PPACA Upheld

Apparently the "Mandate" survives under Congress's "taxing authority." From SCOTUSblog:

Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it.

5-4, Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority.

Amy Howe (SCOTUSblog live feed, 10:32 EDT): In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

The 193 page Opinion is now posted (pdf).
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MONEY QUOTE

Justice Roberts' nice smackdown of Scalia's echoing of the slippery slope Feds-Will-Make-You Eat-Your-Broccoli canard:

[A]lthough the breadth of Congress’s power to tax is greater than its power to regulate commerce, the taxing power does not give Congress the same degree of control over individual behavior. Once we recognize that Congress may regulate a particular decision under the Commerce Clause, the Federal Government can bring its full weight to bear. Congress may simply command individuals to do as it directs. An individual who disobeys may be subjected to criminal sanctions. Those sanctions can include not only fines and imprisonment, but all the attendant consequences of being branded a criminal: deprivation of otherwise protected civil rights, such as the right to bear arms or vote in elections; loss of employment opportunities; social stigma; and severe disabilities in other controversies, such as custody or immigration disputes.

By contrast, Congress’s authority under the taxing power is limited to requiring an individual to pay money into the Federal Treasury, no more. If a tax is properly paid, the Government has no power to compel or punish individuals subject to it.

Emphasis mine. Nicely stated.

OK, so, Section 5405  ("Primary Care Extension Program") survives, along with everything else. I'd be jumping on it, pronto, "REC Trade Association." Seems to me like you might have better long-term funding luck hitching your wagon to AHRQ. ONC's interest in further promoting the REC cause with dollars seems dubious to me at this point.

I'd also be getting off the dime and launching my web presence. Time's a wastin'.

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OK, THIS IS IRRESISTIBLE

And, relatedly...

MSTP STATEMENT ON OBAMACARE RULING
6/29/2012

With its 5-4 ruling upholding Obamacare the US Supreme Court has joined with the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government in abandoning the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and with that ruling abandoned the People.  All of us are now simply chattel of the government to be used and ordered about as they choose.   The history books will mark this date as the day our constitutional republic was killed.  It will now rest with We The People to decide if it will be resurrected or left to rot in the shallow grave dug for it.

Where is the weeping and wailing?  Where is the anger and outrage?  Do the people of the country realize what has just been stolen from them?  Do the people of the world recognize that the shadow of darkness is now fallen upon them as well and that there remains no defender of their feeble freedoms?  The all out oppression of all people has begun.

Those “occupiers” now controlling the three federal branches of government have joined together in rejecting all Constitutional restraint and in doing so they have severely violated their oaths to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.  Together they now stand as blatant usurpers of power and have reduced our constitutional republic, along with all of its freedoms, to nothing more than a dictatorial junta.  Becoming a banana republic is next.

When a gang of criminals subvert legitimate government offices and seize all power to themselves without the real consent of the governed their every act and edict is of itself illegal and is outside the bounds of the Rule of Law.  In such cases submission is treason.  Treason against the Constitution and the valid legitimate government of the nation to which we have pledged our allegiance for years.  To resist by all means that are right in the eyes of God is not rebellion or insurrection, it is patriotic resistance to invasion.

May all of us fall on our faces before the Heavenly Judge, repent of our sins, and humbly cry out to Him for mercy on our country.  And, may godly courageous leaders rise up in His wisdom and power to lead us in displacing the criminal invaders from their seats and restore our constitutional republic.

Roy Nicholson
Chairman
Mississippi Tea Party

OK, "[T]he US Supreme Court has joined with the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government in abandoning the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and with that ruling abandoned the People."

So, the three branches of government, by passing, signing, and then ruling upon a law via the processes set forth within the Constitution have "abandoned" it?

I must have slept through that day in ConLaw in grad school.

But WAIT! There's MORE!

Former GOP Spokesman: 'Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?'
Lansing attorney does not like Supreme Court Obamacare ruling

By TOM GANTERT | June 28, 2012

A Lansing-based civil rights attorney who has held positions with the Michigan Republican Party and Department of Corrections, questioned in a widely distributed email today whether armed rebellion was justified over the Supreme Court ruling upholding Obamacare.

Matthew Davis sent the email moments after the Supreme Court ruling to numerous new media outlets and limited government activists with the headline: “Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?"

..."If government can mandate that I pay for something I don't want, then what is beyond its power?" he wrote. "If the Supreme Court's decision Thursday paves the way for unprecedented intrusion into personal decisions, than has the Republic all but ceased to exist? If so, then is armed rebellion today justified? God willing, this oppression will be lifted and America free again before the first shot is fired."

Latest report is that Davis now trying to walk that one back a bit.

But WAIT! There's STILL MORE!

John Roberts, Constitutional Traitor: Chief Justice Approves Obamacare Tax Mandate

Posted on 28 June 2012 by William Grigg

...Roberts’ ruling is applied Leninism – a pragmatic way of justifying the government’s intention to exercise “power without limit, resting directly on force.” Money and time are essentially the same thing; one earns money by investing his time – an irreplaceable and finite quantity – in commerce or labor. Through taxation the State steals life incrementally, rather than destroying it outright.

In his decision, Chief Justice Roberts has placed the High Court’s imprimatur on the proposition that the regime ruling us can steal our lives incrementally in order to force each of us to participate in a health care program that will regulate every aspect of the lives that remain – and either kill or imprison those of us who refuse to participate. 

This last writer has a serious reading comprehension problem, probably exacerbated by a serious aversion to actually reading SCOTUS rulings in full (along with any inclination to expending the first bit intellectual energy on honestly understanding them). I'm surprised he didn't throw in "Kenyan Anti-Colonialism" aside Lenin for good measure.
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Welcome to The Idiocracy. It'd be funny were it not so.

 

Enough. Back on topic (REC stuff) shortly...