Apr 30 2010
Why Obamacare Will Fail In The Courts
Mandating consumers to purchase services from an industry involved in the formulation of the mandate, with requisite penalties on the consumer for failing to make said purchases, is clearly an example of special interests run amok. That is the main point of this excellent article on how the liberals are trying to force Americans into health care they may not want or need, all to support people who economically have to make tough personal decisions regarding their own health care challenges:
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) includes what it calls an “individual responsibility requirement” that all persons buy health insurance from a private company.
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It is true that the Supreme Court has interpreted the Commerce Clause broadly enough to reach wholly intrastate economic “activity” that substantially affects interstate commerce. But the Court has never upheld a requirement that individuals who are doing nothing must engage in economic activity by entering into a contractual relationship with a private company. Such a claim of power is literally unprecedented.
When we include the obvious future quid pro quo‘s for the lawmakers who will retire to cushy jobs in those same industries they helped force consumers to spend into, the corruption level reaches a point of nauseating stink.
This is the straw that is breaking the libertarian back of American society. When we also look at efforts to force behavior from DC – for example the new drive to regulate salt content food (what are they going to do, confiscate all the salt and pepper as well) – the country is rapidly concluding DC has too much money and time on their hands and is now in the business of being the big nag.
So what if I want to eat an occasionally calorie soaked cheeseburger? So what if I like to have a drink or cigar? So what if feel like going with catastrophic insurance instead of a full coverage plan? What if I want that Hummer or Ford Excursion? When did we decide DC knew best?
We have actually decided DC is clueless and inept. All the more reason to keep them out of our lives as much as possible. Which is why, after a year of the liberals gone mad and making a botch of everything, the Democrats will be ousted en masse this November. Peggy Noonan nailed it today:
It is not that no one’s in control. Washington is full of people who insist they’re in control and who go to great lengths to display their power. It’s that no one takes responsibility and authority. Washington daily delivers to the people two stark and utterly conflicting messages: “We control everything” and “You’re on your own.”
All this contributes to a deep and growing alienation between the people of America and the government of America in Washington.
Alienated, yes. Ready to correct the problem – most definitely. DC is not the source of fixes, it is the root of our problems. DC is not a wealth of solutions, it is a seeming mass of incompetence and ego. The solution reside outside DC, in the American people. Leave us to our own devices, and we continue to impress the world and make history.
Vision not rooted in the “nature of man” is a false vision. A false vision, and a lot of hope, is what propelled Obama to the Presidency. We all know you can’t will yourself and others can’t will you to wealth, to decency, to owning homes, to graduating from college, and a whole host of other things, you can only work hard, learn from mistakes and move forward. Idiot compassion, that propels legislators to think that they can legislate everyones troubles away is doomed to failure.
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I’ve been trying to make this argument to anyone who supported Obamacare since last September. No way is a health mandate constitutional.
As the article points out, now that the bill is passed even the Dems are admitting it.
Lets admit it that it was an attempt to garner more votes for the democratic party. Something that that party has been doing for years and years. And of course it’s illegal as is most of the crap sandwich less than zero and his minions have been trying to ram down our throats. I sure hope the SC has more sense than all these nitwits combined.
Greece is the canary in the statist coal mine. The rumors about “Who’s next?” have gone beyond the usual suspects of Spain and Portugal all the way to…. the UK! One British commentator remarked recently that whichever party wins the next UK election will be out of power for the next generation after that because of the draconian cuts they will be forced to make. That show is coming here soon. All Obungler and the Dopeocrats have done with this healthcare charade is bring the day of reckoning that much closer.
Found out the real reason Lindsey Graham bailed on the Climate Bill, interesting story. One part of the bill was going to be some sort of tax, which would characterized as a “gas tax”. Everyone knows that this was going to be the most unpopular part of the bill, and Graham figured out that Harry Reid was going to introduce this part as the Lindsey Graham tax.
Hope he, and every Republican, learns a lesson about ever trying to work with Democrats – they will ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS betray you! Bipartisanship is dead – even McCain realizes that now.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/95207-graham-feared-a-gas-tax-set-up
This is important,
please read it:
http://lamecherry.blogspot.com/2010/05/another-obama-crisis-too-good.html
I do not believe for a second that the Gulf of Mexico crude pipeline was an accident. It is just too Obama right on schedule to be anything but a controlled crisis to benefit Obama.
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PS: And for the record, to shut this oil leak down, all one needs is to rotary cut the pipe off flush, which the oil industry has pipe cutters to do this, thread the pipe with a robotic tap and die, put a female double threaded screw cap on it with valve, and once in placed, turn the valve off.
All stated, I could shut this leak off in two hours, and that includes dropping the rigs down to ocean depths.
If little me can do this, surely the burly Obama cartel barons could have done it already.
READ THE WHOLE THING,
the prezodent may be guilty of treason.
Here is an alternate opinion,
why did it sink?
http://www.eutimes.net/2010/05/us-orders-blackout-over-north-korean-torpedoing-of-gulf-of-mexico-oil-rig/
Ortega, I worked in the industry. Apparently there’s a lot bigger mess down on the seabed than anything that’s ever been seen before. The BOP stack is too thick to cut with anything, and then there’s casing (metal pipe) stuck through the middle of it, and all of it partially filled with hardened cement which dried where it shouldn’t have.
Even if there *were* rov’s which were capable of the kind of thing you’re proposing (I don’t think there are, yet) you can’t tap and die cracked, bent, mishapen and broken pipe, and that seems to be what’s sticking out of the well right now. And it’s been cemented in place, apparently.
The biggest problem is that it seems part of the casing that was being set is stuck through the bop stack with a couple thousand feet of it (or more) broken over and laying on the seafloor. (this is what the oil is coming out of) What I’ve read is that there *was* a command sent to activate the shear ram but it failed to operate, reason so far unknown. The ROVS have not been able to activate the shear ram either, meaning that something heavy is blocking it.
The rig was involved in a cementing operation at the time, pumping down cement to lock the casing in place. (this is Halliburton’s specialty) A preliminary guess is that a kick came in the middle of this operation, when the cement was still wet, and the one way pump valve at the bottom of the casing string failed. If some of the cement was spit back out of the wellbore before it hardened (at the time of the disaster) we could have a situation where there is casing + cement inside the BOP stack – that’s the definition of reinforced concrete with a pipe through it.
Even sheer rams aren’t strong enough to cut through reinforced concrete, and this could explain why the bop stack has become useless. Apparently the only solution is going to be to drill a relief well from about 3 miles away, hit the wellbore, and pump heavy slurry in to shut the thing down. This will take weeks, maybe months. Since there reportedly a producing wellheads within a few feet of the blown out one (they are usually drilled in groups) you can’t use high explosives (C4, RDX) to try to cut this wellhead off without fear of blowing up some of the good wellheads right next to it.
That’s why this is such a disaster – as with all great disasters, this is a situation that no one thought was possible – every safety has been defeated, and every possible fix (except the relief well) is useless.
The reason why I’ve got to discount any conspiracy theories is that there is no way to explain how any human being, or group of human beings, could have caused this. A whole string of extremely unlikely things had to happen in a row – of course there will be human error, and there will be mechanical error, but remember that the original flaw was something that happened 18.000 feet under the surface. This outcome could *not* have been predicted, since it’s about as likely as an asteroid hitting that rig.
This was a true “Black Swan” event – something that all the rules of probability say shouldn’t happen. But Black Swans *do* happen, and more frequently than we like to think. All technology fails at some point, and the more spectacular the technology, the more spectacular the failure is when it comes. (Think Titanic)
The mature response for the country is to accept that disasters happen from time to time, you do your best to keep them from happening but you can’t stop them completely. And when they happen, you clean them up and go on doing what you have to do. In this case, that means going on drilling while realizing it will always be a dangerous and risky proposition. It always has been, and always will be, no matter how good our tech gets.
p.s. – the torpedo theory cannot be possible because that could not have caused the BOP stack to jam and fail. You’re forgetting that the rig didn’t sink until *after* there had been an oil and gas fueled fire for 2 days. Also, you do not realize how big a rig like that is – a torpedo or a mine would have been a minor inconvenience, quickly contained – there are dozens of separate flotation compartments, and something like that could only breach one of them. An explosion on the surface cannot create a blowout, it only happens *after* subsurface control has been lost.
timeline:
(1) The well kicked during cementing operations.
(2) The BOP stack failed.
(3) A surge of nat gas came through the wellbore.
(4) The gas ignited at surface, either from some of the equipment or from simple static electricity caused by the immense decompression when it hit the surface.
(5) the explosion from the gas hitting the surface kills everyone on the drill floor instantly and takes out the control center.
(6) everyone else evacuates immediately. The fire is too intense for any rig based recovery attempts; flames (not the glow but the actual flames) are visible from 35 miles away!
(7) the uncontrolled surge continues to burn for 2 days, eventually melting much of the rig. I’ve sent AJ some photos of the firefighting ships attempted to save the rig while it burned. The flames were just too intense for any firefighting equipment to stop them. This is because they were fueled by the continuing blowout coming from the deep formation.
(8) this was a floating semisubmersible rig, with computer controlled buoyancy systems. Once all the onboard systems were melted, the buoyancy systems failed. Also, the support ships were pumping water constantly onto the top, which probably ended up getting into the bouyancy structures. (no choice, to not have pumped meant letting the rig melt faster) A list became pronounced, once the list got past 45 degrees it turned on its side and went under, just like any large ship would.
(9) as it sank, the 5,000 feet of pipe between it and the seabed broke off and fell over the top of the wellhead like iron spaghetti, further complicating any cleanup efforts.
(10) we got a hell of a mess down there on the seabed.
I do not trust the courts to overturn the mandate. The best solution is to moot the question by repealing the whole monstrosity, If the Republicans manage to win one or both houses, they can then write a bill to address the health care problems (such as preexisting conditions) while at the same time repealing everything in the previous bill. If it is vetoed or filibustered in the Senate, then that will be the 2012 campaign issue.
Rick C, I think you are right as this is what Sean Trende talked about in one of his recent articles by referencing what happened to some 1998 Catastrophic Medicat Act, which ended up being repealed by the same Congress a year later.
Obama should think twice about vetoing it if the Republicans have the spine to repeal it among everything else.
I understand why Lindesay Graham backed off on the Cap n Trade bill…because he did not want Harry Reid to call that new gas tax, “The Lindsay Graham Gas Tax”.
WWS, this oil thing isn’t going to go well politically but I agree with Sarah Palin that we must continue with the oil drilling after learning what happened to this accident in order to prevent this from happening again.
Fail in the courts? You’re just NOT giving enough credit to left wing judges. Read Justice Stevens response to Scalito in Heller some time. These people are utterly shameless, thoroughly hypocritical and quite INVENTIVE when it comes to figuring out ways to ignore the Constitution!!