Oklahoma Rings Bell for Round Two on Obamacare

Good news for the 33 states that refused to set up Obamacare state-run exchanges.  Oklahoma and a number of other states have filed a lawsuit contesting the mandate and subsidies of those ran by the federal government.  Carolina Journal reported the following:

“I think the statute clearly does say that the subsidy and the mandate applies to the state-run exchanges and not to the federal exchanges,” Harned said.

While still “very disappointed” that the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against the suit brought by the NFIB and 26 states, Harned said her organization is “trying to repeal the most onerous parts of the bill,” with overall repeal of Obamacare the ultimate goal. That is being pursued through legislative and regulatory processes, not the courts.

The way Obamacare is set up, employers face a penalty, which the Supreme Court deemed a tax, for failing to provide health insurance if someone on their payroll is eligible for Medicaid.

“The subsidies are in effect the trigger point for the employer mandate,” said Michael Tanner, senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute. “If there’s no subsidy, there’s no employer mandate.”

The law as written “says subsidies are only available on a state-run exchange. The Obama administration says this is a typo,” and will collect the tax regardless, Tanner said. 

This could be an economic boon for the refusers.  Companies looking to escape the clutches of an overbearing federal government would find refuge in the fabled 33.  These states would be shielded from arbitrary regulations imposed by unelected bureaucrats at the DHHS. The IRS, seeing this legislative error, has already changed the rules, however, they do not have the authority to change the law.

In writing the law, Congress said companies relocating from a state where there are state-run exchanges to a state where there is not would not have to abide by the employer mandate.

“Under the IRS rule, [companies] cannot do that any longer,” Kazman said. “That’s not the sort of thing that the IRS on its own can change.” Taxation is “one of those powers that the framers were very careful about” because it is a formidable control mechanism, so they limited its imposition to Congress, not regulatory agencies, Kazman said.

Another significant concern is “If statutes like Obamacare become the norm, we’re in for a lot of mega-statutes coming out of Congress” whose content nobody will know or understand until well after it’s passed, he said.

 Ths isn't over by a long shot.

Source:  http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/05/02/obamacare-gets-new-court-challenge/

http://healthcarelawsuits.org/blog/detail.php?c=2791250&t=Small-Businesses-Sue-Over-IRS-Rule

http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=10211

Oklahoma Loses 10th Amendment Right in Federal Court Power Grab

Once again we are witness to the transgressions of a federal court. Oklahoma passed a state law that forbade judges from considering international and Sharia law in their decisions. CAIR, a subversive Islamic organization, sued. The end result is another federal government power grab.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling released Tuesday, affirmed an order by a district court judge in 2010 that halted the law from taking effect. The ruling also allows a Muslim community leader in Oklahoma City to continue his legal challenge of the law's constitutionality.


The measure, known as State Question 755, was approved with 70 percent of the vote in 2010. The law is an amendment to the state constitution and bars courts from considering the legal precepts of other nations or cultures. "Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or Sharia law," the law reads.

The appellate court opinion pointed out that proponents of the law admitted to not knowing of a single instance in which an Oklahoma court applied Shariah law or the legal precepts of other countries.

"This serves as a reminder that these anti-Shariah laws are unconstitutional and that if politicians use fear-mongering and bigotry, the courts won't allow it to last for long," said Muneer Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma. Awad sued to block the law, contending that it infringed on his First Amendment rights.

What is unconstitutional is a federal court interfering in state law. The federal government has no claims on the internal business of Oklahoma. Our federalist system, which promotes and celebrates self-governance, is slowly turning into despotic state. And predator organizations like CAIR are benefitting from this power grab.

We as a people once knew the limitations and prerogatives of federal and state governments. Alexis de Tocqueville when traveling the United State in the early 1800’s documented Americans knowledge of the differing roles of each body. He also wrote about the fate of countries who tried to replicate our style of government without understanding it. Here is an excerpt from his Democracy in America:

Once the general theory is well understood, the difficulties of applying it remain; these are countless because the sovereignty of the Union is so entwined in that of the states that it is impossible at first glance to see its limits. Everything in such a government is arbitrary and contrived and it can only suit a nation long accustomed to self-government and where political science reaches right down to the lowest rungs of society. Nothing has made me admire the good sense and practical intelligence of the Americans more than the way they evade the countless difficulties which derive from their federal constitution. I have scarcely ever encountered a single man of the common people in America who did not perceive with surprising ease the obligations entailed in the laws of Congress and those which owe their beginnings to the laws of his own state, nor who could not separate the matters belonging to the general prerogatives of the Union from those regulated by his local legislature and who could not point to where the competence of the federal courts begins and the limitation of the state tribunals ends.


Tocqueville further states what happens to those nations who replicate, but don’t follow the SPIRIT of our Constitution as understood by our founding fathers:

The Constitution of the United States is akin to those fine creations of human endeavor which crown their inventors with renown and wealth but remain sterile in others hands.
Contemporary Mexico has illustrated this very thing.

The Mexicans, aiming for a federal system, took the federal constitution of their neighbors, the Anglo-Americans, as their model and copied it almost exactly. But although they transported the letter of the law, they failed to transfer at the same time the spirit which gave it life. As a result, they became tangled endlessly in the machinery of the double system of government. The sovereignty of the states and Union entered into a collision course as they exceeded the sphere of influence assigned to them by the constitution. Even today Mexico veers constantly from anarchy to military despotism and back again.


Is this our fate? We have federal judges who don’t know the limitatations of their power; worse, we Americans have no understanding of our federalist system. Are we destined to be like Mexico? Are predators like CAIR setting up shadow governments in the United States just like their brethren in Great Britain? Will we become another third-world country like Mexico? According to Tocqueville’s analysis we are well on our way to serfdom.

Source: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/01/10/2344789/oklahomas-islamic-law-amendment.html#storylink=cpy