Healthcare Bills Unconstitutional

I will remind my readers that although this site primarily deals with education reform and school taxes the assault to our freedom and the tax impact of the current Administration's policies can not be ignored.

The healthcare Bills are unconstitutional. Please take the time out of your day and call your representatives and senators and tell them to vote no on this healthcare legislation. Real reform involves opening up individuals to by insurance from any company not just a few and torte reform. Real reform will revolve around a reduction of mandates not more mandates.

The following piece appears in the Wall Street Journal.


Quote of the Day - "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..." --James Madison


Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Why the Health-Care Bills Are Unconstitutional

If the government can mandate the purchase of insurance, it can do anything.

By ORRIN G. HATCH, J. KENNETH BLACKWELL AND KENNETH A. KLUKOWSKI

President Obama's health-care bill is now moving toward final passage. The policy issues may be coming to an end, but the legal issues are certain to continue because key provisions of this dangerous legislation are unconstitutional. Legally speaking, this legislation creates a target-rich environment. We will focus on three of its more glaring constitutional defects.

First, the Constitution does not give Congress the power to require that Americans purchase health insurance. Congress must be able to point to at least one of its powers listed in the Constitution as the basis of any legislation it passes. None of those powers justifies the individual insurance mandate. Congress's powers to tax and spend do not apply because the mandate neither taxes nor spends. The only other option is Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce.




Congress has many times stretched this power to the breaking point, exceeding even the expanded version of the commerce power established by the Supreme Court since the Great Depression. It is one thing, however, for Congress to regulate economic activity in which individuals choose to engage; it is another to require that individuals engage in such activity. That is not a difference in degree, but instead a difference in kind. It is a line that Congress has never crossed and the courts have never sanctioned.

In fact, the Supreme Court in United States v. Lopez (1995) rejected a version of the commerce power so expansive that it would leave virtually no activities by individuals that Congress could not regulate. By requiring Americans to use their own money to purchase a particular good or service, Congress would be doing exactly what the court said it could not do.

Some have argued that Congress may pass any legislation that it believes will serve the "general welfare." Those words appear in Article I of the Constitution, but they do not create a free-floating power for Congress simply to go forth and legislate well. Rather, the general welfare clause identifies the purpose for which Congress may spend money. The individual mandate tells Americans how they must spend the money Congress has not taken from them and has nothing to do with congressional spending.

A second constitutional defect of the Reid bill passed in the Senate involves the deals he cut to secure the votes of individual senators. Some of those deals do involve spending programs because they waive certain states' obligation to contribute to the Medicaid program. This selective spending targeted at certain states runs afoul of the general welfare clause. The welfare it serves is instead very specific and has been dubbed "cash for cloture" because it secured the 60 votes the majority needed to end debate and pass this legislation.

A third constitutional defect in this ObamaCare legislation is its command that states establish such things as benefit exchanges, which will require state legislation and regulations. This is not a condition for receiving federal funds, which would still leave some kind of choice to the states. No, this legislation requires states to establish these exchanges or says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services will step in and do it for them. It renders states little more than subdivisions of the federal government.

This violates the letter, the spirit, and the interpretation of our federal-state form of government. Some may have come to consider federalism an archaic annoyance, perhaps an amusing topic for law-school seminars but certainly not a substantive rule for structuring government. But in New York v. United States (1992) and Printz v. United States (1997), the Supreme Court struck down two laws on the grounds that the Constitution forbids the federal government from commandeering any branch of state government to administer a federal program. That is, by drafting and by deliberate design, exactly what this legislation would do.

The federal government may exercise only the powers granted to it or denied to the states. The states may do everything else. This is why, for example, states may have authority to require individuals to purchase health insurance but the federal government does not. It is also the reason states may require that individuals purchase car insurance before choosing to drive a car, but the federal government may not require all individuals to purchase health insurance.

This hardly exhausts the list of constitutional problems with this legislation, which would take the federal government into uncharted political and legal territory. Analysts, scholars and litigators are just beginning to examine the issues we have raised and other issues that may well lead to future litigation.

America's founders intended the federal government to have limited powers and that the states have an independent sovereign place in our system of government. The Obama/Reid/Pelosi legislation to take control of the American health-care system is the most sweeping and intrusive federal program ever devised. If the federal government can do this, then it can do anything, and the limits on government power that our liberty requires will be more myth than reality.

Mr. Hatch, a Republican senator from Utah, is a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Blackwell is a senior fellow with the Family Research Council and a professor at Liberty University School of Law. Mr. Klukowski is a fellow and senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union.

Summer School At Croydon - Is it cost effective and does it improve performance?

As you have read in the Eagle Times Article Jim Peschke rejected funds for summer school. His reasons was that only 41.7% of the students performed proficient in math with 9 months of schooling, how was two hours a day, four days a week for four weeks going to improve student performance. At this point Marilyn Brannigan scolded Jim and said he needed to do research in the the subject. Jim has done plenty of research and he knows that, "in fact most research shows that summer school as typically administered has little if any impact on learning.” You can read another article on the subject here.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Vote NO on Article 7

The following letter to the editor appeared in the Eagle Times.
Vote NO on Article 7

The spirit of SB2 provides better representation, allowing citizens to vote their conscience without the stigma of open air voting. State and national elections operate in much the same way, and with good reason.

Case in point is our 2008 Croydon town meeting. I motioned to reduce the school budget proposal and have the vote taken by secret ballot. Opposition to the ballot was strong and almost exclusively from the teachers and education staff who directly benefit from increased spending.

We lost the vote, but it was closer than much more controversial votes conducted by show of hands. Clearly ballot voting permitted residents to cast votes unencumbered by social taboo.

Nowhere are the benefits of SB2 better known than in Newport, where the citizens recently rejected the proposed school budget. Uppity Newport voters dared to challenge runaway school spending and won. How dare you!

This is precisely why we have SB2; to allow people to vote as they choose without intimidation.

It is also the real reason a group calling themselves "Concerned Citizens of Newport" launched an all-out campaign to rescind SB2. Their flyer, replete with emotional appeals, was carefully designed with a "grass roots" appearance.

But make no mistake. This is not "grass roots", its Astroturf. Grass roots groups don't organize against year old supermajority public votes with expensive mass mailings. Astroturf groups do.

Before going to the polls on May 13th, voters should know that Article 7 is NOT about restoring Democracy. Its about restoring runaway school spending.

SB2 has freed the genie of democracy. Special interests created Article 7 to put the genie back in the voter intimidation bottle.

Vote NO on Article 7!


Jim Peschke
Co-founder Citizens for Reasonable And Fair Taxes - Croydon


Jim wrote the above piece in response to the anonymous piece of propaganda that was sent out by a group called "Concerned Citizens of Newport" on a hot pink piece of paper this past week.

How ironic that an anonymous group sent out a piece of propaganda wanting to disallow voters from voting anonymously. Interesting... it must be from a group of large tax eaters who had a budget not pass recently because of SB-2. The people who have acted in such a cowardly manor and who want voting not to be anonymous should at least have the guts to step forward and not remain anonymous themselves. - Cathy