Wow. Keep in mind as you read that this is a SCOTUS Justice — one who, had she not been elevated to the Court, might well have been the person arguing this case on behalf of the Obama Administration.
Here’s the exchange with Paul Clement, attorney representing the 26 states, who was giving his oral argument:
Mr. Clement: “Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the court. The constitutionality of the act’s massive expansion of Medicaid depends on the answer to two related questions. First, is the expansion coercive? And second, does that coercion matter?”
Justice Kagan: “Mr. Clement, can I ask you as just a matter of clarification; would you be making the same argument if, instead of the federal government picking up ninety percent of the cost, the federal government picked a hundred percent of the cost?”
Clement: “Justice Kagan if everything else in the statute remained the same I would be making the exact same argument.”
Kagan: “The exact same argument so, so that really reduces to the question of: why is a big gift from the federal government a matter of coercion?
“In other words, the federal government is here saying: we’re giving you a boatload of money. There are no, is no matching funds requirement. There are no extraneous conditions attached to it.
“It’s just a boatload of federal money for you to take and spend on poor people’s healthcare. It doesn’t sound coercive to me, I have to tell you.”
This is a remarkable exchange for several reasons, not the least of which being that it makes clear, in no uncertain terms, that those on the left really do believe that all money belongs first to the government — and that the government is somehow responsible for making this money (whether by printing it or collecting it). That is, they confuse and conflate having the money to dole out as a matter of procedure with owning the money and handing it out as a matter of largess. And they are truly stunned when you aren’t terribly thankful for their enlightened decision to return some of your money to you.
That Kagan would refer to taxpayer money returned to the states as a “gift” from the government — while simultaneously supporting a position that we be mandated to pay that money whether we wish to or not — is absolutely astonishing.
Out of a sense of collegiality, the Senate has confirmed “liberal” Justices that don’t just share a different idea about how the Constitution is to be read; they share a different idea of the validity of the Constitution itself — a belief that is by necessity political in nature inasmuch as it necessitates a mistrust of the underlying governmental system to which they pledge an oath to uphold — and so should never, out of some quaint notion of comity, have be confirmed in the first place.
Once the court becomes an extension of the political arm of a particular party or political ideology outside of the ideology built into the Constitution itself (as a matter of foundational first principles for the purpose of ordering the society and protecting individual rights), it has been corrupted.
That we are but one bad vote away from concluding that the Constitution written and ratified by those who fought a revolution to escape a monarchy allows for the federal government to force individuals to enter into private contracts against their will, is a testimony to just how close we’ve are to allowing the left to complete their coup — one that began with a usurpation of institutions and has long been bolstered by control over language and meaning through linguistic sleight of hand and pedestrian philosophical observation re-imagined as profound anti-foundational insight.
My favorite part:
Liberals really do think the goverment takes
drossunicorn shit and spins it intogolddollar bills.No consideration to the people the money was confiscated from, either the modern taxpayer or the future taxpayer.
The people being coerced, by the way, are those citizens yet to be born who are going to have to pay for that “boatload of money” out of their reduced standard of living.
But they don’t even exist yet, and thus have no agency, and can’t act or choose or any of that other stuff, so fuck ’em.
in the long run we’re all dead right?
Or am I still confused?
There is something fundamentally wrong with these people’s brains.
i find the use of wow to be endearing in 13 y/o girls
From a post at Ace of Spades on coercion.
Did Clement counter with anything Jeff or you folks have pointed out, such as it’s our money and it isn’t without strings attached?
If you allow them to set and define the terms…..
I have a proposition for the learned justice:
She sends me 40% of her income. I will return some portion of that to her, but only on the express condition that she spend it in the ways I direct, such as contributions to the NRA, Focus on the Family, local crisis pregancy center, etc.
Deal?
ulsterman
link
I need more guns.
Isn’t that an absolute, unwavering truth for everyone, McGehee?
And don’t short on ammo! Be a pity to have pieces to share but nothing to put in them!
Sorel, Gramsci and Alinsky should be proud.
I need a shotshell reloader. 16 ga ammo is wiping me out.
[…] at Protein Wisdom, Jeff Goldstein, after exposing Justice Kagan as the Leftist dullard she is makes this comment: Out of a sense of collegiality, the Senate has confirmed “liberal” Justices that don’t just […]
It really does smack the gob, doesn’t it?
She’s not stupid, and she knows exactly how it all works. It’s not a matter of belief, but of manipulation of the hearers.
After all, is this not the same Kagan that falsified a medical brief (lied) in order to support her position on partial-birth abortion?
(And Lindsey, “I’m comfortable with Romney,” Graham voted to approve her. Just sayin’ . )
More just making it up and figuring no one will notice.
I called her the “face of evil” before she was confirmed, and she’s upholding the assertion.
The veiled threats begin.
— Except Pelosi’s whole “we have to pass it to see what’s in it” thing, right, Sen Kerry?
I mean, are you serious? Are you serious?
By the way, geoff, look back to my post of yesterday or the day before about just words, with respect to the left and the courts.
But those kinds of posts don’t get you invited to the cocktail parties, even on the right.
So. OBAMA IS EVIL!!1!!eleventy!
…allows for the federal government to force individuals to enter into private contracts against their will…
My youngest niece is 8 years old, and she’s obligated for $49,786 for good and services she never has and never will receive. The damage is already being done; the health care mandate is just piling on.
OBAMA IS A GOOD MAN IN OVER HEAD!!1eleventy!plusone!
blogfight!
blogfight!
Doesn’t the public deserve to know the names of these nebbishes? Or was it just the one rather lame conlaw assistant prof at U of C?
Doesn’t the public deserve to know the names of these nebbishes? Or was it just the one rather lame conlaw assistant prof at U of C?
Seriously! Do the phrases “cite your sources” and “show your work” mean nothing to these people?
That reminds me of this gem Glenn Reynolds posted.
I believe this is the post Jeff G. referred to above.
I find the reference to “armies” by the Senator to be disturbing in this time of so much manufactured turmoil and the recent executive order signed.
Spleef.
Geoffb at 12:32 pm;
They don’t sound like veiled threats to me. More like ‘shaping the battlefield’. As in “since you have gone against us, we hereby revoke any authority you have- legal or constitutional- from here on out. Or at least for when you cross us again in the future”.
So with that, they reduce SCOTUS to nothing more than a fancy debate club, and reduce their rulings and opinions to nothing more than an issue of ‘credibility’- however much, that is, that the left deems them worthy of having.
Interesting choice of words, also. “The court commands no armies; it has no money. It depends for it’s power on it’s credibility”. Reminds me of Stalin, who when advised to beware of the Pope’s opinion and influence, replied- “this Pope you speak of. How many divisions does he have?”
Obama has convinced a good chunk of Americans that raising the taxes on gasoline is a good way to punish the oil companies.
You really think these folks are within a couple dozen IQ points of understanding any of this shit?
Meanwhile, China is snapping up oil reserves worldwide.
Actually, geoff, it was this one. Specifically here:
They’re within a couple of dozen IQ points of a
potted plantpot.Incidentally, the legislation was completed at the last moment and the vote rushed. Committee reviews were skipped. Kerry, as is his wont, is once again tossing his medals over the fence. Figuratively speaking.
Hey sKerry….
– Any luck finding that DDS-180…..Don’t want to seem impatient, but it’s been 9 years since you said you’d produce same, and people are starting to voice doubts….just saying.
Concerning SCOTUS-Left, (the 2012 edition)….. Apparently. once a person abandons all practical common sense considerations and communiticave rules, no limit exists to the depth of profound idiocies that besome possible. For the children!
That is one hell of a post, especially the part that goes:
And this sentiment isn’t run around at least the entirety of the right side of the national Press why?
I mean, the evident fact that we are indeed one bad vote and one failed legislative session away from our very own USSA hasn’t produced but a damn peep of identical perspective from the legacy Press why exactly?!
A bigass case of convergence we’re living through, people. Shit just got real.
OT but not OT: know why the stock market is at 13k? Because of all the monetary pumping via robo trading. Having decimated our manufacturing base and gone whole-hog FIRE economy in our race to a fifth of the wage we used to earn, we’re all but officially a nation of paper money traders.
The market’s real level? Half that.
Nobody’s going on earnings anymore – this is all one enormous shell game before the days of reckoning come.
How do we keep the whole sorry mess going out on the streets? We print it and Barry’s USSA doles it out. Simple. Watch the national debt exploding.
America, we have given up.
Conn Carroll concludes:
The more important question is, why isn’t Breyer?
link
Which, if the rest of the justices bore this in mind, they’d probably take Kagan aside and harsh words would be spoken.
A question: Has anyone in Congress ever before suggested ignoring an inconvenient SCOTUS ruling? Where does that road lead?
“The court commands no armies, it has no money; it depends for its power on its credibility.”
Oh, I thought he intended us to hear an echo of Stalin as to the Pope.
[…] Protein Wisdom: they confuse and conflate having the money to dole out as a matter of procedure with owning the money and handing it out as a matter of largess. And they are truly stunned when you aren’t terribly thankful for their enlightened decision to return some of your money to you. […]