Listen Up! This is Important.
I’d pondered on something today, but I didn’t want to say anything about it until I checked with a real writ twit. You know, like Bubba. I am not a lawyer and I am not even allowed to play one within the confines of my own home. However, in an odd twist of fate, physics, and really great shiny sandals, I was right about my ponders.
Brothers and Sisters, if we allow the harpies on the rightwing to frame the Affordable Care Act as a “tax,” then shame on us. Shame, shame on us.
The Supreme Court most certainly did NOT call it a tax. They called it a penalty, which America is allowed to levy under our taxing authority. They never, even once, called it tax. It is only a tax in the same way that a speeding ticket is a tax. Or a fine for a DUI is a tax. Or restitution to poor widow ladies who you cheat out of their savings is a tax.
It is a penalty for not accepting personal responsibility and expecting the rest of us to pay for your health care. It is a penalty for not caring about your fellow Americans who have pre-exisiting conditions. It is a penalty for not acting like the Christian you call yourself. It is a penalty for not giving a hoot when seniors fall into the donut hole and can’t pay for their medicine. It is a penalty for not loving America and Americans.
It only affects about 1 – 2% of all Americans. Hell, the ebola virus is more prevalent than that.
Do NOT let them call it a tax. Nobody but Fox News thinks it’s a tax, but it is spreading to other networks tonight.
Stop it!
Preach it, Sister! But then, we knew the ‘publicans were going to spin this until the earth’s magnetic field gets all wonky. Publicans – in antiquity, a title for one who collects taxes. Hmmmm…
1This is simply another case of Republicans spinning anything they once supported but is now endorsed by President Obama as being the end of the world, led by the anti-Christ. They lost, so now they are trying, as only they can do, to turn defeat into victory.
BTW, while I applaud that the law was upheld, I think it was done in the wrong way. It should have been upheld under the commerce clause, because the way Roberts framed his opinion actually opens the way to substantially reduce the power of government to do good for the people in the long run.
2Well said.
3Bestest picture in the world.
http://cdn.crooksandliars.com/files/vfs/2012/06/pelosi%20and%20boehner.jpg
4Thank you and Bubba so much for clarifying this for me! I was, of course, delighted by the decision — delighted, hell, I was orgasmic — but I was confused about the “tax” part, and I knew the farther-right-than-Ghengis Khan- wingnuts would turn it into a “tax” fight. NOW I understand it and will fight the good fight with some expertise — thanks to you and Bubba. Romney is already spinning it, and the rest will fall in place, as always. May you and Bubba be blessed for your hard work, and may we all remember that a number of “Christians” in this world really wouldn’t accept Christ into their church — nor would He want to be there. Thanks JJ and Bubba!
5It is a penalty, which is covered under the broad taxing powers of Congress in the Constitution. Not everyone pays it. Just the ones who refuse to be insured.
6I saw that as I surfed past last night. All I could think was that Republicans are pathetic. But I predict that Mittens will utter the word Obamatax by the end of the weekend.
7HuffPo has a slideshow of reactions to the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Healthcare Act. It is mostly positive, but the usual suspects are vehemently bitter and resolutely determined to repeal this glorious first step towards the end goal of ensuring all Americans can live free from fear of becoming ill or injured.
I cannot, cannot, cannot understand how any person with even the smallest bit of compassion can be against something that can help millions of people.
Thank you, Juanita, fore reminding us we have the ability to fight lies with truth. You are absolutely correct: this is not a tax, it is only a penalty affect a very small percentage of irresponsible people. There isn’t even any criminal penalty for those who can afford to pay for insurance but refuse to and then don’t pay the penalty.
The GOTP, since the 1970’s has been carefully devising effective propagandist rhetoric, fine-tuning such under the devious tutelage of Rove and think tanks created for only one real purpose: power. The greed, the hunger for absolute power is driving the GOTP and I believe has become a mental miasma, a dark and spreading cloud muddling the minds of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose fear can be ginned up and manipulated by those who will most benefit from their gullibility and confusion.
Once upon a time, long ago and far away, I was once a registered Republican for a short time, but the ravenous wolf clothed in in a smiling face and bolstered by shiny lies called Reagan turned me against the party that once welcomed moderates and even some forward-thinking partial liberals. It was he, in my opinion, who planted the seeds for the decline of the middle class that briefly regained a luster under Clinton, but has since been attacked with a thousand little cuts draining its life’s blood by the new GOP and most recently, the Tea Party. The GOTP is callous, selfish and greedy beyond measure as evidenced in its reaction to a simple concept: affordable and accessible healthcare for every single American.
I ask you, how can anyone with a heart and a brain be against that? Our country has one of the worst records on the cost of medical care and quality outcomes of medical care of the most industrialized nations.
This latest attempt to label the penalty against those who refuse to accept personal responsibility for their own health care and the health care of their families a tax is simply a lame attempt to manipulate and confuse low-information and gullible people who, if given the facts, might recoil from the GOTP extremist propaganda.
End of rant (for now).
8My joy from hearing the news yesterday was dampened by reading the posts from my FaceBook “friends” with posts like this http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=394645973925455&set=a.115573198499402.16821.115565601833495&type=1&ref=nf Everybody is running around reposting it in spite of the fact it has misspellings, makes no sense and probably most of them don’t even understand what it says. None of my friends posted anything to celebrate the victory of the sick, poor, and underinsured. I need to clear out my FB friends and start over.
By the way, in order to get that link I posted I had to go to the website of Conservative Patriots of America. Very scary. I was so afraid I was going to accidentally click on some weird “like” button. I got out of there quick and sanitized my iPad.
9I agree with you however by looking at sin tax items, cigarettes, booze and now strip clubs, all have usage taxex that I don’t pay because I don’t use them. I have had an irrevokable affordable insurance polity for almost 40 years. I can say with certainty that I will never be penalized or charged an ‘abstinance’ tax. See you in Charlotte!
10Funny how the Republicans can’t stand the idea of a penalty on someone who hasn’t purchased health insurance but they cheer at the idea of letting that same person die.
11OMG, just this minute; GMA has called this a tax over and over. Stating it as fact that this is a tax, a tax, and by the way it’s a tax. This is going to be almost impossible to fight unless Obama comes out and states clearly exactly what was explained here.
12It’s very frustrating that the Dems just can’t seem to ever get ahead of these memes.
Present at the inception:
In 2004 the actor Gene Hackman coauthored a book that contains a sentence accurately describing the birth of the Tea Party and the beginning descent of the Republican party into a morass of lies and deceptions.
“No–there’s just a lot of people what got led into thinking they were more upset than they really were.”
Precisely what happened. Usually calm, normal people incited by the likes of Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly and almost any politician whose name is followed by (R).
I was going to say I hate Republicans, but Miss Juanita might come after me with a bar of soap.
13Another interesting spin from yesterday is Rethugs calling Obama a liar for saying that the penalty was not a tax (from an earlier video). Those idiots don’t want to recognize that it was Roberts who made reference to a tax, not Obama.
14KS Sunflower … I almost stood up and applauded when I finished reading your comment!! You have stated so succinctly what I would like to say but simply could not have put it any plainer words then what you have stated here.
A gal I graduated high school with commented on my Facebook page, under that glorious picture of Ms. Pelosi and Cry Baby Boehner, something about liking or just waiting for the socialism … I deleted her comment and deleted her from my friends list … I didn’t read the entire comment because as soon as I saw the word “socialism” that did it for me. Of course, this same gal “likes” Rush Limpballs … so what can one expect?
15One more case of a lie getting halfway around the world while truth is still putting on its pants.
16I never doubted JJ’s explanation for a minute, and when I posted a part of it on facebook (responding to my brother-in-law calling it a tax even though he’s pleased with the ruling) my other (lawyer) brother-in-law *liked* it. He’s never *liked* anything else I’ve posted, so this is a real treat.
17@Web: I recently cleaned out my facebook friend list. I was getting too many comments from my east Texas high school classmates that I didn’t want to see and certainly didn’t want on my page. It’s surprising how my blood pressure has gone down since! So purge away!!
I got into a comments discussion with someone about this last night. He was railing against the individual mandate and basically saying FU to Obama and the ACA. So I responded that I guess he won’t mind when all us insured peoples cheer like Republicans while he lays dying because he refused to take personal responsibility and get health insurance. His response… he has health insurance!!! So then I asked him why the hostility towards the mandate when it wouldn’t affect him, he wouldn’t have to pay the penalty, and he might actually (eventually) benefit by way of lower health care costs, lower premiums and more comprehensive coverage. His response… crickets.
He also tried to tell me how the mandate was all an insurance industry ploy to get more profits from more people and blah, blah, blah. When I told him it was actually a conservative think tank that came up with the individual mandate in the late 80s as a market-based alternative to Democrats’ calls for universal health care, all I got in response was…. crickets.
Typical know-nothing who parrots only what he hears on Faux News. We really need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine in this country.
18Who has to pay the penalty (aka as a tax)? Only the scofflaws who don’t have the decency to buy now available insurance and want all the rest of us to cover their medical care with our tax money. The rest of us just continue to pay our insurance and watch the percentage attributable to uncompensated care go down.
19Here are some facts on this so-called tax http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/28/508062/fact-check-mandate-tax-hike/
The mandate can indeed be characterized as a tax, as the Court found. But it is not a massive tax hike on the middle class, much less the biggest tax hike in American history. The tax imposed by the individual mandate amounts to either $695 or 2.5 percent of household income for those who don’t have insurance and are not exempt based on income levels. By comparison, the payroll tax cut extension Republicans repeatedly blocked earlier this year would have added 3.1 percentage points to the tax and cost the average family $1,500 a year.
The mandate, meanwhile, would hit a small amount of Americans — somewhere between 2 and 5 percent — according to a study from the Urban Institute. The number could be even lower depending on the law’s success: in Massachusetts, the only state with an insurance mandate, less than 1 percent of the state’s residents paid the penalty in 2009.
20I doubt that the conservatives will make too big of a deal on the tax issue. Romney is on the record as to saying that his mandate was also a tax http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/flashback-romney-admitted-his-mandate-was-a-tax/2012/06/29/gJQAeqMVBW_blog.html
CHARLIE GIBSON: Governor, [inaudible] you imposed tax penalties in Massachusetts [inaudible].
21ROMNEY: Yes, we said, look, if people can afford to buy it, either buy the insurance or pay your own way; don’t be free-riders and pass on the cost to your health care to everybody else…
Juanita,
Here’s something else we have to stop. Today I heard Eric Cantor say the American people do not want Obamacare. Then I tried to read an article by Jeb Hensarling in today’s Dallas Morning News. I couldn’t get past the 4th sentence. Once again – The American people do not want Obamacare. Unless millions of us are living under the delusion that we are American citizens when we’re not, this is a lie. A you-know-what lie. I’ve never heard anyone call them on this. Grrrrrr.
22Christian Scientists are exempt from the mandate penalty. I know of no tax that works that way–this is more like a user fee.
23For 20 years, the GOP has been able to tell the media that black is white and white is black, red is green and blue is orange… and the media, disregarding their Constitutional duties, ignored the truth and repeated their yarns. The GOP is a political machine that produced Nixon, so why expect any different behavior now?
The real culprits, IMHO, are broadcast & cable news producers, who are also predictable, greedy profiteers adhering to their motto: “If it stinks, air it!” Why are they SO successful? Because our beloved country has become a Nation of Idiots, regardless of education or region.
I’m on a campaign of “TURN IT OFF!” Can you tell?
24If the GOP makes a big deal of this, then we can use this quote from Romney on this issue http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/06/romney-my-individual-mandate-was-also-a-tax-increase.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
“[W]e established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance,” Romney wrote in a 2009 USA Today op-ed. “Using tax penalties, as we did … encourages ‘free riders’ to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.”
25What about the requirement that seniors buy into the Republican drug plan? If you don’t there’s a penalty, remember?
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