Now that I’ve calmed down quite a bit from the shock of today’s ruling — a shock exacerbated by the fact that Fox, reading the opinion as written, initially announced the mandate was struck down — I’ve taken a look at both Obama’s and Romney’s statements about the ruling.
As for Obama, he continues to tell us that we can all keep our insurance, that our insurance companies won’t increase our rates “for no reason,” that in 2014 states will be offering us “an array of quality, affordable, private health insurance plans to choose from,” etc., etc. These are all the lies we’ve been told since the democrats started working to pass this monstrosity.
But what’s more disturbing is this statement from Obama: “Today, the Supreme Court…upheld the principle that people who can afford health insurance should take the responsibility to buy health insurance.” He taught in a law school, right? I think I read somewhere that he even taught Constitutional law. The Supreme Court did not uphold the principle behind the Obamacare legislation. All it did was (perhaps erroneously) uphold this legislation as constitutional. And here is our President, treating today’s ruling as if it’s a mandate for Obamacare as policy! He must be delusional.
And yet, the delusional candidate we don’t know, Mitt Romney, isn’t much better. Watch his brief reaction to the ruling, on this video:
How does Romney propose to mandate that insurance companies accept subscribers with pre-existing conditions, and ensure “access to affordable health care,” without increasing the size and scope of government? Without having “the federal government get between us and our doctors”? In his remarks, he says he plans to do this. I’d like to see precisely how. Obama and his democratic allies found it necessary to force a bunch of young, healthy people into the insurance market, in order to create the pretense of “paying” for goodies of the type that Romney promises.
Take the requirement that insurance companies accept subscribers with preexisting conditions. Why don’t the insurance companies do this already? Because they will lose money. So, if Romney is going to mandate that they accept these subscribers, he either needs to find a way to compensate them, or the companies will go out of business. Same with ensuring access to “affordable” health care. If it was profitable to provide whatever Romney thinks is affordable, then some company would be doing it already. So this, too, will need to be paid for somehow. As we all know too well, Obamacare attempts to “pay” for such goodies by forcing people to buy something — insurance coverage — that they would not otherwise buy. And even so, as Romney himself points out, Obamacare will cause a massive increase in deficits and total debt, because the money brought into the insurance market won’t be enough. Does Romney have superpowers? Is he able to make money grow on trees? Am I missing something?
Don't Let It Go 
so what solution do you suggest for those with pre-existing conditions then? it seems that the insurance model is a failure and that forcing a failed model is also a failure.
Insurance is against *things that haven’t happened yet*! If you have a pre-existing condition, you either rely on pre-existing insurance coverage you already paid for (which would be as easily said as done if the government link between employment and health insurance could be broken), or you rely on the generous assistance of people who sympathize with you, or on a direct welfare payment from the government (which is still statism, but less directly destructive of everyone else’s medical care), or you suffer and die. The concept of insurance doesn’t apply here.
I’ve been writing that Romney is no antidote to Obama, Obamacare, and statism. He is a statist. No, you’re not missing something. Chief Justice Roberts (likely under some threat from the White House) just sanctioned the humongous expansion of federal power, aside from upholding ACA. And Romney is no friend of freedom, either. He signed MassachusettsCare into law, after all. Either way, Americans have just been put on notice that they’re wards of the state. Two things scare me: Roberts’s apparent last minute switch from a majority that would’ve struck down Obamacare (obviously a sign of White House arm-twisting, or Capone-style persuasion), and the expansion of federal tax-and-punish powers. Remember, the “tax” that’s not a “tax” feature of ACA is not a revenue-raising one, but a penal one. What Roberts wrote in the majority opinion was the first instance of the government saying: A can be Non-A at the same time. Further, a constitution can be a non-constitution at the same time, too.
I’ll add one more observation: Romney is the “conservative” candidate for President. Chief Justice Roberts is a “conservative,” too, or at least that’s how he’s perceived by the MSM. What is it that conservatives want to “conserve”? The status quo. So does the Left. And the “Right.” And the champions of entitlements, and the welfare state, and regulations, and controls, and prohibitions….ad nauseum. Americans are stuck now between a rock and a hard place: Islamic jihad, and government jihad. Remember that the Stamp Tax of 1765 actually rendered imported tea cheaper than smuggled, untaxed tea, yet that was the germ of the Revolution that followed ten years later. It wasn’t an issue of a penny paid; it was an issue of government power. The British Parliament had to repeal the Stamp Tax exactly one year after it was enacted, because the Crown collected not a penny in the tax (and most of the tax collectors were forced to resign by the colonists). But accompanying the repeal was the Declaratory Act, which stated that Parliament could tax whatever it chose. Roberts just sanctioned both the modern versions of the Stamp Act and the Declaratory Act.
That’s about the size of it. Conservatives in this country worship dead leftist radicals. They don’t actually believe in or support individual rights, property rights, or any sort of true liberty.
Another observation: Charles Krauthammer in his column today on the SCOTUS ruling, makes this very revealing comment on Roberts’ probable motives. Stating that Roberts is a conservative “constitutionalist” and also someone who doesn’t want the Court to seem “activist,” Krauthammer writes:
” How to reconcile the two imperatives — one philosophical and the other institutional? Assign yourself the task of writing the majority opinion. Find the ultimate finesse that manages to uphold the law, but only on the most narrow of grounds — interpreting the individual mandate as merely a tax, something generally within the power of Congress.”
That’s the hallmark of “conservatives” – to seek a “middle ground” that seems apolitical and non-partisan. That is, to uphold no principles at all, except that of “me-too.” After all, we wouldn’t want to challenge the altruist nature of Obamacare, would we? We’re nice guys at heart, just like the collectivists.
Reblogged this on Glory to man in the highest.
The thing that bothered me most about Romney’s speech was that he called freedom a privilege. He said something about Americans having the privilege of choosing for themselves. I know what he meant. He meant that we are lucky to live in a free country, which we are. But, it is the knee jerk reaction of calling a right a privilege that bothers me.
Darrell: When statists like Romney (or the Bushes, or Carter, or the Clintons, or Obama) say that freedom is a privilege, they mean that rights originate in the state or the collective, not in man himself. They would, however, never be as specific as that. They trust that the ambiguity will slip past everyone and never be challenged, and that’s if they know what they’re saying, which, in most cases, they don’t. It’s doubtful Rommey or any of his speechwriters would be able to be as specific as I have been here. If you posed the contradiction to Romney, he’d blink in incomprehension.
This really gets to the question: what is Conservatism?
Today’s Conservatives are at root really Leftists that are also religious. True Conservatives would have an entire different agenda than today’s “Conservatives”. True Conservatives would want to return America to a white, patriarchal, Christian Republic. This would include: the end of abortion, contraception, divorce (not just no-fault divorce), the end of female sexual liberation, the end of legal immigration (especially of non-whites), the prohibition of Islam (the one thing I agree with), censorship of all TV and movie content, the de-sexualizing of American culture, public respect for Christianity, etc.
That would be a true Conservative agenda. What Republican today is truly a Conservative by that standard? None of them. I’m a libertarian but I know enough that today’s Right is not “conservative”. They are watered down leftists. There are no Conservatives in the mainstream today. Pat Buchanan is the closest you’ll get. We have only Consistent Leftists (Democrats) and watered down Leftists (Republicans).
And yet Objectivists still complain about “imminent Christian theocracy”. I love Rand and her philosophy, but the Objectivist movement has its head up its ass and is completely incapable of any meaningful cultural analysis past the subject of economics. Ed Cline is the only exception. As has been evidenced by his understanding of the problem of immigration in general and Muslim immigration in particular.
“the Objectivist movement has its head up its ass”
If you insist on saying things like this, please don’t visit my blog. Thank you.
the “problem” of immigration isn’t a problem in the first place. it is a nice booygeman that conservatives like to complain about
Here’s a reminder from Paul Lindsey, Communications Director, National Republican Congressional Committee — “Chief Justice John Roberts wrote yesterday:
‘It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.'”
The Court has never consistently upheld the Constitution, not in its entire history. The role of the Chief Justice, however, is not to evade judgment of an outrageous, looting, confiscatory law and blame the electorate for voting for the creatures who passed it. He’s supposed to say: “This is evil, this violates individual rights, this is tyrannical, and we’re declaring it unconstitutional.” We’re not paying him to sit on his butt on a sumptuous salary and with perks we can’t afford (remember, ALL federal employees are exempted from all features of Obamacare, as well as ALL members of Congress) and not pass judgment on law. Sure, you can blame some of the electorate for voting the creatures from the Nazi lagoon into office, but that’s not his job, to place blame and pass the buck. That feature of Roberts’s opinion is I think unprecedented in judicial annals. How low can you get?
Thank you, Mr. Cline. I’ve read some apologies for what Justice Roberts did, saying that, in “fairness,” he basically decided that it was not his responsibility to counter the foolishness of the voters, and that if they don’t like what they’re getting, then they should vote differently, send different people to Congress and support different legislation. But then, just what is the Justice’s job supposed to be?
M. Stern: Republicans are what I just said they were. Consciously, they wish to “conserve” the status quo. Perhaps the correct term should be “preserve.” Now, that would make an appropriate appellation of most Republicans: the Preservatives. Seriously, however, the Conservatives cannot challenge the Left in any fundamental way, because they share the same morality, which is altruism. All they can say to the Democrats and Progressives is, with the indignation of a scold, “Not so fast!” The Right and the Left agree on the ends, while the means are open to negotiation. That’s been the history of Congress and the Executive Branch since the late 19th century, with the bleeding heart, fully developed Progressive, Woodrow Wilson, being the first authoritarian president. If Obama wishes to claim that he is “just like” any previous president, he should have picked Wilson and not any of his successors in office.
To call either Obama or Romney delusional is to imply that they actually believe what they say. Actually, I think, they are just calculating liars. The difference is that whereas Obama probably knows what he says is preposterously false it would never occur to Romney to care.
Why Did Steve Jobs Die?
Doug Casey on “Atlas Shrugged”
http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/doug-casey-atlas-shrugged
Romney’s campaign website promises that he will appoint Supreme Court justices just “like Justice Roberts”.