Sam Smith
The thing that prognosticators got wrong about Justice Roberts was that he actually wanted to help the insurance industry more than he wanted to diss Obama. The Supreme Court’s healthcare decision is much easier to understand when you remember that the idea of the individual mandate came from the right wing Heritage Foundation and that among its supporters before the court were the health insurers wanting to benefit from it.
The liberal lemmings following their faux leader, Barack Obama, of course missed this point, as they did the fact that the individual mandate will not only be a tax, but a stiff one on people liberals used to support. Such as the lower middle class. In fact, Ezra Klein of the Washington Post gave as a sterling example of the wonders of the mandate the case of a man earning $36,000 who will be faced with an effective new tax of over six percent of his income
What is most scary about the court ruling on the mandate is that it opens the way for the government to do whatever it wants as long as it calls it a tax. Tossing out the Obama commerce clause argument, Roberts rightly said, “The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress's power under the Commerce Clause. That clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage in it.”
But then he proceeded to justify the tax approach, saying that Congress' ability to tax and spend is unlimited.
So presumably the government could order you to buy a new car every three years or face a penalty, aka tax.
Or be forced to put solar panels on your roof under the same terms.
When you combine this with the recent corporate campaign fund rulings of the court, you can pretty well kiss democracy good bye, if you haven’t some time ago.
And if you think this is an exaggeration, consider that the court, with liberals cheering, just upheld a 6% new tax on some American who only earns $36,000, while $3 trillion in corporate investments go untaxed in overseas hiding places and hardly anyone says a mumblin’ word.
The party’s over.
