Thank you, Judge Vinson, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, for freeing us from the burden of mandatory health, auto, and flood insurance. Thank you, too, for ending the tyranny of toll roads, parking meters and municipal golf course fees!
Earlier this week, federal judge C. Roger Vinson of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida ruled on a lawsuit brought about by former Florida AG Bill McCollum to try to overturn H.R.3590, which democrats and non-Fox viewers may know as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and Fox News watchers know as the Job Killing Make Grandma Shovel-Ready Obama is the Socialist Anti-Christ Scary Black Guy Act or "Obamacare."
"Today's ruling by Judge Vinson is an important victory for every person who believes in the freedoms granted to us by our Constitution," said Bondi. "This proves that the federal government requiring Americans to purchase health insurance is in fact unconstitutional."
I hate to have to agree with a Florida Republican, or really, most Republicans, on much, particularly a Reagan appointee like Judge Vinson, but I can't help myself.
The government wants ME to have to pony up for health insurance, even though it's my God-given right to use that money to buy beer, cigarettes and lotto tickets, and roll my ATV over so I have to go to the public hospital, declare personal bankrupcy, and make them eat the $130,000 or so that it cost to patch me up? I have to serve up a John Boehneresque HELL NO! to that one.
As a matter of fact, I'm calling out Pam Bondi right here and now to take that stunning victory for the freedoms granted to us by our Constitution and immediately begin suing the Florida State Legislature for their back-door taxes.
The Health Care bill once again calls into question the actual plenary powers of the federal government versus the states. Plenary power hypothetically rests with the states, but there are numerous instances, from national security to our non-militia-based defense department to interstate commerce to Social Security, of the federal government's exercise of plenary power that supersedes the states. A state cannot bar the U.S. Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, or Coast Guard from recruiting in its jurisdiction, even though it has its own Guard units. The FBI's jurisdiction takes preeminence in many major cases, including some which do not cross state lines, like kidnapping.
I'm sure that it has occurred to her that Florida has a mandatory auto insurance law, after all, that requires all drivers to carry auto insurance. TYRANNY! That must be struck down. (Shhh! Don't tell anyone, but it's the same thing...)
She will be likely, then, filing a suit against the government to overturn the Flood Disaster Protection Act of 1973, as amended by the National Flood Insurance Reform Act of 1994. The feds mandate the purchase of flood insurance for all federal or federally related financial assistance for the acquisition and/or construction of buildings in high-risk flood areas.
The Florida State Turnpike Authority should be on her list of agencies that, as the watchdog of the Constitution, she should be suing. Fees to use our God-given highways and by-ways. Unheard of! She should also be filing against all of the municipalities and counties that have toll-roads.
While you're there, filing away, Pammy, you might want to have a chat with them about parking meters. That second tax to use parking on the streets which we already pay for with our taxes is the kind of stuff you dump Darjeeling into Boston Harbor over.
The ruling resulted in euphoria over at Fox News, from mindless Megyn Kelly to the onerous Bill O'Relly cheerleading on a Republican judge ushering in a level of Socialism that would make even the Swedes say "det är imponerande."
It's no great trick for a GOP judge to put dogma over deliberation, but the vacuous Vinson is no visionary. If allowed to stand, his ruling would open up a Pandora's Box of Socialism.
There are thousands of government agencies and authorities that levy all kinds of "fees" and require insurance for everything from cars to floods, to fires, to wind disasters like tornadoes and hurricanes.
This ruling would not only remove the ability of the feds, the states, counties, and cities to levy fees and require insurance to reduce community exposure to financial ruin, but it could potentially mean that thousands of laws, regulations, and codes would be overturned, sending legislatures into weeks, months or years of rebuilding, with all of the political wrangling that entails.
The political backlash for the GOP would likewise be stunning.
Republicans may be gloating about the Vinson decision's short-term impact, but the reason that we have all of those fees and mandated insurances is because politicians lack the intestinal fortitude and the spinal support to be able to actually levy taxes. Many of these mandated insurance laws, toll roads and fees have been pushed by Republicans, because they allow the private sector to do public business and profit handsomely from it.
It is the oxymoronic reality of the Republican Party that it rails against the same government of which it is a part, that must fund certain agenda for the common good, like roads, bridges, schools and oh, yes, health care for every citizen of the wealthiest nation in the world.
If the government cannot compel use of the private sector, or collect fees for services rendered, or charge for certain privileges, like parking in a busy business district, the one remaining indisputable method of funding essential services becomes taxes.
The more that governments have to resort to taxes to achieve those purposes, the more socialized our society becomes. We'll have Republicans to thank for it too.
You gotta love the irony.
Reality Check: No Republican is going to vote for anything that back-doors taxation into thousands of avenues of government that they converted to fee-based systems over the decades.
No matter how many times Justices Scalia or Thomas hang with the Tea-Party-promoting Koch Brothers, that is a Reaganite Rubicon that even chest-thumping wahoos like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell will not cross.
Which is why all of this hype for overturning Obamacare is just spinning wheels to keep the GOP base happy. It is made-for-TV reality drama for poll numbers, not policy. It is just more Republican posturing, not progress.
That is not what the voters wanted in the mid-term elections. They wanted jobs, and the security of knowing that they won't die from lifetime caps, or have their home taken from them because they have cancer and have to pay out every penny of what they own just to stay alive.
My shiny two.