ObamaCare and the children’s lemonade stand next door [Reader Post]

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This past week the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against ObamaCare. The decision, expected to be handed down in June may very well be the single most important case in the history of the United States.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the perennial swing vote on the court pinpointed the argument on Tuesday:

Here the government is saying that the federal government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act, and that is different from what we have in previous cases, and that changes the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way.

He is making the observation that if ObamaCare stands, the federal government can not only tell you what you are prohibited from doing, but at the same time it can tell you what you must do.

Donald Verrilli, the administration’s attorney, suggests that the reason the government can regulate the healthcare market is that that everyone participates in it at some point.

Justice Scalia points out that everyone participates in the food market and therefore the government could use that rationale to force everyone to buy broccoli.

Verrilli’s retort: Though the two markets do share that one trait, they remain distinctly different. The healthcare market, he said, contains participation that is “often unpredictable and often involuntary.” The food market is not that.

Which in turn caused Justice Alito to ask about burial insurance, the cause of which is often unpredictable and almost always involuntary.

You can see where this is going. This gets us to the fundamental question about liberalism in general. When will enough regulation be enough? Will there ever come a point where liberals believe that there is simply enough government regulation in place and that they should stop making new laws? Is there a point where citizens are going to be allowed to exercise individual responsibility to the point that they are responsible for their own lives? From the federal government all the way down to local towns and counties, what one describes as freedom in America is rapidly shrinking.

The thing that liberals never seem to get is that the unknown factor in their plans for universal perfection (read equal outcomes) is the fact that it includes humans. There is nothing that humans have ever been involved in that is perfect, that is 100% successful or 100% safe. Yet liberals continue to push the envelope. And it’s not just about safety… it’s gotten to the point that New York City’s Department of Education believes it’s the government’s job to save people from getting their feelings hurt so they’ve put out a list of 50 topics that should not be used in tests because they might offend various people. Dinosaurs are on the list, presumably because it would offend people who don’t believe in evolution. Computers in the home cannot be mentioned (because not all kids will have computers in their homes) but mentioning a computer in a school environment is allowed.

Is there some point of minutia that is beyond the reach of liberals? John Stossel did a special recently called “Illegal Everything” about regulation and featured children from around the country being stopped from selling lemonade. In one case, in Midway, GA, one of the little girls’ father went to city hall to find out what law the girls had broken. No one knew, but the Chief of Police was clear about why they had to be stopped: We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, or what the lemonade was made with.

In the spirit of the times, I would like to suggest a new regulation. All men should be required to get a federal dating permit in order to strike up a conversation with a women in a bar or at the supermarket. Certainly some men lie about all sorts of things in order to get a woman into bed. From their jobs (or lack thereof) their salaries, their previous relationships, their education and even their marital status. Women across the country would be saved from ever getting their hearts broken or their purity despoiled. Licenses would be $25 per year and would have to be shown within the first 5 minutes of any intended coupling. The woman could scan the license with her smartphone and immediately know everything about her would be suitor.

Such as system would open a Pandora’s box of issues. What happens when a man changes jobs? How long does he have to update his license? What happens if he gets a raise? A cut in pay? Who decides if a previous relationship ended amicably, the man or the ex? Does she have the right or obligation to comment on the issuance of his license? How would a government computer weigh an acceptable honesty score? Does lying to your girlfriend about how beautiful your last girlfriend was generate enough positive points to outweigh the truth you told her about how bad her cooking is? Is there even a remote possibility that this could somehow make dating a better experience?

This may sound farfetched, but that’s what happens when government gets involved in practically anything. Education. Healthcare. Housing…

At the end of the day the United States, like every other society throughout history is guaranteed to be imperfect by the fact that it is made up of imperfect humans. Liberals make the mistake that collective decision making and rule making can move the nation farther down the road to perfection. It can’t and it won’t. The strange thing is, the more regulations they foist on the population, the more people become law breakers, inadvertent and otherwise. With over 100,000 federal regulations and literally millions of state and local ordinances it’s virtually impossible that individuals can go through any day without breaking some laws. With so many regulations, virtually everything is illegal, and it’s simply the whim of the regulators, politicians and police that decides who gets prosecuted and for what.

ObamaCare is the single most important court case in a century for one simple reason. It presents the American people with the clearest choice between freedom and statism since the calamitous 1942 decision in Wickard v. Filburn.

If the Supreme Court throws out the individual mandate and the rest of ObamaCare, perhaps citizens will finally feel like they have a fighting chance in taking on the borg that government has become and begin the process of rolling back the overreach that permeates every area of our lives.

On the other hand, if the Court upholds ObamaCare then it is the swan song of freedom as you know it. The United States will not collapse the next day or the next week or even within the next few years. It will however happen. Power corrupts absolutely and absolute power corrupts even more… A government bestowed with carte blanche will see no reason to ever curb its own power, and eventually it will take over everything. Lemonade anyone?

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Vince,
This is a wonderful paragraph:

At the end of the day the United States, like every other society throughout history is guaranteed to be imperfect by the fact that it is made up of imperfect humans. Liberals make the mistake that collective decision making and rule making can move the nation farther down the road to perfection. It can’t and it won’t. The strange thing is, the more regulations they foist on the population, the more people become law breakers, inadvertent and otherwise. With over 100,000 federal regulations and literally millions of state and local ordinances it’s virtually impossible that individuals can go through any day without breaking some laws. With so many regulations, virtually everything is illegal, and it’s simply the whim of the regulators, politicians and police that decides who gets prosecuted and for what.

It is so true!
I just went to a market.
I was between a car with NO License plates on it whatsoever, darkened windows and lowered with loud Mexican music coming out in front of my car AND a black& white LBPD patrol car behind me.
The patrol car went around me and eyeballed the driver of the car in front but let him go when he turned.
Los Angeles County allows unlicensed drivers and their unregistered cars go unstopped IF the driver is even possibly an illegal.
I would NOT have gotten away with taking the plate off my car.
Whim soon gets turned into unwritten law.
That’s what we’ve got going in Long Beach.
There’s no money in it so why waste the officers’ time?
Only go after lawbreakers who have two cents to rub together.

@Nan G:

Rule by man. We have been traveling down this road now for around a century or more. Rule by man happens when the government has no limitations on what it can, or cannot, do. Politicians make laws based on who is paying them more, or the sad story that results in someone saying, “there ought to be a law”. The next thing you know, something you had been free to do, or not do, has been changed.

Modern liberalism, or, more correctly, progressivism and statism, assumes that the government knows best how the individual must live his/her life. Combine it with political correctness, and the only ones getting busted for breaking the law are the otherwise lawful citizens.

The law itself is ‘rule by man’ because the lawmakers decide on laws not based on the limitations from state or federal constitutions, but rather, on their own imaginative idea of how things “ought to be”.

The enforcement of the law becomes ‘rule by man’ because of the selective enforcement of the law. The selective enforcement happens for various reasons, including, but not limited to, political correctness, laziness, and even, at times, the enforcement agent’s own common sense.

I believe that this is the moment for which God created Clarence Thomas.

I will predict that he will write the majority opinion and that it will be a breathtaking work of scholarship; Thomas will school this 2-bit empty suit– Obama– in Constitutional law, a lesson which will ring through the ages.

He is making the observation that if ObamaCare stands, the federal government can not only tell you what you are prohibited from doing, but at the same time it can tell you what you must do.

Government at various levels has told people for as long as there have been governments that there are some things they are prohibited from doing, and some things that they must do. This is news to Justice Kennedy?

Would you like to grow a marijuana plant for personal use in the privacy of your own home? That’s one of who knows how many things that is generally prohibited. Would you rather not pay any taxes? Sorry about that. Payment is required. You can be compelled to pay. Would you prefer to drive without liability insurance? If you want to drive, the purchase of liability insurance is required by law in every state of the Union.

In my opinion, it’s better that everyone be required to buy health insurance than for responsible taxpayers who are doing so anyway to have to pick up the tab when the uninsured require medical care. You have to pay for health insurance so I don’t have pick up your unpaid medical costs in the form of higher personal premiums and higher taxes.

@Greg:

Not good analogies, Greg.
A person can ”Go Galt,” and thus avoid making enough money to qualify to pay taxes.
They can also decide not to drive thus avoiding ever having to buy liability insurance.

This ObamaCare really is the first time the federal government is demanding something of persons for merely breathing.

@Nan G: A better point for Greg to consider is that the government is forcing you into a contract (you have to buy healthcare) in which the terms are defined and in which you have no right to negotiate. By definition that contract is unenforceable, because the courts have held that coercion nullifies any obligation in such a contract. I’m not surprised at the weakness of the defenses we’ve seen on this law, because it is utterly indefensible under any precept of freedom or Constitutionality.I am very troubled by the statements of the President, and I conclude by the very tepid support he’s received in his own party that I’m not alone.The participants in this debacle– those that voted for it– are particularly worthy of scorn and should be run out of Congress one and all at the soonest opportunity.

@Greg:

Would you prefer to drive without liability insurance? If you want to drive, the purchase of liability insurance is required by law in every state of the Union.

Not a good analogy, Greg, for several reasons.

– One, it’s not the federal government requiring one to purchase the insurance.

-Two, and the most important reason, is that the government cannot compel you to purchase auto insurance if you choose not to drive. If you choose not to drive, you are not participating in the commerce associated with driving. Obamacare compels you to participate in commerce, regardless of whether you want to or not.

In my opinion, it’s better that everyone be required to buy health insurance than for responsible taxpayers who are doing so anyway to have to pick up the tab when the uninsured require medical care.

Sorry, Greg, but that is just plain stupid. Those who are not paying for insurance now, are not going to be paying if Obamacare stays, either. So, you and I WILL be the ones picking up the tab for them anyway.

The purchase of a product in this legislation is a distraction from the all out obtrusive Big Brother information gathering and degradation of personal liberties lurking within. Obviously more than a few conservatives have allowed themselves to be fooled. It’s no wonder that under Barry and his appointed domineering control freaks we stand on the precipice of a Soviet style government, media, industry and military. Complete access to checking and savings records, medical records, new electronic activity monitoring smart meters, internet tracking, WTF!!!! Do they have to insist on cameras in your residence before you wake up? Giving up your personal liberty and rights to privacy to be sure you don’t pay for some drug addict’s bad behavior? Dude! You’ve been sucked into the machine and don’t know it. Welcome to the machine!!!

@Greg #2:

Just arguing the point at hand. And whether or not what you insist is happening is true, bringing that case to the people, many of whom act brain dead when discussing political topics, accusations of paranoia and conspiracy theorist would be leveled, and stick.

Of course, just because one is paranoid doesn’t mean that people are not out to get them.

One thing at a time, and for now, cut the funding heart out of the beast and the whole thing is likely to be scrapped.

It is unfortunate, but rules made by man are our only option at this point.

God screwed out of here a while back. Unless one follows Islam, God is dead for the most part of the population. This is an unfortunate thing that happens eventually within any prosperous civilization.

Pisses off alot of Christians and Jews… regardless, this is a reality again.

Usually preceding collapse on mass scalem

The only hope is to prevent the insane from making the rules.

Scale… scalem. WTF put that in my spellchecker…?

Probably me.

Yikes.

i wish someone would do a parody of the verizon’s “susies lemonade” on the Obama plan

“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.” (‘Atlas Shrugged’ 1957)

–Ayn Rand

VINCE
A VERY SMART POST, and we can feed on anyone sentence, I like the card between two persons
meeting for the first time, the woman say; do you have a card? answer oh yes, here you can scan it.
they look at each other defensive, so she scan and give back the card,
and the conversation begin, with the man asking if she has a card, no she said; why me voice high pitch he said;
well it’s because men lie high tone voice; reply from the the man oh ya rrrr, and woman never lie?
not often said herggggg, okay said him, tell me about you, she said no,
I’m not interested to go out with a bully who want to know all about me, on the first meeting,
I’m leaving,
the next day he open the door to have the police arrest him for steeling a woman’s money at the meeting place,
bye

@mmercier:

It is unfortunate, but rules made by man are our only option at this point.

I see that you do not understand the point made.

‘Rule by law’ is supposed to be how we, as a nation, are governed. The “law”, in this case, being the Constitution as the ultimate standard on whether or not the law in question violates that standard or not.

‘Rule by man’ is based on not using the standard, the Constitution, to decide whether a law shall be written and passed, but rather, on anything but that. When that is the case, the laws being passed do not have limitations upon them, and are only limited by what the men(or women) in charge limit themselves to.

Given that the Constitution is based on the people retaining our ‘natural’, or ‘god-given’, rights except for the small amount of power the Constitution, agreed upon and ratified by the states, extends to the federal government in order to maintain order and do for us, the individual, and the states, that we cannot do for ourselves, law that is made in conflict with the Constitution, and allowed to stand, becomes ‘rule by man’.

@johngalt: “access to checking and savings records, medical records” is not conspiracy theory. It’s in the bill in plain English. Just cutting out the funding for the bill accomplishes nothing with the “brain dead” because they are told to believe the evil Republicans don’t care about the poor etc. and vote for more Democons to bring back Big Brother medicine which includes more invasive behavior controlling legislation. My whole point was conservatives using the flawed rationale of Greg #1 and settling for that irregardless of the invasions of privacy clearly enunciated in the bill.

@Greg:

If you want to drive, the purchase of liability insurance is required by law in every state of the Union.

Emphasis added mine. Everyone else has already said this, but this is at the State level. And we are allowed to buy auto insurance, homeowner’s insurance, renter’s insurance, and even life insurance across State lines. We are also not limited to purchasing insurance with a specific pool of people, such as a small business. True, if you have State Farm auto insurance, you pool is limited to the number of insured by that agent or office. But you can always shop around for better rates……..any time you want, not just once or twice a year. There are ways to make health insurance more affordable, but congress (republicans and democrats) have no desire to really do so. That is where the fight should be.

@Greg#2:

Please read exactly what I wrote. I did not call it conspiracy theory. Nor did I call it paranoia. I simply stated what will happen. That is, charges of conspiracy theorism, or paranoia, would be aimed at those who brought up what you stated is happening. And because the electorate is mainly brain-dead where politics and government is concerned, those charges would stick. Not because they were true, but rather, because people are apt to believe what the media puts out there.

And if the Supreme Court overturns the individual mandate portion of Obamacare, it’s main source of funding, the rest of the bill will go away. And yes, we will still, as conservatives, have to worry about some single-payer system being banged through congress like Obamacare was, but that is not very likely to happen.

@Greg: You said:

In my opinion, it’s better that everyone be required to buy health insurance than for responsible taxpayers who are doing so anyway to have to pick up the tab when the uninsured require medical care.

So where do you draw the line then, in what the government can and cannot compel you to do?

@anticsrocks:

That’s not something Greg, or any other liberal/progressive, thinks about.

Since they believe that rights are extended by government, and subsequently, freedom and liberty, anything government would mandate participation in commerce, in a previously voluntary area of industry, must be ok since government decided it was necessary.

Greg, and his liberal/progressive friends, are ok with a totalitarian government that tells them what, where, and when, to do their living.

Johngalt.

I understand the point completely. We are again going to witness the tender mercy of the rule of wo/man. There is no ability to predict. No one has a clue as to what the wo/ will get the /man to do.

Been there… done that. Every day is a new day for the young.

This is why a wise man invented combat.