Big Dogs House

Absolutely Not A Tax But Now It Is

Sep 17, 2010 Political

In September of 2009 when Barack Obama was pushing for his health care takeover and trying to get votes to pass a bill that would require people to buy insurance or be fined, he clearly stated that his individual mandate would not be a tax. Interestingly, Obama was against forcing people to buy insurance when he debated Hillary Clinton:

Obama: “Senator Clinton believes the only way to achieve universal health care is to force everybody to purchase it. And my belief is, the reason that people don’t have it is not because they don’t want it but because they can’t afford it.” WSJ

He said that he believes the reason people do not have it is that they cannot afford it and the inference is that a mandate will not help that.

But back to the tax issue. Obama was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos and George told Obama that the mandate was a tax increase. Obama flat out denied it and said that it absolutely NOT a tax. When George told him he looked it up in the dictionary and it fit the definition Obama told him that looking it up meant he was stretching things a bit:

STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it’s still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That’s not true, George. The — for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it’s saying is, is that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase.

People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I’m not covering all the costs.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it may be fair, it may be good public policy…

OBAMA: No, but — but, George, you — you can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase. Any…

Read more here [emphasis mine]

Obama is adamantly telling George that this is NOT a tax and that he can’t just make things up.

OK, so when it came out the Democrats in Congress said they could do it under the Commerce Clause.

A lot of states filed lawsuits against the federal government claiming the individual mandate is unconstitutional. The states contend that not buying insurance is not commerce so the Commerce Clause cannot apply.

The case went to court today in Florida and the federal government, probably realizing they could not win the issue on the Commerce Clause, defended the individual mandate because it is a tax and Congress has the right, under the Constitution, to tax. One can debate whether the authority to tax applies to this kind of situation but that is not really necessary because Obama adamantly told us that it was NOT a tax.

I think the judge was unimpressed with this tact and realizes the government is playing games. Nowhere in the 2000 plus page law is the money paid for noncompliance referred to as a tax. No member of Congress called it a tax and Obama said it was NOT a tax. In fact, the law (PL 111-148) [in sections 1501 and 5000 A] clearly states that the individual mandate is commerce in nature and that any one who does not get insurance will pay a penalty. A penalty is NOT a tax:

(1) IN GENERAL.—The individual responsibility requirement provided for in this section (in this subsection referred to as the ‘‘requirement’’) is commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce, as a result of the effects described in paragraph (2). [section 1501]

~snip~

‘‘(b) SHARED RESPONSIBILITY PAYMENT.—
‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—If an applicable individual fails to meet the requirement of subsection (a) for 1 or more months during any calendar year beginning after 2013, then, except as provided in subsection (d), there is hereby imposed a penalty with respect to the individual in the amount determined under subsection (c). [Chapter 48 Section 500A]

The intent of Congress and Obama should play heavily in this lawsuit because the court will have to look at what they said it would be and take that as their intent. Additionally, they worked hard to ensure it was a commerce issue with a penalty attached as evidenced by the language of the law.

This will eventually go to the Supreme Court where it will be overturned on a 5-4 vote.

America, this is happening because the progressives are working hard to transform America into a Socialist nation.

It is November or never and I can see November from my house…

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: fine, health care mandate, lawsuits, lies, Obama, tax

And So It Begins

Mar 23, 2010 Political

The insurance premiums people pay will go down and businesses will see their insurance rates go down. Obama said it would save about $2500 per year.

Well not so fast. The Market Ticker has a quote from its forum and it would seem as if the insurance companies did not get the memo:

“So I just got a call from my health insurance provider. My family rates are going up $200/month … $2400/year per employee effective April 1st. Didn’t take long after signing to get this s**t going.

So much for the “my plan will save Americans” $2500/year in Healthcare premiums.

F***ing liar in chief. “

So this person has to pay $2400 more a year for each employee.

Nice, very nice. So much for the savings.

This bill will cost Caterpillar 100 million dollars a year in additional costs and Zoll will pay about 7.5 million dollars in taxes on its medical equipment. Does anyone think they will be hiring, giving pay raises or NOT passing the cost on to consumers?

Seventeen states have filed lawsuits or shortly will and there is a good chance that the mandate will be ruled unconstitutional. If that happens the whole health care bill begins to unravel because the mandates are designed to force people to pay so more money is available for those with preexisting conditions.

If the mandate gets thrown out the CBO numbers mean nothing…

Tags: insurance premiums, lawsuits, mandates

The Right to an Attorney

Jul 2, 2008 Macs law

I have been thinking about this for some time now. It all started when I wanted to file several lawsuits for government involvement in causing cancer. You see, the several states in the Union, including the state of Maryland, filed suit against tobacco companies claiming that their products caused cancer and that this was an increased burden on the Medicare system because a lot of money is spent on people with tobacco related illnesses and therefore is taken away from people who have an illness not related to substance abuse. The states won and Big Tobacco was forced to pay billions of dollars, most of which, by the way, went to the lawyers. The states got a cut but not nearly as much as the lawyers got. So here is where I come in. I wanted to sue Maryland for contributing to the problem.

Maryland allows tobacco products to be sold here and they charge a lot of taxes on those products. I figured that if Big Tobacco was responsible (under the law) and had to pay the states then the state was just as responsible and had to pay me. Then I decided I would sue Florida because they advertise as the Sunshine State and encourage people to visit there and sit in the sun. We all know that over exposure to the sun causes skin cancer (some exposure is necessary for Vitamin D absorption) so I figured Florida was getting people sick and to make matters worse they send those people back to their home states so that the home state gets stuck with the bills. This looked like a win-win for me. How could they deny that either state was complicit in the sickness and how could states defend against something that they already sued for and won?

The problem was, I have no attorney. I called around and the hourly rates these guys charge is off the scale. They get more in an hour than some people make all week and there was no way I could afford them. So then I thought, well everyone has a right to an attorney and I called the court to ask how to get one. They told me that I was only entitled in a criminal case in which I was the defendant and that civil cases (which is what my lawsuits would be) are not covered by the Sixth Amendment.

This got me thinking even more because now I began to realize that all the lawsuits that are filed each year cost average people a lot of money. I always heard about people who lost houses and their life savings but I figured they were morons who did not exercise their right to an attorney. I had a friend named Mac who ended up in this kind of a jam and lost everything, house, wife, kids, retirement, all of it because his kid left a skateboard on the sidewalk and some old woman fell over it. Her son was a lawyer and Mac never got one (now I know why). Mac drank himself into a coma at the age of 32 and he never regained consciousness. One day his liver failed and we lost him for good, July 4th 1993. I decided to look into the lawyer issue and I found out that:

• Legal fees are more than 2% of our GDP
• A lawsuit is filed an average of every 2 seconds in the US
• The average person is more likely to end up in court than the hospital
• More than half of the Senate are lawyers

These might not seem like a big deal to most people but the Democrats running for office are saying we need nationalized health care when what we really need is nationalized legal services. We are pretty much covered in criminal cases but we need help with the civil ones. I think it is time that we had nationalized legal services so that each person would have a lawyer when one is needed. I am sure that it will be tough for the politicians to get this through because many of them are lawyers and they have lawyer buddies that get rich by filing lawsuits. Look how many times the ACLU gets its way because it threatens to sue and their target backs down because they cannot afford the legal fees. This is not fair. They say there are 40 million uninsured people in the US (it is more like 15 or 20 but I will use their numbers) but there are over 300 million people here and most have no attorney.

We need to have equal footing in the court system so we can fight off Big Law. Big Law is responsible for huge pay outs for spilled coffee, huge pay outs for using electrical equipment in the water and all kinds of stuff. People and businesses are sued for all kinds of things by Big Law lawyers who get rich at the expense of people who could not afford attorneys. It is time to stand up to Big Law people like John Edwards so that those of us on this side of the two Americas can get fair representation just like the rich people do. It isn’t fair that rich people can afford lawyers and the average guy cannot.

The government needs to start charging rich people a legal fee tax and all settlements in civil court should have 10% removed to go to the nationalized legal service fund. We need to get some of the money from the excessive pay outs of civil suits and use it for the downtrodden. How is a person supposed to raise a family if he needs a lawyer in a civil case and he has to spend his life savings or go to court on his own?

I am serious about this and apparently so are some others. I am trying to find the websites but there are a few places that are pushing for nationalized legal services so that all Americans will have legal representation under the law. One place that I heard about is Justice for Justice or Justice in Justice or something like that. If anyone has heard of them and has a url I would appreciate you sending it to me.

We all deserve a lawyer and we should get that lawyer for free.

Tags: attorney, lawsuits, nationalized legal services, rights, unfair