The Stupefying Stupidity of the People attempting to Gut Obamacare.  King v. Burwell

Usually when I use the term Stupidparty it is actually a polite understatement, a euphemism for far worse sins. There are exceptions such as Palin and Bachmann who are genuinely stupid. The Stupidparty Leaders and Disciples discussed here  appear to be literally extremely stupid. But it is their Bigotry that forces such stupidity out into the open for all to see. You just can not make this stuff up. The Facts are stranger than Fiction
By Patrick Andendall

The Koch brothers, their Ayn Randian cohorts and their rabid mental midget followers are engaging in one last effort to gut Obamacare. Thankfully these entitled spoilt brat Oligarchs in waiting, though wildly dangerous, are not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed. It is this fundamental Stupidity that will doom their efforts.

I have recently written a lengthy post dissecting the best and brightest Stars within the Stupidparty Congress, this shorter piece (I promise) will now look at how the Oligarchs use and abuse “the people.” This is the story of the people who are manipulated to vote against their own best interests.

Stupidparty is getting its day in Court: King V. Burwell.

On March 4, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, a lawsuit designed by conservative advocates to destroy Obamacare. If the plaintiffs prevail, about 8 million people could lose their health insurance. 

The King case started out as a legal theory hatched by a group of conservative lawyers in 2010 at a conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)  the right-leaning think tank. The AEI is partly funded by the Koch Empire.

Below are some the key figures behind the AEI

So before this epic battle between the great minds of the CEI and the great minds on the Supreme court, let us look more closely at the four plaintiffs – so that we can see that even the paid off Koch lackeys Scalia and Thomas will find it impossibly difficult to vote the way they can only dream of voting:

The King case is actually four handpicked citizens chosen to be the Trojan horses to gut Obamacare. You would think that with such a draconian, unconstitutional law— bound to increase every ones costs, create massive Job losses, forcing poor people into paying unconstitutional fines and basically torpedoing the best healthcare system in the world (actually American is not even in the top 50)— that the legal and policy genius’s at the AEI would have little trouble finding four tales of persecution woe.  Find four victims of this Obama, this fascist dictator’s evil agenda, to enslave all Americans 

Recent articles by the Wall Street Journal (here and here) and Mother Jones cast doubt on whether the four named plaintiffs in King v Burwell actually have suffered any injury.

#1 David King:
From the WallStreet Journal:
“David King is one of four plaintiffs in a case before the court next month that could halt Affordable Care Act subsidies that make insurance cheaper for millions of Americans. At issue is whether the wording of the law allows the Obama administration to distribute tax credits to residents of up to 37 states that don’t run their insurance exchanges, including Virginia, where the plaintiffs live.

The plaintiffs have persuaded courts to hear their case on the grounds that the subsidies allegedly harm them by subjecting them to the law’s requirement to carry insurance or pay a penalty. Without the subsidies, insurance would be too expensive for them, they contend, thus making them exempt from having to pay the fine for lacking insurance.

But Mr. King could avoid paying that fine or any insurance premiums because, according to him and his attorneys, he served in the Army in Vietnam. That qualifies him for medical coverage with no premiums through the Department of Veterans Affairs, benefits and legal experts say. In an interview at his home here, Mr. King said he had been to a VA medical center and had a VA identification card, which typically serves as proof of VA-care enrollment.

Legal experts say the fact that Mr. King could avoid paying the penalty for lacking insurance by enrolling in VA coverage undermines his legal right to bring the case, known as “standing.””

David King, 64, also has used social media to post altered images of First Lady Michelle Obama wearing Middle Eastern garb, called the president’s political party the “Democraps,” and jokingly wrote that the “NSA, FBI and the other three letter government workers” are keeping an eye on him, the news site Politico  revealed.

David Kings Facebook page:

David King, “brought up Benghazi” when Mother Jones asked him about the case. Separately, Politico’s Jen Haberkorn found his Facebook posts describing Obama as “the idiot in the White House” and describing the president’s political party as the “Democraps.”

One of King’s online posting includes an image from the movie “Back to the Future,” with the words, “Marty, there is no time to lose. You must go back in time and give Obama’s dad a condom,” according to Politico.

#2 Rose Luck 
Mother Jones Reports: The Second plaintiff–well it’s uncertain whether Rose Luck even lives in a healthcare.gov state. Her listed address is an extended-stay motel in Virginia, but she’s no longer there. Anyway, she apparently is destitute and therefore unlikely to be required to buy even subsidized insurance under the law. But she does not care – like David King she is so full of bile and ignorance that destitute though she might be, she would happily bite her nose off to spite her face.

At 56, Luck is the youngest of the plaintiffs. Like King, she doesn’t care much for Obama. On her Facebook page, she has called him the “anti-Christ,” voiced her belief that Obama came to power because “he got his Muslim people to vote for him,” and noted her refusal to acknowledge his legitimacy as president. “Ohhhhh hell no i wouldn’t admit he was our president,” she wrote in one Facebook comment. She has warned her Facebook followers that Obamacare will cost people “77,000 dollars a year.”   

#3 Doug Hurst is also a Vietnam vet and also has reported income that would make him eligible for large subsidies for ACA plans, undermining his claim to be injured by the ACA. But this plaintiff is perhaps the most absolutely absurd – just mind-boggling assuming we understand their politics. This would seem to offer a clue:

What happens when a stupidparty disciple is forced to face the consequences of their own absurd political beliefs? This couple filed for Bankruptcy in 2010. These filings showed that in 2009 the couple had $8,500 of out of pocket medical expenses. Doug Hurst projected income for 2014 was $39,000. His health costs would therefore fall from $655 per month (back in 2009) down do $62.49 a month  – a 90% reduction. But the story gets a lot lot lot worse! In 2009 their 37 year old daughter was hospitalized, having been battling schizophrenia, and died. Obamacare specifically prevents Insurance Companies from discriminating against mental illness. Now this couple wants other parents to suffer the same fate that they have likely had to endure. Poor people going broke – with no ability to protect their mentally ill Children. This is perhaps one the most egregious examples of kicking a gift horse in the mouth – all because they have been manipulated into hating Obama—a hatred that leads to ensuring others will be  barred from benefiting from the obvious life saving opportunities provided by having access to affordable health care. 

#4  Brenda Levy will be eligible for Medicare in June, probably before the Supreme Court rules on the case, and thus has “no stake in the case once she turns 65,” says Nicholas Bagley of the University of Michigan. “It will be moot as to her.” 

She told Mother Jones she has no idea how she ended up being named as a plaintiff. Barbara Levy, a 64-year-old resident of Richmond who used to belong to the Sierra Club and subscribe to Mother Jones — in other words, not exactly the woman you’d expect to challenging the president’s signature legislative accomplishment.

Here’s what she told Mencimer when they spoke in January:

Levy has yet to attend any of the court proceedings in King v. Burwell, because she “didn’t think the case was going anywhere.” At the time we spoke, Levy said that she had never met the lawyers handling the case in person, despite the fact that it had been pending for more than a year. But she said she planned to travel to Washington for the Supreme Court oral arguments in March: “It’s an adventure. Like going to Paris!”

When I asked her if she realized that her lawsuit could potentially wipe out health coverage for millions, she looked befuddled. “I don’t want things to be more difficult for people,” she said. “I don’t like the idea of throwing people off their health insurance.”

Levy couldn’t even recall how she got involved in the case. “I haven’t done a single thing legally. I’m gonna have to ask them how they found me,” she told Mother Jones.

But Levy is no innocent little angel —being exceedingly homophobic and her notions about Obamacare are mathematically flawed to the point of that her understanding ends up being the polar opposite of the facts. Her Mathematical flaws also suggest that if she is a fiscal conservative she might need to spend a bit more time worrying about what is happening inside her family budget.

“She’s no fan of Obamacare. She claimed it gives the government control over Americans’ medical treatment and that the law has spurred the IRS to expand. And she said she doesn’t like the idea of young people subsidizing her insurance. Levy contended that Obamacare had caused many Americans to lose their insurance and for premiums to rise.

In fact, the percentage of uninsured Americans has fallen from 18 percent to 13.4 percent since the law took effect last year. And Obamacare has made health care more affordable than ever before. This especially holds true for Levy. She told me she faced monthly health care premiums of $1,500, which she attributed to health woes that have included two craniotomies and two hip replacements. “I’ve had some holes drilled in my head,” she quipped. Levy hasn’t checked out the plans she qualifies for under Obamacare, but a October 2013 affidavit filed by the government in King v. Burwell indicates that at that time she could have purchased a low-cost bronze plan on the federal exchange for $148 a month. Given this, it’s unclear how Obamacare has caused her any real harm.

Now that is the understatement of the year.

The lawsuit is a dangerous act of charlatanism that is too damned close to succeeding. On King’s Facebook page, Haberkorn also found a touching post about King’s meeting with a father and his terminally ill little boy. If King’s phony lawsuit succeeds, a lot of people around the country are going to get to do that.

All this begs the two questions—how can these two groups of people, the plaintiff’s and their lawyers be so stupid. We will deal with the AEI first, just one arm of the giant tentacles of the Koch empire.

Jones Day lawyers hired by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the libertarian think tank that initiated and bankrolled the case, said they were aware of Mr. King’s veteran status, as well as that of Douglas Hurst of Virginia Beach, the second plaintiff, and they didn’t believe it posed an issue.

The best analogy I can think of for this stunning incompetence is the issue of CIA torture. Put aside the morality for a moment, and just understand that if the CIA was to use torture as default means of getting intelligence, the CIA would themselves become less intelligent. The same can be said to the Koch approach – just throw tons of money at people, and those people really do not have to think for a living. It is this stupidity that has so far staved of a total descent into an Oligarchy. But on present trends money will ultimately win the day – so the Oligarchy draws closer every day – because these guys have plenty on money to burn.

But how do we explain the Stupidity of the Plaintiffs. Well they assuredly do not get there information from Journalists. Ever since Fox won their right to lie, they can no longer be considered news. Now add to that the whole incestuous vipers nest of fake Stupidparty News and Authors – add on a dollop of hate Radio – all of whom play to man’s basest instincts — fear, hatred and Violence – and people will morph into these four sorry excuses for human beings.

If one was to conspire to bring a losing case to even the most prejudiced of Courts, to ensure failure – then the AEI and their Jones day Lawyers could not possibly have done a better job. This stunning incompetence will mean that come Judgement day, hate and ignorance will lose. A rare victory for common decency. These four plaintiffs could not possibly illustrate the value of Obamacare and the value of Government in general— any better.

Stupidparty will have it’s day in court  – and we should all enjoy the spectacle.