The SCOTUS, Obamacare, and the Chief Bastard John Roberts

The bulk of the political talk this week concerns the Supreme Court upholding Obamacare. I must confess that I was a bit shocked and extremely disappointed in the ruling as were many libertarians and conservatives. I have a lot of thoughts about this topic, so I will dive in.

Obamacare is unconstitutional. This does not require legal scholarship whatsoever. But the federal government has strayed so far from the Constitution over the last century that it is pointless trying to discuss whether or not something is constitutional. This is because "constitutional" is now defined as getting the most votes in a SCOTUS opinion poll. As it stands, the Constitution of the United States is a shit stained rag, and the SCOTUS is now a legislative body of nine people. The United States now has a tricameral legislature.

Obamacare was DOA to the SCOTUS because conservatives and leftards have split the court evenly with closet libertarian Anthony Kennedy being the swing vote. Once you convince yourself that Kennedy is a libertarian, you know how he is going to vote every time. Kennedy was going to be against the individual mandate, and he was. Kennedy always champions individual rights, and Obamacare tramples individual rights. As it stood, Obamacare was supposed to go down in flames. But just when you think you've got it in the bag, it takes a piece of shit like Chief Justice John Roberts to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Roberts was against Obamacare. Yet, he reversed himself. Why?! Politics is why. Roberts is first and foremost a politician. He shouldn't even call himself a judge. His ruling is utterly inscrutable with him trying to separate the meanings of individual mandates, the commerce clause, penalties, and taxes. FWIW, Roberts did strike down the individual mandate commerce clause argument as he should. He had to keep his conservative bona fides on that. But it is clear that Roberts wanted to keep Obamacare despite it being unconstitutional. So, he found a way to do it. Here comes that silly tax/penalty argument that no one buys. It was stupid. You can't make people buy health insurance, but you can tax them into doing it. Absurdity.

Roberts made a political move. He wanted to punt on fourth and inches. He wanted Obamacare back in the Congress for them to sort out and deal with. In essence, he wanted the SCOTUS to not be part of a tricameral legislature and go back to being a court. Unfortunately, he used stupidity to achieve what would be a laudable aim. Roberts is right that judges should not legislate from the bench. It was an exit move on his part, but it was not an elegant exit. It was a clumsy fall down the fire escape.

Some conservatives like George F. Will and some libertarians have tried to spin this as some sort of win. This is also stupid. This is not a win for liberty. It is a loss. There is no silver lining to this cloud. This is like realizing you don't have to change the oil on the car you just totaled in the pile up on the interstate. So, what now?

People are now doing the hard work of trying to figure out what Obamacare means for them. The law is overly complex and a complete clusterfuck of legislation. I don't understand it, but I know it will fuck me in one way or another. But it really doesn't matter if you understand the law because it still isn't done yet. This is because we actually have a quadricameral legislature. The fourth house of government tomfuckery is the bureaucracy of the executive branch as they seek to implement this turkey of a law. This will require regulations, and bureaucrats can effectively expand or kill any law they see fit based on those regs. Their power is so awesome in this regard that even the President himself is powerless to do shit about it. A term limited POTUS is no match for a lifelong bureaucrat.

Where will all this lead? The answer is clear. Obamacare will finish demolishing the last bit of good in our shitty healthcare system. Obama couldn't get his knockout punch which would be a single payer system. So, he opted to work the body with a series of jabs and whatever else he could get in. Hopefully, this would weaken the opposition for a future knockout. Will it work? Absolutely.

This country is headed for single payer healthcare like the Canadian model. The easiest way to accomplish this is to expand Medicare to all people. Medicare is already a single payer system that enjoys wide popularity. It would be relatively simple to expand it. Plus, people are already paying for it and even Tea Party people like it. The only real problem with Medicare is that it is clearly unsustainable over the long haul. Projections differ, but Medicare is expected to eclipse both Social Security and defense spending as the largest item in the federal budget. The country is already bankrupt now. To make Medicare work as it stands now will involve some sort of rationing. This happens with all socialized medicine. When something is free, people take all the free they can get until it is gone. The only preventative is rationing. Private health insurance already does this in their shitty way of doing business. Medicare will be no different.

The promise of socialized medicine is that unaffordable healthcare will somehow become more affordable and better if we let the DMV run it. This is not going to happen. But this will not stop people from trying. No matter how much socialism fails, people have to keep going for it. This is because people want something for nothing. This foolish hope is undying. Getting something for something works, but it represents a compromise with reality that no shithead wants. This is why I am a libertarian pessimist. People hate freedom even when they know it works. This is because people are stupid, lazy, greedy, and averse to personal responsibility. As long as they can live at the expense of others, they will. ALWAYS.

If there is any virtue in what John Roberts did, it was letting the American public twist on the phallus they spread their asscheeks to receive. I am inclined to agree. The American people voted for this bullshit, and they deserve to get what is coming to them hard and deep. For the rest of us wanting a free market in healthcare, we must now turn to the coming black market that will be the result of this tomfuckery. But it won't be so bad. Pirate doctors working on converted cruise ships in international waters will be the new thing. You can get a tan after your appendectomy on the upper deck.

UPDATE: I have zero hope that a newly elected Mitt Romney or a GOP Congress will do a damn thing about any of this shit. Conservatives created the idea of an individual mandate, and Romney inflicted it on Massachusetts. The only thing they will accomplish is to get abortions unfunded by federal dollars to appease a constituency and call it a day. In short, the only difference between Romney and Obama is that Romney might wear a condom when he rapes us just like his predecessor. That makes me all warm and fuzzy inside for President Magic Pants.

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