Republicans in West Virginia are apparently trying to criminalize enforcement of Obamacare by shouting the magical word “nullification” at it until FREEDOM and EAGLE occurs.
The bill makes it a felony for federal employees to enforce Obamacare, and state workers would be charged with a misdemeanor, for attempting to implement federal regulations through Obamacare. The bill also declares Obamacare “invalid” in the state, according to the Gazette.
Considering all the collapsing coal mines and exploding oil trains in the state (plus whatever accidents Cole has slipping on ice and things) you’d think that government providing low-cost health insurance would seem to be a good idea for a deadly state of death like West Virginia, but Black President.
The proposal was taken up by the House Health and Human Resources Committee on Tuesday. However, a lawyer for the committee admitted that it might be unconstitutional to actually prosecute federal or state workers over administering Obamcare. It could also put health insurance for thousands of West Virginians who benefit from the law into jeopardy.
“Might be unconstitutional”, because hey, what’s a Supremacy Clause thing and the Civil War among friends, right? Go for it guys. West Virginia is like 94% white, guys. Exactly who are the shiftless, lazy Those People(tm) currently benefiting from Obamacare in the state, anyway?
Numbskulls. Still, I’d argue that over here across the border in Kentucky that we’re dumber, because we know Kynect works and Republicans here are cheerfully running on the platform of taking healthcare away from 10% of the state. Which goes to show you that yes, both states would most likely vote to completely wreck their own family’s health care than see even one of Those People(tm) benefit from it.
DougJ
Sorry, didn’t mean to step on your post!
Zinsky
Why don’t we just fence off West Virginia and use it as the nuclear dump site for all decommissioned U.S. Nuclear reactors?
dmsilev
For their next tricks, GOP state legislatures will order the tide not to come in and declare that the existence of winter proves global warming is a hoax.
ruemara
@dmsilev: you snark, but they pretty much will.
Linda Featheringill
Are there real people in existance who actually believe that shouting “nullification” will have an effect?
Wow.
This brings us back to “sovereignty of the states.” They ain’t got none. That was what the Civil War was about.
SRW1
The sanest interpretation is that the dudes in the WV House know perfectly well that nullification is unconstitutional, but assume, most likely correctly, that their base doesn’t. So they get to be feted as heroes by the rubes for a few weeks. And voila: re-election!
aimai
Sometimes when I read this crap I just want to kill myself. I don’t know about other people but especially when I read the shit that Dinesh D’souza, Bobby Jindal, and Rudy Giuliani have been saying about the President I just become so enraged that I can barely calm myself down. And I’m not even black. This is just what happens to an ordinary, democratic voter, when our President–our choice for President–and his accomplishments and his humanity are so degraded and disrespected by the Republican party. I mean I’m spitting mad. Basically whenever I read this crap.
dmsilev
@ruemara: Who said I was snarking?
OK, maybe a bit, but the climate-change thing is actually pretty plausible.
boatboy_srq
@dmsilev: Didn’t NC already do that for their tides?
feebog
Don’t know why these morans are wasting their time passing useless legislation. There’s five Supreme Court justices who are contemplating gutting the ACA for them.
Kryptik
@Zinsky:
Long as you frame it as somehow helping coal and/or spiting Obama, I bet West Virginians would rush to support the idea tout de suite.
@SRW1:
I think it’s between that and wanting to buy time long enough for either the Supreme Court to say ‘LOL, no, lets cripple Obamacare for everyone’ or the Republicans in Congress to sneak a poison pill past so the country is saved from the immense savage tyranny of affordable health care.
Kryptik
@aimai:
It’s not that people like them are saying it that sends me into spiraling despair. It’s that a cursory glance around through the loudest of the politically aware makes you feel like 90% of the country agrees with them rabidly.
Sherparick
This is what happens when evangelical churches replace unions as the prime social organization in the state and the state Government becomes the property of sociopathic plutocrats. Only 37% of West Virginian bothered to vote in 2014 elections. I don’t think they saw the Democrats as making their lives any better and did not realize that the Republicans were about to make it a lot worse.
Mike in NC
@Linda Featheringill: These clowns should declare themselves to be ‘Sovereign Citizens’ and throw their drivers licenses and birth certificates onto a big bonfire (which might with any luck spread to the state house).
raven
This was 2013.
Mike in NC
@boatboy_srq: Basically, yes.
Frankensteinbeck
Which is why they will not, by God, let a black man EVER tell them what to do.
gah
For WV and KY, it’s not about “those” people. If it was, they’d not have done the medicaid expansions in those states. There’s a pretty strong correlation between red states that did the expansion and the lack of black folks in those states. However, it is most definitely about certain members of “those” people being in the white house.
Their constituents are rallied up on basically their tribal identifications and their tribe does not accept Obama (though in the past, I think many would’ve happily accepted Hillary Clinton as a member, but I seriously doubt that they will in the future). These efforts are obviously futile and meant to continually signal that they’re not “bending” to the authority of that guy while of course quietly enjoying the benefits of that guy’s policies. There is no effect or consequences for this cognitive disconnect in the face of the mechanisms of lower order reasoning.
Now, when you talk about states in the deep south, their motivation is almost completely about “those” people getting any benefits.
Here’s a bonus map showing roughly the strength of “white” tribal identification in response to the existence of Obama as a presidential candidate….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008#mediaviewer/File:US_Election04-08shift.png
The first time I saw this map, I seriously thought it was geologic map showcasing some element of the basement rocks of the Appalachians.
burnspbesq
OT: in which the Notorious RBG screws the pooch, and gets schooled by Justice Kagan, with a little help from Dr. Suess.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-7451_m64o.pdf
ruemara
@boatboy_srq: yup.
JPL
What’s sad is even those on aca with subsidies, will think this is a good idea, because the repubs are going to give them a better plan.
dmsilev
Speaking of right-wing gasbags, Secretary of State Kerry extends the middle finger of welcome to Netanyahu:
Calouste
I’m pretty sure a state prosecuting federal workers for doing their jobs is unconstitutional under Grant v. Lee and Sherman v. the State of Georgia, but I am not a lawyer, so what do I know.
Punchy
FTFY.
catclub
@Zinsky:
Too close to the Appalachian Trail
catclub
@Frankensteinbeck: 94% is Not the only reason. Vermont is probably whiter than WV, but is waaaaay more liberal.
burnspbesq
@feebog:
You sure about that?
http://theusconstitution.org/text-history/3133/government’s-loss-supreme-court-today-may-signal-more-important-win-down-road
RoonieRoo
I think we did exactly this in Texas. I can’t remember exactly but I swear we passed exactly the same thing in Texas.
jl
WV can secede, and would be something for Manchin to be president of.
Another Holocene Human
@SRW1: “The base” is open to any suggestion their authoritarian leaders roll their way. If it sounds like something they want to hear they parrot it like the hypnotized human wreckage that they are.
Another Holocene Human
@catclub: Vermont has its gross white supremacists too, but yeah.
Economy no longer based on resource abstraction
Made a choice to throw everything at education despite their limited resources
coal barons 0wn WV right now
Roger Moore
@Linda Featheringill:
Yes. They’re politicians who care what it will do to their chances of reelection.
rea
Has West Virginia forgotten which side of the Civil War they were on?
Mike J
@burnspbesq: It seems like there are other laws about destruction of evidence that the guy could have been charged with, and the ejusdem generis argument is pretty convincing that fish aren’t records
Iowa Old Lady
@JPL: And when no better plan emerges to save them, they’ll blame Obama.
burnspbesq
@Mike J:
Maybe, but that’s not the thrust of the plurality opinion. The plurality opinion says, in effect, that the statute in question (which was enacted as part of Sarbanes-Oxley) shouldn’t be read as a general spoliation statute because it was unlikely that Congress would have put a general spoliation statute into a bill that whose overall thrust was to clean up corporate governance.
I say that that argument falls apart because there were other parts of Title 18 that were amended by SOX (including, for instance, an increase in the maximum sentence for witness tampering), and there is no evidence that Congress intended that sentence increase to apply only in securities fraud cases.
The more important takeaway in terms of what might happen in King is that you have all nine Justices agreeing that you can’t determine the meaning of two words in a statute without putting them in context.
Dave L
Maybe they should apply for re-admission to Virginia. That would send the same kind of message, and I’m sure they wouldn’t miss their two Senate seats.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
It must be a shitty way to live when spite is the only reason for going on every day. How can people live that way? I’d have thought the hollow, empty pointlessness of their lives would have driven them to kill themselves.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Dave L:
I can’t speak for my fellow commonwealthians, but I’d damned well vote against taking them back, Cole notwithstanding.
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