Just What Will This Mean?

It's been about two weeks now since the Supreme Court upheld Obama's health care reform law and I'm still trying to digest it.  The Court's decision certainly wasn't expected by me and the more I think about it it seems more and more shady.  I'm starting to wonder if all is at it seems here.

The Court found the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare", constitutional which seems like a straight forward victor for Obama, but the way the Court found Obamacare constitutional poses problems for the president.  The Supreme Court upheld Obamacare by defining the most hated part of the law, the individual mandate, as a tax in contrast to the administration's 3 year long insistence that it was not.  So now the president's victory will force him and his supporters to sell this newly defined tax to a nation that hates taxes even more than big government.  In short, his "victory" has Obama in a bind.  

I've heard speculation from conservative talking heads that this conundrum for Obama may have been planned.  I've heard that Chief Justice Roberts was being "crazy like a fox" with his decision, making Obamacare constitutional but in a way that  a) put Obama on the spot and  b) gave Republicans a weapon to deploy against him in the election.  And it energized the conservative/Republican base to boot.  Some conservative talking heads seem to think that the Supreme Court's decision not only isn't so bad but is a net positive for Republicans.  Sorry, but I'm just not feeling it.

Yes, the Court's decision energized the conservative/Republican base, which is good, but that's the only good thing I see in it.   I don't see calling the individual mandate a tax as a good thing at all.  Sure, it gives the Republicans a weapon against Obama but I fear that it also expands the taxation power of Congress.  By labeling the individual mandate a tax the high Court set a precedent that makes Congress' taxation power pretty much limitless when it is intended to control behavior.  Think about it.  The federal government passes a law that forces Americans to buy health insurance and financially punishes them if they don't, and the Supreme Court says the law is constitutional because the financial punishment is a "tax".  The feds can now "tax" us for not doing pretty much anything they tell us to do.That's frightening, and my fear is not assuaged just because this expansion of federal power has energized the base.

Please don't misunderstand me.  I'm glad, thrilled actually, the conservative/Republican base is energized like it hasn't been since the Tea Party protests of 2009-2010.  We need that energy to get out our message and, more importantly, our  vote.  But if we fall short in November, despite all this new energy, and fail to oust Obama from the White House and the Senate Dems from their majority, Obamacare will remain the law of the land.  What then?  Will conservatives/Republicans have enough energy to keep fighting this insidious law?  Will we have enough energy to use uncomfortable (for us) tactics, e.g. civil disobedience, if necessary?  We don't know the answer to those questions and that scares me as much as the federal government's unprecedented power grab. 

So, what does this all mean?  Where will the Supreme Court's decision lead?  It will lead, I believe, to either the restoration of American freedom and self-reliance or to the transformation of America as Obama promised.  I want the restoration of America, not Obama's Marxist-inspired "change".  Conservatives/Republicans can restore America if we choose to.  We have the energy, but do we have the tenacity to win?  Time will tell, and I pray it's on our side.

Double Tap

Have you seen the movie Zombieland?  It's a horror comedy about four people fighting to survive a plague of zombies that's infecting the land. The protagonist of the film is a college student named Columbus, played by the adorable Jesse Eisenberg.  Columbus has created many rules to help him survive in this post-apocalyptic, zombie infested America.  One of his rules is that when killing zombies always do a "double tap", that is hit or shoot zombies in the head twice to make sure they're dead.  The double tap is a good rule for offing the walking dead but it's a terrible and terribly unfair rule for collecting taxes, but it's a rule our friendly federal government is inflicting on certain citizens of our (once?) great Republic.  And just who are the targets of the income tax double tap?  The eeeeeevil rich.

Rich Americans endure a federal double tap on their income.  You'd never know this from the shrill class warfare rhetoric pouring from Obama and company, but it's true.  The dastardly "rich", those Americans making over $200,000 a year, pay a 33%-35%  federal income tax rate on their earned income.  If they invest some of their earned income and make a profit, that investment income, aka capital gains, is taxed at a rate as high as 25%, depending on what the investment is.  So, the income rich people earn from their jobs--yes, most rich people work--is taxed.  Then any profit made from investing that already taxed earned income is also taxed.  Can you say, "Double tap!".  I knew you could.

So now you know.  The eeeeevil, blood sucking rich not only pay their fair share in federal income taxes, they pay twice.  But we 99 per centers shouldn't gloat.  The government, certainly not the federal government, shouldn't be taking anyone's money.  It's ours.  We earned it by the sweat of our brow.  The income tax, however, effectively abrogates our ownership of the fruits of our labor.  It transfers that ownership to the government and makes us wards of the state, living on however much of our labor the state decides we deserve.  And most of us meekly submit to this statist thievery, even arguing about how to make it "fairer".  That's like arguing how to make muggings fairer. 

The income tax must be abolished.  No one's income, however substantial, should be confiscated by Uncle Sam.  It's ours. We earned it.  It belongs to us. 

Tapping is for zombies.

Mr. Buffet, Why Don't You Just Pay More?

He's at it again.

On Tuesday's edition of The O'Reilly Factor it was revealed that billionaire businessman Warren Buffet has written an op/ed piece once again calling for rich Americans to be taxed more. It's been asked before and I'll ask it again. If Warren Buffet wants Uncle Sam to have more of his money, why doesn't he just give it to him? There's nothing preventing Buffet from giving the government as much of his personal wealth as he chooses. So why does he persist in his campaign for more governmental confiscation of private income?

I think Mr. Buffet wants people to think his campaign is about a patriotic desire to bring America back to fiscal solvency. Yes, the US has an ASTRONOMICAL debt problem, but taxing the rich more won't solve it. There simply aren't enough of them and they don't have the amount of money needed to put even a dent in America's deficit. Warren Buffet is smart enough to know that and that brings us to what I believe is the second reason for Buffet's tax-the-rich campaign: "social justice".

The Left's economic creed is that the rich are avoiding income taxes and the government must rectify this injustice by seizing the rich's assets and redistributing them to the less fortunate. Sounds nice, but it's just not true. Wealthy Americans not only pay income taxes, they bear the brunt of the federal tax burden, with the top 1% paying about 40% of federal income taxes. The rich are paying they're fair share, contrary to the class warfare rhetoric of the Left. If Buffet and others like him really want to increase revenue for the federal government while also promoting tax "fairness", they should go after the 47% of Americans who pay no federal income taxes. It's those people, NOT the rich, who are the real federal income tax freeloaders.

Imagine the revenue that would pour into Uncle Sam's coffers if the freeloading half of Americans was made to pay up. And wouldn't it be the height of fairness to make millions of people who take from the system contribute to the system? Warren Buffet would do his country a better service by supporting legislation taking away the lucky ones' free ride. After all, why should I, a lower-income person, have my money taken from me in order to support those who add nothing to the pot? Where's the social justice in that?

I think Warren Buffet suffers from "embarrassment of riches" syndrome. I believe he feels tremendous guilt not only for being successful but for enjoying his success. The mere thought of government confiscating his money assuages that guilt. Furthermore, I believe Buffet has projected his guilt onto his fellow rich, which is why he's pushing so hard for higher taxes on all the wealthy rather than simply asking for more charitable giving. Freely giving one's money away doesn't stigmatize it the way having it seized like contraband does. And being stigmatized is part of the rich's punishment for being rich.

So why doesn't Warren Buffet just give the government more, maybe even all, of his money in order to help the country? Because helping the country isn't really the endgame here. The endgame is to convince himself that he really is a good person in spite of enjoying all the perks his filthy lucre can buy. And I think that's a very sad goal, indeed.