ACA & SCOTUS

Today the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a/the challenge to the Affordable Care Act. I still haven't heard a satisfactory explanation of how the federal mandate - which is at the core of the court challenge - is any different in kind from how the tax code works to reward/punish homeownership through the mortgage interest tax deduction.

Both the HRA and the mortgage interest deduction work through the tax code.  If you don't purchase health insurance you pay a penalty - basically an additional tax.  If you don't purchase a mortgage and deduct the interest, you pay a differential tax relative to what you would pay if you had purchased (and deducted the interest from) a mortgage.

In neither case do are you actually forced to buy something.  In both cases, the tax system is used to punish those who don't purchase the privately-supplied product that the government is trying to get you to purchase.

So, what's the diff?

I made you a couple of Occupy Wall Street signs

Go ahead.  Download them.  You know you want to.

Death Panels are so yesterday

Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast blogs about Ron Paul's response to Wolf Blitzer's hypothetical question on whether care should be provided for someone who is deathly ill and has no insurance.  (Thanks, for the URL, Yvette!)

My commentary on top:

In addition to asking the Libertarian/Tea Party folks for consistency in repealing the emergency room care law on the books, if they don't like the health care mandate (Sullivan's suggestion in the blog link above), how about a pledge from Tea Party types that they won't use emergency rooms that they can't pay for?  Maybe they could wear MedicAlert style bracelets coded to refuse care for the wearer in public hospitals or in private hospitals that required insurance?  A kind of "do-not-resuscitate" toe tag to be worn by Libertarians and Tea Partiers who have a coherent and principled world view...

The Paucity of Hope

I just have one disagreement with Drew Weston's otherwise great piece on Obama in last Sunday's NYT.   And that's the title, "What Happened to Obama?"

I don't think anything happened to Barack Obama.  He is the man he always was.  In the swooning days of 2007 and 2008, some of us on the left distrusted the cult-like status of the man and his campaign.  His admirers (and detractors) weren't seeing him clearly.  Many people projected their desires and fears onto him.

With time, we can now see more clearly who he is.

And who is that?  Not a fighter.  Not a leftist.  Not a reformer.  A conciliator, pragmatist, centrist and technocrat.  Definitely not what these times call for. 

30 days without a workplace incident!

I heard Christine Lagarde interviewed on PBS today about the seriously crazy US "debt ceiling" food fight and the crazily serious Eurozone debt crisis.  She's the new head of the International Monetary Fund, replacing Dominque Strauss-Kahn on 28 June 2011. 

She sounded pretty competent.  And so far she hasn't sexually assaulted anyone. 

Good start.

The Demolished Man

The tragedy in Norway last week has me thinking of one of my favorite books, “The Demolished Man”, by Alfred Bester (1953).  Without spoiling this old science fiction novel for those who haven’t read it, I just want to say that an important idea in the novel is that destructive power capable of ending humanity may ultimately lie in each and every human’s hands.  The author suggests that with the knowledge of this power, we may find ourselves developing a sense of responsibility for all humanity.  Perhaps that sense will allow us to each do the right thing, and to act in a way in which every person assumes responsibility for every other person, and protects all humanity from an ultimate demolition. 

Or, perhaps not.

As technology development speeds up in our reality, the capability for immense violence and destruction by individuals grows.  Terrorist attacks, shooting sprees and the prospect of the acquisition of a nuclear weapon by fanatical extremists are all examples of this fearful trend.

Soon, the fanciful prospect laid out in The Demolished Man will be our reality.

What will we do, I wonder?

Al Gore for President

and, if so called, I will accede to my countrymen's cry to run as his vice-president.

See Al Gore's article in the Rolling Stone on climate change, President Obama, and the future of the Earth.