On December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, banning slavery in all states and territories. On 1917 on this date, Finland declared independence from Russia.
Vladimir Nabokov completed his controversial novel “Lolita” on this date in 1953, and would soon find himself embroiled in censorship and related publishing difficulties, though with no trouble in the United States when it was eventually published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1958.
On December 5, 1933, nationwide alcohol Prohibition in the United States ended after Utah became the 36th U.S. state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75 percent of states needed to enact the amendment that overturned the 18th.
Getting rid of Obamacare has proved not so easy.
The GOP House majority, won in late 2010, voted dozens of times to get rid of the program, but without Senate support to pile on (much less override a presidential veto), they could vote to repeal every day of the year and still nothing would happen.
Besides, the Supreme Court has ruled that it’s okey-constitutionally-dokey to compel custumers to buy insurance or pay a fine — or a tax that’s not a tax.
And then there was the 2012 presidential election, in which the Romneycare candidate lost to the Obamacare candidate.
But laws imposed by men are not laws of nature. Gravity cannot be annulled; Obamacare sure can.
The New York Times reports that the thinking of “conservative and libertarian theorists” at the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and elsewhere has informed several lawsuits challenging the Obama Administration’s attempts to unilaterally redraft provisions of the law as passed.
A key point is that the IRS has no authority under Obamacare to award tax breaks or subsidies to persons who buy insurance through the federal exchange rather than a state exchange. Ability to impose penalties in turn depends upon the availability of such subsidies. All this matters because many states have fought Obamacare by refusing to set up state exchanges. Some of these states are among the plaintiffs in the lawsuits.
Meanwhile, Congress is holding hearings on how the Obama Administration has repeatedly amended the Affordable [sic] Care Act despite lacking legislative authority to do so.
Our freedom, wealth and health are too important to surrender to government dictocrats. Thankfully, many advocates of medical freedom remain in the trenches.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
War: first one hopes to win: then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
At Monday’s White House briefing, a reporter challenged Press Secretary Jay Carney, “if you . . . hit the ‘login’ button . . . it does take you to that screen where you’re asked to leave an email and come back later. That seems to be coming up . . . all day long. . . . is that going to be acceptable if that’s the norm for a lot of people for an extended period of time?”
“What I think is important to note,” Carney responded (repeating himself and blathering a bit) “. . . is that we have a queuing system made for a better user experience so that individuals could get in that queue, could be notified when was the best time to return to healthcare.gov and enroll, if they so desired.”
Desired? We’ve been legally required to purchase insurance. Obamacare-supporting politicians keep talking about all the “demand,” but when folks are forced by law to buy a product, penalized for not, that’s hardly true demand.
After writing that “the functionality of the site does appear to have improved considerably,” the New Yorker’s John Cassidy admits, “However, I didn’t get the opportunity to submit an application, or even to choose a plan. After filling in forms and fiddling around for about forty minutes, I reached a screen that said, ‘You have started an application for health coverage, but our verification system is temporarily unavailable.’”
For those who somehow miraculously navigate the website, the Washington Post reports, “errors cumulatively have affected roughly one-third of the people who have signed up for health plans since Oct. 1. . . .”
Also revealed this week: security was not built into the site, and retrofitting it in could take years.
It turns out that Big Government 3.0 is no more advanced than Web 1.0.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.
On December 4, 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in New York City, General George Washington formally bade his officers farewell.
The obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.
On December 3, 1989, the leaders of the two world superpowers, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, declared an end to the Cold War, at a summit in Malta. A little over two years later not only had the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union was itself dissolved.
If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
When it comes to pension systems, the State of Illinois appears shovel in hand, digging to the bottom. The state’s five public employee retirement systems face a combined unfunded liability of $100 billion dollars; they have only 40 percent of what they need to pay the benefits politicians negotiated with public employee unions — the lowest funding level of any state.
The Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago-area paper, calls a spade a spade: “The shortfall is due largely to decades of legislators skipping or shorting the state’s pension payments — a practice that allowed them to spend that money elsewhere.”
Today, Illinois’ legislators will trudge into Springfield for an expected vote to fix the broken system.
“This deal was made by Speaker Madigan and other politicians behind closed doors,” charges Illinois Policy Institute CEO John Tillman, who fears it makes matters worse.
The bizarre attempt at a fix allows the Legislature to be sued before the Illinois Supreme Court if it fails to make its required ongoing contributions into the pension fund.
The legislation also contains a guarantee clause prioritizing pension payouts before most other state spending. As Tillman says, “Not caring for the poor. Not public safety. Not education.”
And a much ballyhooed option for employees to switch to a 401(k)-style plan turns out to allow only 5 percent of employees to so choose, blocking the rest.
Pay what was promised, but stop digging! Move new workers to 401(k) style plans they can own, with employer contributions handed over every pay period.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.