Saturday, June 30, 2012

The Roberts Dilemma

Oh man, where to start.
Just so we are clear, I did read Robert's entire opinion top to bottom, and took notes, for the entire fifty nine pages of some of the most meaningful and very frightening arguments of this millennium.
I was watching the SCOTUS Blog (scotusblog.com) live when the Supreme Court issued the opinions.

My first reaction, as many of you saw, was to send down the email chain my heartfelt (and noisy) regrets of Robert's decision. However, as I sat thinking once I had recovered from the primary shock, if one ever does, I decided that I should at least look at what Roberts had to say for himself.

Well, that's just what I've been doing the last few days: analyzing his complicated yet understandable opinions. It's taken days, but I believe I have enough to form a conclusion.

Roberts starts out reminding us that his job, and the jobs of the 8 people next to him, is not to decipher bad policy from good policy, but constitutionality from unconstitutionality. Some of course, may say that they would rather be unfaithful to their job in order to save America and strike it down without considering the matter, but I wonder how we would like it if liberal ideologs started acting like that.

No, Roberts thought it through long and hard. And in doing so, he destroyed an amazing potent possibility for government tyranny.

Roberts must have had a lot of fun with the first part of his report. He must have felt like a tornado in a trailer park, crashing and smashing every aspect of the commerce clause argument. Seriously, that was pretty fun to read. And I've never seen someone reference the federalist papers so much. When he was done and began his second part, the commerce clause argument and the Necessary and Proper Clause looked pretty pathetic. This is of course a substantial victory for conservatives because, it being a precedent, his statements make sure that never again can congress use the Commerce Clause in this way.

So what was up with the second part? How could he suddenly go liberal on us? He didn't.

In fact, I believe that we can thank Roberts for his decision. I do not only say this because dubbing Obama's prize pig as a tax will get Obama out of office, but because it gives us an important wake up call.

Isn't it stunning that the individual mandate is constitutional? Isn't it stunning that Congress can force you to do whatever you want? Well, fortunately, they can't, but they can tax you for doing what they said not to, or for not doing what they say. For instance, if Congress passed a bill today that says that everyone who does not own a Chevy Volt has to get their income tax increased to seventy-five percent, it would be constitutional. Roberts has shown us this major flaw in our tax code.

The solution? Flat tax for every citizen. That way, the government cannot tax certain groups of people just because. How would we feel if Congress just passed a bill with an extra tax on African American females. It would be constitutional, but I wonder how America would react.

Of course, I found other issues that I didn't respect Roberts very much for in his 59 pages opinions paper, such as saying it's not a tax for the Anti-Injuction Act, but is a tax for constitutionality (post a comment if you want an article on this), and labelling ObamaTax as a sales tax (a tax on what? Post a comment if you want an article on this).

Then there's the whole thing about a tax having to originate in the House not the Senate, so it looks like the whole thing is going back to court.


Any way, you hate him for it, but after a while, when the tax reforms are in place, Romney's in office, and America is on it's way to being back on track, you'll thank him.


"Aren't you a little young to being doing this?"
"Yes, yes I am"
-Phineas and Ferb

3 comments:

  1. More should follow your example of thinking before speaking. Well said young man!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, you'd be surprised at how many people reported the wrong thing when it was released!

      Delete

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