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Monday, May 24, 2010
AG Passes on Health Lawsuit
By Sylvia Bokor
Albuquerque resident
On May 12, representatives of New Mexican Tea Parties accompanied by former Congresswoman Heather Wilson met Attorney General Gary King in his Santa Fe office to urge him to file suit against the federal government on the grounds of the unconstitutionality of the health care act recently signed into law.
The meeting was the culmination of an effort started at the end of March 2010. Tea Party supporters began telephoning, faxing and e-mailing the Attorney General's office urging King to file suit. The volume of communications was so great that the AG's office set up a special website page to handle it.
Around April 2, a petition was finalized, and the drive to collect signatures commenced. Tea Party supporters — Democrats, Republicans and independents alike — spent their own money on supplies to print the petitions. They collected signatures from Farmington to Lordsburg, from Grants to Tucumcari. Despite New Mexicans' eagerness to sign the petition, many could not be reached due simply to the vast geographical area to be covered.
Nonetheless, a little more than 5,000 signatures were collected — an impressive number, under such difficult conditions.
The petitions were presented to the attorney general during the May 12 meeting. Then the case against the health care law was made: It violates individual rights. It forces Americans to buy a product. It violates the First, Fourth and Tenth amendments. It is replete with "mandates" that increase near-total control of American lives. It interferes in the relationship between doctor and patient. It will cause a decrease in medical practitioners, research, innovation and quality of medical service.
In response, the attorney general stated that other than the anger of New Mexicans against the health care law, he was not sure why the petition committee was asking him to file suit; he did not know what the petition committee wanted; he did not know why they had asked for this meeting.
Such evasiveness leads to contradictions. Three times during the hour-long discussion, King revealed his actual motivation for refusing to file suit. He stated that he saw no point in lending his weight to this matter, the Supreme Court will decide the issue and then he will follow its decision. Translation: King sticks his neck out for no one. Yet King claims he is the lawyer for all New Mexicans.
Regarding so important and so dangerous an issue as this "law," King stated that he had not analyzed it. He said he has some people studying it, and when their analysis was complete he would take a closer look. Despite Wilson's repeated attempts to discover when that would be, King remained evasive....
He said several times that his budget was too small to file suit, that he hardly had enough money to do his job. Apart from this political side-stepping, his disregard for proper, ethical law was also apparent when he stated that filing suit really was a question of whether it was worth spending the money on what it would cost to file and what it would cost to go along with the health care law.
This fatuous remark was made despite the fact that the health care law would add over $265 million to state costs and that the welfare rolls would be increased by an estimated 91,000 individuals.
King was reminded that to date, 21 states have filed such a suit and 41 states have banned various aspects of the health care law. King remained pleasant, outwardly — and unmoved.
King should be replaced.
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