Little-Acorn
Well-Known Member
Lots of people are speculating on WHY Obama described a possible overturning of his Health Care law, as "unprecedented", when he knows quite well that it's done quite frequently. Some say he is "ignorant", as though he actually believed his own statement, but this is obviously not so.
So, what's the real reason he said it? It was not just an off-the-cuff Biden-style gaffe.
My guess is, he is following a long tradition among leftist leaders whose agendas run afoul of the Constitution and, therefore, afoul of the Supreme Court. In the 1930s then-President Franklin Roosevelt had the same problem, putting in place vast dictatorial schemes for controlling everything from the price of laundering a shirt to the quantites of wheat farmers were allowed to produce, even for their own consumption. And the Supreme Court kept striking them down, either partially or in full, one after another.
Roosevelt's response was NOT to say, "Well, it's the Supreme Court's job to decide what is constitutional or not, and according to our form of government I must acknowledge that the Framers had good reasons for putting the restrictions they did on the Federal government from doing these things. So even if I don't like the result I must necessarily agree with them as being more closely aligned with the Supreme Law of the Land."
Instead, Roosevelt decided to add six more Justices to the Court, increasing their numbers from nine to fifteen - the extra six being picked by him, of course, for their devotion to his grand socialistic schemes rather than to the Constitution.
The country was outraged over this idea, inevitably, and started calling and writing their Congressmen in droves. Soon Roosevelt saw that he would not have the votes in Congress to pass his "Court-packing scheme", and withdrew the proposal before any votes took place in the House or Senate.
But Roosevelt wasn't through. Instead of conceding the ascendency of the Constitution,he dipped a little lower in his bag of tricks, and started attacking, denigrating, and vilifying the nine members of the Supreme Court personally.
And he did it, not so much to persuade them himself to change their votes... but to get members of the general populace who didn't know the facts, angry at them. He went on for week after week, telling the American people that "these nine men" were personally responsible for the horrible conditions the nation was going through (Great Depression), that the elderly Justices were directly taking food out of the mouths of poor people's children, removing the heat from their homes, etc. etc. by their perfidious actions of not letting Roosevelt take over and run the entire economy according to socialist ideas.
No mention that the law required that the cases to be adjudged the way they were, that the Constitution gave the Federal govt no power to enact the vast schemes Roosevelt was trying to put in place, and especially no mention of the fact that such totalitarian schemes had been tried before in other places and had uniformly failed to improve the countries where they were tried.
Newspapers picked up the cause, and started decrying the heartlessness and depravity of the justices, in articles short on legal facts but long on rhetoric and talking points. Mobs started showing up outside the Justices' homes, picketing, shouting, hurling insults and worse. The Justices who voted against Roosevelt's schemes got especially vile treatment, while the minority who voted for them, were left curiously alone.
Finally after months of such treatment, one of the Justices started changing his vote on the Rooseveltian schemes, and 5-4 decisions against them started coming out as 5-4 decisions in favor of letting them stand. The Court even overturned some of its own previous verdicts this way. Government started growing at a rate never seen before or since (until the inauguration of the Obama administration in 2009), and Roosevelt and his leftist compatriots never looked back.
Ironically, Roosevelt was re-elected an unprecedented three times during the national emercencies of WWII, and eventually appointed enough Supreme Court justices into the existig nine seats, to accomplish what he had failed to do with his "Court-packing" scheme: Put a majority of Justices in place whose loyalty was to Roosevelt's leftist ideas instead of to the Constitution. But the start of the government explosion that is still with us today, can be traced to that exact month when one Justice changed his vote in response to the mob-rule pressure brought by a President who thought his socialist ideas should take precedence over the Supreme Law of the Land. The rolls of government employees, to oversee the vast functions newly taken on by the Federal govt, started doubling and tripling, from that day forward - an expansion of power and intrusion that has never stopped to this day.
Fast forward to 2012. Once again we have an extreme-left President and a (usually) 5-4 Constitution-upholding majority on the Supreme Court which seems poised to start voting down that President's socialist schemes, this time in the field of Health Care. It may be possible that a little bird has whispered into Obama's ear, that the Supremes DID vote down Obamacare in their voing session last Friday. But even if he received no such word, the tenor of the Justices questions during last week's Oral Arguments - even the liberals justices - seems to indicate an unfavorable (to Obama) decision in the making.
And now we have our first hint of Obama's reaction to such an unfavorable decision, if it comes. Like Roosevelt, he apparently has no intention of considering that perhaps his schemes are inimicable to the Constitution, and represent a power grab that the Framers foresaw, abhorred, and did their best to safeguard the country AGAINST.
Nope, no deferrence to the original American ideals of limited Federal government, as enshrined in the Constitution, seem to be on Obama's mind. Instead, we are getting what may be the first of many attacks on the Supreme Court justices, and the like-minded people who appointed them... directly from the lips of the President of the United States.
It looks like the four Constitution-upholding members of the Court, had better batten down the hatches and clear the decks for stormy weather... and especially the weathervane Kennedy who is often regarded as the "swing vote" and might be easiest to influence. President Obama's strangely disingenuous remarks about how "unprecedented" an overturn of Obamacare would supposedly be, seem to be directed exclusively at the same audience FDR intended back in the 1930s: people who don't know any better, and who would like nothing better than to regard themselves as "victims"... and who can be relied upon to bring endless political pressure on the Justices.
The Supreme Court (and other Federal Courts) are specified in the Contitution to have LIFETIME appointments of their judges and justices, precisely for the purpose of keeping them from being influenced by politics. They are to concern themselves ONLY with what the law says, what it means, and how it applied to present-day cases - NOT whether unhappy (and often unduly influenced) people might vote them out based on their decisions.
Political pressure is only to be brought upon the people who MAKE the laws - Congress, the President, etc. The people are to have large influence on how the laws are MADE... but not on how the laws, once made, are interpreted. They are to be interpreted strictly according to what they meant when passed - they are not to be changed by the Courts. That's Congress's job. And if Congress sees fit to change a law... or even amend the Constitution, with the concurrence of the States... then the Courts must acknowledge THAT change, and render new decisions accordingly.
Well, back in the 1930s, FDR worked hard to find his way around that, and apparently succeeded. Political pressure on the judges caused them to change their votes. The structure and language of the law, had no input to this sudden change.
And now we have another President who, it looks like to me, has decided to follow the lead of the previous Master. He sees (or at least expects) an unfavorable decision from the Supreme Court coming, on his major (actually his only) signature piece of legislation, another huge power grab that goes far beyond anything authorized by the Constitution. And his reaction, is to start telling flat lies in public about what the Court is doing, how heartless the Justices and the people who appointed them are, how much the poor innocent People are going to lose as a result of these heartless villains in power, and all the rest.
I expect that this is just the start of a long campaign agains the Supreme Court Justices, in an attempt to inflame people against them and bring Sharpton-style mob actions agains them personally. He will always have plausible deniability - "I never told anybody to picket their houses!" Speeches containing the sentiments "Will nobody rid me of this troublesome priest?" have long been used by those seeking to evade the law of the land, and not just in the U.S.
Prepare for a long campaign carried by the mainstream (leftist) media, echoing and amplifying the remarks the President made. And it will be a campaign that continues far past the Supremes' June announcement of the fate of Obamacare. Because there may be other Supreme Court decisions the President might want to see come out "his way" no matter how unconstitutional they actually are... up to and possibly including the 2012 version of Bush v Gore.
(to be continued)
So, what's the real reason he said it? It was not just an off-the-cuff Biden-style gaffe.
My guess is, he is following a long tradition among leftist leaders whose agendas run afoul of the Constitution and, therefore, afoul of the Supreme Court. In the 1930s then-President Franklin Roosevelt had the same problem, putting in place vast dictatorial schemes for controlling everything from the price of laundering a shirt to the quantites of wheat farmers were allowed to produce, even for their own consumption. And the Supreme Court kept striking them down, either partially or in full, one after another.
Roosevelt's response was NOT to say, "Well, it's the Supreme Court's job to decide what is constitutional or not, and according to our form of government I must acknowledge that the Framers had good reasons for putting the restrictions they did on the Federal government from doing these things. So even if I don't like the result I must necessarily agree with them as being more closely aligned with the Supreme Law of the Land."
Instead, Roosevelt decided to add six more Justices to the Court, increasing their numbers from nine to fifteen - the extra six being picked by him, of course, for their devotion to his grand socialistic schemes rather than to the Constitution.
The country was outraged over this idea, inevitably, and started calling and writing their Congressmen in droves. Soon Roosevelt saw that he would not have the votes in Congress to pass his "Court-packing scheme", and withdrew the proposal before any votes took place in the House or Senate.
But Roosevelt wasn't through. Instead of conceding the ascendency of the Constitution,he dipped a little lower in his bag of tricks, and started attacking, denigrating, and vilifying the nine members of the Supreme Court personally.
And he did it, not so much to persuade them himself to change their votes... but to get members of the general populace who didn't know the facts, angry at them. He went on for week after week, telling the American people that "these nine men" were personally responsible for the horrible conditions the nation was going through (Great Depression), that the elderly Justices were directly taking food out of the mouths of poor people's children, removing the heat from their homes, etc. etc. by their perfidious actions of not letting Roosevelt take over and run the entire economy according to socialist ideas.
No mention that the law required that the cases to be adjudged the way they were, that the Constitution gave the Federal govt no power to enact the vast schemes Roosevelt was trying to put in place, and especially no mention of the fact that such totalitarian schemes had been tried before in other places and had uniformly failed to improve the countries where they were tried.
Newspapers picked up the cause, and started decrying the heartlessness and depravity of the justices, in articles short on legal facts but long on rhetoric and talking points. Mobs started showing up outside the Justices' homes, picketing, shouting, hurling insults and worse. The Justices who voted against Roosevelt's schemes got especially vile treatment, while the minority who voted for them, were left curiously alone.
Finally after months of such treatment, one of the Justices started changing his vote on the Rooseveltian schemes, and 5-4 decisions against them started coming out as 5-4 decisions in favor of letting them stand. The Court even overturned some of its own previous verdicts this way. Government started growing at a rate never seen before or since (until the inauguration of the Obama administration in 2009), and Roosevelt and his leftist compatriots never looked back.
Ironically, Roosevelt was re-elected an unprecedented three times during the national emercencies of WWII, and eventually appointed enough Supreme Court justices into the existig nine seats, to accomplish what he had failed to do with his "Court-packing" scheme: Put a majority of Justices in place whose loyalty was to Roosevelt's leftist ideas instead of to the Constitution. But the start of the government explosion that is still with us today, can be traced to that exact month when one Justice changed his vote in response to the mob-rule pressure brought by a President who thought his socialist ideas should take precedence over the Supreme Law of the Land. The rolls of government employees, to oversee the vast functions newly taken on by the Federal govt, started doubling and tripling, from that day forward - an expansion of power and intrusion that has never stopped to this day.
Fast forward to 2012. Once again we have an extreme-left President and a (usually) 5-4 Constitution-upholding majority on the Supreme Court which seems poised to start voting down that President's socialist schemes, this time in the field of Health Care. It may be possible that a little bird has whispered into Obama's ear, that the Supremes DID vote down Obamacare in their voing session last Friday. But even if he received no such word, the tenor of the Justices questions during last week's Oral Arguments - even the liberals justices - seems to indicate an unfavorable (to Obama) decision in the making.
And now we have our first hint of Obama's reaction to such an unfavorable decision, if it comes. Like Roosevelt, he apparently has no intention of considering that perhaps his schemes are inimicable to the Constitution, and represent a power grab that the Framers foresaw, abhorred, and did their best to safeguard the country AGAINST.
Nope, no deferrence to the original American ideals of limited Federal government, as enshrined in the Constitution, seem to be on Obama's mind. Instead, we are getting what may be the first of many attacks on the Supreme Court justices, and the like-minded people who appointed them... directly from the lips of the President of the United States.
It looks like the four Constitution-upholding members of the Court, had better batten down the hatches and clear the decks for stormy weather... and especially the weathervane Kennedy who is often regarded as the "swing vote" and might be easiest to influence. President Obama's strangely disingenuous remarks about how "unprecedented" an overturn of Obamacare would supposedly be, seem to be directed exclusively at the same audience FDR intended back in the 1930s: people who don't know any better, and who would like nothing better than to regard themselves as "victims"... and who can be relied upon to bring endless political pressure on the Justices.
The Supreme Court (and other Federal Courts) are specified in the Contitution to have LIFETIME appointments of their judges and justices, precisely for the purpose of keeping them from being influenced by politics. They are to concern themselves ONLY with what the law says, what it means, and how it applied to present-day cases - NOT whether unhappy (and often unduly influenced) people might vote them out based on their decisions.
Political pressure is only to be brought upon the people who MAKE the laws - Congress, the President, etc. The people are to have large influence on how the laws are MADE... but not on how the laws, once made, are interpreted. They are to be interpreted strictly according to what they meant when passed - they are not to be changed by the Courts. That's Congress's job. And if Congress sees fit to change a law... or even amend the Constitution, with the concurrence of the States... then the Courts must acknowledge THAT change, and render new decisions accordingly.
Well, back in the 1930s, FDR worked hard to find his way around that, and apparently succeeded. Political pressure on the judges caused them to change their votes. The structure and language of the law, had no input to this sudden change.
And now we have another President who, it looks like to me, has decided to follow the lead of the previous Master. He sees (or at least expects) an unfavorable decision from the Supreme Court coming, on his major (actually his only) signature piece of legislation, another huge power grab that goes far beyond anything authorized by the Constitution. And his reaction, is to start telling flat lies in public about what the Court is doing, how heartless the Justices and the people who appointed them are, how much the poor innocent People are going to lose as a result of these heartless villains in power, and all the rest.
I expect that this is just the start of a long campaign agains the Supreme Court Justices, in an attempt to inflame people against them and bring Sharpton-style mob actions agains them personally. He will always have plausible deniability - "I never told anybody to picket their houses!" Speeches containing the sentiments "Will nobody rid me of this troublesome priest?" have long been used by those seeking to evade the law of the land, and not just in the U.S.
Prepare for a long campaign carried by the mainstream (leftist) media, echoing and amplifying the remarks the President made. And it will be a campaign that continues far past the Supremes' June announcement of the fate of Obamacare. Because there may be other Supreme Court decisions the President might want to see come out "his way" no matter how unconstitutional they actually are... up to and possibly including the 2012 version of Bush v Gore.
(to be continued)
