Blogs Jun 28, 2012 at 11:31 am

Comments

1
Big deal, Obama made more than that after announcing support for marriage equality.
2
It's also not going to last; we're a long way from November.
3
No, but Romney, if he wins, will get the next 2? 3? Supreme Court picks.
4
Mike Lee (jackass-UT) is apoplectic. It's been very entertaining, to say the least. He's lost a good part of the GOP's in Utah already with his extreme stances, and his responses to this are alienating even more of them.
Granted, he hasn't pulled a Russell Johnson and said that insurance companies should be allowed deny/cut coverage to cancer patients, but he's coming close.
5
If Obama is defeated it's going to be the economy, not healthcare reform.
6
Make that Ron Johnson, not Russell Johnson.... (WI)
7
The downside of course, extends far beyond the health care debate. The SCOTUS has given the power of the federal government FOREVER to impose a tax for any reason. Now the government can impose a tax outside of the traditional reasons of consumption, usage, or income.

Borrowing the broccoli analogy from Justice Scalia, the government can’t use the commerce clause to make you buy broccoli, but it can impose a tax on you if you don’t buy it.
8
@ 7, good thing we elect "representatives" to serve our will. Check the Constitution.

BTW, borrow the dissenting opinion all you want. Unlike the majority opinion, it isn't worth the electrons that carried it to your computer screen.
9
Obamacare contains most of the proposals made by Republicans under Bush the Elder and Clinton. In fact, Obamacare is remarkably similar to GingrichCare.

The ultimate outcome of the changes made by the Affordable Care Act will be a two tier system - a Medicaid program for the poor at the state level and a health care exchange at the state level that works mostly like the federal employee health care exchange does at the federal/national level.

After a decade or so, the end result will be the consolidation of health insurance companies into approximately 5 dominant players, and Medicare and SCHIP will ultimately be folded into this two tier state system and no longer exist as we know it.

Republicans and Democrats have been trying to sell some form of this exact structure to the American public for over 20 years. When the Republicans proposed "GingrichCare" as an alternative to Hillary Clinton's proposal for universal coverage or "Medicare for All" in the early 90s Democrats railed against Gingrich while the reactionary Republicans strongly supported Gingrich and railed against Hillary. Now, with a Democrat championing most of the exact same plan, the Democrats are supporting it as the best they can get (even though it isn't) and Republican are acting the fool.

...and people wonder why politics has been abandoned by good people and left to the sociopathic liars.

If you want to see a better health care plan that we absolutely can afford to implement (and should implement), take a look at Jill Stein's Medicare for All proposal. ...and stop throwing good money and effort after bad.

Stop voting for Republicans and Democrats. If you want REAL CHANGE, you have to vote for something different.
10
Seeing the tiny banner ad for Rmoney appearing on mobile Slog, the ad reading "Support a smaller government, give Rmoney $5appearing now" makes ne really wonder:
Republicans think government should be small, lean, and efficient and thus need less money in the form of taxes.
How about they prove they can make that bullshit work- how about they run Mittens's campain lean and efficient, on less money. Stop taking donations now, GOP dipshits, go prove your lunacy works.

Or not.
11
@7 Who made you buy, and drink, the anti-federalist Kool-Aid?

The Constitution already allowed this.

Elections, flawed as they may seem, are the check on this otherwise unrestrained power.

If the majority of Representatives, having been elected in their districts and believing this will not cause themselves or like minded replacements from loosing the seat, as well as a majority and perhaps a super-majority of Senators, believing the same at the state level, and perhaps requiring the agreement of President voted in through a byzantine system, all think that that taxing the failure to buy broccoli works, perhaps it's not the unreasonable thing you imply.
12
Here's the Upside: Mitt's base are all moving to Canada.

Hey-Ooo!
13
@8: So you don't think Roberts' decision will be used to justify the future tax constitutionality cases?
14
I would love to see an infographic for why people are opposed to Obamacare.

1% - Will make slightly less money exploiting sick people under Obamacare.
2% - Do not want disowned gay child to use parents health insurance.
9% - Would like parents to die more quickly to receive inheritance.
88% - BLACK MAN
15
@7 and why not? The Government already, in a backhanded way, taxes me for not having children, not owning a house, choosing to smoke, choosing to stay in a hotel, having a beer, going to a football game, etc, etc, etc

I'm not opposed to people having children but why should I subsidize questionable parenting by paying higher taxes so they can get a tax deduction for having children? Oh wait to provide for the greater good, like say providing health care for all.
16
I don't think the teabaggery will dissipate much at all, they are Rmoney's CrazyBase(TM), and they are not really connected to rational ideas or arguments.

They are very similar to followers of cultists who predict the apocalypse or aliens landing... when the 'lyspe or aliens don't show up, they drink up whatever explanation is given and cleave more tightly to the leader, despite the abundantly clear evidence that their leader is lying or insane.
17
@14:

You forgot one data-point:

27% - because someone in the GOP told them it would take away their FREEDOMZ! (although, granted, this group may be considered a sub-set of BLACK MAN respondents).
18
@15: Not being eligible for a deduction from your tax liabilty is not a tax in itself.
19
I would be interested to see Romney explain how he's going to replace Obamacare. It is simply not possible to maintain the wildly popular provisions without the mandate so either he has to come clean and admit he wants to scrap those, which wouldn't even go over especially well with his base, or expose his plan as a complete fiction. I suspect the strategy is to attempt to avoid any sort of explanation at all.
20
The comment @11 is the perfect response to the comment @7.

I also like the "posted by" name.
21
@19: here's the thing. Rmoney doesn't actually want to replace the ACA. after all, he did the EXACT SAME THING in Mass.

but he wants to be president, so he says he does. the end.
22
@18: You are a victim of the Framing Effect. There is no "real" amount of tax that a person owes, it's all relative. If you tax one person less than another, you can call it a tax break for one person or a tax penalty for the other person. Both are equally valid descriptors.

(Oh hell, why am I arguing with GDfR? I guess I wanted to put this out there for anyone else who is reading and might wonder if GDfR might have a point.)
23
@22 "There is no "real" amount of tax that a person owes"

I agree with most of your post, but Jesus disagrees with that point: Luke 20:24-25 Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar's. And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.

Clearly, the bible dictates that every penny you make belongs to the government.
24
Nobody believes the gay dude for romney ever has a point. He is a twit, and only here for comic relief.
25
@24: Not only a twit, but a suckputter.
26
I can't believe nobody has pointed out the flawed logic of "I hate health care for every citizen, so I'm moving to CANADA" yet. Because they totally don't do government health care there.
27
actually, the power to tax is fairly absolute, at one point we had a 90% income tax.

btw the power to regulate commerce also has no express limit saying "however, the national gumint cain't make you buy a product." So, it can. Say to compete internationally every person needed to learn...oh...a new software system. The national government could properly command us all to buy a tablet and learn it. As a regulation of commerce. Just like it commands a minimum wage, weights and measures and all manner of things. There's no limit in the commerce clause saying "however, the regulation shall not be overly intrusive or burdensome." It's a grant of power, and it gives power to regulate in the field of commerce. States can regulate families, and this means they can order you to buy food and clothes for your kid, also housing, ohmygodthey'remakingmeBUYAPRODUCTINTHEMARKET but this is not seen as a big deal. So it makes us buy a product. so what? If we all needed a new wundervegetable that is discovered to make us all math genuises, call it broccolianalogue, and congress decides this is good for us to beat the finns and mexicans and chinese in engineering and commerce, yes, they can require us to eat it. constitutional limits aren't the only ones, we have political limits, and you can rely on politics to save us from much stupid regulation, though not always. Th government can kill you in a war by putting you on the front line, it can tax you 90%, it can enslave you to paying for child care for 18 years, it can block most of your contracts at wages or conditions deemed unacceptable, it prevents you from writing a marriage deal unilaterally with no state regulation, it makes you hook up to a sewer provider you didn't even choose, it makes YOU buy education so to speak for many years, and it makes you buy a oven not just a hot plate if you buy a condo. wow. so in this context a little $100 fee or requiring you to pay premiums for health care insurance when you're probably going to use the health care system anyway as a freeeloader if you don't buy insurance isn't all that much more intrusive or shocking than other things government does.

it even makes you share the road with bikes folks. grow up and buy your insurancebroccoli.
28
@25 Oh, "suckputter". No one who lived it could forget that magical day.
29
@27: I wanted to finish reading your commentary, but I had no time to parse it.
30
Perhaps Roberts still felt badly about flubbing Obama's swearing in ceremony that he compromised his own underlying convictions to write his opinion as some unconscious drive to make amends.

Perhaps.
31
Or perhaps he just did the right thing because there was nothing unconstitutional about the ACA.

Perhaps.
32
Gay Dude For RMoney reminds me of a few years back, when all the Scientologists were so excited to see how big of a blockbuster that steaming turd "Battlefield Earth" was clearly going to be. In the months and weeks before the movie opened, they just couldn't contain their excitement.

Then reality showed them what deluded suckers they are.

33
@32: We'll just see who's really deluded on November 7th.

Please wait...

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