This SCOTUS Decision Most Critical of Out Lifetimes


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And now comes another wrinkle in the 2,800 + PPACA:

Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.” How can this be? Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them. The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers.

obamacare.png

For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation. Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies. It’s even worse that Obamacare is trying to coerce Americans into buying those same insurers’ product (although there are escape routes). It’s almost unbelievable that it will also subsidize those same insurers’ losses.

I have been certain that this was part of the "secret" negotiations between the administration and the insurance company's lobbyists.

A...

Thank you for this. I have repeatedly asked my Republican friends, where were the insurance companies during the Obamacare debates?

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I have been certain that this was part of the "secret" negotiations between the administration and the insurance company's lobbyists.

A...

Thank you for this. I have repeatedly asked my Republican friends, where were the insurance companies during the Obamacare debates?

It is just getting worse because of what all actuaries understand about rate structures and that is the killer of "adverse selection" kinda like insurance 101:

The official ObamaCare "enrollment" numbers are out, and they're very close to the unofficial estimates on which we based yesterday's column arguing that the "adverse selection" problem does indeed seem to be materializing. That's based on the age breakdown, which shows ObamaCare failing to attract the required proportion of younger Americans (18-34) and skewing heavily toward middle age, especially late middle age.

And, the new time bomb is the adverse selection from the sexual numbers:

A Wall Street Journal news story points to another potential source of adverse selection:

[Texas insurance executive Allan] Einboden added that age offered only a partial insight into the kind of medical claims new customers might incur.

"If you had a lot of people who were in the 18-34 [age] group because they were planning to have a baby, that would be a very negative demographic as well," Mr. Einboden said. The health plan hasn't yet begun receiving claims, he said, though several requests to preauthorize surgeries in the first days of coverage have executives worried, he added.

Which brings us to a little-noted ObamaCare statistic that is also a sign of adverse selection: the sex ratio.

Therefore, what the sex ratio numbers tell us that:

...it means, in Grady's words, is that "the new health care law forbids sex discrimination in health insurance." Just as no one can be denied insurance or charged more because of a pre-existing condition, a woman and a man of the same age must be charged the same premium, and their policies must cover the same conditions--including maternity care for unmarried men (and women past childbearing age).

What it also means, however, is that women, like persons with pre-existing conditions, are more expensive to insure. The ban on what is called "gender rating" drives men's premiums up as well as women's down. (That doesn't mean, by the way, that women pay less under ObamaCare than before. It may be that premiums rise for both sexes but the increase is steeper for men.)

Furthermore,

It means, .... , that if ObamaCare enrollees are disproportionately female--just as if they are disproportionately older--premiums will tend to go up for everybody.

And lo and behold, they are: The Department of Health and Human Services reports that of the 2.2 million people who have "selected a Marketplace plan," 54% are female. "By comparison," the HHS report helpfully notes, "males account for half (50 percent) of the total non-elderly population in the United States (ages 0 to 64)."

These statist marxists are completely incompetent to raise plants, let alone create a centralized system with no economic priciples to rely on:

That may not seem like much of a difference, especially since a slight majority of the nonelderly adult population (50.3%) is female. (All ratios are based on 2010 census data shown in this chart.) On the other hand, 6% of the 2.2 million who've "selected" a plan are children under 18 on their parents' plan. Assuming parents are as likely to buy insurance for sons as daughters, the majority of these kids should be boys, as are 51.2% of all Americans under 18.

But the enrollment disparity is real, and it's more dramatic when one expresses it as a male-to-female ratio rather than double-counting by denominating the ratio using the population as a whole. A 54% to 46% enrollment difference means that only 85.2 males are enrolled in ObamaCare for every 100 females. By comparison, expressed in these terms the sex ratio for the nonelderly population as a whole is 100.3 (which is to say males under 65 just slightly outnumber females), and for the nonelderly adult population 98.6.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303595404579320730569737964?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303595404579320730569737964.html

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  • 6 months later...

Thanks Stephen:

The D.C. case is being heard en banc by eleven (11) Justices.

The Richmond circuit case has not announced any further process yet.

Legislative intent will not quite work here.

The Rational Man rule might.

Due to what appears to many outside observers to have been poorly-crafted legislative language, Congress wrote a sentence that arguably provides subsidies exclusively to state-based exchanges and not to federally-facilitated ones, even while subjectively intending to provide subsidies in both cases. Yet, even though this is what many people who followed the legislation think happened — largely because the law was passed through an unorthodox budgetary process and never went to conference committee, where messy drafting gets cleaned up — neither side is asserting that there is a "mistake" in the way the law was written.

Fascinating paragraph from the article you posted.

A...

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Another important point made in the article concerns the meaning/definition of "such."

Now some might think that is no great problem.

Peruse this blog:

Grammarians of the world, unite! Lawyers of all punctuation persuasions are discovering the revolutionary potential of the humble comma.

How would you resolve these three recent disputes?

Guns N’ Commas

When the D.C. Circuit struck down the District’s gun-ban law under the Second Amendment, America’s usage mavens got busy.

According to Judge Laurence Silberman, because the Amendment’s second comma divides the Amendment in two, the first half is just throat-clearing verbiage. What remains—the second half—reflects the “right of the people,” which Silberman deems to be an individual right:1

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State
,
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Not so fast on the trigger, counter the gun-ban’s proponents. When the Constitution was drafted, commas were more popular than they are now. And when some states ratified the Second Amendment, their version contained only two commas, not three.

Both sides can give the Supreme Court plenty of ammunition as it resolves this comma conundrum. Will the Justices resurrect the English-law principle that punctuation doesn’t matter in statutes, or perhaps even in constitutions? If not, the Court will face a grammar dispute even more enticing than its recent spat over how to make words ending in -s possessive.

Canada’s Million-Dollar Comma

In a recent Canadian contract dispute over stringing utility poles, the stringer—Aliant Inc.—wanted out of the deal after the price of pole stringing skyrocketed. Under the contract, the stringer first had to give a year’s notice—but could it give notice before the contract’s first term ended?

More than $2 million Canadian were at stake. And you guessed it, the case turned on a single comma.

According to Aliant, the following provision gave either party the right to terminate at any time as long as it first provided a year’s notice:

This agreement shall be effective from the date it is made and shall continue in force for a period of five (5) years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five (5) year terms
,
unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.

Aliant argued that because the highlighted comma set off the second five-year term, the notice provision applied to both five-year terms—not just the second. The other side, Rogers Communications, countered that like it or not, Aliant was stuck with at least five years of pole-stringing duty.

In the resulting tumult, the parties parried punctuation rules against the Rule of the Last Antecedent and other canons of construction. Also weighing in were drafting guru Kenneth Adams, who filed a 69-page pro-Rogers affidavit that was mostly about commas, and Lynne Truss of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves fame, who sided with Aliant.

In the end, an appellate body resolved the dispute in an Only-in-Canada Moment: It relied on the French version of the contract and found for Rogers.2

The Explosive Alabaman Comma

When Alabama reprinted its state code several years ago, an editor added a serial comma to the state’s definition of “gasoline.” This seemingly innocent gesture sparked yet another million-dollar dispute.

Consider the reprint, in which I’ve highlighted the new comma:

Definition of Gasoline.
Gasoline, naphtha
,
and other liquid motor fuels or any device or substitute therefor commonly used in internal combustion engines . . .

A taxpayer pounced on the change: He would owe an extra $1 million in taxes if all naphtha were taxed rather than only the naphtha used in combustion engines. So he argued that the original comma-free version should apply. The dispute wound up at the Alabama Supreme Court, which reverted to the original version but read in the serial comma all the same:

The section defines “gasoline” in three parts: “[1] gasoline, [2] naphtha and [3] other liquid motor fuels or any device or substitute therefor commonly used in internal combustion engines.”
3

Not to ignite more controversy, but this case provides fuel for those of us who believe that serial commas can help avoid ambiguity: Four Usage Fights.

_____

  1. Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F.3d 370 (D.C. Cir. 2007).
  2. Telecom Decision C.R.T.C. 2007-75, [2007] Reference: 8662-R28-200612326 (Aug. 20, 2007).
  3. Ex parte State Dep’t. of Revenue, 683 So. 2d 980 (Ala. 1996).

http://www.legalwritingpro.com/articles/D10-million-dollar-commas.php

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Here is another famous comma case:

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/arguments_in_oneida_indian_lan.html

The placement of a comma could mean the difference between the Oneida Indian Nation getting 13,000 acres of trust land or getting none at all.

Lawyers argued in court Wednesday in Albany about the significance of that comma in a 1983 federal law, and whether it meant the Oneidas were eligible for trust land.

Read one way, the placement of the comma says trust land can only go to tribes that already had trust land, and that would not include the Oneidas.

Read another way, the comma says that any tribe, including the Oneidas, could get trust land even if they didn't have any already.

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FYI on Halbig v. Burwell:

In Halbig v. Burwell, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Administration violated the Affordable Care Act by expanding subsidies to the 36 insurance exchanges run by the federal government. The plain statutory language of ObamaCare repeatedly stipulates that these credits shall flow only through "an Exchange established by the State." The 2-1 panel majority thus did not "strike down" part of ObamaCare, as liberals and the media claim. Using straightforward textual construction, the court upheld the law the President signed but it vacated the illegitimate federal-exchange subsidies he tried to sneak in via regulation.

Distinguishing between state and federal exchanges was no glitch or drafting error. In 2010 Democrats assumed that the unpopularity of ObamaCare would melt away and all states would run their own exchanges. Conditioning the subsidies was meant to pressure Governors to participate. To evade this language, the Internal Revenue Service simply pumped out a rule in 2012 dispensing the subsidies to all. The taxmen did not elaborate on niceties such as legal justification.

The courts usually defer to executive interpretation when statutes are ambiguous, but Mr. Obama's lawyers argued that the law unambiguously means the opposite of the words its drafters used. Judge Thomas Griffith knocked this argument away by noting in his ruling that, "After all, the federal government is not a 'State,'" and therefore "a federal Exchange is not an 'Exchange established by the State.'"

The White House also argued that the court should ignore the law's literal words because Congress intended all along to subsidize everybody, calling the contrary conclusion an "absurd result." Yet this is merely ex post facto regret for the recklessness and improvisation of the way ObamaCare became law, when no trick was too dirty after Democrats lost their 60-vote Senate supermajority. Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass the bill to find out what's in it. Now we know.

I wonder if John "the sellout" Roberts knows the difference?

http://online.wsj.com/articles/upholding-obamacareas-written-1406070280

A...

Post Script:

Taranto had an interesting paragraph in his column [The Law of the Land?];

At issue is ObamaCare's Section 36B, the provision establishing health-insurance subsidies. As Judge Thomas Griffith explains in the Halbig ruling: "The 'premium assistance amount' is based on the cost of a 'qualified health plan . . . enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State under [section] 1311 of the [ACA].' "

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  • 2 months later...

Here is the dissent in Halbig...

https://www.scribd.com/doc/234769507/D-C-Circuit-Halbig-ruling


The single piece of evidence that Appellants cite to support their claim that Congress intended to restrict subsidies to State-run Exchanges is an article by a law professor. Br. for Appellants at 40 (citing Timothy S. Jost,Health Insurance Exchanges: Legal

Issues, O’Neill Inst., Georgetown Univ. Legal Ctr., no. 23 (Apr. 7, 2009)). There is no evidence, however, that anyone in Congress read, cited, or relied on this article

III CONCLUSION

The Supreme Court has made it clear that “[t]he plainness or ambiguity of statutory language is determined by reference to the language itself, the specific context in which that language is used, and the broader context of the statute as a whole.”
Robinson , 519 U.S. at 341. We cannot review a “particular statutory provision in isolation . . . . It is a fundamental canon of statutory construction that the words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme.”
Nat’l Ass’n of Home Builders , 551 U.S. at 666. Following these precepts and reading the ACA as a whole, it is clear that the statute does not unambiguously provide that individuals who purchase insurance from an Exchange created by HHS on behalf of a State are ineligible to receive a tax credit. The majority opinion evinces a painstaking effort – covering many pages – attempting to show that there is no ambiguity in the ACA. The result, I think, is to prove just the opposite. Implausible results would follow if “established by the State” is construed to exclude Exchanges established by HHS on behalf of a State. This is why the majority opinion strains fruitlessly to show plain meaning when there is none to be found

The IRS’s and HHS’s constructions of the statute are perfectly consistent with the statute’s text, structure, and purpose, while Appellants’ interpretation would “crumble” the Act’s structure. Therefore, we certainly cannot hold that that the agencies’ regulations are “manifestly contrary to the statute.” This court owes deference to the agencies’ interpretations of the ACA. Unfortunately, by imposing the Appellants’ myopic construction on the administering agencies without any regard for the overall statutory scheme, the majority opinion effectively ignores the basic tenets of statutory construction, as well as the principles of
Chevron deference. Because the proposed judgment of the majority defies the will of Congress and the permissible interpretations of the agencies to whom Congress has delegated the authority to interpret and enforce the terms of the ACA, I dissent

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  • 1 month later...

King v. Burwell, 14-114

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/08/us/politics/supreme-court-to-hear-new-challenge-to-health-law.html?emc=edit_na_20141107&nlid=53564225&_r=0

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a new challenge to the Affordable Care Act, imperiling President Obama’s signature legislative achievement two years after it survived a separate Supreme Court challenge by a single vote.

The case, King v. Burwell, No. 14-114, concerns tax subsidies that are central to the operation of the health care law. According to the challengers, those subsidies are not available in the states that have decided not to run the marketplaces for insurance coverage known as exchanges. Under the law, the federal government has stepped in to run exchanges in those states.

If the challengers are right, millions of people receiving subsidies would become ineligible for them, destabilizing and perhaps dooming the law.

Here we go...strap in America...

A...

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  • 7 months later...

Thursday could be one of the most important decisions of the remaining 606 days of the worst Presidency in American history.

The Obamacare subsidies case: Either Roberts or Kennedy. This is a “pick ’em” on the outcome. If they do find for the government, expect federalism concerns to play a large role.

The EPA case: Scalia seems like the most likely author, which would almost certainly be a setback for the EPA. Kennedy could be writing this, however, especially if Ginsburg writes the Arizona redistricting case.

The ACCA case: This is probably Ginsburg, unless she has the Arizona redistricting case. If she does not write this opinion, anyone other than Breyer (or Scalia, if he does author the EPA case) is a likely candidate.

The rights of gay marriage is the other important case. However, the outcome will not significantly injure the survival of our Constitutional Republic whereas the Federal exchange issue will as will the EPA case because both will cripple the rest of his failed Presidency.

There is one more mid level disaster case which is the oldest on the docket:

The oldest case on the docket is Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project. The question here is whether the Fair Housing Act allows for a disparate impact claim – that is, a claim that a practice can violate the FHA by virtue of disproportionately affecting a racial group. There is only one justice from the January term who did not author a case: Kennedy.

Kennedy is probably the most misunderstood member of the court. He’s frequently described as a swing vote, but it is probably more accurate to say he is heterodox. Unlike Sandra Day O’Connor, who really did try to balance factors and split proverbial babies, Kennedy has divergent views that tend to be strongly held. On matters of race (such as affirmative action) and the scope of government, he tends to be pretty conservative. Nothing is written in stone, but this suggests that he will probably be writing with the conservative justices here. Oddly, liberals might be better off if Scalia were writing the opinion, as he seemed skeptical at times of the state’s claims. On the other hand, perhaps Scalia is in the majority with Kennedy and the liberal justices. Again, this is not a science.

This is an important case. The fellow who wrote this article Trende has some excellent insights into the Court, the cases on the docket and the Justices...good writer also.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/06/22/supreme_court_bingo_how_it_might_rule.html

A

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Ah, Richard "Little Dick" Durban, you remember him when he cowardly used the protection of the United States Senate to decry:

 

 

Well now diminutive Dick has pre-empted the SCOTUS decision with this announcement, following his marxist pal the President:

 

 

No. 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin said that if the administration loses the case, Democrats would offer a short piece of legislation clearly saying the tax subsidies are also available to people on the federal exchange.

 

    “It’s one sentence and it’s already been written,” Durbin said in a Capitol hallway. “I hope we don’t need it,” Durbin added.

 

I can add more: According to a Democratic leadership source, Democrats already have a one-sentence bill written on both sides — in the House and the Senate — and it will be introduced in both chambers at the “first available opportunity” if the Court ruling requires it.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/24/dems-gear-up-for-war-over-obamacare-subsidies/?wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

 

A...

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Disastrous decision. 6-3 Scalia, Alito and Thomas dissenting. Scalia wrote the dissent.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-114_qol1.pdf

A second disaster was the Texas disparate impact case regarding housing, ICP and the FHA. This one was 5-4 with the Quisling Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito dissenting.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-1371_m64o.pdf

Time for Article V folks.

A...

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The SCOTUS is a lapdog to the Democratic Party since the late 1930s when it caved in to FDR's threat to pack the Court.

--Brant

any decision by the SCOTUS can be rationalized if not rational, just like every SCOTUS decision such as Marbury vs Madison, Dred-Scott, "separate but equal" and it all comes down to ideology vs cowardice (guess which wins)

Marxism continues to conquer the world long after the name was dropped (by most): the philosophy of envy, control, fear and levelling running up against inertia and human nature and soon, political fascism from the "right" (the wrong right) or what the Nazis did to the communists in Germany which will first be directed against Muslims in Europe who are now not fleeing ISIS so much as bringing ISIS into Europe

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Disastrous decision. 6-3 Scalia, Alito and Thomas dissenting. Scalia wrote the dissent.

Adam,

This is actually good news for those who oppose Obamacare and wish to elect a non-Democrat for president.

Had the Supreme court upheld the letter of Obamacare and struck down the subsidy, a strong push already brewing in the Congressional wings to rectify the law with a one-sentence bill would have kicked off.

If that bill had passed, the Democratic machine would have milked it for all its worth. And it would have made repeal all the harder, even with a non-Democrat president.

As it stands, as the following statement is part of the ruling: "In this instance, the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase," I can't think of a better battle-cry for two things:

1. Repeal of the law, and

2. A convention of the states.

Whether this battle-cry will have any effect, I don't know. I do know it is a far better battle-cry than the social-conservative mess they always end up with.

Michael

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Disastrous decision.  6-3 Scalia, Alito and Thomas dissenting. Scalia wrote the dissent.

 

Adam,

 

This is actually good news for those who oppose Obamacare and wish to elect a non-Democrat for president.

 

Had the Supreme court upheld the letter of Obamacare and struck down the subsidy, a strong push already brewing in the Congressional wings to rectify the law with a one-sentence bill would have kicked off.

 

If that bill had passed, the Democratic machine would have milked it for all its worth. And it would have made repeal all the harder, even with a non-Democrat president.

 

As it stands, as the following statement is part of the ruling: "In this instance, the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase," I can't think of a better battle-cry for two things:

 

1. Repeal of the law, and

2. A convention of the states.

 

Whether this battle-cry will have any effect, I don't know. I do know it is a far better battle-cry than the social-conservative mess they always end up with.

 

Michael

 

 

Short term, you are correct.

 

As Scalia pointed out in his brilliant dissent, which takes up almost half of the 47 odd pages of the decision, "...words do not have meaning..."

 

 

Scalia’s dissent accused the majority of “interpretive jiggery-pokery” in an opinion made up of “argument after feeble argument.” His opinion was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

 

“The court holds that when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says ‘exchange established by the state” it means ‘exchange established by the state or the federal government,’ ” Scalia wrote. “That is of course quite absurd, and the court’s 21 pages of explanation make it no less so.”

“Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the government should lose this case,” Scalia said. “But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.”

 

Expanding on the "Words no longer have meaning..."

 

 

...if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State.”  It

is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words “established by

the State.”   And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words “by the State” other than the purpose of

limiting credits to state Exchanges.  “[T]he plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred

to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an

acute and powerful intellect would discover.”

 

 

Long term it cements a corrupt two-party system that is enslaving the citizen in an administrative tyranny that is irreversible.

 

Unstated by Scalia is the fact that we now have a de facto and de jure censorship via the administrative state. 

 

As Ayn pointed out in this 1973 talk regarding the "philosophy" branch of our limited Constitutional republic [structurally] and decisions by that branch SCOTUS:

 

 

 

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Anyone running for national office against a Democrat will find the ACA the gift that keeps on giving as more and more of hoi polloi are screwed over by socialized-fascist medicine and its continually rising costs including less and less doctor availability. When originally passed it was all the doing of the Democrats and now they'll be hanged by what they did.

--Brant

bad US Presidents in terms of damage done: Number one: Hoover (the Great Depression and WWII); number two: Wilson (WWI); number three: Lincoln ("The Civil War"); number four: Bush the younger (invaded Iraq and didn't withdraw from Afghanistan); number five: Obama (hacking of all Federal sensitve information about Federal employees by China which means they will all be vulnerable to blackmail making the US China's bitch for decades to come); number 6: Johnson (The Great Society and Vietnam)

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SCOTUSblog has a couple excellent analytical posts today, among which is Court backs Obama administration on health-care subsidies: In Plain English

I thought this was the money-quote from the Roberts-penned affirmation, in a footnote mentioning the dissent:

The dissent argues that one would “naturally read instructions

about qualified individuals to be inapplicable to the extent a particular

Exchange has no such individuals.” Post, at 10–11 (SCALIA, J., dissenting).

But the fact that the dissent’s interpretation would make so many

parts of the Act “inapplicable” to Federal Exchanges is precisely what

creates the problem. It would be odd indeed for Congress to write such

detailed instructions about customers on a State Exchange, while

having nothing to say about those on a Federal Exchange.



Greta Van Susteren calls it a win-win for each 'side.' The president got lucky and the Republicans got lucky. In political terms, that seems quite sagacious. The left can run to defend the ACA all the way till November 8, and the right can campaign against it -- for repeal. The lines are clear.

Marxism continues to conquer the world long after the name was dropped (by most): the philosophy of envy, control, fear and levelling running up against inertia and human nature and soon, political fascism from the "right" (the wrong right) or what the Nazis did to the communists in Germany which will first be directed against Muslims in Europe who are now not fleeing ISIS so much as bringing ISIS into Europe


Your run-on sentencing sometimes obscures the salient points you make. Here, I take issue with your conclusion that refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict are composed of ISIS operatives. I may have misunderstood, of course, so I'll try to pick out that remark, including the nouns and verbs in a more comprehensible form.

  • Marxism continues to conquer the world (even if not under that name).
  • Marxism by any name is the philosophy of envy, control, fear and levelling
  • Marxism is running up against inertia and human nature
  • Political fascism is what the Nazis did to the communists in Germany (the communist party was banned in 1933, and subsequently rooted out, stem and branch).
  • Soon, political fascism from the "right" will be directed against Muslims in Europe.
  • Muslims in Europe are now not fleeing ISIS so much as bringing ISIS into Europe.

-- I only take issue with the last two sentences. In the first of the two, it seems you believe that the fascist right will take power, or perhaps make enough political headway to force non-fascist parties in power to adopt fascist laws and regulations targeting "The Muslims."

This may be true to some extent. The best evidence comes from surveying the popularity of such nationalist groups as Jobbik in Hungary, the Progress Party in Norway, the British Nationalist Party, the Dutch Freedom Party, The Northern League in Italy, the National Democratic Party in Germany, France's National Front, Vlaams Belung in Belgium, the Danish People's Party, the True Finns, the Sweden Democrats, and the Austrian Freedom Party -- and so on (I've left out the fascist right of Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Slovakia, Spain, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, and Slovenia).

These are all full members of the European Union.

I think one of the things you might not be considering are the manifold institutions of the EU, from its paramount Human Rights law on down to border agreements -- the so-called Schengen Agreement, which dismantles internal barriers to the flow of people, goods, and capital. I think you will find that the various states under EU law have to respect EU law and EU jurisprudence. (for example, France's ' 'burka ban' was appealed to the EU bodies, and found to be legal)

-- all that just to signal that fascist assaults upon Muslim Europeans -- in law -- have very high hurdles, that there is a margin of maneuver, notwithstanding the fascist right's collective numbers and standing in the European Parliament. There, the parties have formed a bloc of 38 legislators, out of 751 seats.

You are, then, generally correct to point to a 'rise of fascism' in Europe. I would only suggest you keep your sense of proportion.

That leaves your last opinion, that "Muslims in Europe are now not fleeing ISIS so much as bringing ISIS into Europe."

Here is my take: those fleeing to Europe are fleeing war or persecution. The greatest refugee flows are from the territory of Syria. There are an estimated 1 million Syrian refugees in Jordan, another million in Lebanon, and a million and a half in Turkey. For the most part, these refugees are escaping the savage civil war and indiscriminate attacks upon civilians by the government side, not merely or only ISIS depredations and terror. The best estimate of the numbers of Syrians who have fled their homes is 9 million people. This is the greatest refugee crisis since WWII.

You seem to suggest that these millions fleeing war are of a muchness, and that muchness includes ISIS members in great numbers.

There is no data that supports this contention.

I know you have insisted upon an apocalyptic scenario for (especially) France, due to Muslim fecundity. You foresee a fascist De Gaulle taking over in a coup, and imposing an authoritarian dictatorship within ten or twenty years, new wars of religion, and a violent breakup of the European Union.

That's an opinion, and a hell of an opinion, but it is most likely wrong in my eyes.

This is Syria, the city of Homs, an area destroyed by government bombing. The government is driving the 'enemy' population out, in a form of ethnic cleansing. This picture is a very small example of the destruction of the urban fabric.

homs.jpg

Edited by william.scherk
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homs.jpg

Kinda looks like Detroit...another testament to collectivism...

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Yarmouk refugee camp (for Palestinians) in Damascus, on a day the ICRC was allowed to bring in food:

not_Detroit.jpg

Regarding destruction in Detroit, I am not familiar with the details. I expect the US air force has bombed it to fuck as in the length and breadth of 'rebel' Syria, but haven't been able to find much confirmation of the scope. The refugee flows from Detroit to Windsor are currently fairly small ...

I had thought the bombing campaigns in Detroit were somewhat 'surgical,' sparing hospitals, schools, mosques, markets and so on, but I am always open to correction.

This is probably Detroit on the left, Windsor on the right. Fucking Democrats.

D5305-1.jpg

Edited by william.scherk
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Yarmouk refugee camp (for Palestinians) in Damascus, on a day the ICRC was allowed to bring in food:

not_Detroit.jpg

Regarding destruction in Detroit, I am not familiar with the details. I expect the US air force has bombed it to fuck as in the length and breadth of 'rebel' Syria, but haven't been able to find much confirmation of the scope. The refugee flows from Detroit to Windsor are currently fairly small ...

I had thought the bombing campaigns in Detroit were somewhat 'surgical,' sparing hospitals, schools, mosques, markets and so on, but I am always open to correction.

This is probably Detroit on the left, Windsor on the right. Fucking Democrats.

D5305-1.jpg

Not funny....

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William's "sense" of "humor" is sooooo nuanced and way to sublime for us mere mortals to understand...which means he does not have one....

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Here's Senator Orrin Hatch's take on the ACA decision.

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The most critical case in our Nation's history was Marbury v. Madison. where in Justice John Marshall assumed or usurped the power to decide on the constitutionality of a law passed by Congress. Such power was never granted to the Supreme Court. No subsequent court has called a Foul on this usurpation (I wonder why?).

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This is probably Detroit on the left, Windsor on the right. Fucking Democrats.

[photograph of the aftermath of fire-bombing Dresden]

Not funny....

It depends. Adam's light-headed comparison of a destroyed Homs neighbourhood to Detroit was funny to him, I guess. I found it grotesque, and so used ironic counterpoint to underline what I though was the speciousness of the comparison. Ha ha.

Incidentally, if you don't find comparing Detroit to Dresden to be funny (or if you don't find comparing urban Syria to Detroit to be funny), you do find the fire-bombing of Dresden a beautiful thing, don't you?

On the subject of the destruction of Tokyo by incendiary bombs, you said this:

Some estimates are as high as 250,000 dead. It was a beautiful raid. More beautiful than Dresden

Funny that.

Edited by william.scherk
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