Health Mandate, Constitutional?

…they won’t answer the question, because they’ve been instructed not to. If they open that can of worms on the air, then any Constitutional lawyer in the vicinity (and there may be a few in DC) could take them to task.

Thanks to CNSNews, this avoidance has been well illustrated.

When CNSNews.com asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday where the Constitution authorized Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance–a mandate included in both the House and Senate versions of the health care bill–Pelosi dismissed the question by saying: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

And here:

CNSNews.com: “Where, in your opinion, does the Constitution give specific authority for Congress to give an individual mandate for health insurance?”

Sen. Leahy: “We have plenty of authority. Are you saying there is no authority?”

CNSNews.com: “I’m asking–”

Sen. Leahy: “Why would you say there is no authority? I mean, there’s no question there’s authority. Nobody questions that.”

Didn’t you know? NObody is questioning that. Except, uh, enough people to have forced Pelosi to send out a “Mythbuster” on it, where she says it falls under the interstate commerce clause (except that most people can’t buy health insurance across state lines, and hence are not engaging in interstate commerce that can be regulated), and likens forcing individuals to purchase a good to regulating the wheat industry, or education. Except, in every example she gives, no one is being forced to purchase anything.

It seems that Congress has as Plan A the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution. Plan B seems like trying to find a way to make it legitimate by saying it’s a part of the tax code, and it’s like extra taxes.

The fact is, the federal government forcing an American citizen to purchase and good or service is unprecedented. And once they get their foot in the door, they could start mandating all kinds of purchases (or boycotts), and regulate the individual choices and behaviors of American citizens on a broad scale.

Nationwide Tea Party, Feb 27 2009

Join the revolution.

Find your nearest Tea Party here.

The Power of Symbolism

You may or may not have seen this wraparound on the LA Times leading up to the inauguration:

I think it’s arguable this was made to bring to mind, perhaps subconsciously, this famous image of God in the Sistine Chapel:

That’s offensive enough, of course – a medium that dares name itself as serious journalism stealing such a well-known symbol in order to get people to drop their skepticism with respect to Our Dear Leader, the Great and Powerful O? Most of the United States is Christian, and this would have a powerfully positive suggestive effect (mental soma) on them, quelling fears and stirring faith.

However, the image of Obama itself lends to another interpretation, I’d argue. Namely:

Which is, of course, the iconic display of fascism.

What’s your take?

When Your Body is No Longer Yours

cross posted from bigliberty.wordpress.com

Many civil rights activists agree: your body, you business. If you’re not hurting anyone else, what’s the business of others if they perceive that you’re hurting yourself? In the past, these activist issues have extended to protect freedom of choice to have an abortion, freedom to smoke cigarettes and ingest other substances that might not be beneficial to your mind and body, and other bodily freedoms, as long as they did not, as a consequence, inflict harm on others.

However, the temptation to control the body of a citizen – thereby robbing the citizen of its most essential right, and reducing the citizen to an effective slave to the whims of the State Health Ministry – is very powerful. A society is a complex entity, and a politician who desires a predictable, machine-like State which operates in a certain way towards a particular purpose, will do what he can to control the variables of the system.

Even just one uncontrolled variable can throw the whole complex societal system out of whack, we learn from chaos theory (it’s called a metastable state, for anyone who wants to know), history, and excellent science fiction like Orwell’s 1984.

This push for absolute control has spelled the downfall of other perfectly good societies. Big Brother can’t be everywhere at once, and if there’s one citizen who isn’t completely controlled, then there exists the possibility for chaos to erupt and for the whole system to collapse.

That’s why the road towards tighter and more extensive controls starts with the loss of basic civil rights: once one has been corrupted, the others soon follow. The most basic civil right is the right to body autonomy; it is reasonable to fear that once the right to body autonomy has been corrupted, other civil rights will follow.

Body autonomy has been eroded over the past twenty or so years. The test case – of whether or not Americans could be so bamboozled – was anti-smoking legislation. Get into private businesses to control the bodily decisions of private citizens, and anything is possible.

The logical question in the minds of some politicians that followed from the outstanding success of anti-smoking legislation was: if we can change the behavior of an individual by claiming that behavior is harming others, how do we go about convincing the populace that more general behaviors are potentially harmful to others?

The answer: by first making bodily behaviors your neighbor’s financial responsibility instead of just your own, and then by redefining “harm” to include any arbitrarily “unreasonable” financial burden.

It’s taken a while, but the path has been laid and we’re now firmly traveling down it. Here are the steps towards the ultimate establishment of bodily ’serfdom’:

1. Cultivate a “preventative” healthcare system. Get in bed with anyone who’s hawking a bottle of Fountain of Youth Elixir [TM].
2. Cultivate a fearful attitude in the population. Overestimate deaths, diseases, and average costs from those stereotypical ills a “preventative” healthcare system claims to eradicate. Frame our existence as one in “crisis.” Suggest such ills are contagious, and call their set an “epidemic.” Frame the situation as one in which public health is at risk.
3. Promote a government-controlled healthcare system by painting private care blackly and public care as cheaper, more efficient, and better quality. Use classist arguments to suggest that only the rich can afford decent healthcare, that their healthcare is excessive, and they should be paying for a more moderate policy plus a few policies for others.
4. Once government-controlled healthcare is established in some form (all it needs is a toehold, as in Massachusetts), burrow ever-deeper into the hide of Americans, tick-style. Argue that since healthcare is no longer private, the costs of healthcare are therefore shared by everyone.
5. Use this argument to suggest that those who do not endeavor to follow “preventative” health measures are deviant, and are financially “harming” their fellow citizens via their “irresponsbility.”
6. Draft legislation which scapegoats certain easily-identifiable groups of deviants which  fines them, enslaves their bodies to meet arbitrary wellness “requirements,” forces their children into camps or otherwise divests the deviants of parental rights, and in general slowly divests the deviants of all their basic civil rights if they don’t “comply.”
7. If this works, then make up new maladies, and find new ways to finger other groups of people who didn’t before fall into a deviant class. Slowly divest all citizens of their civil rights when they fail to “comply” to be responsible and not cause “undue harm” to their citizens financially or otherwise.
8. The step after this one frightens me, honestly. I’ll leave it up to your imagination.

Obama National Anthem

McCain campaign worker mugged and mutilated by Obama supporter in Pittsburgh today

This is something you’re not likely to see reported in the mainstream media: http://cbs4.com/campaign08/mccain.volunteer.mutilated.2.847448.html

A Pew study came out today that 2/3rds of the mainstream media coverage of John McCain is negative, compared to 1/3rd for Barack Obama. Think there’s a double standard? Why isn’t the media reporting on the mutilation of a McCain campaign worker by an Obama supporter, when it so viciously spread the rumor (which Secret Service agents proved was false) that someone at a McCain rally shouted “Kill him” with respect to Obama?

Which have you heard about? I bet you heard about “kill him,” and not about the mutilation of this woman.

Oh, and just in case you thought she might not be telling the truth in order to make Obama’s supporters look bad (or that the mainstream media might play it that way), the mutilator carved a “B” in her cheek for “Barack.” You know, to leave no doubt.

I’m half-considering wearing a McCain/Palin button when I walk through Harvard Square next week. Just to see if anyone approaches me.

NOTE: Malkin thinks this story smells fishy: http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/23/why-that-mccain-volunteers-mutilation-story-smells-awfully-weird/

I had someone comment that the MSM isn’t running with it “because” it smells fishy. Well, that one reporter who claimed someone at a McCain rally cried, “Kill him!” broke a huge story that wasn’t checked into at all until way after, when Secret Service agents said there wasn’t evidence it ever happened. Yet this is still a campaign truism, and no one has heard this mutilation story at all.

My question is, if the story had been the other way around, would the MSM have broken it, whether it seemed reasonable or not?

Oh yeah, and if you write a “B” from another angle — like standing over someone’s head when they’re laying on the ground — it’ll look backwards when she stands up. Perspective’s a bitch, eh?

What I want to know is why all these stories of violence against McCain supporters is staying out of the MSM? If a story that’s not even TRUE, that doesn’t even involve ACTUAL VIOLENCE can circulate around the media and become a campaign truism even after it’s been shown to be highly unlikely, why isn’t even ONE of these, some of them clearly demonstrable and not in question, acts of ACTUAL VIOLENCE against McCain supporters being widely reported on?

The Obama Borg Hive Mind

the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation. "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated."

Certainly there have been many attempts by books, movies, televisions shows, and so forth to showcase the evils in collectivist thought since it became very apparent that collectivism inevitably leads society towards destitution (unless you’re a party official), fascism, class warfare and class genocide, a caste system, censorship, and a drastically lower quality of living than in democracy-loving or capitalist-leaning states.

However, I have to give the award for the best portrayal of the evils of collectivism (while not caricaturing collectivism—in fact, there were some questions, at times, whether collectivism was a more “perfect” or “advanced” state of society), to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and its collectivist species, the Borg.

Some standard Borg quotes and arguments:

1. Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile.

Obama has already won this election. Why do you resist? In fact, he should become president in November instead of waiting until January.

2. Freedom is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant.
You must comply.

The banks will never be free again. Capitalism is over. People can’t govern themselves. CEOs and corporations can’t regulate themselves. The free market and the invisible hand are meaningless. We didn’t want to nationalize the banks, but your failures made us. You must comply with our nationalization.

3. Why do you resist?
We only wish to raise quality of life for all species.

Why do you resist $4 gas, higher gas taxes, and higher oil prices? We don’t want to drill offshore, because we don’t want you using oil anymore. We will raise the quality of life for all species, whether you like it or not.

So — yeah. If this is the direction in which we’re going, there’s going to be resistance from those who do not believe the lies and equivocation of the Obama Borg Hive Mind. Resistance from those of us who know that markets work better than nationalization, from those of us who want to drive and heat our homes and transport our goods cheaply, from those of us who believe that adults don’t need to have their morals imposed on them, and that having those morals so imposed greatly diminishes the robustness of our society.

Reject the Obama Borg Hive Mind.

Telling Your Kids What to Eat

Readers of TCL and BigLiberty should be familiar with arguments against extensive “health-oriented” programs whose main purpose is to get people, especially children, to lose weight. While we have argued in the past against the efficacy of these programs (even when they’re between a doctor and patient and not state-imposed), myth-busting always and ever plays second fiddle to the fundamental question of whether or not a program is fashioned to take away our liberties to parent ourselves and our children.

Yesterday Michael Graham noted on his blog that Newburyport, MA, is taking up the torch of Nanny State Healthism. Healthisms : Health, if some readers aren’t familiar, is like Truisms : Truth. Healthisms are those things about health which “everyone knows are true” that are, if you dig a few more layers down, not at all true and sometimes have a preponderance of rigorous evidence against them. We’re not here to argue whether or not diet and exercise programs can ultimately make someone thinner, and whether even if that’s true, diet and exercise programs are suitable for growing children.

We’re here to talk about why it’s a slippery slope from being “for” programs like this which indocrinate children in particular kinds of behaviors rooted in shoddy science, and effectively take very basic parenting choices away from parents.

In this case, the schools are operating on the assumption that they know better what should go in your child’s mouth than yourself. This doesn’t take into account your own dietary beliefs, your child’s dietary tastes and/or requirements, doctor’s dietary orders, the psychological consequences of splitting food into “good” and “bad” categories (which itself is considered disordered eating by any nutritionist worth his salt), the possible stigmatization of fat children who would be considered by thinner children to be “to blame” for the ban, the focus by school officials on fatter children as the worst offenders and conducting searches in their bags or lockers like one would a hooligan for drugs, or the danger in allowing school board members the power to make scientific decisions about nutrition given they likely have little to no expert knowledge of nutrition.

So it isn’t difficult to see how this sort of thing can get pretty hairy, pretty quickly. A shoddy, strong-armed policy based on shoddy science usually does! It also usually results in a progressively greater ratcheting-down of liberties and rights. When fatter children are being singled out for locker searches solely based on their relative weight, is this still an upstanding policy with health as its goal, or is it simply mindless, Nanny State reduction of basic freedoms, creating a deviant class “to blame” for not conforming to their policies?

When it comes down to it, all the possible bad consequences are reduced to the fact that the State (school, etc) overstepped its bounds. Parents are parents for a reason, and treating every parent who gives their kids any sugar like a secret child-abuser is dead wrong, both scientifically, and legally. I’m of the mind that Newburyport’s candy-ban is illegal: they could not, if pressed, show that candy or soda causes direct harm to the student or distracts other students.

Newburyport parents, it’s my humble opinion that you’re well within your rights to bring this matter to court. Start standing up for your rights now, else precedence will overturn any protestations in the future.

“From Each According to His Ability, to Each According to His Need”

A comment I posted on Michael Graham’s Natural Truth Blog:

Many of Obama’s tax cuts (I think it might be all, but I’d need to check on that) are in the form of “refundable tax credits.” That is, when you file taxes and you’re able to claim certain deductions – instead of those deductions reducing your federal tax liability possibly to zero and then not beyond that even if you have more deductions, Obama’s plan invokes the negative range.

And what are negative taxes? Essentially, welfare checks from the government.

So say you’re already not eligible to pay federal income tax, and you’ve got a child going to college full-time. You will get a check in the mail for $4000. As far as I know, this doesn’t take into account whether or not your child’s tuition and expenses were already being paid for by some other method (need-based/merit scholarships, loans, work-study, etc).

A simple observation is that this “refundable” credit isn’t a welfare check just for non-taxpayers, but taxpayers too. Since it’s not a reduction in any marginal rate, the reception of the “cut” is contingent on how many children you have, whether they’re in college, and whatever other behaviors and situations the credits are “rewarding.” The cut ostensibly awards people who send their children to college, who have children in the first place, and so forth. That is, even those who pay taxes will become dependent on these credits as the market processes their existence. The demand for college education will go up, for a start, which will send the price of tuition up.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the development of a general, behavior-based welfare state is going to be phenomenally expensive. If anyone thinks simply raising the marginal rates of the upper (two? or just one? I forget) bracket(s) by a few percent is going to pay for it, they’re living in la-la land.

In conclusion, Obama’s tax cut plan is doublespeak for the institution of a general welfare state, which rewards certain income classes and certain behaviors, and punishes other income classes and behaviors. “To each according to his need, from each according to his ability.” It is the first step in the ultimate erosion of “the right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Free Capitalist Radio – check it out!

Please, please, PLEASE check out Free Capitalist Radio. It’s wonderful, clear, funny, there are call-ins — it’s really fantastic.