All posts by Wintery Knight

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News

Obama flip-flops on health care mandates – now it IS a tax

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Here’s the deal. In order to get the health care bill to pass, Obama had to trick people into thinking that it was not going to result in higher taxes.

So, you would see him on ABC News before the bill was passed saying that forcing people to buy things they don’t want is not a tax:

OBAMA: No. That’s not true, George. The — for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.

…

OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we’re going to have an individual mandate or not, but…

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?

OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.

So forcing people to buy health insurance and fining them if they don’t is NOT A TAX, he says.

And so the bill was passed.

But the thing is, the government can’t legally force people to buy health care coverage – it’s unconstitutional! And people are suing them for having passed an unconstitutional law. So now the Obama regime has to argue in court that it really is a tax in order to escape court challenges that they overstepped their bounds by passing a health care mandate.

The American Spectator explains. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

In order to protect the new national health care law from legal challenges, the Obama administration has been forced to argue that the individual mandate represents a tax — even though Obama himself argued the exact opposite while campaigning to pass the legislation.

Late last night, the Obama Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the Florida-based lawsuit against the health care law, arguing that the court lacks jurisdiction and that the State of Florida and fellow plaintiffs haven’t presented a claim for which the court can grant relief. To bolster its case, the DOJ cited the Anti-Injunction Act, which restricts courts from interfering with the government’s ability to collect taxes.

The Act, according to a DOJ memo supporting the motion to dismiss, says that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed.” The memo goes on to say that it makes no difference whether the disputed payment it is called a “tax” or “penalty,” because either way, it’s “assessed and collected in the same manner” by the Internal Revenue Service.

It actually is a tax, and just another one of the many ways that Obama broke his campaign promise not to tax the middle class. How else is he going to pay for the trillion-dollar deficits he is creating? He has to raise taxes – or devalue our savings with inflation. There is no third way. The money has to come from somewhere – and if you tax the rich you just end up losing jobs.

Podcasts

Sean McDowell is interviewed by atheist Luke Muehlhauser

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Sean McDowell is interviewed by Common Sense Atheism. (H/T Conversant Life)

The MP3 file is here.

Topics:

  • Sean’s testimony (he is the son of Christian apologist Josh McDowell)
  • Sean’s debate with James Corbett on the grounding of morality
  • The role of public debates in Christian evangelism
  • Sean’s new book on the emergent church and the emerging generation
  • Can apologists on both sides really be honest about pursuing truth?
  • Are apologists on both sides good at encountering ideas on the other side?
  • Do doctrines like Heaven and Hell corrupt the honest pursuit of truth?
  • Why doesn’t Josh defend “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” from critics?
  • What should we make of weird moral rules in the Old Testament today?

Sean’s amazing debate:

This is a MUST-LISTEN. You will love this debate or your money back. And you can even watch the debate here.

Commentary

Sean McDowell surveys the beliefs of today’s young adults

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The article is here on Conversant life.

Excerpt:

  • Skeptics and perspectivalists: “Most have great difficulty grasping the idea that a reality that is objective to their own awareness or construction of it may exist that could have a significant bearing on their lives. In philosophical terms, most emerging adults functionally are soft ontological antirealists and epistemological skeptics and perspectivalists…” (45)
  • Everybody’s different: “Nearly any question asked of them about any norm, experience, rule of thumb, expectation, or belief in life is very likely to get an answer beginning with the phrase, ‘Well, everybody’s different, but for me…’” (48).
  • Individualism: “The absolute authority for every person’s beliefs or actions is his or her own sovereign self” (49).
  • Settling down is for later: “But they also want to relish it [young adulthood] as the time to be young, have fun, and avoid major responsibilities…Later, when they settle down they’ll be sober, faithful, and responsible adults. The assumption seems to be, ‘Whatever happens in my early twenties stays in my early twenties’” (57).
  • Relationships are amorphous: “Old clear-cut labels, like ‘just friends,’ dating, courting, and engaged, for instance, are too black-and-white for the way many emerging adults relate today…” (58).
  • Cohabit to avoid divorce: “The vast majority of emerging adults nonetheless believe that cohabiting is a smart if not absolutely necessary experience and phase for moving toward an eventual successful and happy marriage” (62).

I think it would useful to engage these guys to think throught their beliefs more rationally. On the one hand they want to cause no harm, on that other hand they are totally uninformed about the likely outcomes of their own behavioral choices. E.g. – cohabitation increases the risk of divorce by 50%. Break-ups hurt – and certain behaviors affect the likelihood of a messy break-up. Bad behaviors undermine your view of the trustworthiness of the opposite sex, as well as your ability to be content in a monogamous relationship with responsibilities.