Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I do have a question - if you are so hell-bent on turning America into Russia, why did your wife opt to come here, rather than you go there?

As a result of your ignorance, your question is nonsensical. Assuming you are alluding to my support for single-payer healthcare, that would be more consistent with the Soviet Union -- or Canada -- then either Tsarist Russia or post-Soviet Russia. Russia has a system not too dissimilar from Obamacare. Regardless, my wife is from Georgia. You may recognize that as the country which recently had a war with Russia.

Why on earth would you live here if you don't like the system of government?

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I do have a question - if you are so hell-bent on turning America into Russia, why did your wife opt to come here, rather than you go there?

As a result of your ignorance, your question is nonsensical. Assuming you are alluding to my support for single-payer healthcare, that would be more consistent with the Soviet Union -- or Canada -- then either Tsarist Russia or post-Soviet Russia. Russia has a system not too dissimilar from Obamacare. Regardless, my wife is from Georgia. You may recognize that as the country which recently had a war with Russia.

Why on earth would you live here if you don't like the system of government?

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I do have a question - if you are so hell-bent on turning America into Russia, why did your wife opt to come here, rather than you go there?

As a result of your ignorance, your question is nonsensical. Assuming you are alluding to my support for single-payer healthcare, that would be more consistent with the Soviet Union -- or Canada -- then either Tsarist Russia or post-Soviet Russia. Russia has a system not too dissimilar from Obamacare. Regardless, my wife is from Georgia. You may recognize that as the country which recently had a war with Russia.

Anonymous wrote:
I do have a question - if you are so hell-bent on turning America into Russia, why did your wife opt to come here, rather than you go there?

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So we have a bill originating in the Senate that imposes a tax on the people. Jeff defends that because "it's legal". Nothing about it being moral, just, etc. Just "it's legal".

And THAT is progressive mentality.

I will defend the bill on a number of grounds:

1) the Supreme Court says that it is legal. That makes it constitutional. I remember when Tea Partiers supported the Constitution.
2) I support the tax/penalty/fee whatever because it discourages freeloaders. I remember when Tea Partiers opposed freeloaders.
3) The House voted on and passed the same bill that the Senate passed.Where the bill originated is a technicality. But, technically, it originated in the House. If the House was truly upset that it hadn't voted on the revenue language first, it could have voted against the bill. But, instead, the House voted to approve the bill. It is ridiculous to even act like the issue of where the bill originated is even important. Those making an issue of it probably don't even know that the House later voted on and approved the exact same language.

That said, I would have been much happier with a single-payer health system. If Tea Partiers are going to scream "socialism", we should at least have a socialist healthcare system. For once, they would accurate.

Anonymous wrote:

So we have a bill originating in the Senate that imposes a tax on the people. Jeff defends that because "it's legal". Nothing about it being moral, just, etc. Just "it's legal".

And THAT is progressive mentality.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

That's not actually what the Supreme Court said, so we can stop reading you now.

Oh, really? I don't believe that I ever stated that the Court "said" anything. What I said was, "Second, the Court held that regardless of what the fine was called, it operated as a tax." The court employed a “functional approach” to assessing whether the fine should be considered a tax, for constitutional purposes. If you believe that is wrong, please point me to language in the decision that contradicts it.

What the opinion does hold, by the way, is:

“The Government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the Constitution. Granting the Act the full measure of deference owed to federal statutes, it can be so read, for the reasons set forth below.”

Oh, and:

It is of course true that the Act describes the payment asa “penalty,” not a “tax.” But while that label is fatal to the application of the Anti-Injunction Act, supra, at 12–13, it does not determine whether the payment may be viewed as an exercise of Congress’s taxing power. It is up to Congress whether to apply the Anti-Injunction Act to any particular statute, so it makes sense to be guided by Congress’s choice of label on that question. That choice does not, however, control whether an exaction is within Congress’s constitutional power to tax."

Then there’s this:

“The same analysis here suggests that the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax, not a penalty:”

Finally,

“The joint dissenters argue that we cannot uphold §5000A as a tax because Congress did not “frame” it assuch. Post, at 17. In effect, they contend that even if the Constitution permits Congress to do exactly what we interpret this statute to do, the law must be struck down because Congress used the wrong labels. An example may help illustrate why labels should not control here.”

I can go on embarrassing you all night, but perhaps I should give you an opportunity to respond. Whatcha got?

Yet it was upheld as constitutional because the fine was actually a tax, and Obama swore it was NOT a tax.

And your point is?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

That's not actually what the Supreme Court said, so we can stop reading you now.

Oh, really? I don't believe that I ever stated that the Court "said" anything. What I said was, "Second, the Court held that regardless of what the fine was called, it operated as a tax." The court employed a “functional approach” to assessing whether the fine should be considered a tax, for constitutional purposes. If you believe that is wrong, please point me to language in the decision that contradicts it.

What the opinion does hold, by the way, is:

“The Government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the Constitution. Granting the Act the full measure of deference owed to federal statutes, it can be so read, for the reasons set forth below.”

Oh, and:

It is of course true that the Act describes the payment asa “penalty,” not a “tax.” But while that label is fatal to the application of the Anti-Injunction Act, supra, at 12–13, it does not determine whether the payment may be viewed as an exercise of Congress’s taxing power. It is up to Congress whether to apply the Anti-Injunction Act to any particular statute, so it makes sense to be guided by Congress’s choice of label on that question. That choice does not, however, control whether an exaction is within Congress’s constitutional power to tax."

Then there’s this:

“The same analysis here suggests that the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax, not a penalty:”

Finally,

“The joint dissenters argue that we cannot uphold §5000A as a tax because Congress did not “frame” it assuch. Post, at 17. In effect, they contend that even if the Constitution permits Congress to do exactly what we interpret this statute to do, the law must be struck down because Congress used the wrong labels. An example may help illustrate why labels should not control here.”

I can go on embarrassing you all night, but perhaps I should give you an opportunity to respond. Whatcha got?

Yet it was upheld as constitutional because the fine was actually a tax, and Obama swore it was NOT a tax.

Anonymous wrote:

On November 19, Harry Reid introduced his own version of H.R. 3590 in the Senate. He took the bill that had been unanimously passed by the House, renamed it the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," deleted all its contents after the first sentence, and replaced it with totally different content. What followed was the first pass of the Senate version of ObamaCare.

I am not so naïve as not to know that bills are passed like this all the time. Is this what our Founding Fathers intended for our protection? NO.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As I wrote in my book, Covenant of Liberty:

On September 17, 2009, Congressman Charlie Rangel introduced a bill in the House, H.R. 3590, the "Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009," whose purpose was "to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees." The bill passed the House on October 8 by a 416-0 vote.

On November 19, Harry Reid introduced his own version of H.R. 3590 in the Senate. He took the bill that had been unanimously passed by the House, renamed it the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," deleted all its contents after the first sentence, and replaced it with totally different content. What followed was the first pass of the Senate version of ObamaCare.

Me: That's a black dog

Jeff: There are three white hairs on that dog. You are a liar!

LOLOL

Biggest LOL is that you don't know what an amendment is. Reid, like a number of Senators before him, used a perfectly legal procedure to ensure that the bill met the letter of the law. But, I guess you still will keep complaining that the bill started in the Senate despite that you yourself have just provided a citation that agrees with me that the bill started in the House.

Anonymous wrote:

That's not actually what the Supreme Court said, so we can stop reading you now.

Oh, really? I don't believe that I ever stated that the Court "said" anything. What I said was, "Second, the Court held that regardless of what the fine was called, it operated as a tax." The court employed a “functional approach” to assessing whether the fine should be considered a tax, for constitutional purposes. If you believe that is wrong, please point me to language in the decision that contradicts it.

What the opinion does hold, by the way, is:

“The Government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the Constitution. Granting the Act the full measure of deference owed to federal statutes, it can be so read, for the reasons set forth below.”

Oh, and:

It is of course true that the Act describes the payment asa “penalty,” not a “tax.” But while that label is fatal to the application of the Anti-Injunction Act, supra, at 12–13, it does not determine whether the payment may be viewed as an exercise of Congress’s taxing power. It is up to Congress whether to apply the Anti-Injunction Act to any particular statute, so it makes sense to be guided by Congress’s choice of label on that question. That choice does not, however, control whether an exaction is within Congress’s constitutional power to tax."

Then there’s this:

“The same analysis here suggests that the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax, not a penalty:”

Finally,

“The joint dissenters argue that we cannot uphold §5000A as a tax because Congress did not “frame” it assuch. Post, at 17. In effect, they contend that even if the Constitution permits Congress to do exactly what we interpret this statute to do, the law must be struck down because Congress used the wrong labels. An example may help illustrate why labels should not control here.”

I can go on embarrassing you all night, but perhaps I should give you an opportunity to respond. Whatcha got?

That's not actually what the Supreme Court said, so we can stop reading you now.

On November 19, Harry Reid introduced his own version of H.R. 3590 in the Senate. He took the bill that had been unanimously passed by the House, renamed it the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," deleted all its contents after the first sentence, and replaced it with totally different content. What followed was the first pass of the Senate version of ObamaCare.