Lawmakers, aides may get Obamacare exemption
Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.
Who could have seen this coming.
The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.
It’s all “extraordinarily sensitive”. I wonder why.
A source close to the talks says: “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”
Safety in numbers. If this deal goes down it’s a good reason to vote out every member of Congress.
Read the whole thing if you feel inadequately cynical.
I would recommend the “just unbelievable” category, but I totally believe it. Sadly.
No surprise at all. NEITHER “party” has any sympathy for those they govern. I offer the example of a Möbius strip in geometry, a one-sided piece of paper. It can easily be created by taking a paper strip and giving it a half-twist, and then joining the ends of the strip together to form a loop. It gives every appearance of having two sides, but if you take a pencil and start drawing a line parallel to the edges it will meet having marked both apparent sides. That describes the current government. It is really one side, working against us. The “Möbius Strip Party”.
If we should ever have a chance to give meaning to this quote from the Declaration of Independence:
It would be vital to include an Article to the effect of:
“Neither the Congress of the United States, nor any civilian employee of the Federal government, shall have any exemption or mitigation from the full effect of any criminal or civil laws passed by the Federal government, nor regulations issued by any department of the Federal government, nor decrees issued by the Federal Judiciary. Members of the Armed Forces of the United States shall, however, remain subject to the Congressional power ‘To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces’ in the case of a conflict between the criminal and civil laws, etc. , and such Rules for the land and naval Forces.”
Such an approach to governance would, in and of itself, constitute a full-fledged revolution.
Subotai Bahadur
I’m shocked! Shocked I tell you!
Time to read Angelo Codevilla’s essay on The Ruling Class again.
Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.
Read the rest.
This kind of exemption is standard practice for the congressional pols and their staffs. They have excused themselves from a truckload of rules, regulations, and programs that are good enough for the rest of the peons but simply too complicated or onerous or inconvenient for the ruling elite.
Any vote for this exemption should be a millstone tied around the pols’ neck during the next electoral cycle for their seat, regardless of party.
Throw the bums out!
}}} Subotai Bahadur
I generally concur, though you do need a few codicils there. Example: If you are to allow the state to define capital crimes, then clearly those who… ahem… execute the command need to be exempt from laws regarding murder, as it would produce a spiral problem.
But the exceptions to these can be few and far between, expressly defined ahead of time, and only subject to change by, say, a 3/4ths majority vote from the populace at large, not by the legislators themselves.
Frankly, if we’re in the process of redefining the system, I’m very intrigued by the notion of RAH that there should be two bodies, one which passes laws only by a 2/3rds supermajority, and one whih REPEALS laws by only a 1/3rd minority… the notion being that if 1/3rd of the populace doesn’t like it, it probably isn’t yet a matter for The Law. I haven’t ever seen a full discussion of the downside to that notion, but it strikes me as an interesting premise to base a governmental system on.
I am not averse to strict definitions, but I admit that my train of thought on the capital punishment question was to the effect that “murder” is unlawful killing, and that capital punishment is lawful.
As far as RAH, with the exception of some of his sexual theorizing, I consider his sayings to be a source of great wisdom. A House of Repeal would be a start in slashing the jungle of laws down to size.
Subotai Bahadur
Let those who pay taxes and don’t work for the government, sit on special panels which can nullify laws,abolish gov’t agencies, impound money that has been appropriated unwisely and send it back to the treasury. And also remove any gov’t employee who doesn’t understand that he is servant of the public. This would be genuinely democratic as opposed to the fraud we have now.