Unfortunately, this is playing out pretty much as expected

We’re conditional supporters of legalizing marijuana. We say conditional because the optimal condition for marijuana to exists would be in a low tax/low regulation environment. That, however, is probably not going to happen given the statist ways of our politicians and, unfortunately, a too-large segment of the voting public.


Alas, in Colorado which legalized pot last year, the tragically inevitable is unfolding before our very eyes:

The taxes on recreational marijuana might go a lot higher than first thought. Smokers buying at shops in Denver may pay up to 35 percent in taxes.

Colorado voters will be asked to approve two state taxes totaling 25 percent on all retail marijuana sales in the November election. They may be asked to approve an additional city tax for Denver.

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock wants to add an additional five to 10 percent city tax on top of that.

Hancock said the money is needed to pay the costs of regulating the drug.

Critics complain severe taxes would destroy a new industry already approved by voters.

The Denver City Council has until August to decide if the tax question will go on the November ballot.

(italics, ours)


We won't pretend to know just how marijuana is regulated in Colorado but if the rates stated above in the article are any indication, then that would represent the rather un-optimal condition we fear for "legalizing" marijuana.


Then again, the regulations may be minimal and all this is just indicative of the usual instinct by politicians to tax anything that moves.


Either way, this represents precisely what we fear: taxing and regulating a product right back into the gray market because that will be the ultimate outcome of all this should these taxes go through.


Hopefully, the good people of Colorado not only see these taxes as a step backwards in the freeing of marijuana but also in the unwinding of the drug war.

Suppose that'll teach them from trying to go tax-exempt

Knowing that Baghdad Jim McDermott (D-WA) was going to weigh in on the IRS crisis, you know you were in for some good stuff.


From Breitbart.com:

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) offered a bizarre defense of the IRS's behavior at a House Ways and Means hearing on Tuesday morning, amounting to an attack on the Tea Party and conservative organizations present as potential money-launderers seeking a tax break from the government, not the exercise of their basic rights.

Shorter McDermott: You know, none of this would've happened to you if you didn't attempt to go tax-exempt*



This is unreal. This represents precisely why people are so freaked out over the IRS targeting crisis. That a long-tenured and powerful Congressmen can't see the fundamental wrongness of what he said represents a decadent corruptness that is now part and parcel to our federal government.


Don't get distracted by what McDermott was saying specific to tea party groups seeking tax exempt status; the larger point McDermott was making is that because tea party and other conservative groups dared to participate in the political process, they absolutely had it coming to them. And, yes, seeking to ease one's tax burden is as American as apple pie.


Please note that McDermott is actually confessing to wrong-doing by the IRS but guesss what? So what? As Marco Rubio stated flatly a few weeks ago, these are the words and deeds of a failed third world banana republic yet its happening right here in America: an elected congressman is telling the people who he works for that being targeted and harassed via endless bureaucracy and needlessly invasive questioning is now par for the course for the political opposites of the engrained statist/collectivist culture of the political class.


McDermott and other apologists for the IRS are bullies and thugs and their employment in their current positions needs to be terminated at the earliest possible moment as their championing of a culture of corruption and intimidation does not bode well for the continuing health of this Republic.



* How is it that OFA (Organizing for Action/America), ostensibly the sprawling and well-heeled former Obama campaign apparatus, is seeking the same tax exempt status as these local Mom and Pop organizations? We're sure the irony of progressive/statist groups campaigning/lobbying to raise everyone's taxes seeking tax-exempt status is not lost on you.

A few more thoughts on Scandalabra*

We tweeted the following in response to story that had the former IRS commissioner, Douglas Shulman, visiting the White House 157 times during the Obama administration. This is in stark contrast to Shulman's predecessor, Mark Everson, visiting the White House just once during his four years of service during the G.W. Bush administration.

dailycaller.com/2013/05/29/irs… @wcvarones Everytime I try 2 convince myself it's more a response to dog whistle than a coordinated effort, I c this.

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) May 30, 2013

A longer explanation would be that we don't really feel there was any co-ordinated effort orchestrated by the White House for the IRS to target and harass conservative and tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status.


In a political context, a dog whistle is two-pronged speech: There is what is said and what is inferred, particularly to a target audience. During his first term, the President and several people in his inner circle made absolutely unprecedented attacks on private citizens, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and warned of "shadowy" money that was unduly influencing the democratic process.


Or as the Wall St. Journal explained (h/t: WCVarones):

Mr. Obama didn't need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he'd like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.

Dogwhistle. It doesn't take a behavior psychologist to surmise that once the verbal cues from the administration went out, politically-motivated folks in the IRS and other government agencies went to work.


But is that assumption correct?


Now, we realize that having a statist/collectivist in the White House would prioritize his visitors much differently than we would (hell, his entire re-election campaign revolved around his obsession to make an already progressive tax code even more progressive with his inane bleating of making sure everybody is "paying their fair share) but 157 times? Good lord. As we have taken to saying, those conspiracy de-bunkers out there are going to have to do a lot better than this to keep us righties from over-heating in the fever swamps.



(click to enlarge image)






Of course, Shulman can't recall what they talked about, selective amnesia and just pure unknowingness being a hallmark of this administration (to the extent that the President has claimed to not know much about anything, one gets the sense they keep sharp objects away from him in the White House. Can't be hurting himself with unseemly information).

.






157 known visits to the White House amidst targeting and harrassing of conservative and tea party groups.

Occam's Razor: a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.

i.e. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure what most likely happened here.


Of course, rudder orders from on high and acting upon dog-whistle cues are not exclusive to one another as there's nothing like covering one's bases to ensure a re-election.






* Naked DC has a must-read round-up of what they have coined "Scandalabra" and we are more than happy to run with that term du jour. Go for the photoshops, stay for the writing.

Inconvenient multi-colored graphic pretty much destroys narrative

.


The L.A. Times breathlessly reports here that recently unveiled California health insurance plan rates as approved by the California health care exchange are "better-than-expected". If by "better-than-expected" they mean that smack upside the head resulted in only a concussion rather than brain damage then, sure, let's all get in line for another crack.

And we believe we are probably being far too charitable with that analogy as how can anyone but the most shameless of spin-meisters see this image below, provided by the same L.A. Times, as good news?


(click to enlarge)




(These figures indicate the lowest monthly cost possible for a 40 yr. old person for the Siver plan, the third most comprehensive of the 4 types of plans approved by the state)



The Times waits until deep in the article to get to some real-life cases that reflect reality vs. spin:

One of the bigger risks is that high premiums turn off healthier, middle-income households that aren't eligible for that federal assistance and have to pay the full premium. Rates could skyrocket if the exchange fails to enroll enough of those people to offset the higher costs of sicker, poorer policyholders.

Katharine King, 59 and a self-employed concert and event producer in Santa Monica, already pays $497 a month for her individual health insurance from Anthem Blue Cross. She wouldn't qualify for federal premium help based on her income. Using the state's online calculator, which doesn't yet reflect the final rates, her premiums could shoot up to nearly $600 a month next year.

"The Affordable Care Act is still not all that affordable unless you qualify for a federal subsidy, which I will not," King said. "It will likely be another case of the middle class kind of getting screwed."

Alfredo Ceron, 44, an uninsured painter in Los Angeles, has less to worry about with these rates. He said he earns about $100 a day when he has work, which means the federal government would pick up most of the tab for him and his two adult children who still live at home.

"I'd like to get my family covered," he said while waiting in line at a recent downtown festival to get more information about the new insurance options.

Hooray, subsidies! Subsidies that will have to be picked up by middle class folks like Ms. King via the 47 new taxes contained within ObamaCare.


But back to those rate increases... contrary to the Times opening lede, those rate increases are indeed pretty much in line with what was expected. 20-30% increases as depicted above are what the insurance companies said we could all expect with the implementation of the new healthcare law. Again, we're left scratching our head wondering wherein lies the good news.


And put aside, for a moment, the "better than expected" meme; let's never forget the ObamaCare promise that the law would necessarily bend the cost of healthcare downward.


The bottome line result of this law will be that eople like Ms. King and quite likely you will be getting a double-whammy of paying higher monthly premiums plus paying higher taxes to keep this whole wretched monstrosity afloat. We fail to see how that reformed anything.

Video clip of the day

Clear and blatant abuses of power aside, Nick Gillespie of Reason.com reminds us of why the IRS should scare the bejeezus out of all of us.


(Video: approx. 1-1/2 minutes long)








And in case you are unable to load video or are unable to listen to said video... a recap:

So the IRS has admitted to sitting on applications for tax-exempt status by Tea Party groups for political reasons.

According to the government’s own investigation, applications containing terms such as Tea Party and Patriot were singled out for delays and holds even as groups with liberal-sounding names like "Bus for Progress" and "Progress Florida" sailed through the process.

President Obama said “the report's findings are intolerable and inexcusable” and even fired the acting head of the Internal Revenue Service.

Regardless of how this particular scandal shakes out, there’s still going to be at least three good reasons to be scared as hell of the IRS.

1. It’s always been a political weapon.

John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon all sicced the IRS on enemies and dissenters. And they were just following in the footsteps of Franklin Roosevelt, whose son said his father was “the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution.”

2. Its rulings are super-complicated and capricious.

The federal tax code is longer than Atlas Shrugged, Ulysses, and the Old Testament put together. It’s so complicated that even former IRS commissioners need help preparing their returns.

3. It's Obamacare's enforcement mechanism.

Starting next year, the IRS will be the cop patrolling the Affordable Care Act’s mandates, with the agency overseeing some 47 tax provisions related to Obamacare. You won’t just be reporting income anymore. You’ll be explaining when, where, and how you bought health care as well.

The first two are ones that people have been aware of, hence, the IRS's generally despised reputation but #3 is new to the party and folks that harbor a basic mistrust of the agency that is extracting scratch from their paycheck need to be aware of this fact.


And what better way than a near-throw away cut'n'paste post is there to shill for our favorite tax idea: a national sales tax to replace the current income tax.


Yes, yes, the devil is in the details but in case you've been living under a rock, like, forever, it's clearly an idea who's time has come.



For righties, you are not taxing one's wealth or production. For lefties, you are taxing (over)-consumption and for everybody... you are gutting the IRS.


With only 47% of the nation's elgible population paying in, this gives everybody skin in the game for how it is our federal government is funded. No more disinterested or un-vested parties. Everybody now will force themselves to be that much more informed as to who and where their money is going and how is a more fully informed electorate with respect to the goings of their federal government a bad thing?


Recent events almost demand it.


.

Video clip of the day

We present to you a clip from the oft-contentious congressional hearings with HMFIC of the IRS and IRS scandal fall guy, Steven Miller, who was set to retire in June.



He would appear to have some problems with that whole 1st amendment thingy:






From the Washington Examiner:

During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing today, Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., grilled outgoing IRS commissioner Steven Miller about the IRS targeting a pro-life group in Iowa.

“Their question, specifically asked from the IRS to the Coalition for Life of Iowa: ‘Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers,’" Schock declared.

“Would that be an inappropriate question to a 501 c3 applicant?” asked Schock. “The content of one’s prayers?”

“It pains me to say I can’t speak to that one either,” Miller replied.

After Schock pressed him further, Miller explained that although he couldn't comment on the specific case, it would "surprise him" if that question was asked.

We cannot think of a better reason for the 1st amendment than what you just witnessed.

That's it. That's the whole idea of the 1st amendment - to keep a meddlesome government out of your life and the fact that the man in charge of the tax collection agency of this country cannot give a definitive answer with respect to our most important amendment ought to scare the living hell out of everybody.


We tweeted the other day something along the lines that if you were still a big government liberal, you probably were'nt paying attention to things... for this is the end game of a progressive utopia.


Whether the low level IRS employees were acting on orders from their superiors or, worse, just acting upon the engrained culture at the IRS, this represents the abuse of unbridled and unchecked government power... and the man in charge gives every appearance of not really giving a damn about it.


.

At least one person is looking forward to 2013

.

It’s a pretty solid bet that the Affordable Care Act aka ObamaCare will be neither affordable nor primarily about improving health care in this country when its main enforcement arm will be the Internal Revenue Service.

Regardless of how the fiscal cliff negotiations pan out, Americans will be hit with a $1 trillion tax hike over the next 10 years from the 20 taxes contained within ObamaCare.

Americans for Tax Reform lays out the 5 taxes contained with ObamaCare that will be rolled out next Tuesday. They are as follows:

1. ObamaCare Medical Device Tax: 2.3% excise tax on gross sales of devices. Please note that is sales and not profits.

2. ObamaCare Flex Account Tax: Will set a cap of $2500 on the Flexible Spending Account on the 30-35 million Americans that use it. Currently, there is no federal cap, though employers can set caps of their own. This will especially hit hard the families of special needs children whom rely heavily on the FSA to pay those medical bills.

3. ObamaCare Surtax on Investment Income: 3.8% surtax on investment income earnings on those households making at least $250,000. Combine this with the jump in taxes on investment income earnings with the (expected) expiration of the Bush tax cuts and it becomes a case of piling on. For example, dividend rates may increase from 15% to 43.4%. And who said this administration wasn’t about class warfare? (go to the link for more comprehensive charts)

4. The ObamaCare “Haircut” for Medical Itemized Deductions: Raises the deduction floor for medical expenses on Adjusted Gross Income from 7.5% to 10%, hitting the elderly and those with modest incomes but high medical expenses the hardest. Can't you just feel the compassion?


5. The ObamaCare Medicare Payroll Tax Hike: Currently, the Medicare payroll tax is 2.9% on wages and self-employment profits. Wages and profits exceeding $200,000 ($250,000 for married couples) will face a 3.8% rate. Again, for small business owners with a small profit margin, this is not an insignificant rate hike.

Nancy Pelosi was right. We had no idea just what was in the 2200+ page ObamaCare legislation – so we’re sure glad they passed it so we can now find out what all is in it.

And ain’t it grand?

Quickies

.

A weekly round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.



In the wake of the massacre at Newtown, CT, we perceived this notion that in someway and somehow, the NRA was supposed to answer for what happened there. And we perceived this as coming from both sides of the gun debate, though, obviously more so on the gun control side of the aisle.

And then the NRA buys into this ridiculous notion by holding that press conference on Friday that called for armed policemen in schools. We haven’t thought this through long enough to opine on whether or not this is a good idea but the press became predictably apoplectic that the president of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, did not take questions afterwards. Mind you, this is the same press that has not ever seemed to mind the lack of press conferences held by this current administration.

Let us modify the above paragraph: The press became predictably apoplectic that the NRA was holding a presser at all. This notion that somehow the NRA had to provide answers to what happened two Fridays ago was met with howling and raging criticism from the press who would’ve behaved in exactly the same manner no matter what LaPierre said, so from a strategic stangpoint, we fail to understand what the NRA gained by deciding to go forward with the presser.

And as usual, the anti-gun left continues to demonstrate what hypocrites they are when it comes to civility and having civil discourse on anything they reflexively hate by blowing up twitter with death threats against members of the NRA and gun owners in general.





IBD headline: States Give ObamaCare a Massive Vote of No Confidence

In order to purchase health insurance through the federal government, ObamaCare envisioned the states setting up exchanges or marketplaces through which individuals could purchase insurance for themselves and/or their families.

Unfortunately, the rules and regulations for just how these exchanges would operate have been slow in rolling out. Add onto that the fact that the IT infrastructure that would give the state exchanges the ability to “talk” to the federal administrators of ObamaCare is nowhere close to being set up, you have a massive bureaucratic/administrative nightmare on your hands just a year before ObamaCare is implemented in anger.

The Obama administration wins the Capt. Louie Renault award for being shocked, shocked that just 18 states have agreed to set up these exchanges. The 32 others, including 8 with Democratic governors have said no thanks for shouldering the massive costs associated with setting up and running the exchanges and who, given the current set of circumstances, could blame them?

ObamaCare is already churning out the results one would expect of legislation cobbled together to garner just enough votes to pass but not necessarily to improve the state of healthcare in our country.







How’s that whole Arab Spring working out?

Egypt's new Sharia-based constitution has been approved in a second round of voting, the ruling Muslim Brotherhood party said. The country's opposition leveled accusations of fraud, saying it will appeal the referendum results.

The new charter was approved by 64 percent of Egyptian voters in a “resounding victory,” state news agency al-Ahram reported on Sunday. The preliminary tallies were calculated from reports by polling station officials. Egypt's election committee will confirm the final results on Monday.

Egypt's main opposition party the National Salvation Front (NSF) announced Sunday it will appeal the results of the referendum. NSF members alleged there were multiple instances of “fraud and violations” during the voting process.

“The referendum is not the end of the road. It is only one battle,” the NSF’s Abdel Ghaffer Shokr said, pledging to continue “the fight for the Egyptian people.”

The opposition has asked the electoral commission to “investigate the irregularities” before the vote's official results are announced on Monday.

“They’ve seen a number of instances of possible vote rigging, including unsupervised polling stations, missing ballot papers, stuffed ballot boxes,” Cairo-based journalist Bel Trew told RT. There were also reports of Salafist groups at polling stations coercing people into voting 'yes' on the new document, Trew said.

The opposition also criticized the first round of voting last Saturday, citing various incidents of fraud that have yet to be investigated.

Leading from behind: Putting guns and RPGs into the hands of rebel Islamists, our sworn enemies, to overthrow existing regimes in the Middle East which has only served to further destabilize the region and which has also resulted in restrictions on human rights and civil liberties more so than those previous regimes.

That’s pretty much the sum of it, no? Please let us know if we’ve left out any of the essentials.







They keep telling us they aren’t coming for our guns but emboldened to take cynical advantage of the massacre in CT, lawmakers and tastemakers in this country feel free to unburden themselves of their true intentions ever more increasingly:

In a radio interview on Thursday with Albany’s WGDJ-AM, New York governor Andrew Cuomo said that he plans to work with state legislators next month to submit a proposal for new gun-control laws; in particular, Cuomo said, “our focus is assault weapons,” because current state laws regulating the weapons “have more holes that Swiss cheese.”
“I don’t think legitimate sportsmen are going to say, ‘I need an assault weapon to go hunting,’” he said.

Cuomo continued, “Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option — keep your gun but permit it.”

The governor will propose the new gun-control legislation in his State of the State address on January 9.

(italics, ours)









B-Daddy at The Liberator Today has some advise for his son and his union job at a local grocery store here in San Diego.






KT over at the Scratching Post is unimpressed with your fiscal cliff:

I'm not sure what just happened. As I understand it, the House Republicans decided not to offer President Obama a bill he had promised to veto which would have done practically nothing to avert our upcoming fiscal catastrophe. Of the major problems facing the nation,

1. Fiscal collapse from massive debts and deficits,
2. Economic sclerosis from metastasizing, omnipresent regulations and
3. Social stratification from the growth of secular, libertine religious values

The fiscal cliff deal would have changed none of them. If it's not tackling any of our top three problems, I don't see why the event is such a big deal.

Now, we're not digging the potential of paying $2,000 more in taxes next year so there is a visceral compoenent for us but taking the long view, KT is exactly right. But unfortunately, the country voted to keep in the party in power in the Senate and the Oval Office; a party of which does not even acknowlege those three problems exist.





OK, gang. That's it for today. We hope everyone is enjoying Christmas and Holdiay festivities with family, friends and loved ones as we have had the joy in doing for the past week. We hope to see it continue for another week or so.


.

Quickies

.

A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.







A nice graphical representation of what the President has put on the table to avoid the fiscal cliff.

It doesn't appear that someone is dealing in good faith.


Related: Why have conservatives ceded to the left the term "revenue" to mean exclusively "raise taxes"? What about "pro-growth policies" as a means to generate revenue?



So, what should the Republican response be to the President's proposal? Guy Benson thinks the Republicans should embrace the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan.

Simpson-Bowles, for all its faults, was conducted in an open and transparent manner and brought disparate political players into a room to forge a serious compromise. It overhauls and streamlines our byzantine tax code, takes some important first steps on entitlements, and reduces and caps federal spending. On substance, I'd wager that it would be considerably better than anything Obama and Boehner might produce after weeks of behind-closed-doors acrimony with the proverbial gun to their heads. Politically, it paints Democrats into a tough corner. Republicans could make a grand show of reluctantly supporting Simpson-Bowles for the betterment of the country. Ideally, the press conference would be led by Paul Ryan, who might explain why he voted against the plan as a commissioner, but is now willing to set aside some of his strong ideological preferences to move the nation forward.

Remember, Simpson-Bowles was the President’s own idea and which had bipartisan support. Thus far, the President has not embraced a single part of the plan. We think it would be a brilliant stroke by the Republicans to put the Democrats back on their heels and have they and the President playing defense.

As Benson stated, Simpson-Bowles has its flaws, but we see it as a giving the Republicans a leg up both tactically and strategically because as it stands now, the Republicans, fair or not, are going to take the hit, P.R.-wise, unless they get the President to take a stand on a commission that he specifically requested and whose recommendations he has since rejected.






Salary.com on the 8 college degrees with the worst return on investments.

Yep, all the usual suspects: sociology, fine arts and nutrition are in the mix.




And Salary.com on the 8 college degrees with the best return on investment.








Atari's "Pong" turned 40 years old this past week.

Here's Buzzfeed's short history of the first video arcade game many of us played.









Warren Buffet has been out again pushing his soak-the-rich tax plan. As you are about to read, raising taxes on the rich isn't so much about improving the economy as it is about improving our... feelings.


From the TODAY Show:

MATT LAUER, TODAY: So bottom line, would raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans have a chilling effect on hiring in this country?

WARREN BUFFETT: No, and I think would have a great effect in terms of the morale of the middle class, who have seen themselves paying high payroll taxes, income taxes. And then they watch guys like me end up paying a rate that's below that, you know, paid by the people in my office.

This is an admission of naked class warfare aggression that, never mind the dismal state of the economy, we'll somehow feel better knowing that the rich are paying more in taxes than they did previously.

It's hard to see someone as independently successful as Buffett become such a hack and such a dishonest one at that. Again, if Buffett paid himself a salary above the $100,000/year he so nobly limits himself, he would land himself in a tax bracket that would make us all feel a whole lot better.








Remember, gang, these are the people that will be in charge of your compliance with ObamaCare:

South Carolina's governor faulted an outdated IRS standard as a contributing factor to a massive data breach that exposed Social Security numbers of 3.8 million taxpayers plus credit card and bank account data. Gov. Nikki Haley's remarks on Tuesday came after a report into the breach revealed that 74.7 GB was stolen from computers belonging to South Carolina's Department of Revenue after an employee fell victim to a phishing email. People who filed tax returns electronically from 1998 on were affected, although most of the data appears to be after 2002, Haley said during a news conference.

It's not just small businesses and restaurants that are doing it but now it appears that colleges are getting in on the act.

From College Insurrection:

Youngstown State University is the second institution to be public about cutting adjuncts’ hours to avoid Affordable Care Act-related costs.

The Ohio university announced its plans in a campuswide memo Thursday, hours after an internal department memo from an English professor warning colleagues about the cuts was leaked to the media.

“A provision under the [Affordable Care Act] requires employers to share in the responsibility of providing health insurance to full-time employees,” the campus memo reads. “Effective this academic year, part-time faculty will not be allowed to teach more than 24 hours over fall, spring and summer.”

Youngstown’s announcement comes just weeks after Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania announced it was preemptively cutting hundreds of adjuncts’ hours to avoid an estimated $6 million in employee health care costs when the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate begins in January 2014.

Curious if the deranged left will now consider boycotting institutes of higher education.






America's trusted highway life line, AAA, not down with ethanol:

The AAA says the Environmental Protection Agency and gasoline retailers should halt the sale of E15, a new ethanol blend that could damage millions of vehicles and void car warranties.

AAA, which issued its warning Friday, says just 12 million of more than 240 million cars, trucks and SUVs now in use have manufacturers' approval for E15. Flex-fuel vehicles, 2012 and newer General Motors vehicles, 2013 Fords and 2001 and later model Porsches are the exceptions, according to AAA, the nation's largest motorist group, with 53.5 million members.

"It is clear that millions of Americans are unfamiliar with E15, which means there is a strong possibility that many may improperly fill up using this gasoline and damage their vehicle," AAA President and CEO Robert Darbelnet tells USA TODAY. "Bringing E15 to the market without adequate safeguards does not responsibly meet the needs of consumers."

BMW, Chrysler, Nissan, Toyota and VW have said their warranties will not cover fuel-related claims caused by E15. Ford, Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo have said E15 use will void warranties, says Darbelnet, citing potential corrosive damage to fuel lines, gaskets and other engine components

.


It's bad for your car, it drives up food prices and its production has a larger carbon footprint than does the extraction, refining and shipment of crude oil. It's the worst alternative energy idea ever created yet it continues because it is a subsidized cash crop in a state that is first up during primary season every 4 years.




OK, gang. That's it for today. We'll catch up with you all tomorrow.

Noted "Patriotic Millionaire/Billionaire" out pedaling his distortions again

.

Warren Buffett is back in the news again calling for higher taxes on the super-rich like himself.*





From Yahoo News:

Warren Buffett, the legendary investor who changed the debate about U.S. tax reform in 2011 with a call for the rich to pay more, is now calling for minimum tax rates for millionaires.

In a New York Times editorial printed on Monday, Buffett suggested Congress move immediately to implement minimum taxes of 30 percent on incomes of $1 million to $10 million and 35 percent above that.

"A plain and simple rule like that will block the efforts of lobbyists, lawyers and contribution-hungry legislators to keep the ultra rich paying rates well below those incurred by people with income just a tiny fraction of ours," Buffett wrote.

"Only a minimum tax on very high incomes will prevent the stated tax rate from being eviscerated by these warriors for the wealthy," he added.

The new push is in keeping with the one he made in the same newspaper in August 2011, in which he decried the "coddling" of the super-rich. He used himself and his secretary as an example, noting that her tax rate was much higher than his even though her income was just a tiny fraction of what he made.

"Warren Buffett's secretary" became a political meme following that editorial, and the said secretary, Debbie Bosanek, was ultimately a guest of President Barack Obama at this year's State of the Union address.

If this tired chimera of Buffet's secretary paying more in taxes is going to be trotted out again, we're going to shoot it down again because it is misleading and given the context of it being a presidential campaign meme that it was in 2012, shamelessly cynical.

You see, the reason Buffett's secretary pays more in income tax is because she makes more income (salary) than does Buffett. Buffett, nobly, allows himself an income salary of only $100,000 where he grants his secretary a salary far greater than that (we've heard it rumored anywhere from $250,000 to $400,000).

Naturally, then, his secretary is going to be paying more taxes on her salary income. Obviously, where Buffett derives the majority of his income is in capital gains and dividends that are taxed at far lower rates than the highest marginal income tax rates that hit his secretary's salary (15% vs. 33-35%).

So, we don't need higher taxes on the rich. What we need and what Buffett would do voluntarily if he wasn't being so dishonest in making his argument, is billionaires to start paying themselves salaries of, well, billionaires. Start paying themselves salaries commensurate with what they are worth. Instead, these so-called patriotic millionaires and billionaires are merely acting in the rational manner that any of us would in shielding their income from getting gouged by the man in a manner totally in keeping with the law.

That Buffett wraps himself in the flag, however, reveals Buffett to be merely a tool... and a tool of the President in his continuing class warfare.

Besides, the President himself acknowledged raising taxes on the rich would do nothing to close the deficit gap or pay down the debt thus implicitly admitting to his own stoking of resentment of the rich.




* We've blogged about this issue several times before, so if it seems old hat, we apologize. Sometimes, however, it's good to remind ourselves and others of just why it is an idea like Buffet's doesn't pass the sniff test and which also sets off our highly tuned and calibrated B.S. alarm.

Doing our part for the country

.

While the rest of the nation remains in a state of rancorous political divide, we here at BwD will be doing our part to put the past behind us and do our part for bipartisan healing and advancing the President's agenda. To that end, we have provided a link, here, where our readers can get a sneak peek at the form they will be required to fill out to prove their compliance with the President's signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare.

On this form you will be asked what type of insurance plan you have and for what months (yep, all 12 of them) you have been covered. Qualifying plans must include necessary preventive coverage such as contraception, abortion, and hair loss treatment. Everybody will be required to fill out this form. Everybody. Well, everybody except incarcerated criminals, illegal immigrants and the Amish. If you do not fall into one of these 3 categories, you may apply for a waiver with the Department of Health and Human Services. Consult with your registered lobbyist in D.C. before doing so, we recommend.

If you don't qualify for that waiver but still can't afford to purchase health care insurance, be prepared to cough up $695 (single), $1390 (family with two persons) or $2,085 (family with 3 or more persons) per year for every year you don't have healthcare coverage.

It's becoming more and more apparent, isn't it, just how expensive voting for free stuff can actually be?

News item of the day

.

With gas prices spiraling out of control here in California, we suppose it was time for a little government intervention, right?

Gov. Jerry Brown Sunday ordered California smog regulators to allow winter-blend gasoline to be sold in California this month, a move intended to reverse a sudden scare in the wholesale gasoline market that saw prices shoot up nearly 50 cents a gallon in six days.

The average price of a gallon of self-serve regular gasoline in San Diego County climbed 3.8 cents overnight to settle at $4.712, a record high for a second day, according to figures from the AAA and Oil Price Information Service.

The previous local record of $4.63 was set June 19, 2008.

The governor ordered the California Air Resources Board to allow refiners and gas stations to roll out the winter blend before its previously- scheduled Oct. 31 sales date, an action the governor said will increase gas supplies up to 8-10 percent, ``with only negligible air quality impacts.''


In a letter released at noon, as California gas prices fluctuated widely for the seventh straight day, the governor said the market variations were imposing ``unacceptable cost impacts on consumers and small businesses.''

(ed. note: if by "fluctuate widely", they meant "shot up like a bottle rocket" then yes, prices did indeed "fluctuate widely")

This, he said, was threatening ``significant economic disruption, and serious harm to public safety and welfare.''

The average price in San Diego County has gone up 55.8 cents over the past week, which included a jump of 19.5 cents on Friday, according to the AAA and Oil Price Information Service.

It is now 55.4 cents higher than a month ago and 91.3 cents more than a year ago.

An analyst said California's wholesale gasoline market has gone ``into a panic about the adequacy of California fuel supplies,'' Jeffrey Spring of the Automobile Club of Southern California said the market disruption followed a power failure at the ExxonMobil Torrance Refinery and closure of a Chevron pipeline that moves crude oil to Northern California last Monday.

Other pressure on the state's gas market includes local refineries dropping production levels, energy companies exporting fuel to Mexico and other countries, and allowing inventory to dwindle in anticipation of switching over to production of winter blend gasoline, Spring said.

``I am directing the Air Resources Board immediately to take whatever steps are necessary to allow for an early transition to winter-blend gasoline'' to be sold in California, the governor said in a letter to Mary Nichols, his appointed head of the CARB.

So, it's not Big Oil that's driving up the price of gas? This certainly seems to be an admission as such.


But anyone else troubled by the fact that the governor can figureatively wave his hand over a board of politically-appointed bureaucrats to lower the price of oil. And let's not forget it was this board, the California Air Resources Board, that authored the job-killing AB 32 with its emissions restrictions. This same board self-vetted this law with one of their own scientists who lied about his Ph.D., claiming he received it from UC Davis, when instead he picked it up from a diploma mill in New York.


But back to Big Oil and the profits they make off of their product. You'd be pleased to know that California is right behind New York and tied with Connecticut for having the highest tax rate in the country at $0.67/gallon.


Excessive taxation on the commodity combined with excessive bureaucratic and regulatory burdens placed upon it by a sham of a regulatory board, and Senator Diane Feinstein wants the Federal Trade Comission to have Big Oil investigated for collusion.

Yep. We're in the best of hands.



.

Of the 47% and trying something else...

.

... because what we have now, just ain't working.




In 1992, a full 74% of Americans paid some amount of federal income tax. Twenty years later that number has plummeted to 47% so we were rather puzzled as to why everyone was going bonkers over Romney's "47%" remarks (oh, that's right - the man dared to open his mouth) which were ostensibly about a culture of dependency which has been cultivated by the statist-left of this country for a number of decades. From 74% to 47% in 20 years..? We're sorry - there's something wrong with this picture.


Evidently, an overwhelming majority of Americans are of similar mind as we. Here's Glenn Reynolds on some encouraging poll results that show that 79% of Americans* say their fellow citizens, regardless of their income, should be paying some amount of federal income tax:

These Americans understand instinctively what a recent report from the Tax Foundation said: "Aside from the revenue impact of not having 58 million Americans pay income taxes, economists worry about the social and political effects of having so many people disconnected from the cost of government — a phenomenon known as fiscal illusion. The concern is that when people perceive the cost of government to be cheaper than it really is, they will demand ever more government benefits because they either don't feel the cost directly or believe that others will be paying those costs. Indeed,when one takes into account those who do not file, about half of all households pay no federal income tax, making the situation particularly worrisome in a majority-rule democracy."

You've heard us use the term before but we cannot over-emphasize how much having skin in the game should count for things like health care and the services we receive for our taxes. You think Americans might pay a little bit more attention to bond initiatives and ballot propositions like, say, California high speed choo-choos when they realize that ridiculously butchered estimate of $68 billion is going to be coming out of their hide from both state and federal taxes? You think the term "low information voter" might, hopefully, become a thing of the past if everyone had skin in the game? We do.


It's time to do away with our current byzantine and progressive tax code. Our liberal friends don't think the rich are paying enough and we find it, yeah, we're totally going to highjack the left's own terminology for this context, "unpatriotic" that only 47% of Americans are paying federal income tax. No one's happy. It's not working. Time to scrap it and try something else.


We can probably be talked into a flat tax but what we've recently become intrigued by is the concept of a national sales tax to replace the income tax whereby the wealth you generate for yourself and your family is not taxed rather what and how much you consume. We think that's an idea that would have cross-over appeal to our liberal friends.

So, what do you all think? As alway, your comments are appreciated.



* This would mean that a significant number of that 47% think they themselves should be paying at least some federal income tax. Hmmmm...

Video clip of the day

.



Bill Whittle takes on the 6th deadly sin and with it progressives/statists both here and abroad.



(video about 6-1/2 minutes)

If we can't get envy out of our hearts maybe we can at least get it out of our government.

This whole notion of “paying your fair share” and the “1-percenters” is laughable on its face when we have a progressive tax code whereby half the country doesn’t even pay income tax. Puts a whole new light on “paying your fair share” when it's viewed from that angle, now, doesn’t it?

We could never figure out why a flat tax rate or a national sales tax (that would tax consumption rather the wealth you produce) in lieu of the federal income tax never got more traction. Woops – that’s right. Because it would be reflexively opposed by half of this country that doesn’t pay federal income tax and a good number of their minders who do pay federal income tax and are counting on for political and/or twisted philosophical reasons, in keeping these people in a permanent underclass status.

Whittle’s right, though. If everyone paid the same income tax rate, tax hikes would be a lot less politically viable and, yep, which represents another reason why our flat tax/federal income tax championing never seems to get off top-dead-center.



Oh, well. Guess we’ll take a seat over in the corner with the tin-foil hat and flat-earth types and just keep our mouths shut before anyone starts getting to suspicious of us.


.

Stat graph of the day

.

Tax the rich!

... uhh, sure.

(click to enlarge)

image courtesy: TaxProf Blog

.

Quickies

.

A wrap-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.





1997: Nigerian email scam

2012: Obamatax scam

Federal trade regulators warned Friday that scam artists are using the healthcare law to ask for consumers' personal information over the phone.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said that the illegal activity began after the Supreme Court ruled on June 28 to uphold the vast majority of the law.

Scam artists "say they're from the government" and use the Affordable Care Act as a hook to verify information, according to an FTC alert.


"They might have the routing number from your bank, and then use that information to get you to reveal the entire account number," the alert stated. "Or, they'll ask for your credit card or Social Security number, Medicare ID, or other personal information."

Regulators urged consumers not to give out personal or financial information after unsolicited contact from someone who says they are with the government.

"If someone who claims to be from the government calls and asks for your personal information, hang up. It's a scam," the alert stated.

(italics, ours)




Damn. So, which is it? A scam or...

No small wonder that a 2,700 page law that dumps 30 million people onto the Medicaid rolls and which will subject the American middle class to an unprecedented tax hike and which was crafted in a fraudulent manner of its own, might be subject to some fraudulent behavior of its own.






Hey, do want to know who else is sick and tired of Team O's class warfare rhetoric? One of Team O's 1% fundraisers, that's who

R. Donahue Peebles, a wealthy fundraiser for President Obama’s campaign, derided Obama’s push to raise taxes on the wealthy as “unfair and delusional” and defended Mitt Romney from criticisms pertaining to his wealth.

“I’m so tired of hearing that the rich are not paying their fair share of taxes. Yeah, we are,” Peebles, who has raised between $100,000 and $200,000 for the Obama campaign, told The Huffington Post on Monday. “[T]o say that wealthy individuals are not paying their fair [share] is unfair and delusional.”

And dig this:

Obama has made the “fair share” argument a central part of his call to return to tax people who make $250,000 or more at 39 percent, while extending the Bush tax rates for the rest of Americans. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made the argument yesterday when he said that Republicans “I guess (they) object on principle to the notion that everybody should do their fair share when it comes to getting our medium- and long-term deficits and debt under control.”

Peebles is more sympathetic with the second part of Carney’s argument, though not entirely behind it. “So what should be said is that the wealthy Americans should have their tax rates raised because we need more money,” he suggested. “Now by the way, if they got all these tax raises it still wouldn’t put a dent in the national debt.”

Uhh... that doesn't sound sympathetic - that sounds like a set up for that last sentence for which Peebles is 100% correct. To that point, Carney is wandering off-message as his own boss admitted a few months ago that his whole class warfare angle really had nothing to do with closing the deficit only this pie-in-the-sky notion of everyone paying their fair share.

What better epitomizes the liberal mindset than a policy or set of policies that won't actually accomplish anything but will make everyone feel better about themselves?






2008:

"What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue simply because I want folks to be investigating violent crimes and potential terrorism. We’ve got a lot of things for our law enforcement officers to deal with.”

2012:

The federal government is moving to shut down the nation's largest and highest-profile medical marijuana dispensary operation, filing papers to seize properties in Oakland and San Jose where Harborside Health Center does business.
. . .
"The city of Oakland has developed a system to assure such distribution occurs according to state law in a fair and orderly process," Nancy Nadel, member of the Oakland City Council and vice mayor of the city, said in a statement. "It is most unjust to our citizen patients and distributors who have followed local guidelines to be harassed and treated as criminals by federal officials."

Check out B-Daddy's great post here for more O > W details.





Leslie of Temple of Mut is back from her birthday trip to Vegas and gives a run-down of things both here in Cali and Egypt(?), here.




And speaking of California, here's Walter Russell Mead:

(before proceeding, bear in mind that 5 of the nation's 12 largest oil fields are in California)

Destroying the economic hopes of low income people in order to stoke the self esteem of entitled Boomers is not Via Meadia’s idea of progressive politics, but that just goes to show how backwards we are by the exalted moral standards of the California elites.

The destruction of California isn’t a victimless crime. Millions of low income California residents are trapped in decaying cities where, thanks in large part to narcissistic green unicorn chasers, the manufacturing base has withered away. And anything that blights California, blights us all. America and the world need California back on line; the Golden State has too much to offer for anyone to remain indifferent to its fate.

In the long run, California is too richly endowed and its people too dynamic for the self-defeating policies of the green elites to prevail. Either the governing class of California tires of unicorn hunts, or at some point the people of California will get tired of their governing class. And in any case, the current suicidal policy mix means that sooner rather than later, California will run out of the money needed to maintain the illusions of its governing elites and the whole elaborate system of sham and deception will blow away. (See Detroit, modern history of. Ditto Greece.)

One way or another, things will change; what can’t go on forever, won’t.

Thought experiment: the defeat of statism won't come from any battles fought at the federal level. The shifting balances of power in our two party system in DC make it impossible for any public consensus to be formed as to who caused this friggin' mess.

However, at the state and local levels, we have data and empirical evidence of the damage caused by the one-party rule and more often than not the sickest man in the room has had policies enacted by a ruling one-party coalition of city and state machine Democrats, public employee unions, greenies and coastal elites calling the shots virtually un-opposed.

There are states that are recovering quite nicely from the Great Recession - same for some cities. And then there are those that are not. There are distinct policy and leadership trends that can be differentiated between the two.

As @iowahawkblog summed up perfectly in one of his tweets a little while ago: The President keeps creating jobs in states that aren't going to vote for him.


Discuss.



OK, gang, that's it for today. We're off to a BBQ with our fellow SLOBs. We'll catch up with you all tomorrow.

.

Your California high-speed choo-choo update

.

"There's no turning back on this. We're not going to turn back. And you know why? Because that's what the people want. That's why... there's no stopping high speed rail."

That from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood yesterday commenting on high speed choo-choos and, specifically, high speed choo-choos in California and for which we took him to task here for bemoaning constitutional republics that gum up the works and desires of statist authoritarians.

But you know what? LaHood may be right. High speed choo-choos may be coming and there very well be nothing we can do to stop it because we keep sending people to Sacramento and Washington who are completely oblivious to fiscal reality and fiscal sanity.

California lawmakers approved billions of dollars Friday in construction financing for the initial segment of the nation’s first dedicated high-speed rail line, which would connect Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The move marked a major political victory for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and the Obama administration. Both have promoted bullet trains as job generators and clean transportation alternatives.

“No economy can grow faster than its transportation network allows,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement applauding the legislative vote. “With highways between California cities congested and airspace at a premium, Californians desperately need an alternative

.”

Since when are these people interested in growing the economy that doesn't involve tax-payer money on stimulus plans? There is no such thing as a private sector to these people.

The bill authorizes the state to begin selling $4.5 billion in voter-approved bonds that includes $2.6 billion to build an initial 130-mile stretch of the high-speed rail line in the Central Valley. That will allow the state to collect another $3.2 billion in federal funding that could have been rescinded if lawmakers failed to act Friday.

Just a reminder, gang: the state doesn't have that $4.5 billion plus interest and the U.S. government doesn't have that $3.2 billion plus interest neither.

The bill, which passed the state Assembly on Thursday, now heads to Brown for his signature.

“The Legislature took bold action today that gets Californians back to work and puts California out in front once again,” Brown said in a statement. The governor celebrated with Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento, a fellow Democrat, in the lawmaker’s office right after the vote.

How is spending other people's money taking "bold action"? How is doing only what is encoded in your poltical DNA as a tax and spend statist taking "bold action"?

The first segment of the line will run from Madera to Bakersfield. The final cost of the completed project from Los Angeles to San Francisco would be $68 billion.

A quick word on that $68 billion figure. It's based on a dummed-down plan from the original one the voters voted on back in 2008 and was done so as estimates for the original plan were getting statospheric in the $100-$120 billion range. Even so, in just 4 years, a dummed-down high speed rail that also included some budget gimmickry that Sacramento is famous for is still estimated to cost more than double the $33 billion price tag that was sold to the voters.


We end this sad, pathetic little tale with this:

Dan Richard, chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which is managing the project, said California would have lost billions of dollars in federal aid if the Senate had failed to pass the bill before adjourning Friday for its monthlong recess. California entered a contract that called for the federal government to provide money for building the Central Valley segment if the state also put up its share, he said.

That's what passes for today's macro-economic model: tranferring wealth to spend money in order to receive a transfer of wealth only to spend that as well.

Obamatax...

.

...by the numbers:


15% : Capital gains tax in 2012

23.8% : Capital gains tax in 2013 and beyond



15% : tax on dividends in 2012

43.4% : tax on dividends in 2013 and beyond



$86 billion: Medicare payroll tax to go into effect Jan. 2013.



$65 billion : Individual Mandate Excise Tax and Employer Mandate Tax to take effect in January of 2014. (You will be pleased to know that illegal immigrants are exempted this tax. Hell between this, in-state tuitions, driver licenses, non-deportation decrees, etc. who would want to be a U.S. citizen? That whole living in the shadows thing is a pretty sweet deal.)



$60.1 billion : Tax on Health Insurers to take effect Jan. 2014.



$32 billion : Excise Tax on Comprehensive (Cadillac Health Insurance Plans to take effect Jan. 2018. (That relatively far off date of 2018 was a pay-off to the unions).





$22.2 billion : Tax on Innovator Drug Companies which took effect in 2010. (A tax on innovation... only a rotted-out, ideologically-driven statist-riddled mind could come up with a concept that patently absurd)



Read more of the insanity at the link.



We keep saying around here that Obamatax isn't really about improving the quality of healthcare in this country. Now, why would that be?

With the Supreme Court giving President Obama's new health care law a green light, federal and state officials are turning to implementation of the law -- a lengthy and massive undertaking still in its early stages, but already costing money and expanding the government.

The Health and Human Services Department "was given a billion dollars implementation money," Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg of Montana said. "That money is gone already on additional bureaucrats and IT programs, computerization for the implementation."

"Oh boy," Stan Dorn of the Urban Institute said. "HHS has a huge amount of work to do and the states do, too. There will be new health insurance marketplaces in every state in the country, places you can go online, compare health plans."

The IRS, Health and Human Services and many other agencies will now write thousands of pages of regulations -- an effort well under way:

"There's already 13,000 pages of regulations, and they're not even done yet," Rehberg said.

And this:

A new analysis by the Joint Economic Committee and the House Ways & Means Committee minority staff estimates up to 16,500 new IRS personnel will be needed to collect, examine and audit new tax information mandated on families and small businesses in the ‘reconciliation’ bill being taken up by the U.S. House of Representatives this weekend. ...

Scores of new federal mandates and fifteen different tax increases totaling $400 billion are imposed under the Democratic House bill. In addition to more complicated tax returns, families and small businesses will be forced to reveal further tax information to the IRS, provide proof of ‘government approved’ health care and submit detailed sales information to comply with new excise taxes

.


Having the IRS at the tip of the health care reform spear just doesn't pass the sniff test.


.

Messaging difficulties

.

That the Democrats can't quite get through a conversation without saying the word "tax" is completely understandable as raising them is pretty much what they are running on in 2012; a message endorsed by the Supreme Court last Thursday. Think were joking? Check out House minority leader Nancy Pelosi on Meet the Press on Sunday




0:23 :

"ta-penalty"

Pelosi's assertion that the ta-... penalty is on the free-riders glomming off the rest of us that are paying into the healthcare system is laughable on its face, as Democrats have courted and have counted on the votes of the free-rider class for decades now.

And let's see if we got this straight: They want to soak the rich and the investor class by jacking up the marginal income tax rate and the capital gains rate, they want to saddle the middle class with the taxes built into Obamatax that will fund the monstrosity and they want to stick it to young people and those who may not need nor can afford to purchase health care (Or as @Iowahawkblog tweeted: don't bite the hand that food stamps you). And it's the right that's obsessed with taxes?



Remember, gang:

ObamaCare SCOTUS ruling round-up (UPDATED)

.

(please scroll to bottom of post for update)



Well, despite having some queasy feelings about it as recently as yesterday (when we put a hundy down at The Double Standard getting 5/2 odds that the mandate would be upheld) we certainly did not see this coming...


Via Sir Charles at Doo Doo Economics:

From the National Journal:

The Supreme Court upheld the health care reform law on Thursday in a ruling in which conservative Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal wing and spelled out ways to keep the highly controversial law within the bounds of the Constitution. The ruling vindicates President Obama’s signature domestic policy initiative, even if it doesn’t stop the political debate over the sweeping Affordable Care Act.

The 5-4 ruling lets stand the mandate – the requirement that just about everyone carry health insurance or pay a fine. But the ruling calls the fine a tax, allowing the law to escape arguments that it violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

And here we thought it was Justice Kennedy, who voted with the dissenters that would be the swing vote.


Some thoughts:

The short take-away: The Supreme Court has granted the federal government the power to do whatever the hell it wants as long as it can be called a tax. But, remember, the President, in selling the legislation insisted the penalty for not complying with the mandate was not a tax.

Remember, this guy?:



We actually thought it a penalty instead of a tax as well.


The irony, as we see it, is that ObamaCare was saved by what many on the right insisted it was all along (a tax) and which the President and the rest of the Democrats insisted that it wasn't in order to grease the legislative skids. Let's face it: Roberts bailed them out.

And now that the honor and integrity of the Supreme Court has been restored, we're curious as to what the left is going to whine about now? Oh, that's right: all that money in politics.



Our favorite moral scold, KT, responded to the ruling in precisely the manner we expected (there is much to be said for consistency):

So What's The Big Deal?

If you're hoping that 9 guys in robes are going to save you from your own feckless greed and laziness, you've got some serious problems. With the Supreme Court decision upholding ObamaCare, the culture of demanding what you have not earned rolls on.

And "lee" in the comments:

I was really hoping just five guys in robes were gonna save me from some other clowns' feckless greed and laziness. And I know in November, I will vote, and I will vote for people who CLAIM they will undo this evil, but it's Washington, and it's a monster that makes the creature in "Aliens" seem as cute as a beagle puppy eating a cupcake.

I got twenty more years before they hand me the pamphlet, "So You Want to Die and Leave More Room and All Your Limited Access to Healthcare to Someone Younger Who Deserves It More Than You, You Old Goat," before I shove off down the Soylent Green Highway....

Both valid points.



Here's Leslie at Temple of Mut:

Basically, the US Supreme Court has said: “If you like your death panel, you can keep your death panel”. I cannot understate how disappointing it is to see that Chief Justice John Roberts decided to side with the big-government oriented justices, and merely amend the poorly written law developed by both houses of Congress. However, Roberts did leave us one clue on how we citizens can still fight back, as controlling healthcare is merely a front for controlling every other aspect of our lives. His decision includes this passage:

The Framers created a Federal Government of limited powers, and assigned to this Court the duty of enforcing those limits. The Court does so today. But the Court does not express any opinion on the wisdom of the Affordable Care Act. Under the Constitution, that judgment is reserved to the people.

drozz over at The Double Standard had these thoughts:

Double Standard Industries pays Dean over at Beers With Demo 375 (100 investment + 275 payout) internet dollars. Congratulations.

Hey I correctly interpreted Kennedy's vote (who cares).

Ginsberg, like all liberal judges argues that the mandate is necessary so it's proper in her separate concurring opinion. Her opinion is garbage based on the line that the mandate "solves an economic and social problem" (see Ginsber's opinion at p.12). Bullshit, it solves an economic problem.

Another promise made by Napoleon regarding of Obamatax has been broken.
Know who loves having their taxes raised? Young adults, small businesses, the middle class. And I hope they reward Napoleon by voting in November.

Ann Althouse's opinion of the verdict "President Romney".

Snark aside, this is a huge loss. The opportunity to reign in federal power was there, and now it's gone.

Roberts drew a clear line for Congressional power under the Commerce Clause. Then gave them a loophole to get around it.

Where do we go from here? Well, I'd say the Tea Party hornet nest was just stirred. My hope is that others wake up and realize what exactly just happened.

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know just how we feel about this ruling. We've been covering all manner of things related to ObamaCare and this ruling is indeed hugely disappointing as we're not sure what limiting powers the federal government via Congress now has. Again, the majority logic appears to be, if you can attach a tax to it, then Congress can mandate it.
Will this now extend to GM cars and Solyndra solar panels?

And as Captain Ed over at Hot Air pointed out: Hey, Lefties, you realize that this tax, though imposed by the feds, will be going directly to the private insurance companies. Let's alter that slightly for full effect: that tax money will be lining the pockets of for-profit private health insurers. Your welcome.


Silver lining?: We didn't have the courts do our heavy lifting in the fight for freedom and liberty. No? Well, then, we suppose we've got some work to do ahead of November 6.





(UPDATE #1): B-Daddy of Liberator Today fame finds some cheer from his parsing of the decision:

But here are my reasons why this isn't the full-fledged disaster I might have thought.

1.The ruling didn't expand the power of the commerce clause to infinity. From the WSJ: "The Commerce Clause is not a general license to regulate an individual from cradle to grave, simply because he will predictably engage in particular transactions," the chief justice wrote.

2.Most conservatives had always felt that had the mandate been honestly labeled as a tax, it would have never been challenged. Even though J.E. Dyer at HotAir asks what limit there is on the power to tax, the fact is, there has never really been a limit, so the ruling changes nothing.

3.I always thought the mandate's financial penalty was too weak to force compliance.

4.The mandate has no criminal enforcement provision, including asset forfeiture in the portion of the tax code in which it resides.
5.Because the mandate is a tax, it's repeal can't be filibustered in the Senate, where the rules on filibuster do not apply to spending bills.

6.The ruling on the Medicaid portion is likely to be more substantive. From Volokh: the federal government may deny the states additional Medicaid funds if they refuse to comply with the coverage expansion requirement, but may not take away their preexisting Medicaid funds. The states may then opt out of the expanded coverage, without risk to their current Medicaid funding. In the long run, this may kill the whole scheme. I am encouraged that seven justices accepted a states' rights argument.

7.The Chief Justice worked to protect the reputation of the court. I disagree with the way he did it, but understand the concern. The court should give deference to the legislative branch. The court's failure to interfere here may buy it good will in the future with Americans less invested in right vs left politics.

8.This is likely to help Romney, who is making the argument that the only way to get rid of Obamacare is to get rid of Obama. Supposedly, $1 million has rolled in since the decision.

9.The court has ruled officially that Obama has raised taxes on the middle class.

10.Ultimately the public got what it deserves for electing Democrats in such overwhelming numbers, including the 2008 nominee, who lacked the experience to inject any leadership into this miserable bill. We are reminded of why we need a tea party movement to restore government to constitutional limits because we, the people, demand it.

The last point, is something we related in a FaceBook post (yes, we realize that FB and politics don't miss, but...) as an appeal to all our friends be they liberal, middle-of-the-road or conservative. We're all stuck with this miserable thing for the time being and we need to come to grips with the fact that this cozy, corporatist relationship that exists between the government and the health insurance companies will do anything but bend downward the cost of healthcare. If we are going to get this thing repealed, it will take people across the political spectrum to act in good faith with the knowledge that ObamaCare is not reform rather a furthering of an already miserable status quo.



.