Category Archives: Constitution

Bullock: Life Imitates Art

Celebrity, Constitution, Education, Family, Hollywood, IlanaMercer.com, Pop-Culture, Race

Sandra Bullock’s still on a hormonal high after staring in a film (did not see “Blind Side”; would never go see it) about a white family adopting a black young man, or boy, or baby. (Is there any other kind of adoption? Do affluent blacks ever adopt poor white kids, or is such charity a one-way affair?)

Bullock might be imitating art, or emulating the trend of assembling Benetton babies begun by Brangelina and the moronic Madonna. At least Bullock has not searched out exotic kids as has crazy Angie; Louis Bardo Bullock is from New Orleans.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to homeschooling mothers for whose kids BAB and IlanaMercer.com are required reading. As one of my editors once said, “My home schooled kids receive Mercer’s Constitution-related columns as required reading.”

Beck Breaks From The Pack

Constitution, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, Free Markets, Glenn Beck, War, Welfare

The excerpt is from my new, weekly WND.COM column, “Beck Breaks From The Pack”:

“Not a week goes by when Fox-New phenom Glenn Beck doesn’t make libertarian pedants and purists bristle. Examples? The mushy slogan ‘Faith, Hope, Charity’ on which, Beck insists, the old republic was founded. I’m with Beck’s favored founder Ben Franklin who said that “he who lives upon hope will die fasting.”

Then there is charity: Americans hardly need a nudge in that direction as they are already abundantly charitable. Our countrymen are also constant in their faith ? to a fault perhaps, as too much faith in mystical forces beyond one’s control may compound feelings of helplessness.

Conversely, Beck could be more reverential in his approach to the free market to which the Talker often refers in rather pedestrian, almost statist terms. ‘It is the system that we have; it’s a system that works’ are refrains Beck is fond of repeating.

If instead of waxing fat about “Faith, Hope, and Charity” Beck built on life, liberty, and property,” his viewers would come to understand that the voluntary free market is a sacred extension of life itself. …

In the context of the man’s incalculable contribution to liberty, these are, all-in-all, minor quibbles—all the more so given that Glenn Beck has now taken his most significant step in defense of freedom and constitutional order. Beck has seen the writing on the tottering walls of Empire, and has dedicated himself to that humble foreign policy espoused by the founders. …”

The complete column is “Beck Breaks From The Pack.”

Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

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Grounds For A Constitutional Challenge Of H.R.4872

Constitution, Fascism, Federalism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation, States' Rights

In an interview with NewsMax.com, Judge Andrew Napolitano outlined the grounds upon which the Supreme Court of the United States ought to repeal major portions of Obama’s overweening health care legislation:

“The Constitution does not authorize the Congress to regulate the state governments,” Napolitano says. “Nevertheless, in this piece of legislation, the Congress has told the state governments that they must modify their regulation of certain areas of healthcare, they must surrender their regulation of other areas of healthcare, and they must spend state taxpayer-generated dollars in a way that the Congress wants it done. …

That’s called commandeering the legislature,” he says. “That’s the Congress taking away the discretion of the legislature with respect to regulation, and spending taxpayer dollars. That’s prohibited in a couple of Supreme Court cases. So on that argument, the attorneys general have a pretty strong case and I think they will prevail.” …

The Supreme Court has ruled that in areas of human behavior that are not delegated to the Congress in the Constitution, and that have been traditionally regulated by the states, the Congress can’t simply move in there,” Napolitano says. “And the states for 230 years have had near exclusive regulation over the delivery of healthcare. The states license hospitals. The states license medications. The states license healthcare providers whether they’re doctors, nurses, or pharmacists. The feds have had nothing to do with it.

“The Congress can’t simply wake up one day and decide that it wants to regulate this. I predict that the Supreme Court will invalidate major portions of what the president just signed into law.”…

Napolitano believes the federal government lacks the legal authority to order citizens to purchase healthcare insurance. The Congress [is] ordering human beings to purchase something that they might not want, might not need, might not be able to afford, and might not want — that’s never happened in our history before,” Napolitano says. “My gut tells me that too is unconstitutional, because the Congress doesn’t have that kind of power under the Constitution.”

The sweetheart deals in the healthcare reform bill used that persuaded Democrats to vote for it – the Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback, Gatorade Exception and others – create “a very unique and tricky constitutional problem” for Democrats, because they treat citizens differently based on which state they live in, running afoul of the Constitution’s equal protection clause according to Napolitano. “So these bennies or bribes, whatever you want, or horse trading as it used to be called, clearly violate equal protection by forcing people in the other states to pay the bills of the states that don’t have to pay what the rest of us do,” Napolitano says.

Exempting union members from the so-called “Cadillac tax” on expensive health insurance policies, while imposing that tax on other citizens, is outright discrimination according to Napolitano. “The government cannot draw a bright line, with fidelity to the Constitution and the law, on the one side of which everybody pays, and the other side of which some people pay. It can’t say, ‘Here’s a tax, but we’re only going to apply it to nonunion people. Here’s a tax, and we’re only going to apply it to graduates of Ivy League institutions.’ The Constitution does not permit that type of discrimination.” …

[SNIP]

In this televised interview, the Judge laid out more clearly the test for a constitutional challenge, namely that one is harmed by the legislation.

Note the comment on the impossibility of reading and making sense of H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010 (my experience) each section of which amends and alludes to other laws in the US Code, which in itself is large enough to fill a house with paper stacked to the ceilings.

Lessons From Big Daddy O & His Right-Hand Ho

Barack Obama, Constitution, Democrats, Economy, Healthcare, IMMIGRATION, Regulation, Republicans, Welfare

HERE’S WHAT I TOOK away from the weekend long Pelosi Palooza and Obama health-care orgy:

With one flick of a pen, a politician is able to render finite resources infinite; that in the hands of millions of new affirmatively appointed state hires, private property—approximately $409.2 billion, confiscated from rightful, productive owners— will be funneled into so-called state-of-the-art health care. Basically turned into gold. That bilking “$69 billion more in penalties for individuals and businesses who don’t meet mandates to buy insurance” will generate plenty and prosperity like nothing else, just as The Founders envisaged.

Most of the revenue would come from higher Medicare taxes on about 1 million individuals earning more than $200,000 and about 4 million couples filing jointly who make more than $250,000

What assorted idiots and moochers-in-the making took away from this legislative theft is that it is constitutional to single out a distinct segment of society—the productive—for punishment. The only consideration that counts is, “How many Americans want it?” Gimme, gimme, gimme is the new national anthem.

“The man with the Reverse Midas Touch,” Big Daddy O, and his right hand Ho, have taught the nation so many lesson, not least that attainder laws are now constitutional (Article 1, Sections 9 and 10), and that “our high-minded messiah has the authority to punish an (innocent) group of people—more or less 5 million Americans who’ll shoulder the hulking H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010—“without the benefit of due process.”

Scrap that; no moocher knows what attainder laws are.

And if you don’t yet know that the Republicans are your fair-weather friends who’ll sign their own mammoth bills when they occupy the same seats in the game of political musical chairs they play exclusively with the Dems—then listen to stupid Michael Steel condemn freedom-loving demonstrators for their righteous ire and promise statists like Geraldo Rivera and Sheppard Smith of FoxNews that a welcoming immigration bill is next.

************
Here’s a good precis of H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010, courtesy of the WSJ:

The $940 billion health-care overhaul will take nearly a decade to roll out in full. A look at the key parts of the bill and when they go into effect.
2010

Coverage

* Subsidies begin for small businesses to provide coverage to employees.
* Insurance companies barred from denying coverage to children with pre-existing illness.
* Children permitted to stay on their parents’ insurance policies until their 26th birthday.

2011

Coverage

* Set up long-term care program under which people pay premiums into system for at least five years and become eligible for support payments if they need assistance in daily living.

Taxes and fees

* Drug makers face annual fee of $2.5 billion (rises in subsequent years).

2013

Taxes and fees

* New Medicare taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and couples filing jointly earning more than $250,000 a year.
* Tax on wages rises to 2.35% from 1.45%.
* New 3.8% tax on unearned income such as dividends and interest.
* Excise tax of 2.3% imposed on sale of medical devices.

Cost control

* Medicare pilot program begins to test bundled payments for care, in a bid to pay for quality rather than quantity of services.

2014

Coverage

* Create exchanges where people without employer coverage, as well as small businesses, can shop for health coverage. Insurance companies barred from denying coverage to anyone with pre-existing illness.
* Requirement begins for most people to have health insurance. Subsidies begin for lower and middle-income people. People at 133% of federal poverty level pay maximum of 3% of income for coverage. People at 400% of poverty level pay up to 9.5% of income. (Poverty level currently is about $22,000 for a family of four.)
* Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor, expands to all Americans with income up to 133% of federal poverty level.
* Subsidies for small businesses to provide coverage increase. Businesses with 10 or fewer employees and average annual wages of less than $25,000 receive tax credit of up to 50% of employer’s contribution. Tax credits phase out for larger businesses.

Taxes and fees

* Employers with more than 50 employees that don’t provide affordable coverage must pay a fine if employees receive tax credits to buy insurance. Fine is up to $3,000 per employee, excluding first 30 employees.
* Insurance industry must pay annual fee of $8 billion (rises in subsequent years).

Cost control

* Independent Medicare board must begin to submit recommendations to curb Medicare spending, if costs are rising faster than inflation.

2016

Taxes and fees

* Penalty for those who don’t carry coverage rises to 2.5% of taxable income or $695, whichever is greater.

2017

Coverage

* Businesses with more than 100 employees can buy coverage on insurance exchanges, if state permits it.

2018

Taxes and fees

* Excise tax of 40% imposed on health plans valued at more than $10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for family coverage.

—Sources: House bill; Kaiser Family Foundation

Corrections & Amplifications
The House health legislation imposes a 2.3% excise tax on the sale of medical devices. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the tax was 2.9%, the figure before a last-minute change to the legislation.