Elena Kagan: How Can Giving a Boatload of Money to Poor People be Unconstitutional?

Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | March 30, 2012 | Rush Limbaugh

[Kaslin]

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I have the Elena Kagan sound bite. I know that I have total, 100% credibility with you. When I tell you something, you know it's true. But I want you to hear it. This was Wednesday at the Supreme Court during the third day of oral arguments on the constitutionality of the health care reform law. This is the most junior justice, Elena Kagan, a former solicitor general for Obama, who openly cheered the passage of Obamacare when it went through the House. And she then worked on its defense at the Supreme Court. She should have ethically recused herself. But she didn't. And here is her opinion, in the form of a question to one of the lawyers, doesn't matter who. She's talking about the commerce clause and coercion. She doesn't understand the argument that forcing people to buy health insurance violates the commerce clause.

This is a woman who taught law at Harvard. She was the dean of Harvard Law. Which means she's smarter than anybody else. She's smarter than the dean of law at Columbia and she's smarter than the dean at Stanford. She's just as smart as the dean over there at Oxford. There's nobody smarter. When you're the dean of Harvard Law, you're it. And she has no clue. She cannot conceive, she has no concept of the notion that the federal government cannot force citizens to buy anything. By the same token, the government can't force you not to buy anything. Works both ways. So the lawyers are talking about this using the term coercion, coerce people. This compulsory contract, which is an oxymoron. And she's frustrated. She doesn't understand why people don't understand this. She doesn't understand why people think this is unconstitutional. It's a mystery to her. You mean we can't give people health care? I don't understand. Here's how she said it.

KAGAN: 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 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 health care. It doesn't sound coercive to me, I have to tell you.

RUSH: I am sitting here, if you're not watching on Dittocam you can't see me with my mouth all the way open, in stunned disbelief. Folks, this is why all week I have been urging you: Don't think they're smarter than you are. Don't fall for that. Don't grant them that. These are some of the most uninformed, ill-informed, arrogant, conceited people you will ever encounter. I'm not even gonna assume she knows what she's talking about. What it could be is that the federal government is passing the burden of Medicaid to the states. In Obamacare they are off-loading some of the costs to the states. They're demanding that states pick up Medicaid costs, and she is of the belief that the states are gonna get the money that the federal government currently spends on Medicaid, but they aren't. The states aren't going to be able to afford this. And unlike the federal government, they can't go print money.

They have to balance their budgets at the state. It's very difficult for them to even borrow. They do, they sell bonds and so forth, but it's not nearly as easy to deficit spend in the states as it is at the federal government. And Obamacare takes the money in Medicare and shifts it to the states so that they can show on paper that the overall cost on the federal side is not nearly as high as it really is. And to her, this is a boatload of money, what could possibly be wrong? A big gift from the federal government. Obamacare is just a big gift. We're giving this money, and there aren't any strings attached to it. Boatload of federal money for you to take and spend on poor people's health care. That doesn't sound coercive. What it sounds is clueless. I mean totally, genuinely clueless. And this woman's a Supreme Court justice.

END TRANSCRIPT

[kaehurowing]

People don’t understand this is the most unqualified person ever to sit on the Supreme Court, in terms of real world experience.

Her legal experience consists of 1-2 years as an associate in a private practice law firm. The rest of her time consists of being in academia or being in make work jobs in the Clinton administration.

[Tenlein]

Ha ha - that cartoon is great! Just what I had been thinking - I’m surprised that Scalia didn’t ask Kagan to come back up to the bench after speaking on behalf of the government.

[fremont_steve]

What a fundamental mus-understanding of the Constitution this guy illustrates.. “a charter of negative liberties” isn’t a justifiable statement within any amount of logic. It has a list of enumerated powers, and it can’t/shouldn’t go beyond them. Sheesh!

[JaguarXKE]

You can’t make this stuff up!

[IbJensen]

She acts, talks and thinks like him, so why not just shave her head and call her Curly. Moe and Shemp would be proud to have her in their act.

(Too bad they’re all dead.)

[justiceseeker93]

Maybe Kagan doesn't want to contemplate the coercion factor in the individual mandate, but she'll understand what mandates and coercion really mean if Congress passes a statutory mandate compelling federal judges, under a penalty of a heavy fine or even impeachment, from sitting on cases in which they had previously advocated for or funded or otherwise worked for one of the parties in the controversy before the Court. In other words, voluntary recusal of a judge should be replaced by mandatory recusal in such instances!

[Daveinyork]

She should then tell us what clause permits the federal government to drop a boatload of cash on anyone.

[justiceseeker93]

Correction to my post # 66:

The word "compelling" should be replaced by "prohibiting".

[Gritty]

Those “boatloads of free money” are being borrowed from China in the name of WE THE PEOPLE, whose kids and grand-kids will have to pay it back... that is, if the country survives in spite of the vicious leftist Commies like 0bama and his obedient Pet Rock, “Justice” BagLady Kagan.

Klown Kagan doesn't understand the Constitution much less care for it and uphold it, as she has sworn to do.

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! - Patrick Henry, 1775

Forget about the plains of Boston, my friends. She is one of the cabal of malignant tyrants now forging our chains in the fever swamps of Washington!

Is it time yet, Claire...?

[chris_bdba]

Apparently they gave her the job because she is a gay woman and not for her brain?

[WeatherGuy]

Elena Kagan: How Can Giving a Boatload of Money to Poor People be Unconstitutional?

What a stupid toad!

[manc]

I think she as talked to obama already on what the vote was plus I also think she has been talking to obama since she got on the court.

This was another reason why I wanted a republican who had balls to beat him as I would want an investigation into how obama has been running his admin and the corruption plus giving our secrets and our ally secrets away.

[manc]

and where does she think the Govt’s money comes from.

She’s a complete idiot who needs to be removed from the court

[stephenjohnbanker]

” In other words, voluntary recusal of a judge should be replaced by mandatory recusal in such instances! “

Indeed!

[greenhornet68]

And she’s FUGLY too!

[MamaDearest]

Does anyone believe that Kagan has not called DumBO with the results?

He knows - no question about it. Why would his "plant" in the Supreme Court not have the required "flexibility" he speaks fondly of (now that we have been enlightened as to how this administration achieves its objectives)?

Kagan's statement (more politically motivated than legally supported) and lack of ethics in not recusing herself from this decision diminish the efforts of the other Justices in upholding America's laws and decisions to the highest level humanly possible. One has to wonder what the other Justices think of this appointee and how they feel about her failure to recuse.

[manc]

she has never been a judge, she has hardly any legal experience for the job she has and she only got put there as a plant for obama and to push obama’s socialist agenda.

It’s truly shocking that she got on the bench and she needs removing ASAP

[Scotswife]

Not only is she stupid and fugly, she is a crook too.

In 1996 she defrauded the SC during the partial birth abortion ban case.

She altered a statement submitted by a doctors’ group to mean the opposite of what they intended.

The statement was persuasive in the case....and it was false.

[Focault's Pendulum]

As Kagan goes, so goes the boatload!

[Secret Agent Man]

I wish Scalia would have then said: “And where does the federal government just get this ‘boatload of money’ from in the first place?”

Hint: taxpayers supply it. We all would be supplying it as that’s what the mandate and the penatly is all about.

If it is government money, that means it’s money government has TAKEN from citizens. One way or the other. Directly or by people buying our debt that we (ie citizens) promise to pay (via future taxes) back with interest.