Quotulatiousness

March 25, 2012

Reason.tv: 3 Reasons to End Obamacare Before it Begins!

Filed under: Economics, Government, Health, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:36

March 5, 2011

Expanding the already expansive interpretation of the “Commerce Clause”

Filed under: Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:51

Rich Lowry explains why the recent court decision by Judge Gladys Kessler has such wide-reaching implications:

The easy-to-grasp distinction between an activity and inactivity is one of the most powerful legal arguments of ObamaCare’s opponents. But they hadn’t yet run up against a jurist as ingenious as Judge Kessler. She brushes aside the activity/inactivity distinction because not doing something is a choice and therefore “mental activity.”

Why hadn’t someone thought of this before? The sophists in Eric Holder’s Justice Department must be embarrassed that they didn’t themselves dredge up this killer rejoinder.

[. . .]

Kessler writes, “It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not ‘acting,’ especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something.”

[. . .]

Under the Kessler principle, there’s no nonconduct that the federal government can’t reach. Every day, most Americans engage in nonactivities that affect interstate commerce. If you decide not to buy a house, not to buy a Chrysler or not to buy a Snuggie, you’ve impacted interstate conduct through affirmative mental actions. We’ve gone from the Constitution giving Congress the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes,” to regulating on the basis of the mental activities of individuals deciding not to do something.

If this precedent stands, the Commerce clause has effectively swallowed the bill of rights: there will be no sphere of human activity that the US federal government can’t regulate.

H/T to David Harsanyi for the link.

January 29, 2011

Bad news for US small businesses

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:32

A very small item in the recent US Obamacare legislation will mean a huge increase in tax compliance paperwork:

Section 9006 of the health care bill — just a few lines buried in the 2,409-page document — mandates that beginning in 2012 all companies will have to issue 1099 tax forms not just to contract workers but to any individual or corporation from which they buy more than $600 in goods or services in a tax year.

[. . .]

But under the new rules, if a freelance designer buys a new iMac from the Apple Store, they’ll have to send Apple a 1099. A laundromat that buys soap each week from a local distributor will have to send the supplier a 1099 at the end of the year tallying up their purchases.

The bill makes two key changes to how 1099s are used. First, it expands their scope by using them to track payments not only for services but also for tangible goods. Plus, it requires that 1099s be issued not just to individuals, but also to corporations.

Taken together, the two seemingly small changes will require millions of additional forms to be sent out.

“It’s a pretty heavy administrative burden,” particularly for small businesses without large in-house accounting staffs, says Bill Rys, tax counsel for the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

Eliminating the goods exemption could launch an avalanche of paperwork, he says: “If you cater a lunch for other businesses every Wednesday, say, that’s a lot of information to keep track of throughout the year.”

For a one-person business, this change could double or triple the tax-related paperwork right there. Given that a lot of people have started new businesses in the last couple of years — partly because big businesses downsized and haven’t been hiring again — this will be a significant discouragement to self-employment.

H/T to Virginia Postrel for the link.

Update: It may not stand: there’s a bi-partisan coalition in the Senate to repeal that provision.

June 18, 2010

A “new chapter in U.S. history”

Filed under: China, Economics, Government, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:23

Ron Hart congratulates President Obama for delivering on his promised change:

We are so in debt to China that President Obama had to visit their president in his first year in office. It was an important meeting between the most powerful communist leader in the world and the president of China.

Obama is so popular in China that a nightclub named after him opened in Beijing. In keeping with the Obama theme, the club opened with $10 trillion in debt. It will, hopefully, close in just four years with $15 trillion in debt and no apologies to its “hope-based” investors.

[. . .]

To sum up our situation just short of two years into this Obamanation of an administration: Our debt is much higher, an unwanted ObamaCare bill that will cost us at least $2 trillion more than predicted was rammed through Congress, more troops are in Afghanistan, unemployment is much higher even after a union handout “stimulus” bill, and the biggest tax increase in American history is coming in 2011. So yes, Mr. President, technically I guess you can say you have brought about “change.”

As for your assertion, Mr. Obama, that you are going to usher in a “new chapter in U.S. history,” it looks like you will make good on that too. Unfortunately, it will be Chapter 11.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord.

March 23, 2010

QotD: The future of Obamacare

Filed under: Health, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:14

There will be court challenges to Obamacare but I doubt if they will be entirely successful. I further find it unlikely that the GOP, if they achieve majority status again, will be able to repeal it. Perhaps a combination of the two but that may be the most unlikely scenario at all.

Prediction? In five years, the Republican party will be embracing Obamacare and will be running on a platform that boasts they are the best party to manage it efficiently.

Rick Moran, “NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM DONE”, Right Wing Nuthouse, 2010-03-22

August 14, 2009

If it isn’t Astroturf . . .

Filed under: Health, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:34

. . . maybe it really is grassroots? Jesse Walker decodes some of the hysteria around both the protests and the official responses:

Clashes keep breaking out at the “town hall” meetings devoted to discussing health care reform. Usually the excitement amounts to some angry questions and heckling, but sometimes there’s more. Six people were arrested at a demonstration outside a meeting in St. Louis. Violence erupted at a town hall in Tampa after opponents of ObamaCare were locked out of the building. A North Carolina congressman cancelled a meeting after receiving a death threat; the pro-market group FreedomWorks, which was involved in some of the protests, fielded a death threat of its own. Supporters of the president’s health care reforms, who used to tout the support he’d received from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, are now accusing the very same companies of riling up “mob violence” to stop the plan.

As the charges and countercharges fly, here are three maxims to keep in mind:

1. It isn’t Astroturf after the grassroots show up.

[. . .]

2. It isn’t unprecedented if there are obvious precedents. When someone like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman claims that the “mob aspects” at the meetings are “something new and ugly,” all he’s demonstrating is that he’s an economist, not a historian. When it comes to bands of angry citizens being disruptive, it isn’t hard to find earlier examples in American history. It isn’t even hard to find earlier examples in 21st century American history. Just go to Google and punch in phrases like “guerrilla theater,” “antiwar protest,” and “Code Pink.”

[. . .]

3. It isn’t fascism if…actually, you can stop there. IT ISN’T FASCISM, you numbskulls.

« Newer Posts

Powered by WordPress