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Chelsea Kneen of Bakersfield questions Robert Levy, after his lectures on July 30 in Simpson Auditorium at A-B Tech in Asheville. Kneen will be attending Patrick Henry College in Virginia next year. Levy is the chairman of the Cato Institute and has a vacation home on Biltmore Lake in the Enka-Candler area. Daily Planet Staff Photo

From Staff Reports

The purpose of the mandate in new health insurance law’s mandate requiring everyone to have an insurance policy “is to subsidize the insurance companies, so that they can cover pre-existing conditions,” Robert Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, said last Friday night in Asheville.

Levy, who addressed a crowd of about 100 people in A-B Tech’s Simpson Auditorium, said, “ObamaCare is bad care — and bad for the law.” His talks on “Constitutional Relevance in the Age of Obama” and “The Individual Health Insurance Mandate” were sponsored by the Asheville-Buncombe County 9/12 Project. Levy has a vacation home on Biltmore Lake in the Enka-Candler area.

In a question-and-answer session following his addresses, Levy said “Arizona is probably not going to win” in its appeal of a ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton, who temporarily blocked key parts of Arizona’s new immigration law, on the eve of its implementation last week. Specifically, he said the appeals court likely will be “liberal.”

“From a constitutional perspective, it’s an issue of pre-emption,” he said. “States cannot get involved ... Federal law pre-empt any state laws ... The judge found there were some inconsistencies between federal and state law.”

He added, “If it goes to the Supreme Court, it’s 4-4 (conservatives to liberals), with Justice (Anthony M.) Kennedy” hard to predict.

A man in the audience said his “biggest fear is that one of the conservatives on the Supreme Court will be replaced” by a liberal, tilting the balance of power in a decidedly liberal direction.

Levy said the most likely justice to be replaced is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 77, who is a liberal. Under President Barack Obama, he said “a liberal is most likely to be replaced” by another liberal.

A woman asked, “Did President Obama go over the line by appointing czars?”

“Yes, a lot of these czars have been unconstitutional,” Levy replied.

Another woman asked, “Why can’t we file a class-action suit against the federal government” for failing to follow the Constitution?

“There are threshold tests,” Levy answered. “In almost all cases, taxpayers have no standing ... As long as everybody is injured in the same way, you have no standing.” He said the only way to success in such cases is “if you can show you’re uniquely damaged.”

In his lectures, he highlighted the constitutional implications of several topics in today’s news: selecting judges, bailouts, health care and same-sex marriage.

Levy joined Cato as senior fellow in constitutional studies in 1997 after 25 years in business. He also sits on boards of the Institute for Justice, the Federalist Society, and the George Mason University School of Law. He founded CDA Investment Technologies, a major provider of financial information and software, and was its CEO until 1991.