Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes yesterday asked the Washington State Supreme Court to block Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna from using his office to challenge the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act recently enacted into law. And while as a layman, I have no particular insight into the legal grounds supporting Holmes’ petition, as a connoisseur of irony I give it my full endorsement.
1. Petitioner seeks a writ of mandamus to compel Respondent Robert M. McKenna to withdraw the State of Washington from the case of State of Florida, et al. v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, et al., Case No. 3:10-cv-91, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida on March 23, 2010 (the “Florida lawsuit”), and to cease participating in that case. Petitioner seeks the writ on the grounds that the Attorney General exceeded his authority when he made the State of Washington a plaintiff in that case.
This is what comes from McKenna’s abuse of his office in the pursuit of partisan political gain: we now have a City Attorney, suing to bar a State Attorney General from suing the federal government on behalf of the state, while our Governor must hire an outside attorney to defend the federal government against her own attorney — the Attorney General — and his unauthorized lawsuit.
And of course, we the taxpayers are paying for all of this.
No doubt McKenna thought he would score some cheap political points with his party’s base by joining this lawsuit, but as every experienced attorney knows, there’s nothing cheap about their profession.
It’s starting to look like a circle jerk.
Let’s thank the lawyers.
Question: Can the govt force you to buy something? Really?
Way to go, Pete. I want to see McKenna hoisted by his nipples up a tall pole in a public square so that we might all watch him squirm.
HHS just announced that Obamacare drives up costs not lowering them.
How are you assholes going to pay for this?
@1
Your employer can. Which is what’s going to happen when those tax credits for employers kick in. Want to work for us, you have to have health insurance!
@1 “Question: Can the govt force you to buy something? Really?”
Yes. If the government can draft you into the Army and force you to die fighting in a war you don’t believe in, it sure as hell can force you to buy mandatory auto liability insurance, a motorcycle helmet, or health insurance. How fucking stupid can you be?
Is the objection that McKenna acted against the wishes of the Governor? I mean is he supposed to take direction from the state government, or is his position supposed to be independent?
If the former, he is supposed to take direction from the executive branch, and surely overstepped his bounds. If the AG is supposed to be independent, act on his conscience if you will, then why is he being villified?
Oh, I understand that his motivation was entirely politically motivated, in this instance. But what about next time? It seems to me that the boundries, the scope, of the AG need to be more defined, to prevent a reoccurance of the same thing in the future.
@3 “How are you assholes going to pay for this?”
We’re not. We’re going to pay less for our health insurance because the millions of people who have been freeloading will now have to pay for their own medical care. Rep. Jay Inslee estimated at his townhall meeting last summer that HCR would save the average policyholder $1,300 a year in premiums.
A writ of mandamus is a court order compelling an office holder to perform or forebear from a specified act. The act must be ministerial rather than discretionary in nature. For this reason, I don’t think Holmes’ lawsuit has a snowball’s chance in hell, but maybe I overlooked something, or maybe there’s more to his legal strategy than currently meets my eye.
Wanna save money on health insurance? Stop paying 5 to 10 times as much as the rest of the world pays for the same medications. We are subsidizing “their” health care worldwide with US Tax Dollars.
McKenna. Time to drop the suit. Maybe you should be spending your free time building cases against banksters…. I’m just sayyyyin…
# 4: Most large and medium-size companies already require their employee to take the company’s health insurance, whether it’s paid for by the company, the employee, or split between them. The more employees who participate, the cheaper the rates for all.
My daughter’s firm turned to some crappy insurance in 2009. It’s essentially an umbrella policy, it has a %6K deductable, and she has to shell out over 400 per month out-of-pocket for the premiums. When she told them no thanks, her student health insurance through the UW is better (she’s still taking classes there), she was told she doesn’t have a choice, as long as she still wants to work at the firm. So the premiums are deducted from her paychecks every month, even though she never meets the threshhold necessary to file a claim – even though she paid over $3,000 in out-of-pocket medical expenses last year.
I suspect that the management has another policy available only to them which makes up the difference at the lower end of coverage.
Did you see Rachel Maddow last night? A Reuters reporter found out Wellpoint was using a software program to find “clients” that have been diagnosed with breast cancer so they could begin finding ways to rescind their policies.
We gotcher health insurance right here biatch!
Sick
Sick
Sick
Murder…..
@10
Having health Ins. is mandatory for full time employees where I work. We got a better deal from our insurance folks for having that in our contract with them
I find the cries of “I’ll go to jail, rather than by Obama Care” by the potemkin patriots on the right rather humorous. What they are going to do is continue to get insurance through their job just like they already do so that they can continue keep their job and continue to make the payments on their houses and and trucks.
@10
In our case if you don’t want health ins. though work, you just have to prove you’re getting it from somewhere else. For 1 person the employee contribution is $75 and my employer picks up around $350 a month.
While the irony is funny, the cost of the dispute is not so funny. Holmes, unlike Bobby Mac, has a client. Still, I’d prefer our attorneys spend our money more wisely.
can’t we all just get along?
We will need a law, passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, to block the funds from being spent. Of course, Republicans could fund it out of their own pockets, but I don’t know about the legality of that.
Sam Adams was a scoundrel, liar, braggart and thief. Very fitting moniker considering the post.
Actually, in Spokane and Yakima they’re calling it the ‘war of western agression’.
Sam Adams was an American Patriot… another fact lost on slingshit.
Facts, they turn libtardo minds to shit!
It should be “The ‘War’ within the State”.
the irony is having Rabbit peddle quotes from Jay Inslee as if Inslee has an objective view; jeesh; they guy is peddling the talking points.
i’m amazzed this free country w/ a constitution (and bill of rights) thick w/ state protection should now have a fed telling me what i have to do. (and for the thick…the army drafting me is also in the constitution)
yes, and he was not into slavery like so many other of our founders.
the ones who loved liberty and whom we should emulate etc.
ya see, there was this free market in slave labor. and the constitution said implicitly we couldn’t regulate that market by…banning it. people were free to sell slaves to the europeans in africa who took them over here and in a free market in charleston or annapolis or new orleans sold ’em off, thank gof there wasn’t any gummint regulation because as we know, a free market maximixes everything we value and hold dear. well turns out that those adamses up in masserchusetts didn’t go along with this slavery thing too much there was one of them who turned agin’ private property on that amistad thing, too! but fortunately, most of the founders understood property and freedom well enough to protect the free market in slaves.
man i just love them slave promoting founding fathers!
@6 “Is the objection that McKenna acted against the wishes of the Governor?”
No. The objection is that he’s misusing the powers of state’s top legal office to engage in craven political grandstanding for the benefit of one political party, which is beneath the dignity of the office.
@11 “A Reuters reporter found out Wellpoint was using a software program to find “clients” that have been diagnosed with breast cancer so they could begin finding ways to rescind their policies.”
Every Republican in Congress voted in favor of allowing insurance companies to continue doing this. Every voter in America should remember this for the next 40 years.
@15 “can’t we all just get along?”
No.
We’re going to kick the wingnuts’ asses back into the gutter where they belong. This is all their fault. If they had stayed in their sewers in the first place, we wouldn’t have all this trouble.
@19 “the irony is having Rabbit peddle quotes from Jay Inslee as if Inslee has an objective view; jeesh; they guy is peddling the talking points.”
Sometimes talking points are based on facts. Not yours, of course.
Inslee is a partisan; quoting him is about a valid as quoting yourself or wikipedia.
I do love the nutjobs who think that because we allowed slavery way back, the whole constitution is invalid. And you think tea partiers are whack jobs; this nut is basically pulling a jury nullification game on the US constitution. He forgets that the constitution also enabled passing an amendmentexpressly prohibiting slavery (that very instrument you think is bad cuz founders had slaves, is also the thing capable of protecting their rights later on0
ps, i thought the library was closed; how are you all posting into the night? (monroe penit also closes)
@27 According to your “logic,” quoting Republicans is equally partisan and invalid.
But your argument is bullshit. Inslee’s comments were based on nonpartisan research. Just because you don’t like a fact that invalidates your irrational hyperpartisan view of the world doesn’t make it less a fact.
And I challenge you to prove the invalidity of Wikipedia. You can, in fact, find articles in Wikipedia on everything from nuclear reactor design to medical subjects that are written by experts and are highly accurate. Yes, it’s a community encyclopedia to which anyone can post, but that’s a strength not a weakness: If someone posts something that’s incorrect, someone else will quickly change it, usually within a few minutes. I use Wikipedia because it is a reliable source of information. For further information, see last sentence of paragraph above.
McKenna’s a manipulative cunt, and he doesn’t have the plumbing to make that work for him.
That pantywaist will never be governor.
ah, the Inslee as expert fun…
why not quote CBO, or even day old news how this bill will cost well into the hundreds of billions, plus costs to most of us will soar..
don’t let the facts get in your way of adoration for socialist principles
re 30: Straw man argument. You are a failure.
never take advice from a dis-barred lawyer – especially the one who posts on HA…
just sayin….
@30: He was quoting the CBO, you ignorant fuck!
And note that the current CBO was staffed largely by the Rs when they were in power.
The Ds didn’t have to abide by CBO scoring, they chose to do this because they committed to transparency and the President demanded a revenue neutral bill. The Rs and Bush didn’t give a rats ass about CBO when they did Medicare Part D, or the Wars, or the fucking Trillion dollar economic sucking chest wound of the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
According to the the conservative CBO score HCR will save almost 2.2 Trillion ove 20 years. The actual result will most likely exceed at least 2 times this according to some estimates, but the conservative CBO would not go along.
And when we eliminate the insurance extortionist, middlemen with a public option, the savings will be enormous and some evil, blodsucking motherfuckers will be out of business.
33, zotz…nice lie.
pls share the source link on your lie about saving $2.2 trillion..
yeah, like i said, you made that up.
socialized medicine adding to the deficit
see…http://www.examiner.com/examin.....ustainable
It’s actually 1.3 Trillion:
http://www.opencongress.org/ar.....Bill-Leaks
I apologize for the eror and plead lack of caffeine (and your total bullshit).
(4th attempt to post)
1.3 Trillion:
Not 2.2 but still quite significant. I apologize for the error. I plead lack of coffee (at the time) and your total bullshit
@35: The article you cite says nothing of the sort.
The CBO director is quoted saying what is an observable fact, that almost all of us agree with: the deficits are unsustainable.
The rest of the article is spin and total unsourced rightwing bullshit from one Kim Dvorak. Who is this person? Here’s a couple of clues, in addition to the so-called Examiner “news” outfit:
Kim is a frequent “columnist” at FreeRepublic (about 1/2 degree from Stormfront, the neo-Nazi site):
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&#.....00d2daff08
And Red County:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&#.....00d2daff08
And numerous other wingnut bullshit if you google her.
you really think removing the private sector will lower costs…i can more believe in Bigfoot than i can believe that lie
38
Believing in Bigfoot is more defensible than is your blind faith in the private sector.
@28..wiki is easily manipulated.
its a great source of information, but sometimes you have to take it with a grain of salt of some subjects…
@39…as is your blind faith in uber-government.
hey 39, pls tell me which societies have grown more prosperous whilst converting from free enterprise to socialism.
right, none.
just imagine if the government ran coffee; never would get Starbucks; if they ran online books, would be buying 3 titles from the USPS instead of Amazon; if you needed a computer, it would be $10,000 rather than the MSFT inspired $500….the list goes forever.
42: “pls tell me which societies have grown more prosperous whilst converting from free enterprise to socialism.”
Please tell me what the hell you mean. There is no pure capitalistic country in the world, there is no pure socialistic country. You don’t even have a defensible definition of either. You folks of the Limbaughian/Beckian persuasion seem to believe in blacks and whites. You are, of course, naive. Western Europe has certainly become more prosperous as it has adopted a variety of practices that folks of your ilk consider “socialistic.” This nation was becoming more prosperous until doing some deregulation (promoting “capitalism,” presumably) that didn’t work out so well.
Have you ever considered that there might be a balance, or that neither pure capitalism nor pure socialism is possible?
@18, Teenypud’s now quoting from the Texas School District’s History of the United States. Subtitled; The History We Wish Had Happened (Hey if you don’t like it, just change it).
Featuring these great Americans and their essays:
Preston Bush, America’s Free Market Allows Sympathizing with Genocidal Dictators As Long As the Profits Are Large Enough
Joseph McCarthy, How I Saved the Republic
Ronald Reagan, The Hollywood Setbuilder’s Guide to Ruling From the Oval Office; Running Guns & Deficits While Looking Innocent
Newt Gingrich, Divorce Your Spouse While She’s Cancer Ridden; the American Way
George W. Bush, How I saved the Republic
Dick Cheney, How I Restored America’s Reputation On the International Stage, Subtitled; Go Fuck Yourself, the Best Thing I Ever Did
Donald Rumsfeld, The Military Strategies That Brought My Grandiose Successes; The Unknown Unknowns
Remember, if you don’t like history….just change it!
43…i’m talking in economic terms…would you rather have China’s economy (wide open) or say Britains? I’m talking about our country where now the Gov’t owns 2 major corps (car guys), health care (that is, on the way to), home loans, student loans, ….
bad idea
“The report found that the president’s law missed the mark, although not by much. The overhaul will increase national health care spending by $311 billion from 2010-2019, or nine-tenths of 1 percent. To put that in perspective, total health care spending during the decade is estimated to surpass $35 trillion.”
–HuffPo
Those who work hard to build their success are obligated to provide for those who really didn’t feel like like putting that much effort forth? I mean come on! Those who are riding the gravy train of free medicaid will still be getting free healthcare at the taxpayers expense. there will just be more of them at the freebe line.
@43
You’re pointing to Europe as a success story? Those static, stagnant, self-loathing nations that are dying as we speak? The ones with the perpetual 10-15% unemployment, and 60%+ tax rates? Those, oh so successful European countries? Or maybe that is what you mean – in Europe, their populations have reached the demographic tipping point,Hence their importing of vast numbers of aliens to, they thought, support them and their ever increasing numbers of old folks. Not working out so well for them though is it. That would sure explain why you all are so desperate to open the flood gates of unlimited immigration to this country though. You really are desperate to emulate the Europeans…
@48 Huh? There are teeming hordes of people trying to illegally sneak into the country from Europe? Who’d a thunkit?
Oh, wait…might your data be just a trifle out of date, like maybe by 120 years or so?
@47 Oh, my heart positively ACHES for the likes of Kerry Killinger!
@49
Don’t be deliberately obtuse. I said nothing about anyone trying to sneak into the US from Europe.