on what the government can tax.
Now that they've been handed a majority they'll find some other feckless reason to not oppose it.
In fact, I'd hazard a guess that the GOPe leadership views their majority in both houses as a liability and an inconvenience; it makes them have to go make other excuses for doing nothing about anything.
As I said, the GOP may have dropped the ball intentionally - or they may simply have been too stupid and intimidated to pick it up when it was handed to them. But I think Roberts did give them a way of overturning the whole law, and for some reason, they just chose not to do so.
That's my recollection also.
Yes, I agree with what you said.
First, I think this is an interesting topic to debate and discuss. I'm not sure whether Roberts is a traitor, a genius or something in between. It is not "my approach" and I don't buy everything the author has written at all.
My primary point is that if SCOTUS had declared 0bamacare unconstitutional in June, 2012, everything that was wrong with 0bamacare would have been blamed on this SCOTUS decision rather than the bad law, the Left would have launched a scorched earth attack on the rule of law and SCOTUS that would have made Bush v Gore look tame, ending in a scenario where we truly "could have lost by winning".
We’ll see how it works out- which form Roberts is true to.
If that's true, shouldn't Roberts have ruled against it on those grounds?
Also, enumeration plus the fact those goods and services “the People” need are provided by the government that raised revenue in a Constitutional manner to provide “general welfare” qualities. An individual does not directly purchase “...fire trucks, police uniforms, road graders...”, for themselves. They are taxed directly in PROPORTION to everyone else or choose to exercise an action where they could be taxed. ACA fails on the enumeration side and on the tax/penalty side. You are PUNISHED for not purchasing an distinct service tailored specifically to you and for you, while another individual is exempt from that “tax”/penalty. Explain that one.
I don't think you'd find many military historians who think losing to win is a viable scenario, and you know Patton's motto, "Don't pay for the same real estate twice."
I have NO IDEA how that was your takeaway from my post. In relation ONLY to 0bamacare, we 'may have lost by winning'.
I don't think you'd find many military historians who think losing to win is a viable scenario, and you know Patton's motto, "Don't pay for the same real estate twice."
Yes, this is a war but in NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM is this a true military war with human life at stake. Therefore, "losses of real estate" are less grave in intermediate battles in order to win the overall war.
This
He and his wife adopted 2 children from a country that required residency in that country which the Roberts did not do thus making adoption likely illegal. No doubt Holder would threaten to deport them afterall the children are not violent cartel members.
Would the children having to be cared for in Ireland be worse than selling out the future of the US? Assuming this is the blackmail issue, Roberts has not thought it through.
I disagree with his decision and think America would have been shocked if he had made blackmail threat known. But that aside the children would likely not have been “cared for” in Ireland. The adoption would have likely have been void and they would have lost them. They then could have worked on doing the adoption legally since moms were willing to let them have the children.
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