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Roberts viewed as an Idiot and the law a TAX!
Why an idiot, Jack? His ‘job’ is to interpret the constitutionality…the legality of any case brought before his court. I may not like a decision handed down but I’d rather have a court that is independent from the two parties we currently have screwing up this country than a court that is only furthering any one party’s agenda.
Why, because the law was not written as a tax.(See Obama, Ried & Pelosi) So if it is not a tax and a penalty imposed by the Commerce clause it is most certainly UNCONSTITUTIONAL as the other 4 sane justices stated. That is why!
It doesnt really matter because all we have to do is elect Romney and get 51 Senators to Ram this thing out the back door as it was enacted under reconciliation in the Senate with 51 votes.
While I want to see the Obamacare/Obamatax fade away, I agree that Judge Roberts did his job via interpretation, and he should be admired, not scorned.
What may likely transpire between now & 2014 is this:
1)A large majority of states (like Florida) will not prepare for their state exchanges, which forces the Feds (currently the Obama admin) to create it for them. The Feds like any bureaucratic run business (think DMV, think US Post Office) will not be able to handle the expense of, the establishment of, and the control of this anywhere close to affordability. The cost to administer all of this will escalate sooooo ridiculously high that the program will collapse under it’s own weight. The Feds would then have to levy ADDITIONAL TAXATION on top of the Obamatax for Obamacare. And guess who has to approve of tax increases and tax apportionment?
2)Likely the Obamatax will be defunded in the House & Senate before 2014. If it survives to 2014, additional taxation will be called for to further fund; and again, this is far from likely to be a popular vote by Congress! The Congressmen who wish to be re-elected are not going to be favored in re-election if they side with Obamatax and any subsequent additional taxation levies to further the cause for Obamacare.
(In other news, it was just learned that Obama had one of the liberal judges (not Roberts) visiting the Whitehouse in the week before the ruling. That judge should have been rescued. Hmmm…)
Bottom-line: I encourage those against Obamacare/Obamatax to register to vote and show up at the polls come this November. If you want him out & those of his progressive ilk, get thee to the polls!
Did you mean the judge should have been recused or rescued? I guess it doesn’t make much difference in the grand scheme of things.
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Your grandmother was right, use your head. The penalty wasn’t written as a tax because the writers knew that it would not pass if the penalty was called a tax. It only passed by one vote so it is not a stretch to believe that one of the weaker proponents would have voted no.
You obviously haven’t read the bill because it does read as I’ve listed above … verbatum
Sure it is. So why does Obama say it is not a tax? You must be the only one that has read it.
Tell me Progressive bloggers, if this is not a tax, how come the IRS is being charged with enforcement and collection of the tax/fine? I understand they plan to hire 17,000 new IRS agents to make sure they collect it. Sounds like a tax to me.
After listening and reading the news the last two days I’m worn out.
The chief justice of the supreme court may be voting on what is viewed as pc rather than constitutionally correct, and presidential nominees (of both major parties), and their spokes people think it’s okay to lie if the end justifies the means.
Were has honor and shame gone?
I think that anybody who does not understand that “($2,085)per family or 2.5% of household income” is not a TAX on the middle class is an idiot with a capital I.
Roberts said in the majority opinion it was a TAX not a Penalty as the constitution does not allow for a penalty to be imposed under the commerce act. If it is a tax and the law reads it is not a tax but a penalty, then he should have determined it unconstitutional as the other judges all unanimously determined. Read their opinion. They state that they must rule on the law as it is written not as it should be written to be constitutional. That is my point and yes Roberts was wrong but in the end he is right we as voters will have to get rid of Obama if we do not like bad laws being written.
there’s 2700 pages of stuff in that bill. I’ll bet there’s other taxes in there than any one is aware of.
Brian, One of the worst things in the 2700 page law is if certain items are not achieved by the state run exchanges and savings by certain dates in the future then the law will create a single payor system. Paid for with tax. So if you pay any income tax at all then you will be paying for your neighbors health insurance, food stamps and cell phones. LOL…. God help us! We are all in trouble with this law.
Sarah you have hit on the underlying goal of the drafters… the single payer system. They knew they could not get there by going directly for it so they have built in traps that would lead to the goal.
Sarah, Many of our Progressive blogger friends always leave out inconvenient facts about this 2,700 page monstrocity. They touch on just the penalty/tax that people will have to pay if they don’t sign up for insurance. They ignore all the other taxes built into the bill such as the 2.5% excise tax you will have to pay if you sell your home. That should spur home sales, don’t you think? You sell your home for $200,000 and pay an additional tax of $5,000. What is that doing in a Healthcare Bill? I could go on, but they will never get it about all the bad things coming their way in a few short years.
Agent, I think that was 3.8%, wasn’t it?
PS: A penalty, not a tax though.
I have seen reference to 2.5%, but I could be wrong. If it is 3.8%, that is even worse. Another bad one is the deduction for healthcare expenses. It has been if you had unreimbursed expenses of 7.5% of your gross adjusted income, you had a tax deduction for it. That is now going to rise to 10% which will make it harder to get that deduction. Is that not a tax increase or a penalty? I will let you be the judge.
Hey Agent – I thought that 2.5% was only on capital gains in excess of 250K. Can you clarify? If correct, that’s not too middle class, is it?
Company Gal, you are mixing apples and oranges. Any person who sells their home with this provision will pay an excise tax on it. This should really revive the home market, right? We are being taxed to death in this country and it needs to stop. Join me in November to vote these idiots out of office.
Company Gal – Wrong! $2,000 or 2.5% of your income if you elect not to buy health insurance. this law has nothing to do with capital gains tax.
I feel the need to point something out:
If the average house is $251,000 currently, and let’s say your house goes up in value by double, when you sell it you have “gains” of $252,000. Now then, remind me, with even 5% interest how much did you end up paying for your home? Generally about double.
You didn’t make any money, and then the government will tax you all of $37,500.
Basically your housing value isn’t even allowed to give you interest to cover inflation. The government can certainly collect your interest value in your home though to cover inflation. Sounds like a great idea eh? Then as a result the person retiring needs more social security, and more taxes are needed. This is the epitome of why democrat plans never work.
By taxing them 15% you now need to give them more to get by.
It will be interesting to see if the 26 states that sued on this law will implement it with the exchanges. Several have said they don’t intend to do it. Will Holder sue 26 states like he did Arizona on the Immigration fiasco? Maybe we will be fortunate and he will be long gone and the next AG will be more pragmatic and the law will be repealed by the time it comes up.
Texas has just come out and said they don’t intend to implement this law and expand Medicaid rolls and bankrupt the state. I hope the other 25 join in shortly.
Kennedy’s opposition is no real surprise given his consistent view of federalism as essential to liberty. I suspect Roberts was willing to issue an unpopular opinion in part to safeguard the legitimacy of the institution and in part to correct what he may see as a disparity in the balance of power between the legislature and the judiciary.
The legitimacy of the institution was indeed in question with a majority of Americans beginning to view the justices as politicians in black robes. Bush V Gore set the stage, and things like Clarence Thomas’s failure to disclose over a million dollars of prior income that his household received from the lobbying activities of his wife exacerbated the problem. It’s hard to maintain the appearance of impartiality or defend yourself against claims of bias when your wife continues to work opposing a bill which is the subject of litigation for which your court has already granted cert.
The GOP is up in arms. I have heard and read many comments along the lines of “Republicans put him in office and he let us down.” Many *expected* Roberts to overturn the PPACA based on the political ideology of the President that tapped him and saw a decision to overturn the law as something Roberts owed the base. Those kinds of expectations are a real problem, and they really do jeopardize the long-term legitimacy of the court.
In this light I think the Roberts decision was quite commendable. He had the opportunity to use the bench to score a major political victory for his benefactors. He instead took the political football and punted it while in the process eviscerating the government’s argument regarding the commerce clause powers.
I think Kennedy views the decision as potentially dealing a strong blow to the state/national federalism that is the keystone of our government while Roberts views it as a way to reign in both Congress and the Supreme Court itself while avoiding the appearance of picking winners and losers based on political expectations.
There is no way of interpreting the personal thoughts and motives of any of the judges. We only have to look to their writings of their opinions. Some make sense, and some look like a convoluted long journey to something that does not make sense, ie; Roberts opinion. Therefor because of Roberts wrong decision or his charity to the left, We are stuck with this TAX, until we can vote all of its creators out of office as Roberts stated in his opinion we should. I just wish he would have ruled on the law as it was written a penalty rightly imposed under the Commerce clause. Which they all viewed as unconstitutional under the commerce clause.
Sarah, you are a shining beacon for all us Conservatives. Since Roberts was a disappointment with his decision, it is up to We the People to make our decision in November and vote these bums out.
This will be if not repealed, The largest middle class tax increase in the history of the Country. affecting much of the middle class tax payers. If you and your spouse are working, you will feel this tax either by your employer dropping your coverage and paying the small fine or when you sell your home and pay a tax on this sale. You just might find eventually as the law was written in the 2700 pages we had to pass to find out what was in it, that it becomes a single payor system, and your tax will be completely based on your income so you will paying for the bum bum on the corners food stamps and cell phones and also for the 600,000 new imigrants who are entitled to health benefits due to the generosity of our president if the vote for him. “HOPE WE CHANGE” 2012
I don’t agree with the ruling or Obamacare, however it is a good thing that the justices didn’t vote “party lines”. The justices job is to interpret the law and base there decision on the law and not political persuasion.
If we don’t like the law, then we need to elect new leaders.
It doesn’t sound like Roberts determined constitutionality based on the law as written. He converted the law so that the penalty was a tax so that the law would be constitutional.
Roberts played this brilliantly, by stating that this was a Tax and not a Penalty he has set this up to be overturned in the correct branch of the Government the US Congress.
This created the base in which the Republicans can take control of both the Congress and the SENATE and repeal this insane tax increase and end the Nanny state the liberals have been trying to create since FDR.
i am confused… was it not noted that the so-called tax/penalty was for anyone whose hh income is more than $250k… so the this is not middle income at all being affected… my concern, is how are they going to track this? those so-called new hires in the IRS 17,000? how is the gov’t going to keep this avail and on track to pay for? we don’t truly have enough to handle medical care, social security and many other gov’t programs… truly how are we going to manage this? balanced budget? where? we are spending more money as a gov’t… who is going to stop? when will congress get off their duff and truly get our spending under control? after all, you the congress are passing the budget that the presidents are submitting. are you going to have enough to fund this health care? this will be a fiasco, because it is definately not resolved, only put on a band-aid….
Wudchuck, What budget are you referring to that Congress has passed recently. This government has not passed a budget since Obama has been President. The budgets he has presented have been overwhelimingly rejected. The House has proposed budgets and had them pronounced DOA by Harry Reid in the Senate who has been living on continuing resolutions since they don’t want the American People to find out how bad it actually is. The only way to get a decent budget passed is to change out the Senate and Presidencey in November and then a lot of cuts can be implemented starting with repealing Obamacare and replacing it.
Isn’t tax/penalty like tomato/tomato? Who cares what you call it? It is what it is. Instead of arguing about symantics, let’s come up with solutions that are not so knee-jerk on both sides.
Middle, haven’t you heard? It is a tax and the IRS will be in charge of collecting this and are hiring thousands of new agents to do it. By the way, if you are part of the middle class, you will have to put up with 7 new taxes, not penalties. There will be new solutions done after this onerous bill is repealed.
I disliked this decision as much as anyone. The problem I have is not so much with the Supreme Court (Yes, I think Roberts should have sided with the minority) But with the people who rammed this through in the beginning. That would be the Democratic Congress who quickly put this together, gave congress about 24 hours to read it and rammed it through on a floor vote in the middle of the night to get it passed. I guess that Obama really learned Chicago politics well as this just smacks of Chicago politics. Then all of the propaganda and rhetoric about how good this is gets all of the deadbeat, college students,low IQ voter and uninformed voters on board which makes it difficult to stop. That leaves the conservatives nd states with lawsuit options and the Supreme Court.
It also smacks of the lack of integrity of the Democratic party. They really are the no integrity, no class, deadbeat, I ain’t working and living on the government party.
This is an issue that should have been voted on by the people. If it had it would have been voted down. Thanks for all the hope and change. What we end up with is no hope and all we will have left to live on is the change in our pocket. Vote them out in November or everyone who gets a paycheck will pay the piper for this white elephant.
Fire them all in November.
You have the right idea FFA. Hopefully, he will retire to Hawaii rather than coming back to Chicago where you are. If he is in Hawaii, he can play all the golf he wants to and be far from the mainland.
Romney sure is collecting a lot of donations from his friend in The Hamptons, but let’s just say you’re wrong and President Obama is elected again. Where will you go?
I guess where ever the free stuff is being handed out.
Well, you should have done that under the previous regime. There were actually more handouts under Bush than there is under Obama. This comes from that well-known leftist Leslie Marshall:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/leslie-marshall/2012/07/05/america-is-less-dependent-under-barack-obama
You are right Planet. Leslie Marshall is a well known leftist since she has been featured on Fox many times to try to spin the Progressive viewpoint. She has been spinning her wheels a lot trying to justify what this administration has been doing. This is straight from government speak. Say one thing, mean another and hope the public swallows it. It is kind of like you saying Obamacare does not have taxes in it. I don’t think the IRS is into penalties and they are enforcing the bill.
Well Captain Planet obviously you are not from this planet.
I’m telling you, it’s from a well known leftist. How more blatantly honest can I be? I would hope one of you might fact check her and find out, she’s right.
Planet, I thought I would jerk your chain today and see how you react to it. It is all over the internet if you care to check it. Our President has come out and said his biggest failing was that he didn’t communicate his vision adequately to the American People. He made 30+ speeches trying to sell Obamacare and couldn’t sell it. People just don’t buy untruths since it has all turned out to be a lie. It is not that the people didn’t understand it, it was we didn’t like what he was selling and he was doing Healthcare when he should have been focusing on the economy and helping the private sector create jobs. His trillion dollar stimulus was nothing but political payback to his supporters and all these cities and states have blown through the money and are on the verge of bankruptcy or have serious problems.
Or, do we not care about facts and just take what the pundits say as truth these days? If you don’t do something to inform yourself, you do a lot to belittle yourself, or something like that is what my dad said several times.
Planet, do you not consider Marshall a pundit? She is just a liberal mouthpiece of the leftist agenda and proves it everytime she is on the air. She is not quite as bad as Alan Colmbs who makes me ill everytime I hear his diatribe. He is so bad I have to switch channels until he is gone. I do enjoy hearing Dr. Monica Crowley who is smart as a whip and very easy on the eyes. She gives the straight scoop on issues and points out the error of the Progressive ways.
Does my VA medical benefit count as coverage?
Yes, it does!