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It will be a shame if the legislation goes down in flames because of political semantics.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/03/argume…
Know why the tax thing is a problem for you folks? Because it isn't a tax. It's an unconstitutional command to engage in commerce at terms set by the government whether such commerce is in your personal interests or not. Collection of penalties for failure to abandon your financial autonomy to the government is routed through the IRS as a convenient collection agency, not as tax collectors per se.
I realize honest reporting is entirely beyond you, Constant, but such transparent lies as this aren't convincing anyone not already brainwashed to your side.
Hey, I haven't gotten my rimjob from you yet. Get it together!
I'm still sticking to a 5-4 or 6-3 upholding of the law, with Kennedy and/or Roberts. I expect Alito, Scalia and (obviously) Thomas to say no.
That said, Kennedy, being the biggest empty suit (or robe, as a more appropriate image), might be swayed by oral arguments, but I have a feeling that he's willing to bend over backwards to accommodate this particular legislation.
The forces allied against it are extremely powerful. Jesus people. We're talking of an electorate so blindly stupid as to fall for the flimsiest "Weapons of Mass Destruction" lie to invade another country and kill a hundred thousand innocent people and not even blink. AND re-elect the idiot who sold them the lie.
You think the same morons in this country understand the complicated nuances of reforming healthcare?
And frankly without Single Payer the whole thing is a house of fucking cards anyway.
What's the difference?
Problem solved.
But if the medical insurance mandate is unconstitutional does that mean the mandate to have car insurance is also unconstitutional? I mean we must be consistant right?
If there's no difference, turn down your employer's health insurance and save a ton of money by buying ten pounds of broccoli a week and pocketing the rest.
I thought it was Brussels Sprouts?
The idea that people are being forced into the healthcare market is libertarian fantasy bullshit. I can eat broccoli or not eat broccoli to my heart's content, but at some point I will get sick, I will get injured, and so everyone else. And then we either have insurance and a doctor, or we have no insurance and go to the emergency room. Either way, we're all in the healthcare market.
Another problem with the law, which cuts both ways from a constitutional perspective, is that the penalty for not getting insurance is relatively mild. On the one hand, you could argue that makes it more like a tax and less like a mandate. On the other hand, you could argue that means making really sure that everyone buys insurance isn't all that necessary, and so can't be justified as "necessary and proper" for an enumerated power.
There's a specific, technical answer to your question, actually: it's called "adverse selection." In a nutshell, if a health care program is optional, healthy people will opt out, and the program won't be able to sustain itself economically.
State laws must not violate your rights. Federal laws must not violate your rights and must also be allowed by an enumerated power of congress. The argument being made before the court is that mandating purchases is not an enumerated power of congress. If you accept that argument, the federal government cannot mandate the purchase of health insurance but a state government can still mandate the purchase of auto (or for that matter health) insurance.
It's so awesome.
Those who participate in Obamacare get some sort of credit or exemption or something. Those who don't join don't get that tax break.
And here I thought the teahadists were in favor of tax breaks...
Ummm, no...
First, villas are what Clooney and his type own. We couldn't begin to afford one. We have a small house in a small village (not even a cafe or alimentary in the place, that's how small) in a non-touristy part of Italy. But we do happen to think it pretty fabulous, so that part you got right.
I'm currently in a smallish suburban house in south Snohomish County. See, I go to Italy for a few months and (this is the tricky bit) then I come home. I realize that sequence of events is difficult to follow for you folks, but I can't really make it any simpler so that you can understand it.
FYI, where I come from the only time you put wife in quotes is when you're erroneously referring to a lesbian coupling as a marriage. Hope that helps!
But the geodesic dome thing in Nepal sounds really cool. Now I want one, damn you!
At some point I will need tires for my car. Those tires will be manufactured out of my state, the business selling them may operate in several states and so on. Yet I don't and won't concede the governments right to decide that I should buy Michelin tires designed for rain.
I engage in health care, as does everyone else. Yet I don't and won't concede a government right to tell me how I ought to pay for that health care and what specific financial instruments I need to do so.
Really, how hard is this folks? Put it another way. Right now you have a House and Senate and the presidency with strong socialist tendencies, as you wish it. What about when that isn't the case? Would you like someone ideologically opposed to you deciding what kind of health care, food, housing, and so on you ought to buy? Because that's the power you're granting the federal government with this appalling bit of tyranny, in case you hadn't noticed.
You mean not at all, since you can't buy health insurance across state lines?
Do you have a better alternative for health care reform in mind?
Because right now, it's like we're on a sinking ship, and not enough people are helping bail out the water. So to avoid everyone sinking, the captain is ordering everyone to help bail water out.
People have already shown that they won't voluntarily help everyone in the country with medical costs, even if they know for a fact that it will end up hurting them more in the long run, they simply won't do it voluntarily, they have to be forced. For their own good and the good of the entire nation, everyone must help out. Some people do understand this. It seems you do not.
Most Americans have no *real* choice in health care. They take what their employers offer, if they do in fact offer insurance. No one is shopping the wide open market because there isn't one at the consumer level.
You should have raised these concerns when the Republicans wrote up this plan in the 90s.
Let's try this - you exercised your god given right to not go out and buy new tires for your car when they were wearing out and you went and got a flat. You were too broke to replace the flat and you happened to live in a country where you knew public garages were required to replace it whether you could or could not pay for it so you went to the public garage and got it replaced then proceeded to ignore the bill. As the public garage is not able to collect from you then guess who is saddled with the bill? That would be the public, yes?
Oh my god! This is theft! Yes theft, from the public. Surely you agree? Aren't you always carrying on about taxes being theft and such?
The righteous Christian here. The 'I got mine and screw you' righteous Christian. No cognitive dissonance in evidence.
Urgutha @whatever, I kinda like broccoli. Brussels sprouts? Not so much.
In the long run, though, the Supremes are gonna do what they're gonna do. You don't know what that's going to be. I don't know what that's going to be. Hell, there's a better-than-average chance they don't know what it's going to be.
wait, are you confusing SB with Hagbard Celine?
If an uninsured person with no means of paying his bill goes to the emergency room, the costs of his care will go directly onto the shoulders of others. You're always going on about the government stealing your money to give to other people; you should support regulations that will stop the hospitals from doing this too.
food for the kids.
clothes for us. you are not allowed to engage in the "inactivity" of being naked on your lot visible from the street.
a housing unit on your lot. no, you are not allowed to engage in the non-"action" of just being there without a unit that meets code.
in every area where congress has power to legislate, such as commerce, there is no language int he constitution (other than the specific rights) that limits congress' power.
so yes, if congress decides you must buy broccoli, they can pass that regulation. if thy decide everyone in the usa must go to college to have better national commerce, they can pass a law making you do it. there is no action/inaction distinction; the distinction is the subject area; commerce or not. just like a state govt. can mandate you to buy foor for and take care of your kids, as they are sovereign in the area of the family, the national government can mandate you to undertake action in interstate commerce. in this ccase to avoid the huge freeloader problem. but the wisdom or need for the law is not even legally relevant -- once it's in the area of interstate commerce, the court cannot create substantive limits like the action/inaction distrinction without TAKING OVER THE LEGISLATIVE FUNCTION and depriving us of a legislature and the freedoms we get thru regulatory programs, in this case the freedom from the freeloaders. the need for that, whether broccoli is analogous, all tha tis a legislative function and for the court to take over that analysis is a huge power grab not unlike bush v gore. talk about an activitiy unrestrained court! usurping our rights!
sadly, it was the democrats own failure to boldly say "fuck yes, we can mandate. of course we can; all regulation is mandates, duh! so yes, we can mandate whatever we want if it's in the field of interstate commerce which is OUR business to mandate in, as opposed to the several states' business, which health care an dinsurance certainly is. Facing rapacious insurers and freeloaders, this mandate is the solution, and court must butt out of this issue once it decides yes it's about interstate commerce or else we have no laws at all and the court is involved in a power grab just like in the past decades when it used to make up a freedom to contract that supposedly banned a minimum wage, or similar rejected doctrines. Yes, we have a national legislature, and fuck yes, it can fucking mandate that you buy something so you are not a irresponsible welfare seeking freeloader."
Aaaaand then not accounting for flight schedules from Seattle to Italy. Thus making it highly improbable (if not impossible) for you having done so on the night in question in the time frame given. Barring some kind of unknown charter or fantastic time-tunnel. You see some of us, me in particular, travel a great deal to Europe. I can't imagine posting to SLOG while in Europe let alone on any vacation.
The little fantasy you have constructed here was very amusing at first. I've waited to see how far you'd dig your self in. Pretty far, apparently. Now it's kinda sad. But I urge you to double down and keep going with it.
You also realize that the host for SLOG would be able to tell where you've been posting from (Italy or the US), right? And if they were so moved to audit a post they could pretty easily determine how full of shit you are, right? Though why they would care enough to do so is as big a mystery as why you feel the need to constantly lie about having a home in Italy. I guess deep down you actually want to invalidate any sort of logical point you attempt to argue here.
I don't know where you fly from or to, but it takes me 9 hours (give or take half an hour) flight time to get to Rome. No, you don't do this by selecting the least expensive flight on Kayak or whatever, but we do it every year. Again, I don't know your flight habits, but I usually can't sleep the night prior to international flying nor the day I arrive. The bad side as I get older is the tiredness. The good is that I never get jet lag since I more or less immediately fall into local time patterns. So, Mr. Mason, are we clear that I couldn't have murdered my secretary in her kitchen on the night of January the 6th or am I still under cross examination?
I'm sure that, loving deception and libel and moral filth as they do, the Stranger staff could place me wherever they wish. But I really couldn't care less what they think, so there's that.
None of which really matters, does it? I mean, unless whether I'm posting from Italy or Chicago or Seattle or a supersecret bunker I share with Karl Rove under Mt. Rushmore is integral to the argument it's just you hating that others have found a way to make a life which makes them happy, yes? I mean, I get that this hatred of others happiness is the fundament of liberal thougth, but try not to be so obvious about it, m'kay?
So how about addressing the actual points, rather than the side issues, just for once? How about dealing with the subject rather than your personal dislike of someone you will never personally know enough to make any rational judgement about them?
No? Straw man all you got? Okay, good to know.
I'm just saying, you have no authority to call people out on avoiding the important questions at hand.
Speaking of false mataphors-
Meeting your obligations to your nation for your citizenship shouldnt be a matter of chance. Every single young person from 18 to 20 should be obliged to serve their nation if only to realize that freedom isn't free, that it costs in sacrifice and duty. Far from limiting the draft I'd make service compulsory as is done in Israel.
And when asked to do so comparing this to the unconstitutional interference in my private financial life Obamacare makes compulsory isn't just inaccurate, it's insulting to those who did and have done their duty by their country.
@45
I pay for shoplifters when I buy groceries every time they add up the bill at the register. I pay for employee theft at the lumber store in the retail costs of what I buy. So should we nationalize all industry to avoid the risks of paying for those who would steal from their fellows? Not in my humble opinion, though likely in yours this is the ideal. Because some people would rather have Ipads and cell phones and Doritos than medical care doesn't itself equate to an inanswerable claim to the merits of forcing me to buy a particular kind of health insurance whether good for me personally or not.
And don't bother with the 'if EVERYONE seeks regular medical care costs will go DOWN in the aggregate.' I learned basic math 20 years before you were born, and only in liberal mathematics does 2 plus 2 equal 2. Or 3. Or 2,304,321. Hell, maybe even 4! Whichever proves the particular point the liberal is making at that time.
And who said THAT? I'm all for vigorously collecting the money hospitals or doctors are owed by those who elect other priorities over health care. Wouldn't bother me a bit.
Nor do 'I' freeload. I carry an insurance policy appropriate to my families financial needs, not to what Obama thinks I need. And this is the essence of liberty, the right to make choices and live with the good and bad results of those choices without government interference.
At any rate, none of this addresses whether the federal government has the slightest right to determine for me the particular method by which I pay for my health care. This mandate doesn't say 'buy tires when they're bald.' It says 'buy Michelin brand tires of this model range when your tires reach 40% tread. I don't care if they won't fit on your car. I don't car if you prefer Perellis. I don't care if you don't actually drive the car more than once a week, so 40% tread will last you 3 years. Buy Michelins, and buy them when we say.'
That this doesn't disturb you is troubling, it makes me worry for the kind of autocratic tyranny you and folks like VL are helping create for my kids and their eventual kids.
And last I checked shoplifting was illegal whereas public hospitals are legally required to treat all comers. Also last I checked in the civilized world there was something called bankruptcy that had replaced debtors prison. I'll assume you would prefer that never occurred however.
If everyone gets a regular checkup, the costs associated with many severe illnesses (such as pneumonia and many kinds of cancer) go way down due to nipping problems in the bud before they can develop. Don't try to pretend that you're so bad at modeling that you can't understand this simple effect.
This may be news to you, but people who are uninsured typically aren't that way because they're blowing all that money on stupid shit. More commonly, it's because they CANNOT AFFORD insurance, and are forced to choose between being insured and putting food on the table. You pull up the specter of "oh, they're just CHOOSING to be poor/uninsured/unemployed" every single time we have a discussion like this, and it hasn't gotten any more accurate. The vast majority of poor/uninsured/unemployed people are doing their damndest to get ahead; you need to free yourself from the belief that hard work automatically results in prosperity.
9 hours to Rome? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...from Seattle? Try 11 to 14. IF you get a through flight - at best. With zero delays. Italian customs? Oh. My. God. It's like Butoh slow. Give or take a "couple" hours indeed. You have no idea, do you?
I knew you didn't own a house there. And I knew you were lying about being there - because you obviously forgot you told us you were going. Now I doubt you've ever been to Italy at all.
You don't even remember when you said you were going to Italy, do you? Quick scour your posting history so you can remember! You sure don't seem to remember you only gave yourself about a 14 hour window.
Golly. Was there even a through flight on the night in question?Hmmmm... I know. Do you? What was that flight number again, SB? Better think that through a flight number from this month may not time out.
You said your house was in Tuscany. That's about three hours from Rome. By Train it's longer. So in order to fit the time frame there is this magical flight from Seattle and magical no traffic (in ROME? from Fiumicino? Not Ciampino, which is farther south) drive all in under 14 hours! Amazing! What town in Tuscany is that, SB?
And, on top of the mind bending physics or private jet, the first thing you did, after manically sprinting from Rome to Tuscany—at midnight in Italy—was to repeatedly post shit to SLOG? Really? That alone is nuts.
Trolling internet communities that hate you is is own special brand of mental illness. But maintaining this transparent fiction about your life is on a whole other level of sad fucked in the head.
Yes. Let's all pay attention to your arguments. Because this elaborate and pointless lie you've caught yourself in lends them so much credence.
You cannot be for real. You have to be some construct concocted by the Stranger as a conservative whipping post. Otherwise, you are clearly insane.
So may I take the ad hominem attacks as a de facto admission of the basic merit of my actual arguments about the illegal mandate for me to engage in commerce?
Yes? Thanks SO much.
As for the rest, keep playing junior detective if you wish. I know what I know, which is that you're in part right. Wasting time in Italy writing to halfwits like you is indicative of a problem. Even if that's only because my family is asleep in a Roman hotel while I'm twiddling my thumbs the alleys and piazzas of Rome hold much more interest than your sick obssession with me. I mean really, checking flights, asking where my Italian home is (like I'd tell a creepy fool like you!) and so on indicate a real personal problem pal. I realize it's partly to deflect from you entire inability to reasonably argue with me. I mean, reality is on my side and delusional idiocy on yours, so how could you?
However, I won't waste any more time on you or any of the other resident Kool-aid drinkers. Thanks so much for the reminder of all the useful things I could be doing instead of injecting reason into Stranger blog discussions where reason simply isn't wanted or even recognized. Have a nice life with that whole internet stalking thing you've got going, old pal.
Hotel in Rome? That's not what you said in January 22/23.
Anyway. It was a trap, you idiot.
DIRECT Flights to Rome from Seattle average 15-17 hours. Which there were none. There is no way you were in Rome. Or anywhere outside your basement.
I was hoping you'd dig deeper.
I didn't NEED to check flights. Though I did in January and again yesterday to make sure.
See. I sometimes do work for cruise lines and airlines. And my brother in law is pilot for Delta. Guess where he flies? Or used to, anyway.
You fucking liar.
I debated whether or not I'd bust you. Because I really didn't care. It was such a pathetic lie. That was month ago. I was gonna let it go and jut laugh at you.
But then you swaggered into this thread throwing your bullshit around.
And you got caught. You lying sack of shit.
And as for stalking SB? Yeah. You're THE resident right wing whipping post and crank. God forbid anybody remember what you say all the time over and over.
You deliberately try to inflame and provoke. You so desire attention it's pathological. And for the record you don't piss me off at all. You amuse me. Though, true, most people here I do tend to forget completely. So be flattered.
Politics aside, even. You can't repeat the same lie over and over and expect people to just forget it. Especially when you do your best to piss them off with everything else you say.
PS. I'll be looking forward to your Sock Puppet, IssaquahJazz and his yurt in "iceland."
Yes? Thanks SO much.
I was going to ask him, considering his EPIC, profanity infused meltdown back around Valentine's Day, if he had anything to say about the evils of government regulation regarding adult family care facilities, to which I had assumed his absence indicated he had been committed to allow his nerves a rest.