Spin, spin, spin
Each day I have a decision to make.
Actually, I have a lot of decisions to make, including the first one—to get out of bed, and then what to have for breakfast. But some time after that I have to decide what to write.
I do that in any number of ways. Sometimes there’s a pressing story that’s new and hot; gotta write about that, even though everyone else is doing so, too. Sometimes there’s something more general that I’ve been working on already and I finish it and publish it. Sometimes (much less commonly) I recycle an old post, especially for the holidays. Sometimes some quirky thing just happens to strike my fancy that day. Sometimes there’s a comment on the blog that cries out for a response. Sometimes I go to a bunch of favorite websites for inspiration and find something that another writer has churned out that’s a must-read, either because it’s so insightful or so stupid or so deceptive.
Right now I’m still reeling over the SCOTUS Obamacare decision, the one I can’t quite bring myself to call NFIB v. Sebelius although that’s its official name. There are so many huge issues involved: the ruling itself, how it fits into history, its likely future effects on the federal government’s power, whether Obamacare will be repealed, whether the ruling will enhance or reduce the chances of that happening, the law of taxes and how it fits into Roberts’ decision, the workings of Roberts’ mind and psyche, the internal machinations of the Court and the interrelationships among its justices, and whether political threats and/or considerations influenced what Roberts did. And those are just the things that immediately come to mind.
As I surf around the MSM and the blogosphere and read the work of others on these subjects, however, I get quite weary. I’ve got long drafts for about five or six pieces myself, on closely related subjects. But by the time I finish them (if I do) this will be old news, important though I think it may be. However, my real weariness comes from noticing how predictable so much of the commentary is, and how shameless the spin.
I like to think that I’m interested in finding out the truth, wherever it takes me. I’m sure a goodly number of people who disagree with my conclusions would laugh at that idea of mine about myself, but then they’d also have to explain my political conversion, which was the result of my doing just that: following the closest thing to the truth that I could discover, and going where it led me—although it led me to a place where I became somewhat of a social pariah, so the cost was rather high.
I’m still trying to learn the truth and then reflect on it. For example, right now I’d like to ask liberal pundits the following question (or in fact anyone asserting as much): if the Obamacare charge for non-purchase of health insurance is a tax, what sort of tax is it? Because I don’t see that it’s any sort of tax at all, whether that assertion would be good for Obamacare or good for the Republicans campaigning against him.
It’s not a consumption tax and it’s not a direct tax. The direct tax question was specifically addressed by the majority in the Obamacare case, who found that it was not a direct tax (although the issue was hardly discussed in oral arguments; I would say, however, that if it’s any sort of tax at all—which I do not think it is—that it would be a direct tax of a type that violates the Constitution). It’s not an income tax subject to the 16th Amendment, although it’s collected through the IRS (as the dissenters pointed out, there are quite a few non-tax payments that are collected that way); an income tax is levied on the broad group of people who have a certain income, and this is only levied on those who fail to purchase health insurance. It’s not an income tax exemption, either, although that certainly could have been done if Congress wanted to. But Congress chose not to do it that way for political reasons. It’s not a property tax, or a poll tax, or a tariff, or any sort of tax at all. And although I’ve read most of the SCOTUS opinion on the subject, I couldn’t find where Roberts and the majority say what sort of tax it is, either.
So I think that the recent statement by a Romney spokesman* that Romney agrees with the SCOTUS dissenters that it’s a penalty and not a tax is correct and consistent with his previous position on Obamacare. No doubt it would be far more expedient politically now to leap on the “it’s a tax” bandwagon—and no doubt many Republican ads will do so. But if that represents a reversal of a person’s pre-Sebelius position on the subject, then it’s just as much spin as when Obamaphiles now embrace the idea that it is a tax when earlier that notion was anathema to them.
Now, I don’t know how many Republicans and conservatives were saying that it was a tax in the first place, back when it was passed. And it’s hard to get that information, even by Googling (which I tried). But anyone who did say that then, and says different now, is a hypocrite.
I don’t think it would make it impossible to shape effective anti-Obama ads on this by telling the truth. They would start with something like, “The US Supreme Court said that Obamacare is a tax, and yet Obama promised not to raise taxes on…” and continue in that vein. Perhaps I’m asking much too much of politicians and politics when I wish they would do so. But the dilemma is always whether it’s a good idea to descend to the level of the other side in order to fight it.
[*If you want to know what spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom actually said, rather than just the isolated sound bite that it’s a penalty and not a tax, here’s more of it:
“[Romney] disagreed with the [SCOTUS] ruling. He disagreed with the findings of the ruling. He disagreed with the logic that supported those findings. He said that he agreed with the dissent, which was written by Justice Scalia, and the dissent clearly stated that the mandate was not a tax”…
Fehrnstrom, seeming to understand the awkward position the Romney campaign is in, parsed his words carefully. He criticized Obama for “celebrating” the majority opinion while he and members of his administration still dispute that the penalty for not having insurance is a tax. Romney, by contrast, has “consistently described the mandate as a penalty.”
He also argued that the law “raises a series of taxes” elsewhere, “including on our medical device companies…[T]he president also needs to be held accountable for his hypocritical and contradictory statements, because he’s described it variously as a penalty and as a tax.”
IMHO, if Obama has actually said that (and I’d love to see some quotes, because to the best of my recollection Obama has been consistent in saying it’s not a tax, as well), calling him on his hypocrisy without being hypocritical oneself is the way to go. And there’s absolutely nothing that stops a truthful person from making hard-hitting ads highlighting the fact that the Supreme Court has called this a tax, and Obama is capitalizing on that while insisting it’s not a tax. Nor is there anything that would stop the GOP from driving home the fact that, whatever it’s called, it most likely will have negative economic consequences for most middle-income people and not just the rich.]
You have to have humour, faith, love for life, and gratitude to keep fresh and valid. But even those aren’t always enough. A vacation or sabbatical may be needed. And I for one think you deserve it.
I may take one. As the full reality of the SCOTUS hits me and Robert’s perfidy and the ongoing blindness of a large swath of America’s spacious skies and amber fields of grain, I think I need to escape the city, escape the news and spend some time on a farm or a ranch mending fence and feeding the cattle who only see me as a dim shape.
http://www.usa-flag-site.org/song-lyrics/america.shtml
Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion relies on double-speak AND encourages the other branches of government (i.e., Congress and the executive branch) to do so as well.
Even liberals who read that opinion have a strong urge to take a shower to wash off the filth notwithstanding their joy in the result.
“But the dilemma is always whether it’s a good idea to descend to the level of the other side in order to fight it.”
Only if you wish to enhance your chances to win. If you simply want to fight the *good* fight then its entirely optional.
When it comes to the actual politics of the present moment it seems to me the only real question in this regard is the question of Machiavelli in The Discourses where he says:
Questions as to the “acceptable” methods by which to fight the opponents of the life and liberty of the country seem to me to be mere dilettantism. They are the accoutrements of the mild right that the left has come not only to expect but to depend upon.
From Jerry Pournelle … (but emphasis mine)
The Road to Serfdom
What matters is that Mr. Roberts has handed the question back to the political branches of the government.
…
Whatever the motives of Mr. Roberts, he has sent the message that the Court cannot continue to be the only barrier toward the march of the nation toward national socialism. In my judgment it was clear to him — it certainly is to me — that handing the Federal Government direct responsibility for the 15 to 20% of the economy encompassed by health care, adding that to what the government already controls, is a fundamental change in the nature of the Republic. It is a fundamental change in the Constitution made without any Amendment. Ruling Obamacaret unconstitutional would make the Court the key issue of November 2012, when the key issue really ought to be, do you want the Federal Government running that much of the economy? Do you want to go where the country has been heading for the past decades?
Thus his decision: this is a political decision. Make it the key issue of the November 2012 campaign. You cannot rely on the Supreme Court to stand in the path of history and shout Stop! Perhaps at one time you could, but you are down to one man. You have bet the future course of the Republic on the life and integrity of five men; if any one of them dies or is disabled you will no longer have anyone standing in the way of this march to national socialism.
Mr. Roberts is one man, one vulnerable man, who sees the future clearly.
Now I have no sources inside the Court. I have never met Mr. Roberts. I have no idea what he is thinking, but I would be astonished if the above reasoning had never occurred to him. It seems obvious to me.
In any event the effect of what he has done is to make ObamaCare the key issue of the 2012 election as it was of the 2010 election. The 2010 election that sent a Republican to Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. The election that reduced the Democratic power in the Senate, and gave the Republicans a majority in the House. The election that showed that raising taxes is not a popular platform to run on. And he has said that ObamaCare is a tax.
–
vanderleun: then you are saying that the ends justifies the means. Lying, cheating—perhaps even, in the end, turning into what you despise.
That’s wonderful.
Paul_In_Houston: I don’t buy that Roberts is playing some meta game of four-dimensional chess. He may have given the right a tool in saying it’s a tax, but he took away much more from them when he said it was permissible and tortured the constitution (and the definition of a tax) to say so. He could have stopped the expansion of the federal government on very solid constitutional grounds, and it was well within his right to do so (one of the functions of the Supreme Court is to declare unconstitutional statutes or parts of statutes to be unconstitutional), but he did not.
This of course does not mean the fight would have been won had he done so. Hardly; not even close. But it would have helped a great deal in this one huge battle about Obamacare and the best way to reform the health insurance system. Of course it’s up to the electorate to protect liberty, no matter what Roberts might have done or not done. But I can’t pretend what Roberts did do was good or even neutral, even if it might (accent on the “might”) have unexpected (accent on the “unexpected”) beneficial effects in the election.
I guess for me it comes down to this…None of that matters, and it’s a waste of valuable time and energy debating about all of these little things. (what kind of tax, did Roberts switch, blah blah blah.) The SCOTUS ruled that the law stands, and we need to get busy making the argument that it’s a horrible law, why it’s a horrible law, and why we need to elect Republicans to get it overturned. We simply can’t afford all of this BS. We can’t afford to be fractured, we can’t afford to lose this fight. I believe this law will destroy the country and our liberty. It’s time to get busy and get focused on kicking as many Democrats out of office as we can.
Well, I can see that a position in which the ends justify the means might offend delicate sensibilities, but again we can return to Isiah Berlin’s extensive meditation of the question of Machievelli as being a question to which all of Western Civ has struggled to answer since M. first posed it. It doesn’t make M wrong, it just makes him difficult.
Let’s see what the core mention of ends justifies means is in the original M’s Discourses on Levy:
“The consuls together with the whole Roman army fell, as I have related, into the hands of the Samnites, who imposed on them the most ignominious terms, insisting that they should be stripped of their arms, and pass under the yoke before they were allowed to return to Rome. The consuls being astounded by the harshness of these conditions and the whole army overwhelmed with dismay, Lucius Lentulus, the Roman lieutenant, stood forward and said, that in his opinion they ought to decline no course whereby their country might be saved; and that as the very existence of Rome depended on the preservation of her army, that army must be saved at any sacrifice, for whether the means be honourable or ignominious, all is well done that is done for the defence of our country. And he said that were her army preserved, Rome, in course of time, might wipe out the disgrace; but if her army were destroyed, however gloriously it might perish, Rome and her freedom would perish with it. In the event his counsel was followed.
Now this incident deserves to be noted and pondered over by every citizen who is called on to advise his country; for when the entire safety of our country is at stake, no consideration of what is just or unjust, merciful or cruel, praiseworthy or shameful, must intervene. On the contrary, every other consideration being set aside, that course alone must be taken which preserves the existence of the country and maintains its liberty. And this course we find followed by the people of France, both in their words and in their actions, with the view of supporting the dignity of their king and the integrity of their kingdom; for there is no remark they listen to with more impatience than that this or the other course is disgraceful to the king. For their king, they say, can incur no disgrace by any resolve he may take, whether it turn out well or ill; and whether it succeed or fail, all maintain that he has acted as a king should.”
[ http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10827/pg10827.html ]
Key here, you will note, and persuasive in the incident cited as well, is the notion that without victory there will be no state of freedom in existence to reclaim the “honor.”
It seems to me the error here, and it is an error commonly found in liberal/progressive rhetoric, is that actions/methods can indeed turn one into an object that one “despises.” This seems to assume that actions are an indelible stain on the fair and unsullied white sheet of faultless honor… even if that unsullied white sheet is a funeral shroud. I do not believe this is the case but simply a learned attitude that can be unlearned.
After all, if Gramescian/Machievellian methods can be used to undo the republic, certainly the same methods can be used to undo the left.
vanderleun: your example, that of an actual hot war in which it is clear that the literal survival of a country is at stake, is not a good analogy. Because the problem is that in a battle such as we are in now—which is an ideological war for the heart and soul of the American people—each side believes it is the one preserving the country from the other, and if each believes it can compromise principle because of that, than they do become more or less indistinguishable, ultimately. Pave with good intentions and all that.
It is an old question that has no real answer—an old dilemma that has no solution—and do not pretend you have found it. Even in World War II, which IMHO was the closest thing we have had to an existential war in modern times—although we were brutal, we did not descend to the tactics of the enemy. I have written posts describing why I believe that even the terrible act of dropping the bomb on Japan was the least terrible of a group of very terrible alternatives, and so I understand the principle of sometimes doing things that seem cruel, however.
It is always tempting to lie and spin in an ideological (as opposed to literal) war, which is what I’m talking about here. I not only don’t think it’s right, I don’t think it’s the way to “win.” If one of our side’s arguments is that we are better ideologically, we must actually be better ideologically, and lies are not convincing unless you think people are much too stupid to understand they are being lied to. And if that is the case we are doomed anyway, so what’s the point? That the better liar will be the victor, so we’d better be the better liar?
Oh, and the idea that the ends justify the means not only offend “delicate” sensibilities, it should offend the sensibilities of everyone. It is, IMHO, one of the reasons I prefer right to left—I happen to think it “offends” the sensibilities of those on the right at least somewhat more often than of those on the left. And I happen to think that it’s a good thing, and not really a handicap in the war, although it might be a drawback in some of the battles.
A much better weapon would be to work on the mundane level of making inroads in arenas such as school boards, the way the left did. We need our own Long March. And in the short run, being both aggressive and relentless and basically truthful is the only way to go, IMHO. People see through lies and spin more often than not, I believe, and it makes then cynical about both sides, and more inclined to vote for the side that will give them the most stuff. If the right is to stand for liberty and the values of the Founding Fathers, it must act with more integrity than the left and trust that it will resonate with a greater number of people. I don’t think it’s necessary, or productive, to resort to trickery and lies.
I concur with Vanderleun. Fighting in the sewers does not mean one becomes sewage.
Don Carlos: I figured you would be.
“Fighting in the sewers” is fine with me. But you don’t fight sewerage with sewerage. You fight hard and you fight smart, but you don’t have to lie to people, which is what we’re talking about here.
And by the way, I’m not talking about lying to the enemy in wartime. That’s okay. I’m talking about lying and spinning to the American people. You fight lies with truth.
For example, look at what Breitbart did. I never saw him lie, although I suppose I might have missed something. But he was a tough, tough and very effective fighter despite generally telling the truth, and he wasn’t above using tricky tactics to expose the other side without lying about them. He drove the other side crazy, and they certainly lied about him.
We could use him now.
(Also see my comment right above yours.)
I think that the assumption that this is not a hot war is an error. I think it assumes that simply because we’re not seeing armies engaging each other with weapons that we are not in a war for the future of the republic. I think that, at this point, we are. Neither do I think that a lie “dooms” one’s side. It doesn’t unless you think we are in some kind of contest to see who can be the nicer, truthier bunch of people.
As to citing WWII and “although we were brutal, we did not descend to the tactics of the enemy” I think that some history from, say, the Battle of Okinawa, the fire bombing of Tokyo, the firebombing of Dresden and other items on the macro and micro level would put paid to that nice notion.
As to whether or not we “became” like the monsters we fought I would say only that we did not do so only because we did not have to do so. If it had been necessary it would have happened. Depend upon it.
This situation is not longer just a nice “argument” between different sides of the same family. This is a situation in which the republic is being dismantled and the Constitution hung on a nail in the crapper. They long since tore off and used the part about ethics.
vanderleun: I didn’t say this wasn’t a war, I said it was an “ideological” war rather than a hot war. Your assertion that it is a hot war is incorrect, unless you are using some very bizarre definition of “hot war.”
And of course we used some of the same tactics in terms of bombing as the enemy did in WWII. I never said we did not; what would make you think I meant that, when I specifically discussed Hiroshima, one of the worst examples of those tactics in terms of the loss of innocent human life?
But we certainly did not descend to the enemy tactics in general. Just as one example, take the Holocaust, one of the things to which I was referring. Or our goals for the conquered nations, as opposed to what Germany had planned had it been victorious.
Slightly OT, but we all need to remember just how terrible this law is.
Affirmative action doctors?
Employers must pay for free birth control pills and abortions? And 26-year old dependents?
Insurance companies must take everyone with pre-existing conditions?
Death panels?
All the problems Obamacare was supposed to solve could be addressed with minimal government interference.
All the talk about tax versus penalty is a waste of time. After the American medical system is destroyed, the biggest winners will be Costa Rica, India, and other medical tourism sites.
Tom, I agree with you, 100%.
Vanderleun, I also agree that we may have to get down in the mud and wrestle with the progs. Becoming as brutal as the enemy is what happened to our Marines in the Pacific in WWII. Yet, when the victory was secured, they returned to pre -war habits and standards.
It’s a brutal business, is war. Politics is supposed to be more of a gentleman’s game. Not in the hands of the progs, commies, and their fellow travelers. Artfldgr has written and explained at length about their low down, dishonorable strategies and tactics. Yes, it’s nice to have a fair fight with rules followed by the contenders. However, we have not and will not get a fair fight from the progs. Remember Obama’s mantra, “If they bring a knife, we bring a gun.”
Whether the payment for not having health insurance is a penalty or a tax is, as far as I’m concerned, a matter of semantics. If the SCOTUS rules that it’s a tax and any other definition would render the law unconstitutional, then are we not within our rights to call it a tax? Not to mention that there are 21 other taxing provisions in the ACA over and above the tax for not having insurance. May we not then refer to it as being a humongous tax bill with many other anti-freedom rules stuck in there with the taxes?
It’s a bad tax law. It’s a bad health care reform law. Bad laws need to be repealed and replaced.
Well we’ll just have to agree to differ on the nature of this war. You don’t have to be shot to be conquered. You don’t even have to be invaded. You simply have to let it happen while waiting for your enemy to be nice and play fair.
As they say in the movies if you don’t think you’re being destroyed it can color what you are prepared to do about it.
Malone: You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I’m saying is, what are you prepared to do?
Ness: Anything within the law.
Malone: And *then* what are you prepared to do? If you open the can on these worms you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they’re not gonna give up the fight, until one of you is dead.
Ness: I want to get Capone! I don’t know how to do it.
Malone: You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. *That’s* the *Chicago* way! And that’s how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that? I’m offering you a deal. Do you want this deal?
Ness: I have sworn to capture this man with all legal powers at my disposal and I will do so.
Malone: Well, the Lord hates a coward.
neo, you asked when did Obama call the mandate a tax. He has long tried to have it both ways. In the public he said the mandate is not a tax. When his administration argued before courts, he claimed it was.
Neoneocon,
You ask “. . . if the Obamacare charge for non-purchase of health insurance is a tax, what sort of tax is it?”
Although not an attorney, nor legally trained let me make an empirical attempt to address that (full disclosure, In response to his article “What was Roberts’ Thinking?” I’ve sent a letter-to-the-editor to Richard Epstein at Defining Ideas suggesting that he deal with this very topic).
In the financial industry we currently have two distinct taxes that, IMO, fall precisely in this same category. They are excise taxes. The first is a 10% premature distribution tax which is levied for most IRA and Qualified Plan distributions taken prior to age 59 1/2. The second is a 50% penalty tax which is assessed after age 70 1/2 if an investor fails to take the required minimum amount from his/her IRA or Q-Plan (it is assessed not on the total amount of the distribution but only on the shortage).
Both of these taxes are frequently called “penalties,” but it is my understanding that they are legislatively and therefore legally “taxes”.
The also fall into Justice Roberts’ argument for calling the mandate a “tax.” They are assessed and collected by the IRS, the proceeds of the collection are remanded to the govt and they are based upon income. A taxable distribution becomes an income taxable event and each of these taxes is levied against that event (10% on what the premature income distribution WAS, and 50% on what the income distribution should have been).
Furthermore, the 50% penalty actually taxes the participant for something they DIDN’t do (i.e., not taking out enough money to BE taxed).
Now I readily admit that there may be underlying legal issues w/ which I am not aware, but initially, these two distribution taxes and the healthcare mandate seem to fall under the umbrella of Justice Roberts’ reasoning.
I am curious to see what legally trained minds such as yours and the constitutional scholars would say about this supposed relationship. Aside from the question of should Roberts have or should he have not applied such reasoning, does it validate the actual reasoning or not, and why?
J.J: so lying to the American people is just fine with you? In an ideological war such as the one in which we are engaged?
Which is the subject matter of this post.
Neo writes,
“I’m still trying to learn the truth and then reflect on it. For example, right now I’d like to ask liberal pundits the following question (or in fact anyone asserting as much): if the Obamacare charge for non-purchase of health insurance is a tax, what sort of tax is it? ”
Why? Do you imagine the technical premise upon which they supposedly justify their appropriation behaviors really function as more than a post hoc “legal” rationalization of their will to have?
DNW: You ask, “Do you imagine the technical premise upon which they supposedly justify their appropriation behaviors really function as more than a post hoc ‘legal’ rationalization of their will to have?”
My answer is: actually, no, although some subset of them might think so, I suppose.
By asking the question I am trying to get at (a) what their reasoning might be, just in case there is some validity there; and (b) if they can’t answer the question except with absurdities, to point out just how absurd and politically motivated their reasoning is.
So the question could get at several sorts of truth. If in fact there is a valid argument that it’s a tax of some kind, they could offer the explanation as to what sort of tax and I will take a look at that argument. And if there is not such an argument (as I strongly suspect there is not), their failure to give a good answer to the question can serve to expose what is going on there for those who really care to look.
My other point is that, till now, I haven’t even seen an effort to answer the question of what sort of tax it might be. Which says a lot about the rigor—or lack thereof—of the thinking of those who espouse the idea that it is a tax.
T: yes, but the thing the person didn’t do in that case is contingent on that same person’s having done something first: purchased an IRA or Q-plan. Without that purchase the tax can’t take effect at all. That also takes it out of the realm of a direct tax, by the way. It takes it into the realm of a tax on something that someone initially did—a financial transaction, and a detail within that transaction, rather than a simple failure to do something, period (a failure to buy insurance).
In my opinion, those taxes you cite all fall into a very different category of being. If you can cite a tax that involves no action at all, even initially (like the Obamacare tax/penalty), I’d love to hear what it is.
From the latest thread on Belmont Club . . .
36. trangbang68
I think the problem sane and morally intact folks have when dealing with leftists, statists, jihadists and other enemies is viewing their motives through our own principled belief systems. We’re trying to play by the Marquis of Queensberry rules and they’re hitting us with 2é—4′s and grinding broken glass in our faces. I know we don’t want to “lose our humanity” or “stoop to their level” or whatever the argument is today, but there are some folks amongst the elites who need a mudhole stomped in their ass and someone to turn around and stomp it dry again.
July 2, 2012 – 1:23 pm
Trangbang is talking about LIBOR, but the point of view is applicable to Obamacare. We are in a slow-motion fight to the death. We need to take this fight seriously before it’s too late.
Promethea: do you think Breitbart played by Marquess of Queensberry rules? I do not. And yet it didn’t involve lying. As I’ve said over and over again, I’m not suggesting kid gloves.
It’s interesting that this topic generates so much ire—and, I believe, so much misunderstanding of what I’m saying. This has nothing to do with pounding the opposition. It has to do with whether lying is the right way to go about it.
Neo . . . the point isn’t whether it is a tax or a penalty. The point is that this hateful law must be struck down. It was passed illegally in the dead of a winter’s night, and it contains many items that are destructive of people’s lives, livelihoods, and property.
The law is an abomination. Roberts and his ilk are traitors. As someone said on another thread somewhere, not one single person who passed this law is subject to its provisions.
That is tyranny.
Neoneocon,
I can’t argue with that logic. For the record, I oppose Obamacare and the mandate intensely; I’m just trying to figure out how this all fits into Roberts’ reasoning. Perhaps, using Occam’s Razor, it WAS jut a bad decision—it wouldn’t be a SCOTUS first.
Promethea,
You wrote that “The point is that this hateful law must be struck down..” I couldn’t agree more, but that’s precsiely what the “traitorous” Roberts has permitted to happen. As a mandate it’s a constitutional issue–gotta override that with a new amendment ratified by the states. As a tax, it’s a legislative issue, it can be repealed by congress and the people have the power to vote into office representatives that will do precisely that and it can even be deactivated by executive order as Obama’s own precedents have shown.
My rhetorical question is this: “Is John Roberts actually playing a very dangerous game where the future of this country hangs in the balance? Given the conservative Angst, was this a considered reaction for the precise purpose of getting the socialist Obama out of office? Did he really understand that a decision in the other direction would have the potential effect charging up the liberal left and thus his choice was for a lesser of two dangers?” Just asking.
I don’t think any of the Supreme Court justices read the 2,300-page bill. Surely there was something in that bill that would have been unconstitutional.
For example, the provision that medical schools have to accept affirmative action students. That really made me angry. That would have been a good time to strike down affirmative action. It’s insane to demand that doctors be accepted according to race. I would have refused to go to any doctor that appeared to be chosen according to race. There is another provision that puts some new tax on investment income. How can that be related to healthcare? There is a “no-severablity” clause in the bill, meaning that it must be accepted in its entirety. Surely there is some teeny thing there–like forced labor for doctors or some such–that could render it unconstitutional, throwing the whole thing out.
Obviously, I haven’t read the 2,300-page bill. But neither did the Congress nor the Supreme Court. How can laws be constitutional that haven’t been read by the people who passed them?
If one is going to be “cute,” like Roberts was, then he could have found something “cuter” to put a stake in the heart of this evil bill.
Of course, the obvious way to strike it down would have been to say that the federal government has no right to create an all-purpose law that destroys insurance companies and takes over the medical insurance business of America.
Spinning a tale and telling a lie will capture the many; but remember the ten to one rule. The captured are worth only one tenth of those not captured.
The spin war is unlike war where defined geo-boundaries exist. When the purpose of war is to kill and not to convert, then both sides practice deception as befitting.
In the spin war, deception works but reaches an asymptotic point where something other than deception must provide control. Truth, on the other hand, is not a limited continuous function, necessarily. It might be quite linear for awhile, or geometric, but then it jumps up and down and struggles and prevails. But since it incorporates more than man can comprehend, it is deception that fears truth and not the other way around. Deception is the way man wants the world to be; not the way it is.
To be on the side of truth and say that deception is allowed (again, only for the spin model, not the geo model) and would be efficacious is to fracture the integrity of one’s expression of truth.
Promethea,
Unless you’re speaking of a speaking of a specific severability clause regarding health care, there was NO severability clause in the ACA. This was always one of the contentious issues–would SCOTUS strike the mandate as unconstitutional and the entire law because of a LACK of a severability clause?
The original House bill HAD a severability clause, the later Senate version did not. The normal process was to go to a conference cttee, blend the two bills and re-present them to the House and the Senate for a favorable vote. The House was no problem because it was Dem controlled but after the Senate passed its version, they lost a seat to the election of Scott Brown (MA) and lost the 60 seat opportunity to overcome a filibuster. The House then simply passed the Senate version as it was (w/ out a severability clause) because it was still Dem controlled thus not requiring a second Senate vote.
Correction of a bad use of a pronoun: Please substitute “Truth” for “it.”
But since Truth (not “it”) incorporates more than man can comprehend . . .
Liberals have always had the advantage in this fight because, in general, they don’t fight fair. What’s more, they know, in general, conservatives do. I’m still glad of the difference, but I grow weary of the result.
“”so lying to the American people is just fine with you? In an ideological war such as the one in which we are engaged?””
Neo
Is there a such thing as truthful propoganda? Lol. This issue sort of gets to the heart of why our rotary club republicans keep getting their ass kicked by union hall democrats. Which might seem all noble and feel goody if so many lives of people not even born yet weren’t being ruined in the process.
Highlander,
I would disagree with your terminology on this. I think that in the past conservatives have fought in a gentlemanly fashion (rules of combat, etc); that is beyond fair, that is a structured fight. I would agree with Neoneocon that Breitbart fought fairly, but hit back at least as hard as he was hit. Like the left, his battle was less structured and he didn’t worry about being perceived as “better than his adversaries” which was, IMO, McCain’s fatal flaw. Breitbart used the left’s own tactics against them without the concommittant lying and misrepresentation that they engage in.
HCT (Health Care Tax), is a sales tax potentially and a breach restitution….
Insurance, technically, is a contractual product
as is telephone service but not beer. as is your system software, but not a road toll.
anyone notice how so many products became more than just a product but contractual products where your ownership of the object of said contractual product is secondary to the product itself. though insurance was always this way, including the odd ball Lloyd’s.
so when you get insurance, a phone, or get software… your really entering into a contract, and the phone is sold to you to use (or given). the software contract ula says you dont own the product, your licensed to USE it. insurance terms are all a standardized legal contract.
under contract law, an entity can obtain settlement of profits that would be earned if a contract were not breached.
the law basically is saying that this is a contract between the state and the people, and if you buy it, then your fulfilling the terms of said contract.
if you do not buy it, your are breaching the contract, and said money can then be obtained for breach.
Since the state is the entity that sells the contract, one can think of the price as a 100% + sales tax. make the cost a penny for everyone, and the sales tax a 30,000% if the payment is $300 per person.
this wacky step above is what you need to make it a TAX, otherwise the rest of the argument doesnt really need it. but without it, it may not be seen as a classic tax.
however a new classification of tax would not be covered by laws that define the other kinds. this new tax sans the 30,000% bs, would ultimately be a new kind derived from a direct payment for a contract with the state.
this is the only argument i can think of that can be contorted in some odd way to make some sort of argument that would fit the question at hand. Contorted like a Circus de Soliel performer, but technically an angle that works (ignoring all spirit and focusing only on the letter of things)
in this way, its a penalty and a tax, but not a penalty tax… because the penalty is what the state would have gotten had you not fallen in breach with their social contract.
the party receiving the profits they would have earned does not receive them as a penalty. while breach can carry penalty, the money that replaces profits lost that can be shown as such, is not the penalty.
All three positions above are satisfied easily by such a perspective. the US government will enter into an insurance contract with the people, and as such those that pay are fulfilling the terms of such a contract, and those that don’t are in breach and have to pay the losses.
putting the cart before the horse is what they are doing so that it compels the purchase.
the fact the state gets the profits either way from a contract everyone enters into, is then what compels the purchase.
with the sales tax contortion on the breach contortion, its a sales tax when you pay, but since its a contract, its a breach when you don’t, and the party (the state) loses the sales tax, and so seeks it upon your breach with the contract it has with you.
Neo: “J.J: so lying to the American people is just fine with you? In an ideological war such as the one in which we are engaged?
Which is the subject matter of this post.”
Not lying – lawyering. As in what the definition of is, is. You are tilting at the definition of how a penalty can be a tax. Yes, somewhere in there there must be some truth, some clarity. However, until clarity is arrived at, why can’t we define it exactly as CJ Roberts did? Is that lying? No, it is lawyering – of which the progs do an enormous amount. Bill Clinton gave a graduate seminar in it during his presidency. I don’t like it, and like you, would prefer clean, well understood definitions of important terms. But when the definitions are cloudy, is it lying to use that which gives your side some advantage?
I am reminded of one of the great lessons of life.
Bugs Bunny is running for office against Yosemite Sam. Bugs adopts a Teddy Roosevelt persona and exclaims ” I speak softly and carry a biiiiiiiig stick.” Sam appears on screen w/ an enormous club, looks at Bugs and proclaims “Well I speak loudly and carry a bigger stick——-and I USE it, too! Thwack!”)
Therin is the lesson and a la Breitbart, there is no lie in that!
Artfldgr wrote: “if you do not buy it, your are breaching the contract, and said money can then be obtained for breach. ”
If not entering into the contract equates to a breach of contract, isn’t this like duress which, then, invalidates the contract on its face?
J.J.:I think there is something about this thread that hits a nerve with people that is clouding the message I am sending out.
Let me try to be really really clear here: the lying I am talking about is lying by the press, and by pundits (some of them, of course, lawyers), to the American people. I am not talking about lawyers in court, or judges in a court at all when I am speaking of lies, although of course they are capable of both.
I am talking about a pundit or press member or politician changing his/her tune, for example, whether that someone be on left or right, who spent a lot of time and effort saying this was not a tax and is now saying it is, or vice versa. Or someone who, to score political points, misquotes someone or says something they know to be untrue.
Notice, for example, in my post, I wrote: “For example, right now I’d like to ask liberal pundits the following question (or in fact anyone asserting as much): if the Obamacare charge for non-purchase of health insurance is a tax, what sort of tax is it?” Yes, I’d like to hear from lawyers and especially Roberts on that issue, but the thrust of my post and my question there is quite clear: liberal pundits. I go on to talk about political ads and the like.
And if a person on the right wants to define a tax in the way Roberts did, then that person would have to agree that he ruled correctly. That person would also have to stop fighting the expansion of the tax power of Congress. That person would also have to disavow his/her earlier assertion that it was not a tax, if in fact the person had said that. That person would also have to live with the fact that he/she is lying, if in fact he/she really, honestly believes it is NOT a tax.
So, why not tell the truth? If you happen to believe it’s not a tax, why say you believe it is? Why not emphasize that the Court has said that it’s a tax, if that’s your point? I think hypocrisy and lies are discernible, and people lose credibility with a lot of listeners when they use them.
Artfldgr: the state is not the entity that sells the contract. The private insurance company is the entity that sells the product. The state enforces contract law.
“Obamacare requires people who can least afford it to pay $700 (or whatever) just for being alive.”
That’s the truth; let’s go with that. And I agree with you, Neo; if the Right becomes intellectually dishonest, it loses most of what it is. The Right is right because we see how the world actually works. If we start pretending the world doesn’t work a certain way, or words don’t have certain meaning, we become the Left . Because after we start warping truth and words and meaning, whatever truths we stand for will also be warped.
T: my point exactly, about Breitbart. He was a genius of sorts. He managed to keep his integrity in the way I’m talking about, while fighting very hard and very effectively. Not everyone can do that, which is why he was so valuable.
And of course, the left accused him of lying, all the time. They couldn’t damage him as much as they otherwise might have because he had the defense of truth, if people were paying attention and did their homework. Naturally, not everyone was going to pay that kind of attention.
So my point is not that people should be gentle and not fight hard. That was a problem for McCain, and a paradox, because although he was a tough guy with a military history he didn’t know how to fight hard, and/or didn’t want to, in the political arena.
And of course telling the truth doesn’t insulate you from charges that you’re a liar. The attacks on Breitbart proved that, if anyone needed proof.
It is an old question that has no real answer–an old dilemma that has no solution–and do not pretend you have found it.
it WAS found though, and the answer is not within the logic, but in numbers.
the population is something that does not exist. its a mental construct we use. some of our mental constructs put is in a position where we think they exist because the rules and labels work so well they are a reality for us.
but sans our minds, there is no such thing as a population, but there would be such things as individuals.
the answer to the question then is in the number of people who are moral, and so can hold the end justifies the means types to some set of rules that work and have teeth with keeping them bound up in mind.
this is what makes western civ judeo christian view work and more successful. It was said many times.
ergo the destruction of the people that make up the judeo christian western civ… and the influx of others and the games…
the religion before and the morals of the people allowed action in the face of ideology. it was slowly dismantled, but if you know the history, you could replace what was removed… and removed what was added that was not in line with it.
you dont have to be a judeo christian for this to work. the moral momentum of that is what fooled us into thinking that this way of living and regarding the world, was how we naturally are. (and so if you removed it we would be free of it and still be the same)
The one ethos that had the togetherness and the ability to stand up to power was judeo christian. if you look at the other religions and pseudo religions you will find that none of them are much of a threat to a state power – except judeo/christian ethics.
from pharaoh to today, its the one force that has confounded total power (Even its own total power. when it sought it, it fractured and there were many kinds each diluting the power of the one).
look to history… throughout history, religion and the state have clashed, to the point where the state has even tried to merge with it to have it.
the beauty of the american system was that the state was kept separate as an advocate. however, until socialists and progressives the church was not separate as an influence and moral beacon to the state.
the destruction of family, demonization of the church ethic in culture, and so on… was all talked about and discussed as to what to do to free power from tis limit, so that power would not be oppressed any more by this ‘system’.
if you think socialism is a drag on economy, i will tell you that the biggest drag is hidden. its the cost difference between the more moral past, and the less moral chain gated windows, and so on.
all that lack of morals has a financial cost too. and its HUGE. and when wants to say which morals, as we can make em up. the truth is that while we can pretend what we make up is a moral, the real ones are essential, absolute, and resonate with natures.
think of it this way, you can lead a horse to water but you cant make him drink.. you can hand someone a moral, but that dont mean someone will practice it. the system with the most real morals that do not take away freedom that does not require another.
real morals are built on respect, not coercion, and require the same in return.
and judeo christian ethos has real morals as such. Other religions have some of them, and other things, but they dont seem to create such prosperity and freedom to act, along with the idea that its not reserved for itself only but was to be shared.
America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within. Joseph Stalin
now that no morals is normal, and we are materialist (do not see the spiritual), and are not allowed to love our home and families (our duty, honor, country as Douglas MacArthur said)
if i had time i can find others who are all saying the same thing… in one form or another..
“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
WHy do you have to give it to them in little pieces. because you have to normalize certain things before they will take it. from the point that that was made, america would not accept it, becuase america had a set of judeo christian ethic and morals and such informed them to avoid certain things and if they didnt, bad would befall…
if the bible is talking about natural principals then the failure or success of the outcome would appear remarkable to people looking to follow something that brings success. moral guidance, etc.
this would be regardless of whether god exists or not.
after all, isnt marxism just another set of rules to live by and other morals? but unlike its competitor its rules and morals do not lead to a better welfare in followers, only in leaders. where the other morals lead to better followers, which also has better leaders.
we clearly can say that our forefathers would not vote for such people as we do… why? who informed them? how were they educated? not in state school, the state had not that power. and who made sure they knew all this? mom and dad, but not after feminism… (not to mention teaching and explaining 1 on 1 what was right, what was wrong, etc). who is teaching them now?
one does not have to believe in god to benefit from the perspectives, any more than one has to believe in talking foxes to learn from aesop.
there is a reason why religion destroyed aristocracies power, and it didn’t do it by being like that and or like the state… (when it was like that, the state was very powerful).
the murder of the jews last century was the attempt to remove the ultra conservative keepers of the faith. the morals and ethics that has you acting in terms of that god and what he would approve.
cant serve two masters and they wont change horses. modern christian majority do not have that attention and conserving idea…
Neoneocon,
As many people have noted progressives often live in an echo chamber and, thus, never develop the ability to debate and defend their positions. Breitbart was, to my knowledge, the first to throw the Lewft’s own Alinsky-ite tactics back at them and they had no idea how to deal with that. Before him what conservative had the fortitude to publicly tell a Progressive to “go to Hell” or to commandeer a press conference? To the Left Breitbart was deadly, figuratively speaking, because he undermined their facade of credibility and refused to cower in fear of being called a ___________ (choose your own expletive-laden ad hominem here). He made it clear that they were loud, obnoxious and annoying, but not all that scary, really. IMO that’s why they hated him so.
Artfldgr: the state is not the entity that sells the contract. The private insurance company is the entity that sells the product. The state enforces contract law.
really?
are you sure about that?
The state health benefits exchange is one of the central concepts embedded in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
you see, you buy insurance from the exchange, that buys it from the insurance company.
so in this model you DO buy it from the exchange.
as this is a form of nationalization where the state takes on the role of distributor with a selection of products it carries made by others
even if your able to choose direct payment, the control of it all makes that just a game with definitions, and not really independent as all the details are dictated by the real owner, the state.
after all, one of the key determinates of property is your ability to act upon it and do with it as you will.
or as ford said. i want to own nothing but control everything. which is a clever way to say i want to own everything, without being responsible for it. nationalization accomplishes this (regardless of the form it takes)
Mike Rosen, a local talk radio host, often says that “the constitution says what the Supreme Court says it says” The Supreme Court says it’s a tax, therefore it’s a tax. No matter what my position on the mandate prior to the decision on healthcare, it’s now a tax, because the Supreme Court says it’s a tax. Again, I suggest that there will be plenty of time after the election to ponder these deep and meaningful questions. Right now we need to stop arguing amongst ourselves and start talking about how it’s the biggest government takeover of all time, how it is intended to destroy private health insurance, how a lot of us will lose our insurance because our companies will pay the tax or fine, rather than provide coverage. How it will rob us of choice, and destroy some insurance that provides lower levels of coverage, because it can’t meet the government mandated levels. How it will break our already in 15 trillion dollar in debt government. How it will create long lines, and delays for treatment. Last but not least, how anything the government gives, it can take away. These arguments will carry the day. We can talk about whether Roberts is a liberal, and these other deep and important questions after the election. FOCUS PEOPLE, FOCUS!!!!
the New York Post saw a pattern that most other media outlets never see. To some, it was jarring.
“Anti-Jewish crime wave,” read the June headline about a series of recent anti-Semitic attacks.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/black-mobs-now-beating-jews-in-new-york/
The conservatives [and Kennedy] refused to join any aspect of his opinion, including sections with which they agreed, such as his analysis imposing limits on Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause, the sources said.
Instead, the four joined forces and crafted a highly unusual, unsigned joint dissent. They deliberately ignored Roberts’ decision, the sources said, as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate.
Tom: Well, that’s just peachy.
So, whatever the Supreme Court says goes? The Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is?
Unbelievable. And people on the right call leftists mindless followers?
I wish I understood how someone can hate Obomneycare and yet support Romney. It makes no sense. It’s like saying you abhor Nazism but feel the time is really right for a man like Alfred Rosenberg.
Artfldgr: yes, that was one of the early tip-offs that the process by which this case was decided was highly unusual and highly contentious. I respect the 3 conservative justices and Kennedy for what they did. I read their dissent, by the way, and thought it was excellent.
Rob: I’ve probably written at least 20 posts on that subject. Do a search and you’ll find them. Take a look especially at this one, particularly the video and the NOTE at the end.
Here’s an excerpt that I quoted there:
Artfldgr: my reading about the exchanges indicates, to the best I can decipher the situation, that although the states maintain all sorts of regulatory control, the contract is between the individual and the private company, not the state.
Of course, I doubt that would last very long. I believe the goal of the left is to have the state (I mean the State, as in the federal government) take over the whole shebang. But as of now, and in the beginning of Obamacare at least, my strong impression is that the contract remains in the private sector.
Even now, states (small “s” in this case) regulate insurance fairly heavily, and the rules vary from state to state. But the person still buys a private product (unless they’re on Medicaid, etc.).
Artfldgr: in response to your comment at 11:04 PM, I would say that it all depends on how far down that path to lack of morality the country has gone.
I don’t think it’s passed the point of no return. Yet.
Neo,
Maybe it’s because I read your writings all the time. But I find your site refreshing and the first one I open every day.
When I’m traveling and in the airport, at lunch at my desk, at home before bed, with coffee in the morning.
I don’t comment as much as I used to but that is because i have to prioritize given how busy I am.
I agree with what you have to say probably. There is something to be said for people probably reading what they agree with and reinforcing their beliefs.
But I learn a lot from you. I used to try to teach. I became too busy to argue and too busy with irrelevant idiots where I work and live.
The mental gymnastics required for this SCOTUS decision makes my brain hurt. I try to think where we are headed.
I knew we were headed this way already I suppose. In 1995 the press and democrats kept up with the mantra that Republicans were cutting Medicare 270 billion dollars over and over. People kept trying to point out to people like Dan Rather that math is math and an increase of 7% per year is an increase.
The problems are that we are left to beg and the blob grows (referring to the movie “The blob”). I call the government the blob.
I work for it. Even so-called conservatives are entrenched and help the blob grow. They see thier piece of the blob is important. Everyone elses piece of the blob isn’t.
My parents are conservative but worked for the federal government for 40 years. They cashed out at the end which is probably the smartest thing they could’ve done. I’ll probably do the same.
I have about 4 baskets for retirement but will it be enough.
I advise everyone to generate and build many baskets for their retirements but most of the people I know think that their one or two is fine.
When I work hard every day, on my own initiative I take classes and learn more, I do more each day than most around me and then I see self-centered me, me me’ers who can’t see that we are headed towards very difficult times.
Wow! Looks of strong, thoughtful, urbane, and highly cultitvated comments. Forgive me for being simple….
1. Stop contemplating Roberts’ ‘reasoning’? He betrayed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So stop pondering Roberts. Start thinking about how to elect a congress and president that will make Roberts’ decision null and void.
2. SCOTUS is not the final arbitrator of the law of the land. WE ARE. And we are in a struggle for the life or death of individual liberty. I believe in peaceful means, so it is my duty to do all I can to shift the course of the ship of state millimeter by millimeter. (Note: if the shooting ever starts I’m ready to be a member of the senior citizens brigade.)
3. Comparing Romney to Nazis if infantile. Yes we need to hold Mitt’s feet and all elected officials, feet to the fire, but if for one nanosecond you think Romney = BHO you are, politely, missing a few cards from the deck.
4. Believe your gut instincts. This is a struggle for my (and your) children and grandchildren. Defeat BHO, hold the house, and take back the senate should be our focus. Yes, if we are victorious we will still have a swollen behemoth managed by flawed mortals. But that is a damn sight better than what we have now. Measure victory in inches gained, not completed Hail Mary passes.
5. Be positive! Negativity assures defeat. Visualize your opponent on the ground and you standing with good posture and stable stance looking down at his defeat.
Neo-
I somewhere got the idea that you went to law school, but are a lawyer in name only. Given ol’ Marbury v. Madison, I am a little surprised at your surprise @1154 that the Constitution says what the Supremes say it says.
Don Carlos: you are correct. I graduated from law school but am not a practicing lawyer. But I learned way back in law school that, although the Supreme Court interprets the law and sets the precedent du jour, I have disagreed with tons of what it says over the years (and I’ve read quite a bit of what it says over the years).
So, although SCOTUS says the Obamacare penalty is a tax, I know that my judgment tells me it is not. So I won’t say it is. I will say, however, that the Supreme Court has ruled that it is.
baklava: I appreciate your words.
There is quite a bit of logic in just assuming anything that grows govt coffers is a tax. Just like there’s logic in the notion that the lottery is nothing but a tax on people who aren’t good at mathematics.
Neo, Trust me, I’m no mindless automaton. The point of what Mike Rosen says is this. We can argue till we’re blue in the face, but at the end of the day, until We The People change it, if the SCOTUS says that abortion is legal, it is. If it says that the Commerce Clause allows congress to do something, it does. I may or may not agree, but in practice what I think about the issue is meaningless. Do I personally think it’s a tax? Probably not. The point I was trying to make is that Obamacare is a target rich environment. The tax question is not even the most pressing argument against it, in my opinion. The loss of liberty is. I’m trying to make the point that we can sit and howl like wounded dogs all day long, but that’s not going to get us the Senate, retain the House, and gain us the Whitehouse. My only concern, from here until election day, is making sure we get the bill overturned.
Rob, the choices are Romney and Obama. Do you think Obama will sign a repeal of Obamacare? Now you understand how someone can not support Obamacare, but still support Romney. I know for a fact Obama won’t. I hope to God, Romney will. What he did in Mass. doesn’t matter to me anymore, it only matter that the bill gets signed.
Neo, also, rather than sitting back and calling me mindless, I’d love to hear your argument on why the statement is not true. Keeping in mind that I think most of what congress has done for the past 50 years is probably unconstitutional, at least the way that I understand the constitution, and the mindset of the Founders.
To tax (from the Latin taxo; “I estimate”) is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax
I don’t think it’s passed the point of no return. Yet.
its WAY past it…
your not looking at the young and imagining THEM having children…
If you think “walmart” pictures are bad 20 years after feminism destroyed family, because no one knows their manners, how to behave, how not to be rude to someone because they dont care, are nihilist, and so on.
the birthrate of these people are below replacement, which means the population is dead and doesnt know it yet (or believe it)
they have already past the event horizon… the rest is a done deal and there is nothing to do about it.
we say here, learn from history or your doomed to repeat it, why are we NOT learning from the Russian history we have been copying?
so they import muslims who want sharia law… in fact in the case of muslim pakistanis turning out white girls into free prosititutes for them, the imam said that if they had sharia law, this would be taken care of. so the solution is the goal, they rape so that a moderate can call for the law in their country which pretends to control such.
USA… (read carefully)
note they talk about the whole, not the groups being exterminated by policy, a situation lemkin called genocide..
what they dont tell you is what happens if you take a look at each…
lets do some math..
300 million had 40% of the children
83 million had 60% of the children
notice the trick so you dont see the numbers right?
actual values vs percentages
21% of the population had 60% of the children
78% of the population had 40% of the children
ie. the children that the 78% would have were transferred by wealth and policy to the 21%.
We now have 47% or more on welfare thanks to this process going on for 50 years plus
in less than 15 years your going to see that outcome, and the angry minorities talking about killing whites. and the mass attacks on jews (as in the ny post now)… and so on.. will have what happen?
they will finish the genocide. which was accomplished through state policies impinging on one race under the presumption that if they have so much they are all racist.
note that there is no alternative view… its monolithic like feminism. this despite the western civ being the only one to abolish slavery as being ok… (and now are racists for it… historically speaking the minorities with the big mouths from marx are making a case that keeping them in slavery to preserve your own life, was the right choice)
this is why they will report the replacement fertility of the US as a whole, but refuse to break it down for you in any easy way…
makes it easy for people to deny whats happening. as in germany…
As many as 47 vulnerable girls were plied with alcohol, gifts and money
They were then passed around for sex with ‘several men a day’
At least one victim forced to have sex with 20 men in one night, police say
Muslim leader warns that some British Pakistani men ‘think that white teenage girls are worthless and can be abused without a second thought’
now who pushed equality without any idea of behavior? and who pushed multiculti? feminists were the fifth column… teaming up with gay and race groups…
we are below 4th grade reading level as an average, and people cant even operate the military equipment from WWII, let alone the more technical stuff today.
basically you and everyone is going to wait till the numbers are so skewed, the women so unmarryable, the babies exterminated, the elderly euthanized, till the numbers change drastically
then what?
are you going to be like hitler and stalin and other countries trying to reverse this decline by paying women to be mothers?
sorry… its been tried, and it doesnt work!!!!
here… our future since we have the same policies and we refuse to remove them. unlike below who have removed them and cant fix the damage!!!!!!!!!!!!
Children for Sale
Would $36,000 convince you to have another kid?
by implementing first in 1917 by lenin, what we copied in the 1950s we are on the EXACT SAME TRACK except we have replacement slaves for the leaders unlike russia who doesnt have open borders to hide their decline
the millions of white hispanics as the population tracking countes them, was used to hide the decline. the same kinds of games the AGW people used and flubbed with!!!!!!!!
but note…until women wake up and are willing to accept that they screwed it up, they will continue to be genocided and nothing will be done. ie. as you just said, i dont think its so bad
Despite not doing detailed research to look throughu the fake numbers.
they lie to you as to AGW
they lie to you as to unemployment
they lie to you as to welfare recipient numbers
and they lie to you as the outcome of policy
but when they tell you they arent exterminating you and have no way to show they arent, and you blindly believe without realizing we are copying nazy germany but soft style (lack of power), there is no up in arms is there?
imagine if the jews in germany didnt want to save themselves, refused to fight back, refused to run and didnt want to believe the state wa hurting them
better outcome? or worse than the worst they got?
you can read the rest of the leftist socialist slate which is clever in that it claims all states have natalist policies to increase births, but leaves out that they are RACE BASED…
here is a bush era article…
Putin Urges Plan to Reverse Slide in the Birth Rate
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/11/world/europe/11russia.html?pagewanted=all
Australia offers a $4,000 bonus for every baby, and recently proposed to pay all child care costs for women who want to work
Japanese localities, facing near catastrophic population loss, are offering rich incentives. Yamatsuri, a town of 7,000 just north of Tokyo, offers parents $4,600 for the birth of a child and $460 a year for 10 years.
Singapore has a particularly lavish plan: $3,000 for the first child, $9,000 in cash and savings for the second; and up to $18,000 each for the third and fourth.
Birthrates have also plummeted, falling from an average of 2.63 children per woman in 1958 and 1959, to 1.89 children in 1990 and to 1.34 children in 2004.
Non-Hispanic US white births now the minority in US
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18100457
at no place is it easy to find a number that will tell you…
they wont let you know that its farther below Russia!!
go here, and you will find that this number is no where to be found, your not allowed to know what the birth rate of the target race is!!!!!!!!!!!!!
here is the breakdown
14 Demographic statistics
14.1 Median age
14.2 Age structure
14.3 Population growth rate
14.4 Birth rate
14.5 Death rate
14.6 Immigration
14.7 Net migration rate
14.8 Sex ratios
14.9 Infant mortality rate
14.10 Life expectancy at birth
14.11 Total fertility rate
14.12 Unemployment rate
14.13 Nationality
whats missing? break down of races and fertility rates… no?
In 1900, when the U.S. population was 76 million, there were 66.8 million Whites in the United States, representing 88% of the total population
IF you look at the tables in 1972, less than 5 years after summer of love and the feminist revolution. we dropped below replacement.
it wasnt until 1989 when the number went to replacement. ie. between 1972, and 1989, the progressives realized that the white population may notice they are dumbing them down, taking their wealth, removing them from jobs, and genociding them…
so they opened the borders and made it critical to let immigrants in so that the below replacement number sof the residents would be hidden!!!
so only with open borders do we have barely a replacement level of births… but this is hiding that the people coming in are having three times the children… but the total remains steady.
so…
the target race is being genocided as in germany and the victims dont care thanks to ideology and propaganda and an ego vanity that wont look or accept that they can even make bad choices
(go ahead.. show me when women dont defend all choices as good… from women voting hitler in 1933 (now qualifying it so you cant use the prior elections low numbers rather than the critical one before election data was no good under the full regime)
the article you want to see on jews dying out and being diluted out were 10 years ago.
you have to remember them!!!!!!!
American Jews See Population, Birthrate Drop
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/sep/11/nation/na-jews11
shoa II… slow genocide by state policy outcomes.
Tom: I suppose that it depends on what the definition of “true” is.
Obviously, the statement you gave from Rosen is not “true” in the usual sense of the word “true”—unless of course you, like the relativists, believe there is no objective truth. And of course, for legal purposes, it’s “true” in the sense that what the Supreme Court says is the law of the land, is the law of the land.
However, this is a blog; we discuss things here. And one of the things we are discussing right now is whether this SCOTUS ruling actually does conform to the Constitution, or even to the law in general (such as the definition of the word “tax”), and therefore whether it is “true” that the Obamacare penalty is a constitutionally permitted tax objectively speaking, not just in practical legal terms post-Sebelius.
Obviously also, the most pressing task about Obamacare now is overturning it, and that is a matter of politics, as you indicate. But a blog is not entirely task-oriented. On blogs, when an event occurs—such as a remarkably bad ruling that expands the federal government’s tax power in a new and novel (and probably unconstitutional) way—it is something to talk about and render an opinion on. And that opinion cannot, and should not, be limited to “it’s true because SCOTUS says it is” although it is the case that for the moment it is reality because SCOTUS says it is.
As for the politics of it, my argument involves what I believe pundits and candidates might say about Obamacare and the Court if they actually believe the SCOTUS ruling is incorrect in the objective sense (that is, that it is a penalty rather than a permitted type of tax) and yet want to take political advantage of the Court ruling, and how they can do that without opening themselves up to the charge of hypocrisy and/or pragmatically convenient change of basic principles.
90% of world Jewry is contained in only 6 countries. Even if we exclude Israel from these figures, it takes only eight countries to reach that figure. Of those eight, three (USA, Canada and the U.K) are English speaking.
so policies that lump whites together exterminate their many separate groups. ie. there are only 13 million jews… so if there is an even decline across all white groups. say 25%… the other whole can take it. but the smaller parts get killed out..
so latvians who are only about 3 million people or so… are even more a minority… but because we are lumped in with all the others, the decline of the whole is our death knell.. as only the larger populations will seem to remain
ie. as long as you see some of class X your not going to notice the removal of smaller groups within the set as you refuse to see them separately, value them separately or even treat them separately. as that is communist control.
ie. make it one big white race, then you can do a bloomberg soda on them. say we dont want 80 percent whites… which it wouldnt be if you said, we dont want 1% jews, we dont want .5% latvians, we dont want small population races to survive.
once they are gone, then they will come for the others
Martin Niemé¶ller
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I did not speak out;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
divide and conquer and replace
“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
and next time an atheist says there is no god
“A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
as i said. we can discuss things as the world goes buy… but no one is willing to take the responsiblity to point out whats going on… its easier to talk endlessly about it and avoid the responsiblity
we been doing that for 60 years now…
ben: the legal definition of a tax—and of the federal taxing power—is different and more precise than that.
Here, for example, is an excerpt from the dissent in the Obamacare case:
Also:
Why does it matter? If the payment is a penalty the Commerce Clause applies, and the majority of the Court has said it’s not a valid exercise of that power and is therefore unconstitutional. If the payment is a tax, the majority has said it’s constitutional.
Here’s a lengthier discussion of the constitutional definition of tax.
Thanks very much for the info Neo.
Here’s the way to fight and all it requires is courage:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/07/02/allen_west_obama_wants_americans_to_be_his_slave.html
Allen West says Obama wants Americans to be his slaves. He has also said that 78 to 81 congressmen are Communists. It’s the truth. Chris Christie says similar truths about financial spending. And although both are hounded by a press that seeks their destruction, they are popular.
I heard a comment from the 350 pound female weightlifter. She said, and I paraphrase, they [men] respect you if you can push them around.
You respect West and Christie because both have mastered the particular art of war needed. That art is based on a fearless expression of the truth backed by knowledge, intelligence, personal integrity and articulateness. Rush Limbaugh and Mark Steyn come to mind. None of these people are spinners; they are mountain toppers-that is, that find a mountain to shout from.
Neo,
I’m working on a cud-chewer at UnapprovedThoughts on the Roberts flop. Curious what you think of the Stewart Baker idea that the weird lobbying effort by Dems and liberal pundits and profs likely means that the left side of the Court leaked that Roberts was waffling. Also means that they deemed him weak enough that he could be influenced.
The recent leaks (agree with Althouse that they likely came from kennedy) show, along with the dissent itself, that the conservatives on the court are completely disgusted with him.
I think it likely that Roberts has managed to trash his own credibility and that of the court such that he has lost everyone’s respect on both sides of the court and on both sides of the populace. While leaving Obamacare in place and writing an opinion that will have zero influence on future cases.
Don’t fall prey to despair.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/07/02/bill_whittle_on_the_way_forward_after_supreme_courts_obamacare_ruling.html
Neo, you’re a well organized, persuasive advocate. Your legal training certainly rises to the top in a debate like this. I agree with you that blogs are places for discussion rather than always being task oriented. I’m enjoying and learning from this discussion. On the other hand, I am by nature a task oriented person. That’s why I agree 100% with parker’s commment @ 1:00am.
But this is all a bit like saying you can embrace Alfred Rosenberg because he opposed the use of Zykon B in the gas chambers (he favored some other poison, you see). Sure the final Romneycare package was not exactly what Romney wanted it to be and of course the Dems made it worse than had to be. No surprise there. But that doesn’t change the fact that Romney’s fingerprints are still all over it. Even the much more watered down version favored by Romney would still have constituted an unnecessary government intrusion into the field of healthcare. So….
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve conceded that I intend to vote for Romney. But as my finger is pulling the lever, my mind will be reckoning how we can then get rid of Romney and his RINO cronies. We do what we have to do on election day, but we have to think big picture if we’re really serious about holding our ground against the Left. What we don’t need are more Romney apologists. We have to tell the truth.
Romney leads in 15 swing states. It doesn’t matter if Cal and NY support Obama by a 30% margin- same electoral count.
…which is all the reason I needed as an excuse for revisiting the Kinks, Live 1970, Lola
Tax. penalty, involuntary contribution–no matter what they call it, Obamacare is going to cost me a lot of money.
I’m no lawyer, and the majority of Americans aren’t either. We don’t want to hear any more spin or analysis of Roberts playing chess. It’s time for action.
What I plan to do differently this election is to emulate the liberals – not by lying, but by being more vocal and less reticent.
The liberals at work never miss an opportunity to mock conservative politicians and ideas. The conservatives I work with, myself included, are too polite and professional to instigate something like that. No more.
I read letters to the editor, and editorials by the editor himself, spewing hate against Conservatives and lying about current events. I hesitate to respond becasue I don’t want my name in the paper. No more.
My liberal friends on social media start each day by posting a link to a news article from MSNBC or Huffington Post, with an in-your-face comment. I don’t respond because it seems rude to interject politics. No more.
This election, I’ll be making phone calls, knocking on doors, and posting signs. We can win by getting the truth out there. The media won’t do it, and someone has to.
Lisa M, you GO girl!!
AMEN, LisaM!
Here’s an excellent article on the main issues of ObamaCare…it’s going to make health care in the USA crappier, many will lose their insurance, and it will drive up the cost of health care here by increasing premiums, increasing taxes, and creating inflation via more federal debt:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/304532/obamacare-final-battle-avik-roy
Everyone of us should read the article carefully and try to memorize its main points.
“Of the 22 civilizations that have appeared in history, 19 of them have collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.” toynbee
Romney: If the Supreme Court says the mandate’s a tax, then it’s a tax
Tom: you didn’t provide a link, but the fuller quote is here. As I suspected, Romney’s making a very nitpicky legalistic argument about it, not that he’s changed his mind and it really is a tax, but that for purposes of federal law and constitutionality it’s a tax.
As I wrote yesterday, legally it’s a tax, for now. But that doesn’t preclude our discussing and having very firm opinions that that’s the wrong decision. Romney, of course, has to thread a very fine needle, since he has to defend the Mass state mandate as well and say that’s NOT unconstitutional, while still making political points against Obama based on the SCOTUS decision. So we have this rather unsatisfactory attempt (which uses the formultation “I don’t agree, but SCOTUS has spoken” and also “it’s different at the state level”). And as far as law goes, he is correct, technically, and therefore skirts the issue in more or less the way I was suggesting earlier. But although it’s the truth legally, it’s unsatisfactory to most people, I think, because it’s complicated and convoluted. But there is no other way to resolve the inherent contradiction between the need to call it a penalty because that’s correct, and the need to make political use of the SCOTUS decision that it’s a tax for the purpose of deciding constitutionality:
Neo, I gotta lotta love for you, and I apologize, but I just couldn’t help myself. It really pissed me off that you called me mindless, and for your boy to come out and say exactly the same thing I did….Just an opportunity I couldn’t pass up! Again, my apologies. All of that said, please understand that while I sometimes disagree with you, I’m often in awe of you too, because you are EXTREMELY intelligent. I’m obviously reading your blog for a reason. Thanks for all of the well thought out, deep, and thoughtful posts.
Tom: no need whatsoever to apologize. You did nothing wrong.
But for the record, I didn’t call you mindless. I was responding to what you quoted talk show host Mike Rosen as suggesting to his listeners, and also the suggestion on your part that we stop arguing about this. I wrote,
“And people on the right call leftists mindless followers?”, meaning that if we followed your suggestion to not talk about it (on a blog, no less) we’d be mindless followers.
Alright, I get that. I probably should have said that Rosen always prefaces that statement with the phrase, “For all practical purposes”. I probably should also say that he’s always said this about Supreme Court decisions that we would call legislating from the bench, while arguing against them. I agree that these are things that should be discussed, but my concern is that this is another situation where conservatives fight among themselves, and get fractured. (Bearing in mind that I’m responsible for some of that myself.) I’ve made no secret of how I feel about Romney, but I just feel like it’s time for us to unite and get to the task at hand. I do understand where you’re coming from.
Tom: believe me, I agree with you on that, as you can see from this.