Obamacare before the Supreme Court

A reader wrote:

Are we all so hyped up over a shooting between a twenty-something and a 17 year old in Florida, that we have no care for what the Supreme Court decides on universal healthcare?

The Supreme Court hasn’t found a major piece of economic legislation unconstitutional for violating the enumerated powers of Congress since the 1930s. And the Supreme Court today is truly conservative, not in the liberal-conservative sense, but in the sense that they don’t want to make big waves and they generally accept prior Supreme Court precedent.

So I find it hard getting excited about this when I am nearly certain the outcome will be that Obamacare is upheld.

Comments

[g]

I have it on right now (C-Span replay) and wow, I am simply wowed by the lack of intellectual curiosity by Ginsburg. She doesn't sound like a justice on SCOTUS at all. She sounds like a politician advocating her cause, plain and simple.

Of course, it distresses me that Clarence Thomas has yet to say anything, although generally speaking I am in agreement with his writings. I do wish I'd hear questions from him.

Wow, guy arguing for the law was really bad, and the reason, I believe, that he had no good answers for the questions asked, is that there ARE no good answers for this attempt to use the commerce clause for forcing people to buy a service and a product.

[HS: Thomas doesn't believe in oral argument for some philosophical reasons, so he never speaks.]

[AllanF]

I'm with you on this HS. After Kelo, how can anyone have any doubt how these tools will rule?

Contrary to popular myth, the SC is boring for their predictability. My guide for predicting SC rulings is simple but infallible:

1) Is there a ruling that will make it more difficult to prosecute NAM petty, and not so petty, crime? Yes, rule that way; no, proceed to next question.

2) Is there a ruling that will provide for more lawsuits? Yes, rule that way (see the recent EPA case); no proceed to next question.

3) Is there a ruling that will further the power of the administrative bureaucracy? Rule that way (Obamacare obviously falls into this category). Next case.

[Conquistador]

"Thomas doesn't believe in oral argument for some philosophical reasons, so he never speaks." - Half Sigma

Written arguments are more persuasive due to the medium. The reader lets his mental guard down and is open to suggestion.

[Turambar]

"Wow, guy arguing for the law was really bad, and the reason, I believe, that he had no good answers for the questions asked, is that there ARE no good answers for this attempt to use the commerce clause for forcing people to buy a service and a product."

Maybe he has been getting some unhelpful prep sessions from the smartest guy in the room/constitutional dilettante? Supposedly the direction of the governments case had changed in the last few weeks.

[rightwingnut]

[HS: Thomas doesn't believe in oral argument for some philosophical reasons, so he never speaks.]

It made me curious where this influence could have come, looked over the Wikipedia entry on Thomas. Very interesting HBD-realism & law education value considering it was the 70's:

"Thomas entered Yale Law School, from which he received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1974, graduating towards the middle of his class."

"Thomas has recollected that his Yale law degree was not taken seriously by law firms to which he applied after graduating. He said that potential employers assumed he obtained it because of affirmative action policies. According to Thomas, he was "asked pointed questions, unsubtly suggesting that they doubted I was as smart as my grades indicated."

"I peeled a fifteen-cent sticker off a package of cigars and stuck it on the frame of my law degree to remind myself of the mistake I’d made by going to Yale. I never did change my mind about its value."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas#Early_life_and_education

[AllanF]

"Maybe he has been getting some unhelpful prep sessions from the smartest guy in the room..."

ROTFLMAO!

[John]

"So I find it hard getting excited about this when I am nearly certain the outcome will be that Obamacare is upheld."

I feel this way, too. Obamacare is clearly unconstitutional, but so is the rest of the welfare state, and nobody really cares. If 90% of the population thinks there should be a federal Social Security program, then we are going to have a federal Social Security program, and no piece of paper with writing on it is going to stop that.

Still, if by miracle this is overturned, it would be the greatest thing a government has done since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

[helene edwards]

So I find it hard getting excited (sic) about this when I am nearly certain the outcome will be that Obamacare is upheld.

You're probably right on the outcome but that doesn't mean there's no excitement. Since any new government bureaucracy means thousands of black managers, Obamacare means sweet, brainy people like Trayvon Martin will likely be the gatekeepers of your medical care when you're 70. That prospect excites you, doesn't it?

[Jon]

"HS: Thomas doesn't believe in oral argument for some philosophical reasons, so he never speaks."

Could it be that he really is an affirmative action black who is only as smart as his clerks who write for him?

[Sgt. Joe Friday]

You know, I think Obama may actually hope he loses this, for the following reasons:

1. It's an unpopular law. It gets struck down, the media will see to it that Obama's fingerprints on it are nowhere to be found. The stock market soars, and Obama gets re-elected.

2. Since Obama figures he's going to be re-elected, he also probably figures he's going to have coattails and will once again have Democrats in control of Congress. Without having to worry about facing the voters again, he can start from scratch, pushing what he really wanted in the first place: a single payer system, maybe even with individual doctors in the direct employ of the government.

[HS: The stock market is not going to soar because Obamacare is struck down. If anything, Wall Street probably likes Obamacare.]

[lil mike]

This is the biggest story of the week (and possibly the year) although Trayvon is dominating the news cycle from the grave.

"I feel this way, too. Obamacare is clearly unconstitutional, but so is the rest of the welfare state, and nobody really cares. If 90% of the population thinks there should be a federal Social Security program, then we are going to have a federal Social Security program, and no piece of paper with writing on it is going to stop that."

Although it's true that the Supreme Court has followed polls as much as the Constitution, that gives me a little hope, since Obamacare is polling so poorly. Maybe they will end up doing the right thing, even if it's for the right reasons.

But that's just a hope. I'm basically with HS that Obamacare will be upheld, but just barely.

[Linda]

"Thomas has recollected that his Yale law degree was not taken seriously by law firms to which he applied after graduating. He said that potential employers assumed he obtained it because of affirmative action policies. According to Thomas, he was "asked pointed questions, unsubtly suggesting that they doubted I was as smart as my grades indicated."

I seem to remember reading in his biography "Strange Justice" that for the only grades the authors could verify, he was near the bottom of his class. If he graduated with descent grades, that may suggest the employers were right and that there is affirmative action grade inflation at the most elite law schools. That would have implications for Obama's magna too.

[Anon E. Mouse]

If Thomas had gone to a lower ranked school people would just think he was stupider because they would have no way of knowing that he voluntarily attended a worse school to compensate for the positive effect of his race on admissions. If he did graduate near the middle of his class that means he was a good fit (although obviously at Yale the people near the top of the class dont have a better school that would be a better fit for them)

[Linda]

If Thomas had went to a lower ranked school they would have thought he got in based on merit and admired him for not using affirmative action to get credentials he didn't deserve (in their eyes).

What I find interesting is that so many liberals insist that a dark skinned broad featured black like Clarence Thomas was an affirmative action case at Yale. This tells me that deep down liberals believe in HBD, but it only comes out against blacks who are not politically useful to them. It's similar to how liberals believe poor whites are stupid, once again showing how liberals secretly believe in race and class differences but it only comes out against those who are politically inconvenient like black conservatives or poor white republicans.

Of course liberals will argue these groups are stupid because they're not voting their demographic interests, but if they didn't secretly believe in HBD, they would come up with a more charitable interpretation. For example liberals never claim that conservative gays are stupid, even though conservative gays are not voting their group interest. This is because gays are not stupid (on average) and liberals know it and thus must have at least semi-rational reasons when they vote conservative, but blacks and poor whites are never given the same benefit of the doubt when they vote conservative.

I believe extreme liberalism is a largely an overcompensation for guilt a lot of whites feel for secretly being so racist and elitist. I believe Obamamania was also partly an overcompensation of the same guilt. White liberals finally found a black man they could accept as an equal (Harvard educated, light gold skin, delicate East-African and caucasoid features, tall slim elegant build, non-religious and non-homophobic) and thus elevated him to the status of a super genius God.

[Anthony]

The way the Court has been ruling, if Obamacare had been a straight-up tax to pay for health care, with a break for people who had insurance, it would be constitutional - nothing different about that than about food stamps, or social security, etc. The questions in the Court were all about whether Obamacare was a tax or a penalty.

The large remaining question is whether, if the individual mandate is not constitutional, what remains of the law. This is where it's going to get messy. I think the Court, or at least Kennedy and the solid liberals, are looking for a way to salvage as much as they can. Since 4 of those 5 are ignorant of economics (except Breyer), what they'll leave of Obamacare will be a bigger mess than what passed, thus satisfying AllanF's second criterion.

[Insider]

'That would have implications for Obama's magna too.'

How would it have implications for Obama's magna?
Magna is a designation that ties itself to how well the rest of your classmates perform.