I pit all conservatives who have bought into the Halbig/King ACA trutherism nonsense

The BBQ Pit
1

Inspired by the warning that I received in this thread, I hereby pit all conservatives who have bought into the Halbig/King trutherism nonsense which is fueling the upcoming last ditch attempt to get SCOTUS to destroy the ACA.

In real life, this fiasco extends to virtually the entire Republican Party; on the SDMB, however, this lovely group includes such conservative stalwarts as adaher, Bricker, Terr, & Iggy. I’ve made my case in several threads already for why the King case is entirely bogus & fueled solely by the rightwing holy war against the ACA, and I often feel as if I’m shouting at the wind when I point out its blatant illegitimacy & all I hear back is “that’s wrong.” For me, the straw that really broke the camel’s back was when I caught Bricker saying this, referring to Cannon & Adler, the two maniacs who concocted this whole scheme:

Ladies & gentlemen, this is total horse shit. Please allow me to introduce you to Michael Cannon and the myriad of wonderful ways in which likes to spend his free time (emphasis added):

As forks and knives clinked, Michael Cannon, Cato Institute’s health policy director, took to the podium. He insisted that Mississippi abandon its insurance exchange, OneMississippi.com. The federal government “is desperate for Mississippi to do its dirty work,” Cannon told the audience, and “will do anything they can to bribe states to create” insurance marketplaces. He then asked the elected officials in the room to raise their hands.* “If you took an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and you believe this law is unconstitutional,” Cannon said, “then, I submit you have a duty to prevent this law from ever taking full effect.”***

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/mississippi-burned-obamacare-112181_Page3.html#ixzz3MITq4l6X

If that doesn’t give away Cannon’s blatant political posturing on this issue, then I don’t know what can convince you; the man is essentially a sociopath masquerading as a libertarian, though it’s likely that they’re one and the same anyway.

For those who speak legalese, I’ll always link to Bagley’s article. It punishingly takes down the King argument far more effectively than I can. If you want to see me go off on this argument elsewhere, check out my posts in the Elections thread.

In the meantime, I invite any likewise-minded folks to join me in denouncing the hogwash behind King v. Burwell, though I imagine that a number of rankled conservatives might want to chime in as well.

2

It’s true that the attempts to bring down ACA through lawsuits are politically motivated. It’s also true that the lawsuits have merit. Not only does the text say something different from what the administration would have you believe, we have one of the main architects on record as saying subsidies only go to state exchanges and one of the most prominent analysts(Jonathon Cohn) also saying so. Further, the IRS’s initial rule only allowed subsidies for state exchanges. This rule was changed after the administration had an “oh shit” moment.

3

“Merit” is a word with marvelous flexibility, it can be stretched to cover a vast acreage. There is some rational merit in the position that the precise wording of a law trumps the clear intent of its devising. That is a rational argument, but not a reasonable one. Nor is it intended as a reasonable argument, it is a technical instrument designed to an ignoble purpose.

If they succeed at their purpose, many thousands of our fellow citizens will suffer, in degrees from a chronic pain easily remedied through the spectrum of ill health including death. In devotion to the Dollar Almighty they will inflict misery on people who cannot effectively resist.

And the horse upon in which they rode.

4

As tempting as that offer is, I think I’ll be able to resist.

5

Intent is not clear. Little was said either way about the issue and what was said supported the plain language.

Rule of law is essential to a free society. Rule of men is an evil to be avoided, even if it sometimes brings results you agree with. This President has established that he believes he has legislative powers.

6

That’s wrong.

The fact that you have to start a thread here rather than in GD is pretty weak shit. Richard Parker makes great actual arguments in favor of the ACA in other threads. He acknowledges the counter claims have merit, though he thinks they are not persuasive. In other words, he argues the position. You, not so much.

Your arguments consist of you declaring things illegitimate or without merit. In this OP you allude to other arguments you claim you have made without even so much as a link or summary. No real support of your own. You link to someone else without so much as a summary and say case closed. In the other thread, you seemingly purposely mischaracterize a link you present and when it’s pointed out you ignore it.

7

I’ll take a moment to state that I’m afraid **2ManyTacos **has really mischaracterized me.

But I’ve been pitted! Does this mean I am now an established poster?

And to 2ManyTacos, Chevron doesn’t mean what you think it means. The DC panel did a Chevron analysis and rejected the administration’s argument. The 4th Circuit panel did a Chevron analysis and upheld the administration’s argument. It is a given that the SCOTUS decision in King v Burwell will include a Chevron analysis. That does not mean a 9-0 ruling for the administration is necessarily forthcoming.

Supreme Court cases sometimes take on a life of their own entirely outside of the scope of the basic issues at hand. King v Burwell has the potential to be one of those cases. The court could use the case to clarify Chevron, to clarify the meaning of the “plain language” rule and the absurdity exception as well as the significance of legislative history.

Recognizing such potential for a case does not require being conservative or liberal. It requires an interest in the law that goes beyond how you might personally prefer a case being decided.

There are sound arguments in favor of the administration’s position just as there are sound arguments against. But as a *Chevron * analysis goes, the administration is highly unlikely to win on a “plain language” argument. The lower courts didn’t buy the administration’s plain language argument. The administration needs a favorable ruling based on Congressional intent or agency interpretation. The lower courts rejected the administration’s arguments on plain language and on Congressional intent, with the 4th Circuit siding with the administration based upon agency interpretation.

Since plain language must be evaluated before Congressional intent or agency interpretation (as both the DC Circuit panel and 4th Circuit panel did) then there is a chance the SCOTUS will decide that the appellants will win and Congressional intent would never be considered at all. After all, no deference is owed under Chevron if the agency interpretation is contrary to the statutory text.

8

And if one form of legalistic theology is chosen, many thousands of our fellow citizens will suffer. To choose such a course because of the arcane technicality of Constitutional law may be rational but it is not reasonable. No worthy purpose is served by imposing suffering on our fellow citizens in awe of some abstract legal sophistry. And if they are not our people, who’s people are they?

9

Rule of law is a little more than an abstract concept. We live in a democracy. If bad results ensue from a badly written law, Congress can correct the law. The reason liberals consider this a crisis is because they dont have control of Congress anymore.

Shoulda read the bill.

10

When are people going to learn that it’s futile to engage people like adaher, etc.?

11

Awww, you’re so kawaii :slight_smile:

12

I think what get lives means is that it is futile for him to engage people like adaher, etc. - meaning people with an IQ higher than his.

This covers most of the Dope, a large part of the rest of the world, and some species of house plants.

Regards,
Shodan

PS - I had to Google “kawaii” - is that new?

13

Awww, you’re so kawaii :slight_smile:

Derision,
The non-Dunning-Kruger world

14

I think elucidator makes an important point here.

While I agree that reasonable people may disagree over the interpretation of this law (contrary to the lame OP’s assertion otherwise), I don’t think that reasonable people can disagree that, well, reasonable can disagree about it. In which case, reasonable people should not insist that their view is the one and only reasonable view in light of the significant damage that can be done to actual, living human beings. And I think this is one of the legal principles that Richard Parker has made in defense of ruling agains the states suing in this case. When more than one interpretation is possible, go with the one that seems the most, I hate to say it, but… reasonable.

15

There’s mountains of motivated reasoning on both sides of this. That’s not surprising. It’s a fact of life for all public debates over the law, but especially so when the legal issues are subtle and largely trivial, and the policy issues are big and important.

I agree with Bricker that there is legal merit to this challenge. Where we disagree, I think, is what legal issue is at stake. In his view, this is a simple question of whether statutory text can be ignored because of the policy implications. I don’t think that principle is actually at stake here. What is at stake is a subset of statutory interpretation rules for untangling a messy statute.*

Vanishingly few people have any intellectual pre-commitments to the outcome of the minor statutory interpretation questions at issue in this case. So of course it follows that policy preferences are what has driven the debate.

__

  • -Here are the actual legal questions, in my view:

According to the IRS’s interpretation, “Exchange” is a defined term in the Act, and it is defined as an exchange established by the State. But that view means there is a redundancy created by the statute’s subsequent use of the phrase “Exchange established by the State”–it’s like defining Hot Dog as a 100% beef hot dog, and then referring to a 100% beef Hot Dog. How much does that kind of redundancy matter? Is it enough to render the statute unambiguous in the challenger’s favor? The IRS’s interpretation also places a lot of weight on the capitalization of the word Exchange. Is the principle that capitalized terms are defined terms strong enough to render the key phrase at least ambiguous in the IRS’s favor?

Those are pretty trivial and specific statutory interpretation issues. There’s also a general question of when bizarre outcomes can be considered, quite apart from negative policy consequences. For one example (among others), according to the challengers, Congress decided to require detailed reporting concerning the $0 of subsidies provided in the federal exchanges. Is the implausibility that Congress decided to save itself some time if they later decided to amend the statute to provide such subsidies relevant? Or does that fall into the same category as considering outside evidence of legislative intent?

16

I think all sides agree that if there are reasonable interpretations on both sides then the IRS wins. What the challengers have to show as a matter of law is that their’s is the only reasonable interpretation. To me, that pretty clearly resolves the matter. But I think it is possible to find that the statute is unambiguous in denying federal subsidies if you answer all the tiny little interpretation questions (outlined above) in a certain way, which is why I think it is fair to say that the challenge has legal merit.

17

That sounds reasonable. :smiley:

18

This works both ways. It would be misleading to characterize the outcome of this case to be potentially damaging only to one group of people. Actual living human beings will be harmed regardless of the outcome of this case. On the one hand that harm may be more acute, but there will be winners and losers either way. In any case, the measure of relative impacts to various groups should not inform the outcome of this case nor do they factor into the merits or demerits of any argument. Fiat justitia ruat caelum

19

The problem with this approach is that by reducing the immutability of legal and judicial principles, it essentially makes the judges into policy makers, free to rule in each case based on their preferred outcome.

If there was widespread agreement that one outcome amounts to “significant damage” then there’s a system in place to correct that damage, that being the legislative and executive branches. The reason that doesn’t work here is because while it’s widely agreed on the SDMB that one ruling would cause “significant damage”, IRL this is subject to considerable differences of opinion.

The approach that you and elucidator advocate amounts to giving the ultimate decisive power as to what’s the best policy to opinion of the judge or judges who happen to be deciding the case. This is not the proper role of the judiciary in a democracy.

20

That’s not what John Mace is advocating, as far as I can tell. He does call out the issue as one implication but is not supporting the abandoning of legal/judicial principles to reach a desired outcome.