Health insurance isn’t just a product. It’s a contract. What happened to the contracts clause?
VDH is absolutely correct - and has a great historical perspective. There was nothing good about yesterday’s ruling.
I was thinking the same thing yesterday as I read all the comments about the silver linings. VA AG’s piece in National Review today is the worst of all.
Roberts’ credibility as a Constitutional Scholar is now on par with that of 0bama.
VDH nails it again. On point and brilliant.
VDH delivered yet again. There is no silver lining.
Not only is this an AWFUL (as in ‘How in the world can Roberts did that’ AWFULNESS) decision on the largest government intrusion into private citizens’ life and rights. The precedence it set will reverberate for a long, long, very long time.
Not only our elected representatives do not listen to us, the people, who should be their boss and not the other way around.
Now we’ve seen the slippery road of ‘meaning and definition’ being twisted to an unrecognizable degree by Roberts’ reasoning. Think on it, law gets passed by our betters, then gets new definition by the court.
What Roberts did is unforgivable, that The Constitution is no longer the last defense against a tyrannical goverment.
VDH just stated (much more elegantly) exactly what I have been saying — point-by-point.
First good piece I’ve read today. THanks for telling it straight, Victor.
My take on the whole thing is in some short platitudes:
Things have to get worse before they get better.
You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
The phoenix will rise from the ashes, but first you need ashes.
Fact is, we are very much going the way of ancient Rome. People have made that comparison for most of my life (I’m 58), but they were perceived as clutching at straws. But no more. The parallels are obvious and hard to ignore. But I am familiar with Bible prophesy. It clearly states that before the return of Christ it will be worse in the world than any time in history.
Everybody needs to man up and realize that there have been few times in history where there was not great suffering. We’ve had a mindbogglingly long run, but the chickens are coming home to roost.
Do you want to see your future, in a fashion? Watch The Pianist. Seriously. The reasons and victims may be different, but it is the world we are living. It is the world many humans are living right now and have been living the whole time we’ve been enjoying our relatively utopian existence.
Frankly, the populations of modern western countries remind me of the “above surface” humans in the distant future in the first version of the movie, “The Time Machine”. Children in so many bad ways.
This is just the next step in a clear march we have been on for a hundred years, albeit one of the larger steps. Mankind is simply doing what he always does: self destruct.
This may really help the R’s this november, but that is really irrelevant too since they have all but removed the mask, exposing them as just the other side of the same coin.
Heads, I win, tails, you lose.
It’s far worse than Hanson thinks it is.
It’s a continuation of established & accepted tax law:
You pay $X unless you can demonstrate a qualifying deduction.
Go thru your 1040 form and notice there’s a bunch of such cases: sometimes X is a fixed amount, sometimes it varies, usually it’s veiled by some indirection but upshot is you pay that amount unless you can demonstrate a qualifying deduction.
Now one of the qualifying deductions is gov’t-approved health insurance, and X = $3000.
For 47% of “taxpayers”, the small fraction thereof who don’t have that qualifying deduction will have other deductions which will reduce that amount to $0.
It’s like current taxation:
You pay $1000 unless you have a dependent child with a Social Security Number.
You pay $500 unless you purchased a home-energy-reduction product (insulation, solar panels, etc.).
You pay $1000 (or whatever) unless you purchased an electric car.
There’s a whole bunch of products for which you, in effect, pay a tax if you don’t buy (flip side of getting a deduction if you do).
Just a new take on standard law.
I don’t like where I’m taking this.
How fast can we get an Amendment through the states?
This is no different than me driving past a federal park that has a $5 admission fee and being told I must pay $4 for not entering. No one in their right mind could reasonably argue that I was not being punished for failing to enter the park.
Victor David Hanson sees things as I do. I am as appalled as he that people are busily polishing the turds we have been presented, and calling them shiny.
bttt
When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect. - Thomas Paine
This just depresses the hell out of me...again.
You should be able to differentiate between estimable NR contributors such as Mssrs. Hanson and Steyn—and the NRO lily-livered editorial staff.
I have already made several decisions about ObamaCare. First, I won’t cave and let them force me to buy something I don’t want or need at the present. Second, I won’t cave to the IRS and pay their “fine” (tax) for something I haven’t purchased. Finally, I will let them send me to prison for not caving to them.
If we all refuse to “buy” the insurance and pay the “fine”. there aren’t enough jail cells to hold the majority of America in prison.
Bobby Kennedy, years ago when he was the US Attorney General, said that civil disobedience is a necessary way to overcome bad and unfair laws.
Let’s find out.