Tornado Alley (PROG)

[arizona1]

Who's crazier? The plaintiffs in the Obamacare case or the Supreme Court for agreeing to hear it?

How low are they wiling to go?

Two more of the challengers in the King v. Burwell challenge to Obamacare appear to have questionable standing to be claiming that they are harmed by the law, the Wall Street Journal reports. In previous reporting the Journal raised questions about the standing of the other two plaintiffs.

One of the plaintiffs the Journal highlights is avowed hater of President Obama Rose Luck, who, as Mother Jones reported, posts horrible screeds against the "anti-christ" Obama who is only in office because he "got his Muslim people to vote for him." Luck, the Journal reports, gave her address in the filings as a short-term stay motel. That's important because her address was used to calculate how much her subsidy would be for purchasing insurance—proving that she cold receive a subsidy which would mean that she was subject to the mandate to buy insurance. But Luck isn't at the motel anymore, and no one seems exactly sure of where she is to determine her current status. The attorneys at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is bankrolling the case, say that she's still in Virginia.

The other plaintiff in the story is Brenda Levy, the plaintiff who was taken aback by finding out that this case could take insurance away from millions of people. Levy told the Journal that "she couldn’t recall how or when she had become involved in the case and that several times that she and the other plaintiffs had been told not to talk about it."

She said she had little knowledge of the case’s progress, including when it had been filed, guessing only that she had become a participant before that date. […]

A spokesman for Chesterfield County Public Schools, which Ms. Levy had listed as her employer in most of her recent campaign-donation filings, said her annual rate of pay was less than $10,000. A single person earning that amount wouldn't have to pay the penalty if she went without coverage and would make too little to qualify for any tax credits. Ms. Levy didn't answer questions about her income on Saturday and didn't respond to an email on Monday.

So Levy's standing is in question because it's not clear now where she lives and whether she still qualifies for subsidies. When she filed the case, she said her income would be $43,000 in 2014. Was she lying in her affidavit? Levy will also turn 65 in June, when the court is set to rule, and then be eligible for Medicare. As the Journal reported last week, the two men suing—David King and Doug Hurst—were both Vietnam veterans and "likely qualified for care through the Department of Veterans Affairs that would fulfill the law’s requirement for them to have coverage or pay a penalty."

Potentially none of the plaintiffs actually are in a position to sue, but that doesn't bother the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the libertarian think tank that brought the suit and is bankrolling it. "The lawyers are not concerned about standing issues," CEI spokeswoman Annie Dwyer told the Journal. They need just one of the plaintiffs to qualify. It might be Luck, if they can find her and she's making enough money now. Or it my be Levy, if she makes more money that she says in her FEC filings. Or it might be Hurst, depending on whether he can get care from the VA. But this is potentially a real problem, at least in some lawyers' minds. "'Standing is dynamic and has to be present at all times and not just at the time of the lawsuit’s filing,' said Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general during the Obama administration who worked on an amicus brief supporting the government in the case."

So all of the plaintiffs seem to qualify to sue on the basis of just how much they hate Obama and Obamacare, and may or may not qualify to sue on the basis of the law. This suit was already pretty suspect on the merits. As more is revealed about it, it's becoming more and more absurd, qualifying it as one of the most bullshit cases ever to be plucked up by the Supreme Court.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/10/1363545/-More-questions-about-plaintiffs-in-Obamacare-nbsp-case