dayman

Misleading and sensationalizing things for political gain? Doesn't sound like the GOP to me. Also doesn't sound like politicians in general. Obama should be ashamed he's doing something never before seen. This isn't the politics I know.

Pilot was ok, second episode was bad, last episode was actually good IMO it' starting to actually develop some plot. As for the tgreg, it's a TV show. So obviously it is...what it is. But all in all, the blasting of the Tea Party morphing into nonsense and then pitching idiocy was pretty spot on if you ask me. Then again, I despise the "modern Tea Party" and the show was basically just talking about everything I've already hated the Tea Party for. It included some positives for some non-tea party conservatives and didn't mercilessly blast all the GOP...giving props to some ousted Repubs and even in a round about way John Boehner (talking about his endorsing many of the "reasonable republicans" ousted). Bottom line though is the overall slant of the episode was that in 2010 a bunch of maniacs got elected to the House and as a result there failed to be a reasonable opposition party in government. Tea Party supporters are going to hate that. Hard line conservatives may feel uneasy. Many "moderate conservatives" I know in real life will agree on it (and want their party back). And obviously most left of center folk agree as well. It all comes down to me on how you view the Tea Party. If you see them as what they might have once been for, or if you see them as the actual people in Congress who call themselves "Tea Party" and what has happened with their "leadership" (if you can call it that). In any event, the "Tea Party" Congress IMO (and in national approval for what it's worth) is by far the worst Congress in my lifetime, and I'm glad they called out the "grass roots" myth behind the "movement" as it grew and lost that element. All my opinion. Anyone to the right of "moderate conservative" won't agree of course. No hard feelings. But to me the show was a blow below the belt to the Tea Party but it wasn't as if it was completely baseless...it was based in the real justifiable criticism the far right has brought upon itself.

.........and if any tea party people were still watching they are no longer watching

I choose to call that the "American Enlightenment" thank you very much. I pay tribute to our period of enlightened revolution by drinking 20 beers and eating 10 hot dogs and watching other people launch colorful explosions...in doing so I mark myself as their legacy.

The HSA's and the tax treatment? I mean ultimately nobody can afford the catastrophic costs. Nobody. So you will always need insurance for that sort of thing anyway...and that's where all the costs are...5% of us use 50% of the money. So say we go to that system and bite the bullet and the catastrophic insurance plans are basically huge subsidies everybody gives to 5% with no real care they get out of it....then the "lower level" is a choice (I guess) of HSA's or some supplemental insurance? Pretty obvious looking at my situation I'm going with an HSA...as will everyone like me. Pretty obvious the fat guy next door with diabetes is taking the supplemental insurance. So the supplemental insurance plan is now sky rocketing. So the higher level insurance is even more of a rip off than what I have now b/c I pay only for that (which I don't use unless I'm hit by a bus)...and the supplemental market is through the roof b/c everybody that is healthy gets out and runs to HSA's. So insurance is now even more ****ed. Now...if I could just get ripped off on the high level policy but know I'm secure, and take my HSA and use healthcare wisely and the costs came down...I have to tell you for me that would be something (given my relative youth and health) that would be a huge win. But are Americans going to use less healthcare? Is this HSA option (which only the healthy people really want to use) going to have a significant effect on fat/unhealthy America to drop costs? They're going to consume less as a result? The market forces take control here? I'm not so sure. Plus, the hardship on those who are sick...gets pretty rough in that situation. I don't have the answers obviously but I think we should go with what we've got...but please bring back those "death panels" b/c we all need those and we have got to accelerate the pay structure shift even more dramatically medicare should get even more ambitious on that end. To be honest though I'm still evolving on the whole issue. The side of me that strives for some sort of a system wants to improve the ACA. The side of me that just wants the lowest price healthcare for myself would take the HSA and catastrophic plan and just let everything else burn...hell throw some panels into the catastrophic care plan to make some calls on this end of life stuff and I'm basically out clear and free (until I'm old or get some nagging sickness and my HSA runs out...in which case I'll be clamoring for a system more like the ACA)

Here's a link to one innovative program that people think has momentum in upgrading our ability to teach math: http://www.ted.com/surpriseme/211500#1

Whooo your avatar is accurate. I get it though no problems.

LOL. An interesting interview from just a year or two ago... (spaces worked into the links to bypass the media limit on this retarded message board) Parts 1-5 (to watch parts 2-5 copy/paste link and remove the space after youtube.com/) http://www.youtube.com/'>http://www.youtube.com/'>http://www.youtube.com/'>http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=WXy3-Qn1dos&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Wgr41TxxLi0&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=oQD9r1jRIqs&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=dtutiPP82G0&feature=relmfu

The states rights (in huge letters) argument suggest UConn James is against Federal healthcare reform. For obvious reasons, neither party takes that position. So question is "how" not "if" ....

Anyone interested in this debate should watch the GPS Special "Fixing Education." You can buy it for $2 on Itunes. It's a great piece on education. Actual smart reporting and analysis on the problem...ya know...something this board probably isn't interested in.

Touchy?

Secretary Palin

LOL lawyer speak. I drain porta potties for a living. In fact I ranked 51 in seniority so last Thursday I became a independent contractor around 10am. Don't doubt my **** speak.

It is your duty, if possibly, to fairly construe his words under the presumption that they were accurate.

Haha, I will agree that you find the dissent more compelling and I find the controlling law a better ruling. (in other words I'm right and your wrong )

As is always the case the court does not rule beyond what is necessary. As such you don't he didn't proclaim a bright line rule as he found: We have already explained that the shared responsibil¬ity payment’s practical characteristics pass muster as atax under our narrowest interpretations of the taxing power. That's not to say he was without comment, just read the back half of the summary on the first page. There you will find factors and considerations he used to reach that conclusion. As for the broader end of that spectrum, he references cases where they "policed these limits aggressively"...(so we could read those cases for more information on the outer limits) Just read the short summary in the first post for more specifics all the quotes in this post are taken from there.

The Congress can monkey with appellate jurisdiction b/c it is expressly in the text of the constitution. That's besides the point. The challenge to the validity of the Mandate necessarily turns on whether it's an exercise of commerce clause or taxing clause power. The Anti-Injunction act is relevant not b/c it would invalidate it but as you said early, it would effect standing. The relationship between creatures of congress to themselves and to the constitution is inherently different. As for there being no limits on the taxing power, that ignores the entire opinion Roberts wrote. While the limits are far broader than under the commerce clause, he went through the tax analysis precisely b/c at some point an exercise of that power ceases to be a taxing clause question and crosses over into the more limited commerce clause power. There is case law on that issue, and will no doubt be more in the future.

What you have described is your experience with your health insurance company. Nothing more. Lucky for you, the ACA will help people like you in the future a lot by regulating the behavior of insurance more closely and controlling the price of drugs. To suggest that is insurance generally, it wrong. I don't blame you for feeling as you do about your own policy/company and situation under those facts. Once again btw, many insurance companies have no investors and run not for profit models. And many that run for profit models vary in terms of their response to stories such as yours. Characterizing the entire insurance industry based on that example, is no accurate for the purposes of this discussion. Generally speaking the profit they pull is between 2 and 3 percent.

The anti-injunction argument is pretty basic actually. It's a statute, it's a creature of Congress. The Constitution is not. The Congress could not expand their powers under Constitution by labeling..that would be absurd, for that analysis the court must look to the substance of what Congress is doing and whether it is within their power. For the purpose of how their own statutes relate to each other however, a more textual approach is appropriate. How creations of Congress relate to each other is fairly cut and dry, look to what Congress wrote. And as Roberts said that has been the practice: Amicus argues that even though Congress did not label the shared responsibility payment a tax, we should treat itas such under the Anti-Injunction Act because it functionslike a tax. It is true that Congress cannot change whether an exaction is a tax or a penalty for constitutional purposes simply by describing it as one or the other. Congressmay not, for example, expand its power under the TaxingClause, or escape the Double Jeopardy Clause’s constraint on criminal sanctions, by labeling a severe financial punishment a “tax.” See Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., 259U. S. 20, 36–37 (1922); Department of Revenue of Mont. v. Kurth Ranch, 511 U. S. 767, 779 (1994). The Anti-Injunction Act and the Affordable Care Act,however, are creatures of Congress’s own creation. How they relate to each other is up to Congress, and the bestevidence of Congress’s intent is the statutory text. We have thus applied the Anti-Injunction Act to statutorily described “taxes” even where that label was inaccurate. See Bailey v. George, 259 U. S. 16 (1922) (Anti-InjunctionAct applies to “Child Labor Tax” struck down as exceeding Congress’s taxing power in Drexel Furniture). Congress can, of course, describe something as a penalty but direct that it nonetheless be treated as a tax for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act. For example, 26 U. S. C. §6671(a) provides that “any reference in this title to ‘tax’ imposed by this title shall be deemed also to refer to the penalties and liabilities provided by” subchapter 68B of the Internal Revenue Code. When Roberts cites the absurdity of forcing someone to buy vegetables he is referring to that by regulatory authority. Not by taxing authority. And if you feel that the tax code should not be used as it has been, fair enough a lot of people feel that way. That's an issue for you to take up with Congress though, not the Supreme Court.

Yet: this Court has held that a “tax” imposed upon private conduct was so onerous as to be in effect a penalty. -Scalia Dissent ...so they've never done it. At some point they had never done the above either. And if in fact the analysis goes to substance, I see no reason the door doesn't swing both ways. Well it's more that on one had we most decide what the law is and in doing so we must be mindful of the constitutional forces that pull in opposite directions and when the rubber meets the road with issues of federalism, spereation of powers, constitutional construction, and then...the anti-injunction act...it's clear that the creature of statute...the feeble (by comparison) anti-injunction act will be what is thrown under the buss (and obviously so). Even Scalia himself wasn't too pissed about that at least he didn't make a huge deal about it...

Scalia uses whatever suits him at the time. Thomas uses actual principle (regardless of what you think of that principle). In any event, I do agree that it is not the holding of the mandate as a tax but the Anti-Injunction analysis that was the most acrobatic. However, the absolute worst outcome for the country would have been to hold it a tax and then punt until 2015. Also, the analysis under that section does nothing of significance and is plausible enough...if the country was saved a crippling wait of uncertainty at the expense of the anti-injunction act that is nothing anybody can honestly say with a straight non-partisan face they care about.

Hard for me to see how the Conservative wing considers their opinion more conservative than Roberts. Federal v. State. Courts v. 2 branches. 2 sources of tension inherent in our system. If you can fairly construe it to be constitutional (as is your duty), and in such a way that narrows the possibility of future commerce clause expansion as well as bolstering States rights when is comes to taking some but not all the bribes the Federal Government will offer them...that to me is the most conservative holding there is. Splicing words in an asinine textualist nature and saying over and over the Federal government could have done this but that it's not what they could have done but what they did (while at the same time saying admitting it is your duty to "if at all possible" construe the statute as constitutional), looking to form over substance as to determine what they did...in general the dissenting opinion is just weak. But that's just me. And Scalia is typically weak to me when he gets his hard on textualist nonsense flowing. It was a tough case, and honestly given the apparent 3 approaches the court as a whole took....I have to say Roberts proved himself to be a good C.J. who IMO produced the best opinion of them all.

Consider the above before you walk around demonizing the insurance companies. (I believe I elaborated after you posted).

This is such a load of **** I stand in awe. Insurance has it's holes, but the crux of the problem is 5% of people using 50% of healthcare (end of life, fat unhealthy people), and providers being terribly inefficient which they are allowed to do based on the pay structure of insurance which followed the trend set by...you guessed it...medicare. Nobody anywhere in that system is anything but a rational actor, there are no evil people tanking America for personal gain. Most insurance companies make 2-3ish percent profit and a lot of them are not for profit anyway. Additionally the ACA mandates they used 80% of the money they take in on services and anything left over is paid back...on top of that the ACA is taxing the insurance companies more on that 20% left over. Plus they provide certain basic/preventative check up type services w/ no co-pay by law now...and they take you no matter how sick you are. In return of course, the mandate will compel people into the market. The bottom line is, as we all know, the cost of healthcare. There are some cost controls in medicare, and some substantial pay structure experimentation in Medicare to correct the trend it set itself decades ago. That of course, and unnecessarily sick people...people who are unGodly and unnecessarily fat and consume pills and operation after operation b/c they don't take care of themselves. And then of course the thing that every Republican said was "killing grandma" which is also reality...end of life care needs to have rational decision making in it. Every single other civilized nation realizes this. It's just insane to dump 100K into an extra year of ****ty quality of life for a 92 year old...that' sounds harsh....but it's the truth. And yes before anyone says anything, it would be the truth if it were me too. Long story short there are no "villains" but if you are looking for them they aren't the insurance companies. There's only one group that benefits from the rising costs and it sure as hell isn't them...we all know who that is....

And those were, one more time since I do not recall?