House of Eratosthenes

Goes without saying I’ve never been too enamored with the ACA. It chooses personal security over personal freedom. Not as a byproduct of what it is trying to do, but as a primary goal. It “fundamentally transforms” America, one of the few promises President Obama made that He’s actually tried to uphold. Makes us into yet another filthy European socialist mudpuddle where “everyone” has “access” to everything, but nobody can do anything without permission.

And now, it doesn’t even do what it’s supposed to — even the mechanics of it, that goofy website, can’t generate the lift to overcome the drag. But we have to follow through, “they” tell us, because it’s “the law of the land.”

Sheesh. So sick of that. PASSED BY A MAJORITY IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, PASSED BY A SUPER MAJORITY IN THE SENATE, AND DECLARED CONSTITUTIONAL BY SCOTUS. Law of the land! Even though it sucks.

I’ve seen that phrase hammered together & tossed out there by people known to me to take some measure of pride in not knowing how any part of this system works, not knowing what a “bicameral legislature” is, people I doubt could reliably answer the questions you have to answer to become a naturalized citizen, like “How long does a United States Senator serve in one term?”

Let’s take this one on. Let’s do some of the critical thinking they can’t do.

The majority in the House of Representatives is 219 out of 435, one-and-a-half votes over the tipping point. Not a single Republican vote. So if the point is that The People want this albatross around their necks, sorry, no dice. You can just take a quick glance at the current House of Representatives and see, no we don’t have a majority of democrats in there, and ObamaCare is a big part of the reason why. Oh yes, the vote was valid. And legal. And the House of Representatives is charged by our Constitution with the obligation to represent the Will of the People, therefore, to bring that will to the decision-making process. The thing is, though, they fucked up when they did it. They did it wrong. Next time the real “People” had something to say about it, there was a bloodletting, because this isn’t what they wanted.

Supermajority in the Senate: Sixty to thirty-nine, with one abstention. Again, not a single Republican vote. But a supermajority is a supermajority, right? Two words: Cornhusker Kickback. And many other things. No representation of the true Will of the People in this chamber, either. And then there is Scott Brown sitting in Ted Kennedy’s seat. How come was that? Because of this vote. The six-seat shift in the 2010 elections affirmed this.

Which brings us to the Supreme Court, which supposedly upheld the constitutionality of ObamaCare. This is true, they did uphold it — as a tax. The progressives do not recall, since it is not expedient for them to think about it, that the Obama administration’s commerce-clause arguments were entirely rejected by the high court. So yes, it is “constitutional” that you have to pay this fine for failing to follow this regulation, even though the regulation, and the fine, exceed Congress’ authority under the Constitution. This false-veneer of constitutionality comes from Congress’ power to levy taxes. It’s a tax on a selected class of people, who don’t do such-and-such. Precisely what President Obama Himself repeatedly said it wasn’t (See about three minutes in)…

The rebuttal to “upheld by the Supreme Court” practically writes itself, as a question: So, is this a tax?

If it is, President Obama lied. We’re accustomed to Him playing fast and loose with the truth, it isn’t proving His status as a liar that is the issue. The issue is that when you sell a product under false pretenses, as any salesman can tell you, you should expect some push back. You should expect some things to be pulled back into the realm of the arguable, even after the ink has dried. The customer may rescind. In a lot of jurisdictions, he’ll be allowed to, maybe even obliged to. Because you didn’t stick to your knitting. You over-promised and under-delivered, and some of your “sales” might get un-sold. I’m sure that feels awfully unfair to a lefty politician, but that doesn’t mean it is.

If, on the other hand, President Obama was right and it isn’t a tax — then it isn’t constitutional. In fact, the Supreme Court explicitly shot it down.

Congress already possesses expansive power to regulate what people do. Upholding the Affordable Care Act under the Commerce Clause would give Congress the same license to regulate what people do not do. The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing. They gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it.

Conclusion: It’s more like, Abuse of trust in the House of Representatives, layer upon layer of filthy corruption in the Senate, and bait and switch in the Supreme Court.

While we’re here, a minor quibble if I may, minor nit to be picked. The notion that the Supreme Court declares these constitutional, is mostly a twentieth-century perversion. The authority the Supreme Court wields here, comes from a decision 150 years before that. The Supreme Court was not granted this power, nor is it accurate to say that they assumed it, or usurped it, or took it. The declared it as intrinsic and vital to the process of applying duly enacted law to specific situations, which Chief Justice John Marshall pointed out is “of the very essence of judicial duty.” This authority that his court declared for itself, therefore, was never anything more than the necessary latitude to recognize logically unworkable contradictions. So the Supreme Court never had the power to declare things constitutional, in the sense that it is somehow my personal obligation to say something like “Oh dear, well the Supreme Court says up is down and East is West, I guess I shall have to agree in order to be a good citizen.” The power they declared for themselves was to declare things unconstitutional. And minimally, only when the contradiction is unavoidable and irresolvable. You don’t have to think impossible things just because the Supreme Court tells you to. Everyone knows that. If anyone doubts it, tell a hardcore moonbat liberal what opinions he is & isn’t supposed to have about Bush v. Gore. Or, give a cat a bath, if it’s less trouble.

This matters, because the Affordable Care Act didn’t acquire a new layer of cachet in this “law of the land” business once it came out of SCOTUS. Quite the opposite. It came out of that final sausage-mill shredded, unfit for enforcement in the form in which it had been presented to us, sold to us, and sold to Congress.

“Law of the land?”

Heh. So was slavery. Heck, it’s even in the Constitution! Three-fifths of a person and all that. Right, liberals? Isn’t that what you’re always telling us?
- Severian | 10/22/2013 @ 12:01
All sorts of things were the law of the land (or still are) that leftists shriek about, such as the PATRIOT Act.

Besides this, I keep running against something that my brain can’t dismiss, especially when everyone else I talk with does so. (Someone had better think about it if nobody else is willing to.) To wit: all those years ago, the Framers of the Country wrote up a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. We’re told by experts in such things what the document really means, in vast reams of opinion, but the only experts available at the time it was written were the folks who wrote it, and the document they wrote is not nearly so complicated or unwieldy as the ink spilled in the interpretation. It makes me think that one or the other group is confused about things, and if I’m making book on whom, then my money’s on the guys who were able to explain their expertise briefly, in the actual document.

And when I read that document for myself, it unfolds very clearly and logically – written neither by nor for a self-appointed cleric class of panjandrums, but as it says right off: WE THE PEOPLE. And as such, it was written to be understood by those very ordinary people, farmers and clerks and merchants. It was the government that was going to get it through its thick heads, not the people, who were now citizens and subjects no more.

So I have to beg the Court’s pardon when it declares that this non-tax is in fact a tax, that it would be unconstitutional otherwise but is now magically OK on grounds its own writers and defenders explicitly rejected as a supporting argument. No plain person would say, for example, “This milk, if it were actually water, wouldn’t be spoiled, so I will call it water and drink it.” Neither should a plain person look at this and say “This non-tax would be legit if it was a tax, so I will call it a tax and make people pay it.” The lawful power to levy taxes presupposes that the taxes are to be raised to pay for a lawful purpose; absent that there’s nothing to say that Congress can’t just levy taxes on us for any purpose that crosses their collective whim, or even for no purpose at all. The Income Tax (100 years old this year, huzzah) had to be amended into the Constitution because otherwise it wouldn’t have passed muster… but now the Court says such things aren’t a concern, just pass it because of the power to raise and levy taxes.

I’m calling nonsense on that. I am especially calling nonsense when it takes hordes of self-proclaimed experts thousands of pages to impose this monstrosity and nearly as many pages for them to explain why it’s legitimate. I don’t need that sort of training to recognize that it runs against the plain sense and meaning of the easily-understood Constitution of the United States. They may impose it anyway, but it doesn’t become legal in the imposition – it becomes tyranny and thus my duty as a citizen to defy it if I can.
- nightfly | 10/22/2013 @ 14:33
[…] to Internalize “Stop It! Stop It Now!” Passed by a Majority in the House, by a Supermajority in the Senate, and Declared Constitutional by … Top Men Dungeon Under Apartment Pre-Halloween Festival The Fail Maria Kang Winnable? “A New […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 10/25/2013 @ 04:56
This is very well done. I wish I had a comment to add information, but I don’t, so here is just a compliment
- IcelandSpar | 10/30/2013 @ 18:53
[…] “British Sarcasm” Failure to Internalize “Stop It! Stop It Now!” Passed by a Majority in the House, by a Supermajority in the Senate, and Declared Constitutional by … Top Men Dungeon Under Apartment Pre-Halloween Festival The Fail Maria Kang Winnable? “A New […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 10/31/2013 @ 05:49
[…] middle-age straight white male bloggers who’s been telling anyone who’ll listen what a sham this whole thing was…congratulations. We were right all […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/11/2014 @ 07:55

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Passed by a Majority in the House, by a Supermajority in the Senate, and Declared Constitutional by the Supreme CourtTuesday, October 22nd, 2013

Passed by a Majority in the House, by a Supermajority in the Senate, and Declared Constitutional by the Supreme Court
Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013