There have been some insights on the ruling yesterday that allow us to keep hope alive that conscience rights, unborn children, and their parents can still protected:
- Since the Individual Mandate penalty was deemed a "tax" by Chief Justice Roberts, its repeal is filibuster proof, because tax repeals cannot be filibustered. This seems to be very uncommonly known as those commentators involved with yesterday's whirlwind news cycle were not able to pick up on this. They were saying that Romney and Bachman and Cantor can talk about repealing as much as they want but it only takes a Democratic filibuster to prevent that. Turns out Roberts interpretation would actually make the repeal easier.
- There are still law suits in progress by EWTN, University of Notre Dame, and other Catholic institutions on the religious freedom issue that could still come before the Supreme Court. Does anyone know a good site to track what all law suits against the Affordable Care Act are out there and where they are in terms of making it to the the case docket of the Supreme Court of the United States? These too could result in a ruling that would make the act in its entirety unconstitutional.
- George at Convert Journal does an excellent job pulling together cogent points on the war on Religious Freedom. To save yourself endless hours of Google searches and reading many articles not worth your time I recommend his latest post, as well as his whole series on the war on religion. He has some excellent videos in that series.
Here is key quote from George's latest post:
November 6th is now a REFERENDUM on ObamaCare
The decision to accept this controversial freedom crushing, pro-abortion healthcare law now goes to the voters. YOU decide. Cast your vote for president Obama and his party if you support this deeply flawed law. If you oppose the law and recognize that improving healthcare access does not have to be at the cost of religious liberty and innocent life, vote against President Obama and his enabling party. It really is that simple.
There is going to be real moral dilemma for immigrants that are personally impacted or have friends and family personally impacted by the Republicans tough talk on immigration. If we take our Lord's teaching on mercy to heart, we also need to have open minds and hearts to finding way of treating those who are here compassionately. I haven't studied this enough, but there are those who have and we have to put compassion above the economic me-first (characteristic of the KKK in the south, and those in Europe that cheered when the Jewish families were kicked out of their homes herded toward their deaths), while at same time we do need to make it harder for immigrants to come in completely under the radar.
Many of the voting, and even-non-voting but opinion-leading Hispanics, have anger at Republicans that show so little care for their, their families', their friends' struggle to make a better life for themselves. Will they take a short-term view or a long one? Do they care more or less about the attack on religious freedom or the inherent evil of an administration and party whose clear agenda is to ensure abortion is treated as a right, 100% subsidized by society at large regardless of what they think of the destruction of human life in the womb?
I don't know how Romney can win unless he gets someone on his ticket that is able to work with the religious leaders of voting Hispanics to make this argument as well as to represent them in getting promises from Romney and others running for federal office that will treat those that are here illegally with compassion and mercy, while at same time reforming the process by which they may enter here, so that our border states do not have burden that cannot be carried in terms of healthcare, education, and law enforcement.
How also do we treat immigrants desire to improve the quality of life of their families with the injustice that has been done to families in this country by policies that have not protected manufacturing jobs and non-enforcement of immigration laws and work visa rules that have handed US citizens jobs to foreign companies that will supply lower cost labor.
Similarly the seemingly stone hearted Republicans that talk so obliviously about the replacement of the Affordable Care Act with talking points and policies that only resonate with those who have kept their employment throughout this past recession, and do not have medical conditions among their family and friends that they lack the funds or insurance to treat their diseases or injuries, need to be woken up by a compassionate leader who gets it.
Just as Senator Rubio has ideas similar and better to the proclamation the President made on the lawn to ensure there are more campaign workers from the Hispanic community, Romney needs to find someone or he and Rubio need to say how their replacement of the unconstitutional act will provide the safety net that does more to help temporarily unemployed persons and their families, and provides financial or other solution for those deciding between debt leading to personal bankruptcy or medical treatment.
I don't know that it will be Rubio as VP, or is there someone that can find the sweet spot of moral, merciful and fair for healthcare and immigration? Is it Huckabee?
What about other problems with our economy? The need for reforms that undo the harm that unions' overcorrections did to force American companies to take their manufacturing out of the U.S. whereas foreign companies will build plants here and do well, because they are non-union?
What about property taxes increasing on homeowners even as their property values decrease and many left "upside down"? I am not sure, but it seems like the same root cause to that one and local and state governments going bankrupt has to do with the inequity between the great deals public unions, teacher unions have secured for their members and what happened a decade ago in industry. Remember when Sears and other companies cancelled company pensions? We have in this country those who are non-public union workers, non-teachers that need to fund their own retirement and partially fund their own healthcare that are being taxed to give early retirement aged co-citizens awesome pensions and healthcare benefits.
This is the reason our local and state governments have shortfalls. This is why property taxes must continue to go up even as overreaching federal government leaders seek to do more of taking from those that don't buy into the entitlement culture to give and provide for those who do.
What about the need to raise revenues during the interim period of passing reforms? Is there a way to close loop holes with some sort of flat tax coupled with a national sales tax that gets those in the underground economy contributing fairly to those that provide for their civil rights and protections? If you look at the high level view of our current federal budget, we are not far behind the European nations like Greece, Spain, Italy. How do we continue to provide foreign aid and provide military defenses for countries like Germany and Japan when we are borrowing and running up debt that the Federal Reserve can neither lower interest rates or print enough money to keep us solvent?
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