Mood:
smellyTopic: Political and economic
For my first post here in over a year, I make the following prediction regarding the Supreme Court's upcoming decision on the Obama health care law: The Court will find that it lacks jurisdiction of the case at this time. A bare majority will believe it is unconstitutional. But enough of these will also believe that it (or, at least, the tax penalty provision of it) is a "tax" that, when joined with the supporters of the law who also believe it is a "tax," the only strict holding a majority of the court will reach will be that the tax injunction act deprives the Court of juridsiction to decide the case. (Recall that I said two years ago that the real constitutional problem with the law is that it imposes a tax payable to private corporations at a rate set by those corporations, rather than by Congress.) That will leave us going into the election with a health care law, and health care system, that is presumed to be unconstitutional, but is still on the books until the first time the IRS tries to impose the tax penalty to enforce the individual mandate (at which time the unfortunate taxpayer may sue for a refund and get the law invalidated). The fist time the Court will actually have jurusdiction to reach the constitutionality of the law is 2014.
