When did you find out the individual mandate was a tax?

For the vast majority who did not pay attention over the past few years, they found out that Obamacare’s individual mandate was a tax with the release of the US Supreme Court decision. That’s just fine for a brick layer or a clerk. It isn’t their job to think about such distinctions. It is the job of those in government. So when did Nancy Pelosi find out? When did President Obama find out? Is the date they found out so late as to consider it a measure of political incompetence that should weigh down their re-election campaign?

Is anybody asking these people these questions?

Regarding The Obamacare Decision

I didn’t mean to post on that particular issue today, but as I was running through the Daily Brief archives looking for something else entirely, I found this entry from nearly a year ago – which is rendered timeless by today’s events. That’s the trouble with having a huge blog-archive, by the way – one is always finding quite splendid entries that one has forgotten entirely.

(A comment by Xennedy at this thread on Belmont Club which struck me as being particularly perceptive — and histoically apt.)

I’m not thinking of military history for this one. I’m thinking of the various schemes by which the southern states retained political dominance of the United States over the increasingly more numerous and anti-slavery northerners prior to the Civil War. Eventually these schemes became so odious and unpopular that they destroyed the political structure of the Union as it had existed. The response of the South wasn’t to accept demotion or immediate war – it was to engineer a supreme court decision to end the house divided, as Abraham Lincoln put it, and make the whole union slavery friendly. I’m thinking of the Dredd Scott decision, and in my evaluation of that ruling in theory southerners could bring their slaves into (say) New York and compete with free labor unhampered by the free state status of that state. In practice the Civil War intervened before anything like that actually happened, but my point is that the political establishment of the day attempted to rule game over and cement their hold on power in perpetuity regardless of the will of the people.
 
Seem familiar? In my view similar events are happening today. Cram Obamacare through, hold 40 Senate seats, and it’s extremely difficult to repeal. Issue EPA regulations from the executive branch, and ignore Congress. Re-elect Obama, pick another two or three supreme court justices, and the Constitution means whatever the left wants it to mean.
 
The problem with this – or perhaps I should say the solution – is that eventually people tire of the rigged game, and lose their willingness to play.
 
So was Obamacare a new Kansas-Nebraska Act – which preceded the formation of the modern Republican party – or a new Dredd Scott decision – which preceded secession and civil war? Or neither?
 
I don’t claim to know. But I do think we are in the opening acts of a much larger story, and the drama over the debt limit is much less important than it appears in the immediacy of the here and now. The welfare state paradigm of American governance is collapsing, and that collapse will continue even if a debt ceiling increase gives it a slightly longer run. To quote that famous Chinese curse we live in interesting times. Alas.

I’ve long been a fan of Wretchard, at Belmont Club – and of Steven den Beste, too, when he was regularly posting, back in the High Middle Ages of blogging. (Which was in the early Oughties, more or less). In a just world, they would have mighty thrones among those who comment upon current events. Wierd that I am the scatter-brained, intuitive humanities major who appreciates the heck out of severely logical IT-engineer types, but there you go. I guess it’s because of the underlying logic about it all.

New BlogAds Poll Question

You can register your opinion re today’s Supreme Court decision on Obamacare by answering the BlogAds poll (“Three quick questions”) in the left margin of this blog. BlodAds says that it will publish the results tomorrow.

(Chicagoboyz is a BlogAds affiliate.)

Real Estate: Flight Capital and Bigger Government

Miami residential real estate prices are holding firm and even increasing despite the weak economy. The recovery appears to result in significant part from capital inflows from French, Venezuelans and other foreigners whose governments are ramping up their attacks on private wealth. With low interest rates, a weak dollar and relative safety from confiscation, residential property in the more cosmopolitan US cities is a financial haven for Europeans and Latin Americans.

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