Haven't I explained this North Dakota honey ad nauseum. The bottlers take my perfect product and blend in shit like Iowa corn syrup and then have the nerve to put on the label 100% pure ND clover honey.
Well I've sent you enough of my product so that you know what the creme de le creme tastes like.
Americans buy shit off the shelf, but my friends get the real stuff from me.
As for insurance - we all should have it. There's enough shit in the world to worry about. The rich people can still have the top care - but the rest of us shouldn't go bankrupt if something shitty happens in life.
Wade, nobody in this country is truly free anyway - we're all slaves to something. Mine just happens to blonde hair and nice rack. [grin1]
Originally Posted by: DakotaT
Oh, I agree, your honey *is* the creme de le creme. *I* wouldn't have to be forced to eat it. But my point is that if you could convince Congress to mandate it even for the hoi polloi like Foster and the cultureless of Minnesota, the Honey of Honey Laws would stand.
I like to think of myself as a man of fairly refined tastes when it comes to matters of food and drink. But I would object strenuously to making even my choices of North Dakota honey, Spanish pork, English cheddar, and Scots whisky mandatory on others. And my dad instilled in me early on the virtues of insurance, so you don't have to convince me of that "should" point either.
But that's what the Supreme Court has okayed with this degree of judicial deference to the legislature and its "power to tax."
Every time "should" becomes "must" we have lost some of our freedom. When we enable the federal majority to make "should" into "must" whenever they think it happens to be a "should", we negate the very vision of our own Constitution as one of powers limited by enumeration, and we no longer have a constitutional justification for ANY freedom.
It would have been bad enough had the majority in this case been built solely around the case law surrounding the Commerce Clause. Judicial deference to the legislature on matters "regulating commerce" has emasculated the 10th Amendment for half a century. But giving a legislature carte blanche in the name of their power to tax? That is madness pure and simple.
Not surprisingly, most of the examples that I gave in my earlier post were examples of where a liberal government with its agenda wants to change our behavior. But consider these two:
1. A conservative-dominated Congress and Executive mandates all pregnant women to take their pregnancy through nine months, that said women disclose all their sexual partners during the possible period of conception, that all such named partners be tested for paternity, and that all men found by such testing to be the father be made to marry said pregnant woman. The same statute then provides that any man or woman failing to obey this mandate be assessed an head tax of $10,000 (or perhaps a income tax surcharge of 10%).
2. The same conservative-dominated Congress and Executive mandates all adults sign certain "articles of faith" that strongly resembles Luther's
Large Catechism, and taxes those not signing (Moslems, atheists, and a damn lot of those who would call themselves Christians) extra.
3. The same conservative-dominated Congress and Executive mandates a particular kind of gun training, and imposes an extra tax on anyone who refuses to take the several-thousand-dollar-a-head Government Gun Course.
By the logic of the court's opinion, a constitutional challenge to any of the three would be extraordinarily difficult to sustain. By my reading today of the various opinions (all 170+ pages of them), the only argument supporting the mandate that was supported by five justices was Roberts' "it's a tax" rationale. Add in any Court's reticence to actually reverse a prior Supreme Court decision, and this is going to be extremely hard to find unconstitutional ANY legislation that Congress has added the appropriate "tax" language to.
Courts will "distinguish" past cases they don't like, sometimes making great logical contortions to do so, but actual reversal is extremely rare. I doubt if there are enough instances that would take all of one's fingers to count.
And this is the kind of ruling which will be extremely hard to meaningfully distinguish from. In that it will be as successful as Wickard v. Filburn, the 1942 "as long as it significantly affects commerce, and Congress gets to decide what is significant" Commerce clause case that emasculated the 10th amendment.
But even Wickard v Filburn merely castrated the Constitution. This court has given the Congress the power to make us use an oversized catheter to pee.
What were George Carlin's seven words again?
Pissy shitty fucking cunt motherfucking cocksucking assholes, that's what they are. And if they aren't bastards, it's only because their mother made two mistakes rather than one.
Sorry for the language that belongs in the Back Alley, but this decision honks me off. REALLY honks me off.
Bastards.
[aside to Foster: can we reduce the wage of all fucks who wear black robes by twice what we reduce the wages of lawyers?]
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)