Lee's Blog

If the people gloating over the Declaration of Dependence actually live in the same country I do.

All through the debate over federal health control, these people were saying that if you don’t have health insurance, you have no medical care of any kind. If you break a leg, they seem to imagine, you take a big slug of whiskey, put a belt between your teeth and get some strong friends to straighten it as best they can and splint it with a broom handle.

Well, no, that isn’t how it works. I used to work in a doctor’s office. People came in who were on Medicare or Medicaid, and we treated them; the working poor came in and we treated them, took time payments (without interest, of course), and wrote off what they couldn’t reasonably pay. Doctors are compassionate people. They have to pay the overhead, they often have heavy debts, and they want to make a good living to make up for those grueling years in med school, but they also want to see people get well — even people who can’t pay.

This morning, in a response to the outrage at this virulent assault on freedom, privacy, and human dignity, some totalitarian sneered, “Oh noes, the black people will get to be treated in our hospitals!”.

Again, does this totalitarian live in the same country I do? Has he ever actually set foot in a hospital? I have. More hospitals than I really wanted to, in truth. And every single one of them has patients of all races, doctors of all races, nurses of all races … Every one of them was fully integrated from top to bottom. You basically have to be willfully ignorant or astonishingly stupid to think otherwise. But I was referring to a totalitarian, so that goes without saying.

Well, there is one benefit to the Declaration of Dependence: it will get the uninstitutionalized mentally ill off the streets. Into Federal prison, it’s true, but off the streets. 

The homeless guy who followed me down the street in NYC, screaming obscene suggestions for acts I should perform with my mother: do you think he files income tax returns? No, and nobody cares because he has no income anyway. But do you think that he can get his act together enough to apply for insurance? That he can manage to apply for an insurance subsidy?  That he will manage to hold onto his proof of insurance so that he can produce it when the gendarmes shout “Papers!” at him?  No, so to prison he goes.

I trust the congresscreatures that voted for this travesty will tout this great benefit to their subjects. And I trust they will remind their subjects to keep their papers on them at all times.    

I was born in a free country. I woke up yesterday in a mostly free country. I woke up today in a partially free country.

IANAL, but I wonder if last night’s atrocity can challenged on grounds that Congress has delegated its lawmaking authority to private institutions which would, I think, be unconstitutional.

That is, Congress requires me to pay income taxes, but the requirements exist in laws duly passed by Congress; the forms to use, the deadlines, even the places to pay, are all established by law. Under last night’s Declaration of Dependence, I am commanded to identify an acceptable private actor, fill out their forms (which are entirely at their discretion and will differ from actor to actor), meet their deadlines (again at their discretion), and make payments as they require (using payment vouchers or whatever as they decide), all on pain of death. Oh, sure, the Feds say this is on pain of a fine, but as Walter Williams has said, all laws are on pain of death: if you don’t obey, they fine you; if you won’t pay, they arrest you; if you resist arrest, they kill you.

So, can Congress constitutionally delegate to unnamed third parties the power to issue requirements for satisfying federal law?  The power to decide, in other words, whether I am a federal felon?   

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if [this nation] last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”