DEFUND and, eventually sometime in this century, REPEAL OBAMACARE, the current Socialist Scourge of America!
Maybe complicit Republican Socialists will get it done for a change! Also, repeal all laws and rescind all regulations that interfere with a FREE MARKET!!!
Anyone who believes this country is free is an idiot!
[Editor's Note: Obamacare is a 'backdoor' tax increase imposed on all Americans — individuals and businesses. While insurance companies have increased premiums (doubled and tripled) to cover the cost of implementing Obama's socialist coup of the healthcare industry, there certainly remain hidden costs for all Americans. Most of the predictions are realized. Obama's central planning(also) is the culmination of 120 years of America's Socialist transformation.]
[Editor's Note: the emphasis throughout this article is added by this Editor.]
For those who thought that the lawsuits challenging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) were at an end, think again. On September 9, Judge Rosemary Collyer of the federal district court for the District of Columbia refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the entire U.S. House of Representatives against the Obama administration over its funding of certain aspects of Obamacare.
This is a historic lawsuit and a historic decision. In the past, individual members of Congress have filed a number of (unsuccessful) lawsuits against sitting administrations. But this is one of the few occasions when such a suit has been pursued by the entire House of Representatives as an institution.
Adopted on July 30, 2014, House Resolution 676 authorized the speaker to file suit. On January 6, 2015, the House in the new 114th Congress adopted HR 5, authorizing itself to succeed the 113th House as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
The challenge by the House makes two claims against the Obama administration and specifically Sylvia Burwell, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Jacob Lew, the secretary of the Treasury. First, that the administration has spent “billions of unappropriated dollars to support” Obamacare. Second, that the administration “effectively amended the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate by delaying its effect and narrowing its scope.”
According to Judge Collyer, Section 1402 of Obamacare “requires insurers to reduce the cost of insurance to certain, eligible statutory beneficiaries” and the “federal government then offsets the added costs to insurance companies by reimbursing them with funds from the Treasury.” While certain other credits in Obamacare are paid through a permanent appropriation in the Internal Revenue Code, these “Section 1402 Cost-Sharing Offsets must be funded and re-funded by annual, current appropriations.”
The House claims it has never appropriated any funds for §1402, yet the administration “nonetheless drew and spent public monies on that program beginning in January 2014.” This violates Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”
On the employer mandate, §1513 of Obamacare requires large employers to offer full-time employees enrollment in a qualified plan beginning on Dec. 31, 2013, or pay an “assessable payment, i.e., a tax.” The House charges the administration with effectively amending this requirement “both by delaying the employer mandate beyond December 31, 2013, and by altering the percentage of employees that must be offered coverage.” Thus, the administration “usurped” the Article I legislative authority of the House.
[Editor's Note: Obamacare was the sneaky, 'behind-closed-doors' way for the Democrat CON-gress of 2010 to both take-over and control healthcare and install 16 new taxes on Americans. CON-gress HAS A SPENDING PROBLEM. The cash-flow imbalance solution is NOT to destroy the economy with even more taxes and regulations. After all, the parasites shouldn't kill their Golden Goose. This is the greatest reason for the new Term Limits and Balanced Budget Amendments.]
The administration filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that the House lacked standing to assert either claim and that “only the Executive has authority to implement the laws.” The administration further argued that the courts should “stay out of a quintessentially political fight” between the legislative and executive branches.
However, Judge Collyer rejected the notion that this was a nonjusticiable political question: “Despite its political ramifications, this suit remains a plain dispute over a constitutional command, of which the judiciary has long been the ultimate interpreter.” The judge also rejected the claim that the House lacked standing—at least on one of the two claims it has made. Judge Collyer did not decide on the merits of the lawsuit—only on “whether the House can sue the Secretaries.”
On the appropriations claim, the judge concluded that the House has standing to sue since it is challenging the administration “as an institutional plaintiff, to preserve its power of the purse and to maintain constitutional equilibrium between the Executive and the Legislature.” That distinguishes this lawsuit from prior unsuccessful challenges, such as Raines v. Byrd (1997), in which Sen. Robert C. Byrd and other members of Congress sued over the line-item veto law. They had voted against the law, which was passed by majority vote and signed by former president Bill Clinton. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed that suit because Byrd, et al. failed to establish that “their claimed injury is personal, particularized, concrete, and otherwise judicially cognizable.”
In contrast, in Coleman v. Miller (1939), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a challenge by members of the Kansas State Senate who claimed that their votes were sufficient to defeat passage of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution except for the illegal vote of the lieutenant governor. Those senators had “a plain, direct and adequate interest in maintaining the effectiveness of their votes.” Similarly, just last term, the Supreme Court held that state lawmakers had standing to sue as an institution in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (2015) for the injury suffered from a ballot referendum that stripped the Legislature of its redistricting authority.
Judge Collyer ruled that if there is merit to the House’s claim that the executive spent public funds that were not constitutionally appropriated, then “the House has been injured in a concrete and particular way that is traceable to the Secretaries and remediable in court.”
In contrast, however, Judge Collyer concluded that the House does not have standing to pursue the claim that the administration improperly amended Obamacare to delay the effect of the employer mandate. According to the judge, this claim concerns “only the implementation of a statute, not adherence to any specific constitutional requirement.” Judge Collyer placed great emphasis on the fact that this claim is really a statutory, not a constitutional claim, and that the House did not seek injunctive relief against this alleged violation.
Thus, according to Collyer, “a ruling for the House may offer nothing but the ‘psychic satisfaction’ of knowing ‘that the Nation’s laws are faithfully enforced,’ which is ‘not an acceptable Article III remedy because it does not redress a cognizable Article III injury.’” The fact that the House does not have standing does not mean that private plaintiffs, such as employers who are affected directly by what the Treasury Secretary has done with regard to the employer mandate, could not sue “and convince a court that such [Treasury] regulations are contrary to the [Administrative Procedure Act] or otherwise improper.”
The House of Representatives may still lose this lawsuit in the long run. But this decision is a significant defeat for the administration, which had hoped to get the entire case dismissed without a trial. The case will now go forward, to be decided on the merits of whether the administration used unappropriated funds and violated the Constitution.
A recent survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that a majority of Americans are unaware of what is considered basic knowledge of the Constitution.
This information, which was released Wednesday, comes on the cusp of the 228th anniversary of Constitution Day (Sept. 17).
Here are some of the most surprising findings from the survey:
1 in 3 Americans believe the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to home ownership.
1 in 4 Americans believe the Bill of Rights guarantees “equal pay for equal work.”
1 in 3 Americans (31 percent) could name all three branches of the U.S. government and 32 percent could not identify a single branch.
1 in 4 Americans (28 percent) believe a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling is sent back to either Congress for reconsideration or to the lower courts for another decision.
1 in 10 Americans (12 percent) believe the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to own a pet.
25 percent of respondents agreed that “it might be better to do away with the court altogether” if it started making a lot of rulings most Americans disagreed with.
26 percent said when Congress disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decisions, it should pass legislation saying the court can no longer rule on that issue.
26 percent favored requiring a person to testify against himself in court.
46 percent opposed a prohibition on “double jeopardy,” or retrying a person for the same crime twice if new evidence emerged after a not-guilty verdict.
54 percent believe the government should not be able to prohibit a peaceful march down a main street, even if the marchers’ views are offensive.
50 percent believe the government should not be able to prohibit practice of a religion if a majority of voters thought that it held un-American views.
76 percent opposed giving the government “prior restraint,” the right to stop the press from publishing articles critical of the government.
The survey was conducted during the last few days of August among 1,012 adults ages 18 and up. Its margin of error is plus or minus 3.7 percent.
See the following links for more related articles:
[Editor's Note: what I have dubbed the "Legislative-Executive-Judicial Cabal" which the American People have caused by ignoring the generational transition from our Constitutional Republic to what now is, in effect, an "elected" dictatorship. Never mind who is elected. Never mind which bogus party is in power. The superficial, theatrically staged, choreographed appearance of debate, disagreement, and stalled legislation always resolves into more government and less FREEDOM. We the People still lose more freedom after every "emergency" or unnoticeably when CON-gress passes another general, open-ended law that enables the Executive (dictator) and its unaccountable agencies to formulate more freedom-restricting regulations (200 pages a day get posted to the Federal Register). The "Dictator's" agencies (police force) continue to pile-up more weapons to squelch uprising(s) when the People finally realize and understand their tyrannical government.
Currently, CONgress is just a group of socialists, progressives, and faux-conservatives (career politicians) that, on a daily basis, ignores the Constitution, many of their own past statutes, and cedes their responsibilities to the president ("elected" dictator). A comparison to the history of Rome becomes more and more credible with the Executive and its "featherbedded" lackeys gaining more power while CONgress sits back all fat-dumb-and-happy.
CONgress has made recent efforts to expose State Dept. failures in Benghazi (inept political leader), Fast-and-Furious gun-running (criminal AG), IRS 1st amendment violations, gov't union Veterans Administration fraud, and whining about Obama(Reid)-killer-Care, but these efforts are mostly politics as usual. Most "citizens" will forget about these infringements from our unaccountable, uncontrollable Executive branch with its tyrannical agencies staffed by socialist unions that extort "juicy" contracts from the "elected" dictatorship.
Most positions in the federal government whether elected, appointed, or hired are nominal, make-work jobs (confidentially) designed merely to grow government, bilk money from private businesses and citizens, and eventually fully transform America into a totalitarian state. When this happens, CONgress will have destroyed the economy and the country by their negligence and counter-liberty policies, and it will be almost impossible to Restore America. The 'Restore America' list is only a beginning too.]
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
James Madison, Federalist Paper 47, Friday, February 1, 1788
Anyone who believes this country is free is an idiot!
"Extortion and thuggery are good things when they're called law!"
Larken Rose
[Editor's Note: a Constitutional Convention is required to reverse the damage to freedom and liberty since 1900. This Article V was ratified by the participants at America's founding Constitutional Convention as an alternate path for repairing damage to freedom and liberty, a path for the People to restore damage caused by our failed representatives in the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of a government designed to represent the wishes of We the People.
The States must "demand" a Convention and explicitly specify an agenda of:
laws to be repealed or modified,
Amendments to existing constitutional clauses that define the co-equal branches to further specify and define, and
new Amendments or statutes to be eventually ratified by States.
These Amendments should further specify and clarify the powers of the Legislature and Executive Branches. A good example is the definition of a "Bill".
A Bill should contain ONLY verbiage in regards to the topic of the future law. NO earmarks and NO unrelated sections or attacments.
Many past Bills sent to a president for signature contained unrelated but essential funding sections that rendered the Bill veto-proof when it warranted a veto.
CON-gress can override a veto if the Bill is deemed absolutely necessary by CON-gress.
If the Bill requires SPECIFICALLY related amendments, the CON-gress can "debate" (with its usual theater) and vote any new amendments.
The original text of the Constitution contains some very GENERAL clauses enabling both CON-gress and Executive branches to write laws and
regulations with their particular nuances expanding powers beyond intent. "Intent" may be gleaned from a complete understanding of
Federalist Papers.
An example of further specification and clarity for CON-gress should be a clear, very specific definition of the boundaries for the interstate Commerce Clause.
To restore freedom, liberty, and individuality - minimally these must be repealed:
Currently, even with computer-searching systems, the list of antiquated and/or obsolete statutes (and related regulations) is unwieldy.
These statutes must be invalidated unless there remains an applicable reason for retaining the law(s).
Aside from invalidating statutes, there are many regulations that are biased in favor of large enterprises (who buy support from bureaucrats)
at the expense of the competition, effectively repressing the Free Market. Any regulations not related to public safety that gives a financial advantage
to some companies over their smaller rivals must be rescinded to enable all companies with good consumer products to excel without burdensome regulations.
Additionally, the Convention should adopt for ratification at least these new Amendments or statute modifications:
clearly define and limit the role of government in regards to the term "general welfare",
Term Limits for CON-gress (12 years) including a 6 month limit on time residing in DC,
strict Prohibition of Lobbying (with a comprehensive definition of "lobbying"), and
a Balanced Budget Amendment to stop wreckless spending. During a CON-gressionally declared "war" (only after USA is attacked or attack is proven "imminent"),
deficit spending is permissible.
Restore America to its roots, i.e. Defense, State, Treasury, and Justice. Some Agencies are required like CIA and NSA, both respectively focused on defense against real foreign aggressors and not fictitious paranoid delusions of war mongers. Other agencies help where certain interstate communications are necessary. Most agencies like Agriculture, Education, DEA, IRS (eliminated with 16th Amendment) and many other listed here should be eliminated.
Restore the world Gold Standard with five contentious steps, and
Replace the IMF, World Bank, and Export-Import Bank with facilities that reflect the new Gold Standard, and
After decentralizing and economizing, if tax revenue is needed to fund all or part of the federal government, then implement the Fair Tax.
Regarding a Constitutional Convention itself, some of the available literature warns the reader about a possible "unstructured" and "mismanaged"
Convention that might propose and adopt amendments that could damage the Republic.
Possible, however, it is difficult to envisage how much more damage could done over what the L-E-J Cabal has already done.
If the Convention's agenda and rules of order strictly prohibit violation of the rules and enable a vote on unlisted Amendments AFTER all others are adopted,
then the Convention will be properly structured and managed. ]
Those who seek out positions of power tend to be paranoid, hypocritical wimps. Consider the issue of firearms. Politicians have many thousands of mercenaries (soldiers and "law enforcers") wielding all sort of deadly weapons--guns, tanks, missiles, drones, etc. Yet those same politicians pee themselves at the thought of the rabble owning semi-automatic rifles. From their twisted, elitist perspective, it's perfectly fine for them to swipe many billions of dollars from their subjects to spend on all manner of armaments, but if YOU want to possess a rifle, they think you should have to ask their permission, and register it, and make sure they always know what you own.
They also expect to be allowed to do things in secret, while claiming the right to spy on you and everyone else. As far as they are concerned, it's none of your business what they do, or what weapons they have, but it is their business to know everything that you do and everything that you have. Of course, they will pretend that their goal is to protect you from the "criminal element," but you'd have to be pretty dense to actually believe that. Why do you suppose they mostly whine about civilians having weapons that:
are used in only a tiny percentage of actual crime, and;
are the most effective types of weapon for resisting "government"
aggression?
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. People who gravitate towards political office think they have the right to rule you. That's the job they applied for. And, of course, extorting you and bossing you around could be rather more difficult if you are better armed than their enforcers. So they hand out machine guns to their mindless thugs, but have tantrums about you having a 30-round magazine.
A new Congress has been seated, and it brings the prospect of perhaps, maybe, potentially, in a possible way doing something about the runaway federal deficits. And in other news, several New York area bridges are for sale, which you can acquire at a bargain price.
Excessive Spending Destroys!
Feds Have a Spending Problem — DO NOT RAISE THE CEILING!
Feds Have a Sewage Problem!
Becky Gerritson: "...government is out of control!" and "...our representative government has failed us."
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the IRS to detail under oath how some of former agency official Lois Lerner’s emails went missing, as well as any potential methods for recovering them.
Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington gave the Internal Revenue Service exactly a month — until Aug. 10 — to file a report, which he demanded as part of a lawsuit from a conservative watchdog, Judicial Watch, against the agency.
Judicial Watch is seeking a wide range of documents from the IRS, including Lerner’s emails, as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. It has complained that the IRS didn’t tell it that the agency couldn’t recover all of Lerner’s emails from 2009 to 2011.
Sullivan cast his ruling as a compromise, and a potential way for Judicial Watch to get answers without the court wading any deeper into the matter. Judicial Watch had asked the court to potentially compel IRS officials to testify about the lost emails, through a process called limited discovery.
The FairTax is a consumption tax unilaterally applied to all Americans at the same rate. For businesses, payroll taxes would no longer exist. Our exports would include a heavy tax for overseas buyers purchasing our products, while our imports would be cheaper for us to purchase. I'm not sure how this would affect GDP, as more information is necessary.
According to the FairTax website, "Under the FairTax, every person living in the United States pays a sales tax on purchases of new goods and services, excluding necessities due to the prebate." The prebate gives every legal resident household an "advance refund" at the beginning of each month so that purchases made up to the poverty level are tax-free.
So a family of four making something like $50,000/year should not have to pay taxes, thus preventing an unfair burden on low-income families. Since the FairTax eliminates both federal and payroll taxes, you get to keep your gross pay amount of each paycheck earned.
John Adams said, “Without [term limits] every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey”. That being said, here are some of the reasons we believe our country needs Term Limits.
Term Limits can help break the cycle of corruption in Congress. Case studies show that the longer an individual stays in office, the more likely they are to stop serving the public and begin serving their own interests.
Term Limits will encourage regular citizens to run for office. Presently, there is a 94% re-election rate in the House and 83% in the Senate. Because of name recognition, and usually the advantage of money, it can be easy to stay in office. Without legitimate competition, what is the incentive for a member of Congress to serve the public? Furthermore, it is almost a lost cause for the average citizen to try to campaign against current members of Congress.
Term Limits will break the power special interest groups have in Congress.
Term Limits will force politicians to think about the impact of their legislation because they will be returning to their communities shortly to live under the laws they enacted.
Term Limits will bring diversity of people and fresh ideas to Congress.
[Editor's Note: If you want to get rich, i.e. advance from a low paying government bureaucrat job on the local or state level, THEN GET ELECTED TO THE US CONGRESS (House or Senate). Once you're elected, it's easy to steal from your campaign contributions or the Congressional budget allocated to your seat and staff. You can go on a government-funded junket with 'lavishly' paid expenses. The list of ways to steal from the government while in office is inexhaustible. There are only a few Congressmen who left Congress just wealthy instead of a multi-millionaire. Of course, there are several who arrived in Congress as multi-millionaires and don't need to steal from the government.]
