Kim Priestap

GAO: Obama Administration doesn't have legal authority to enact spending program in ObamaCare

Congress’s non-partisan investigative arm said Wednesday President Obama is stretching the law to give bonuses to mediocre private Medicare plans — an $8 billion program the auditors had already urged the administration to cancel.

What? The Obama administration is operating outside the law? No. That simply can’t be! Not the most ethical and transparent administration in human history!

Cue Captain Renault: 

The House strikes down ObamaCare 244-185

Every single Republican as well as five Democrats voted for the repeal. Those Democrats who voted to keep ObamaCare and the massive tax hikes that come with it securely in place are now on the record. 

Surprise! ObamaCare to cost three times what Obama said it would

I know that no one reading this is surprised in the least. The question in my mind is how best to punish those — the president especially — for being such incredible liars.

Indeed. 

The ObamaCare mandate creates another constitutional issue

The Democrats refuse to accept the argument that the ObamaCare mandate is a tax. They continue to call it a penalty. It may not matter which word is used to describe the mandate because both may still be unconstitutional.

Nancy Pelosi said the mandate is “a penalty that comes under the Tax Code” for free riders. Penalties are punishment, are they not? Punishment comes after someone has been convicted of a crime. So where’s the due process here? Since when does the legislature get the declare a large group of Americans guilty of being free riders and then slap them with a tax or a penalty?

This mandate is unconstitutional no matter which term is used because it’s a bill of attainder.

SUCKERS!… 75% of Obamacare Costs Will Fall on Backs of Those Making Less Than $120K a Year (Video)

If you think Obama actually cares about you and your well being, you’re nothing but a fool.

Could the ruling to uphold the mandate as a tax be an even better result for conservatives politically than if it had been struck down entirely?

Read Ann Althouse’s post and tell me how today’s SCOTUS ruling on ObamaCare helps Obama in November.

Nobody thought about taking away your Big Gulp until the government began to pay for everyone's health care.

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. penned a column published in the Wall Street Journal today that makes a very important point about Michael Bloomberg’s move to ban all sweetened drinks sold in containers larger than 16 ounces. For perspective, 16 ounces is nothing more than a pint, or just two measley cups.

Mr. Jenkins writes:

Here is the ultimate justification for the Bloomberg soft-drink ban, not to mention his smoking ban, his transfat ban, and his unsuccessful efforts to enact a soda tax and prohibit buying high-calorie drinks with food stamps: The taxpayer is picking up the bill.

Call it the growing chattelization of the beneficiary class under government health-care programs. Bloombergism is a secular trend. Los Angeles has sought to ban new fast-food shops in neighborhoods disproportionately populated by Medicaid recipients, Utah to increase Medicaid copays for smokers, Arizona to impose a special tax on Medicaid recipients who smoke or are overweight. New York itself, with private money, some of it from Mr. Bloomberg’s own pocket, has also tried the carrot approach, dangling direct payments to encourage beneficiary families to adopt healthier habits.

So perhaps the famous “broccoli” hypothetical during the Supreme Court ObamaCare debate was not so fanciful after all. It flows naturally from the state’s fiscal responsibility for your health that it will try to regulate your behavior, even mandating vegetable consumption.

As Mr. Jenkins points out, Bloomberg’s move is not unusual for him since he is one of our original nanny-staters. It’s clear that he is also influenced to a degree by the passage of ObamaCare, because it places more of a burden for the cost of health care on all levels of government. 

What Bloomberg does not realize is that his stupid regulation will only make people fatter, not thinner. Why? Instead of buying one 20 ounce sweetened drink, consumers will now end up buying two 16 ounce sweetened drinks for a total of 32 ounces. In other words, Bloomberg’s fanatical need to control the behavior of others will end up encouraging people to drink even larger servings of sweetened drinks at one sitting than they previously would have.

Can you say moron?