By doing away with the Individual Mandate, the Trump Administration created a potentially fatal vulnerability in Obamacare’s constitutionality that the Republican party has actually managed to exploit.
Core provisions of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, were ruled unconstitutional by a Texas judge on Friday following a lawsuit brought by a group of Republican attorneys general from 20 states against Democratic attorneys general from 14 states led by California’s Xavier Becerra.
According to court documents (below) US District Judge Reed O’Connor of Fort Worth agreed with the GOP coalition that he had to gut key provisions of the Affordable Care Act after Congress last year eliminated the individual mandate – a tax penalty for not buying insurance.
Friday’s decision which will undoubtedly be fought all the way to the Supreme Court, as California has already announced that they will appeal.
The Texas-led Republicans argued that they’ve been harmed by an explosion of people on state-supported insurance rolls – claiming that when Congress repealed the tax penalty last year it nullified the US Supreme Court’s rationale for deeming the ACA constitutional in 2012.
This is how it’s done. What the Left has wrought via the courts can be undone via the courts.
If someone questions whether a single judge in Texas can repeal the Affordable Care Act nationwide, ask him if a single judge in Hawaii can nullify the President’s constitutional authority to defend the continental United States from invasion.
More please, GOP.
If Congressional Republicans had the spine of their state attorneys general colleagues, they’d use their once-per-year “Pass a Spending Bill with a Simple Majority” card to get the Wall funded before the Democrats take over the House next month.
I'm kind of resigned to the fact that there will be no wall or meaningful immigration control, and Trump is all talk.
Change my mind!
Trump may be all talk, but it's remarkable that he's still talking about his core campaign planks this far along. A standard Republican grifter would have abandoned all talk of immigration for the donor class' agenda by now.
We find ourselves in a paradox. Everyone inside the system is too corrupt to reform it. Only an outsider can stand against the system, but he lacks the knowledge of its workings needed to achieve his goals.
In the midst of all the MAGA hype two years ago, level heads cautioned that the best Trump could do was buy us time. I was one of them, but it's starting to look like I was wrong. It's unlikely that we'd have seen alt-lite figures deplatformed, roaming AntiFa lynch mobs, or kids given life in prison for dumb mistakes under Jeb or even Hillary.
I'm not saying those two alternatives would have been preferable. Trump has goaded the Left into showing their hand too early. Facebook soccer moms and lifelong union Boomers are turning their backs on the Democrat party in disgust. Meanwhile, the fact that hatred of white people is the Coalition of the Fringes' sole unifying principle is being discussed on national prime time news.
The accelerationists may have been right after all. If Trump couldn't save the system from itself, it was unsalvageable to begin with. Right now it's burning itself down in a frenzied attempt to take him down. A smart dissident movement would take advantage of the diversion to start gaining ground elsewhere.
You make a lot of good points. Thanks for talking me down from the metaphorical ledge.
A smart dissident movement would fill the vacuum. Sadly, a lot of the dissident movement appears to be fame whores who couldn’t make it in traditional Buckley-ite circles and have conned dissidents into thinking they’ve always been one of them, or ego-driven e-celebs in it for the fame.
Here’s hoping enough people see through this and act—and vote—accordingly.
Every major movement in history has had camp followers who rush to the front of the parade when they sense there's profit to be had. These are largely venal misfits who, as you said, couldn't make it within the establishment, so they prey on political outsiders' need for leadership and direction.
What we're seeing now as the enemy ups the ante and Buckley style disavowals fall on deaf ears is also entirely normal. We've reached the point where speaking out requires heroic virtue. The grifters are naturally being peeled off as the costs of resistance rise.
That's a positive development. Disease co-opts and kills off compromised cells, but this triggers an immune response.
Think of this juncture as an intermediary period when the disease is advancing, and the antibodies haven't shown up yet. Time has just about run out for the first crop of unserious leaders. You'll know when the serious people take the field.
Alex, I think most people either don't care about politics, or are getting pushed further and further into the alt-right just because they're sick and tired of being called evil, privileged whites.
Yes, there are some holdouts, probably atheists clinging to the Religion of Everyone Can Maintain Western Civilization, but even some of them will come around eventually.
The real question is how much of Western Civilization will be in tact when they do?
Heian-kyo,
Great points. I myself have changed my opinion on many things, not just free-market libertarianism and American-style conservatism, over the past couple of years, though traditional GOP-ism was always a poor fit for me. I suppose I was looking for an excuse to leave it. Enter Mr. Trump.
Where I get discouraged is when I discovered that it's not the people running the system that are the problem, but THE SYSTEM ITSELF that is the problem. I've been paying less attention to politics and more to my family, my business, and God. It's done wonders for my physical, mental, and spiritual health.
But I still get cranky when I try to discuss these issues with people who refuse to see where the signs are pointing.
So how much of Western Civilization will be intact? As much as people like us can keep alive. It's a monumental task, but it also has the potential to be very fun and rewarding. And I'm not talking about money.