White House still avoiding calling health-care mandate a tax

This is a dumb argument. Semantics on if Obama raised taxes on those making less than 250k is irrelevant. He made life more expensive.

 

He sent his lawyer to the supreme court with specific instruction to argue it is a tax.

 

His solicitor argued it could be construed as falling under Congress' mandate to tax so as to play into the Supreme Court's duty to uphold a law's
constitutionality according to all reasonable avenues, only because, it was well known that certain justices would legislate from the bench, instead of doing their job of seeing, simply, whether or not a law passes constitutional muster.

For example, certain ones of these justices allowed an extension of the Commerce Clause to justify, somehow, that home-grown mar1juana for medical consumption was "national commerce" because it affected national prices (???), but they were sure "no" votes on this one...and it wasn't because their reading of the Constitution had shifted significantly...it was because they didn't like the bill, and fit their reading accordingly.

 

Obama does stuff all time I don't like (exercising executive privilege in the Fast and Furious case as a recent example, I'm always for government transparency), but nothing he has ever done compares to the crap Bush did. The whole Iraq was and BS it was built on, being the number 1 thing.

 

Holy run-on sentence Batman! I am not even sure if I agree or disagree with what you are saying. It is very hard to see what you are comparing and contrasting. Is English your second language?

 

English is actually my third language.

Je vous souhaite une bonne journée.

 

Casey, you should stop avoiding the point though.

here, I can help---

Because of the fact that Supreme Court has become a legislator by proxy, it is fair to expect the Administration to play the game of getting a constitutional law passed through whatever avenue it chooses.

 

That makes sense. I have found, during my struggles learning english, that short sentences makes it easier for people to follow you.

 

I have found that people who quibble about semantics don't have very many arguments, when push comes to shove.

 

I read your post several times. I gave you my honest response. I cannot see what you are comparing and contrasting. I was very polite about it.

 

I in turn, was polite and offered you a simplified explanation, one which you (still) have not read, apparently. My note was also really an observation of the thread in general---which is based on semantics rather than substance.

 

Perhaps in your mind you were being polite, so I will accept it.


If Obama spins diction for political purposes that conflicts with his best legal justification, it isn't a reach to consider it a falsehood. Thus my response to Anticope.

 

Casey, politeness is not a virtue on its' own. It is weakness when unjustified. Kindly stay on point next time.

I am glad to see you are beginning to stray back to the main point. The tax mandate was not his best legal justification, it was Roberts who single-handily made it so. All four of the other concurring justices to the majority opinion wrote a separate opinion headed by Ginsburg that made it quite clear they thought the Commerce Clause was sufficient to uphold the law. If it were not for the obvious partisan mess the Supreme Court has begun, I do not think this would be in question.

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/102685/conservative-defense-obamacare-affordable-care-health

A Conservative Law Professor on the Obvious Constitutionality of Obamacare

 

Your theories on politeness are culturally dependent, not universal.


The ruling of the court is not relevant. What is relevant to the discussion on Obama is his arguments. He is publicly saying something that conflicts with his legal arguments.

 

My "theory" on politeness is mine only, and I do not expect for you to share them, nor do I much care if you do or do not.

However, I have always found it curious how people will nibble around the edges of substantive discussions by trying to bring to mind, really, quite irrelevant cultural rules and norms. I'm not going to play by those rules for long, and I am glad you are moving beyond them as well.

The ruling and how the justices got there is entirely relevant. If certain members of SCOTUS did not hold a personal grudge against the President (as evidenced, for example, by Scalia's remarks after the immigration law) and did their ACTUAL jobs of merely checking the constitutionality of the law, this would be a non-issue. As it is, in any legal defense, SCOTUS is bound to find a law constitutional by any means possible. Obama's solicitor merely opened all the avenues. He's not an idiot. If the justices are going to play like this, and dismiss perfectly good laws based on personal feeling and affiliation with the Republican Party, I would expect a constitutional scholar to employ all possible roads to get his law upheld.

Because, as it is written in the Constitution---

The end justifies the means.

 

How is the ruling relevant to the question of Obama misrepresenting himself publicly?

 

The whole discussion is idiotic too. It focuses on trying to define a complex set of legislation into an easy word, that can be deployed in simplistic rhetorical devices.

I personally think the Democrats should just own it, and say it straight up, but politics doesn't play that way. However, the Republicans are being disingenuous with their latest line of reasoning. Should we have called it a "tax" every time Reagen pushed through deregulation, given how much the American people lost because of that?

 

Copycat

 

Because the end justifies the means, and Obama is a smart cookie, who bent the rules ever so slightly, because he knew the game was already stacked against him.

Also, because whether or not it is called a "tax" should not matter at all. It is a sad reflection on the current American political climate of quick sound-bits and over-heated rhetoric that it does. The legislation did not change one bit.