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Behold the prescient genius of the Framers, who wrote the Bill of Rights in disappearing ink. |
The progressives won their victory
on Obamacare. Repeal would be simple,
but I doubt it ever happens. Neither
party’s partisans will be able to help themselves--there’s too much merry
mischief to be made with a thousand-page statute.
Why would they ever give that up?
People who value principles over practicalities don’t rise to high
office, certainly not in the Coke and Pepsi parties of American politics
today.
So they’ll dicker and bargain and
bribe each other, writing their own little pet projects into any repeal. They'll mess with a few big things and leave the devlish
details behind. And so the apparatus of
the state rachets just a bit tighter. As it does.
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Ouch. |
But really, today’s ruling doesn’t matter
much. It was going to happen anyway, it
was just a matter of time. Macro, we’ve
been on this path for decades, and progress looks to march on. The best efforts
of the Tea Party or the Ronpaulians or the Libertarians never seem to change the
direction, only the speed. Micro, it isn’t
going to matter much to me either.
Like
almost every bill from every Congress, this bill was written for the benefit of
the governing class. To them, primary benefits will accrue. But there's a lot of words in there, each one an
opportunity for unscrupulous others to capitalize on it. The working poor will get to decide whether
they want to buy the insurance plan HHS settles on or pay the tax. The higher up the socioeconomic ladder you
go, the more access you’ll have to lawyers who can get you out of it.
I go to
bed every night with a lawyer who spends his days trying to keep the poorest of
the poor from getting screwed in court.
And while he waits for his cases to be called, he sees victim after
victim get screwed because they don’t know any better, or losing cases they
should win because they don’t have a lawyer.
More laws = more opportunities to use the law to screw someone. The disadvantaged and underprivileged that Democratic
politicians love to trot out for photo-ops—they don’t stand a chance.
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Her grandkids went to public school ... the one a half-mile from Dan Quayle's giant ugly house. |
For every
good guy out there, there are a hundred assholes who view each statutory
clusterfuck as an opportunity. Hell,
they revel in it.
I’m one of
those.
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Pretty much. |
And why
not? Strip away the emotion and
intention, and there is no analytical or economic basis to disbelieve that
Obamacare will cause deep damage to the economy and medical system. It only makes sense that people who see the
disaster coming will want to prepare.
The last
major healthcare law I read in full was the Medicare, Medicaid, and S-CHIP extension
Act of 2007. I went to classes on
it. I sat around with some really smart
and more experienced lawyers and we analyzed ideas to get around the parts we
didn’t like. And then I taught seminars
about it to other lawyers, and we all used those ideas for the benefit of our
paying clients. The part of me that likes games and winning will enjoy reading through the entire bill now that it's settled law.
The progressive
worldview can’t entertain the idea that the rising tide lifts all boats, so they even
things out by forcing everyone into the same boat with the blunt force of
legislation. So they shouldn't be surprised when the inevitable games begin. It makes sense that pressed sailors would be more inclined to creative mutiny. Especially when rum rations run short.
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At least it's still legal to self-medicate. |
When the
pieces of Obamacare finally get implemented, the people who can afford to
subsidize everyone else are going to find ways around it, so everyone else will
subsidize them. I’ll be cancelling my
insurance the second it becomes more expensive than the “tax,” and drop any
future health crisis onto a compulsory insurer’s lap. When they goes out of business. . . well,
that’s an inevitable consequence of the law I worked against. If anything, that just makes it more
important that I do what I can to maintain my advantages in the brave new world
to come.
And my
conscience doesn’t bother me about that—at least, not much. I did what I could to stop them from scuttling
the ship of state. But when it sinks, I
plan to take the lifeboat.
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No more room for passengers. Maybe they should legislate universal access to wings next. |
Rope.
ReplyDeleteYes, rope.
ReplyDeleteWait--not for me, right?
Rope and tree.
ReplyDelete