Rant: Vote for Obama

I will probably recant 15 minutes after I write this but here is my current thinking.

On the NFIB vs. Sebelius decision.  I would have voted with the liberals on this one.  Not because I agree with their policies, but the question was, is this constitutional?  I think courts should be very hesitant to strike down laws as being unconstitutional that have been passed by Congress.  It's a lesser version of Parliamentary Sovereignty.  The way to "fix" this is to repeal it.

Is Obamacare a tax?  No.  There is a difference between a tax and a penalty, and it clearly is a penalty, not a tax.  If it were a tax, then a challenge would have to wait until the tax was actually assessed. If it were a penalty, then the act penalized is by definition illegal. I disagree with Roberts having it both ways here.

If it is not illegal to make a decision to go without health insurance, then how could such a decision be penalized?

Does the Commerce clause reach inactivity?  There are certain things you can be required to do and for which inactivity can be penalized.  Such as showing your ID to board an aircraft, showing up for jury duty, and registering for Selective Service, get immunized.  There are limits to the Commerce Clause (it cannot be the basis for a law forbidding bringing a gun on to school property), but this is based on natural limits (such a law should be passed at the state level), not because of inactivity.

Some "opt out" decisions require taking a stand, like being a conscientious objector, as opposed to mere neglect.  Going without health insurance is a decision of this magnitude.  

The age of noninterventionism died in the 1930s, when another Justice Roberts voted to uphold the constitutionality of New Deal legislation.  Roberts doesn't honestly deal with the Lochner issue here. I think the individual mandate is linked to the right to receive emergency medical care.  I think that one should be able to have a principled libertarian position to reject the right to receive emergency medical care linked to an exemption from the individual mandate, but the decision doesn't rely on that.  So I think inactivity is not a valid limit to the Commerce Clause.  To put in plain language, yes Congress could constitutionally pass a law requiring you to eat broccoli.  The reality is, we have a big brother nanny state and we have had one since the 1930s.

Do we seriously want to go back to the Lochner era?  Just say yes or no.  If the answer is no, then it is sophistry to say that the Commerce Clause is any limitation on other than minor issues. 

Roberts claims to be a conservative, to say that we have a government of limited powers, but then he upholds the law.  Ask him the Lochner question, and he would say no.  So he is a fake on the tax/penalty issue, and he is a fake on the Lochner question.

Specifically, compare him to Scalia.  Scalia likes Lochner and isn't afraid to say so.

Romney is also a fake, a RINO.  He likes big government, and passed the precursor to Obamacare in Massachusetts, known as Romneycare.  If he were elected, he would act fiscally irresponsible by raising spending without raising taxes.  His actions would drastically worsen the deficit.

Obama is like a sports fan who won the lottery.  All he wants to do is sit on the couch with the remote and watch basketball games.  When he's not doing that, he wants to play golf.  Obama is the opposite of a transformational leader - he doesn't want to transform anything.  He likes things just the way they are.  He is out of touch, and Michelle takes full advantage of the situation by being treated like royalty.  He does have people under him, specifically in the Treasury Department, who realize the fiscal dangers we are in who are trying to change things.  Obama is clueless, but some of his people have a clue, and he will let them, through his inactivity, at least try to fix things.

Romney on the other hand IS big government.  He will vastly expand the "police powers" of the state, and turn the US into a Mormonized (and I don't mean that in a bad way) version of Massachusetts.  Imagine an army of IBM salesmen from the 1960s, all wearing black suits with black ties, or better yet, the Men in Black, with their stopwatches and flowcharts, all trying to make government more efficient.

No thank you.  I prefer my government inefficient.  Better the lazy bum I know than the energetic scoundrel I don't.  "Keep the lazy bum in charge".  There is your campaign slogan.