I, Jeremy Pitcoff, of Nesconset, New York, hereby petition my state’s Assembly and Senate, to create and pass legislation clarifying its citizens’ rights to self determination. I respectfully request New York’s State Legislature to address the innate illegality of the “individual mandate,” recently passed into federal law in the guise of healthcare reform. In passing this bill, the Democrat party has enacted a law which forces individual citizens to enter into private health insurance contracts and purchase government approved policies accordingly. This is the first time in American history that such a law, mandating peoples’ private spending, has been enacted.
Because the Constitution grants only limited powers to the Federal Government, and because none of these powers carry any implied jurisdiction for federal coercion of private purchase, Obama-Care appears to wither under constitutional scrutiny. This being the case, the individual States of the Union have a moral obligation and political responsibility to uphold the 10th Amendment of the Constitution which clearly states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This crucial element of the Bill of Rights was created to insure that even in times of illegitimate collusion between the separate branches of government, federal power could still be reined in. In a democratic republic, the States are, and of right ought to be, the most powerful check on federal tyranny.
It is times like these, with Congress passing laws of such dubious legitimacy, that New York must reassert its rightful role as federal watchdog. Our State Legislature must step to the forefront and assertively declare that our Federal Government has no constitutional right to make decisions on its citizens’ private healthcare management. Because our new state and federal laws will prove irreconcilable, the Supreme Court of the United States will become the final arbiter of Obama-Care’s legitimacy. The Court’s decision will then become the law of the land and all interested parties will respect it as such. Win or lose, the State of New York will take pride in knowing it did its best to preserve the individual liberty and autonomy of commerce its citizens demand and expect. If New York’s current legislature proves unwilling or unable to enact a law reasserting the rights of its citizens, then these citizens will know who and who not to elect this November. The time is now for New Yorkers to unite against federal infringement and fight back this wave of big-government rule.

Jeremy Pitcoff
Smithtown Republican Committeeman