Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

I'm against it either way, of course, but there would be no need to raise taxes to do the tax-credit if the government would learn to live within their means and cut spending. And given the "progressive" tax structure,the raising of taxes and giving tax credits may not have such a burden on me, as I am at the lower end (so I don't think my overall taxes would go up by $700 per year). It all depends on how they would work it all out. Of course, the GOP are turn-coats for trying to make it all work out to begin with. If they are trying to "ease the pain" then they share in the evil of the individual mandate.

I'm not sure, but I might owe Software Nerd an apology for not making the above more clear when I was arguing with him over the impact of the SCOTUS decision. As I understand his position, the mere fact that some can get deductions while others cannot means that those not getting the deductions are paying a higher rate of taxation. But while this is true, in a sense, it's still not the same thing as having targeted tax / penalties for not doing what the government orders you to do. Of course, it would have been better if the Founders had discovered some mean of financing the government that wasn't taxation, such as a national lottery; but even from the very beginning we have had special taxes on specific items not paid by those not engaged in buying or selling of those items -- i.e. the whiskey tax. Too bad this wasn't seen as a violation of the rights of the whiskey producers and sellers, as we would have won that battle long ago.

Here is a "practical" application of the idea endorsed by the SCOTUS regarding the government supposed ability to tax you into doing whatever the hell it commands you to do through the tax code. A leading Christian advocate is saying that there ought to be a tax onto people who do NOT go to church. This is entirely different from the idea that taxes ought to be high so that specific deductions can be made for doing certain things. In other words, currently, you might be able to deduct church going or belonging to charitable organizations, but they could not target specific individual for a special added on tax. Now they can do this, according to legal experts on taxation I have read on the internet. There could be a little box you would have to check-mark, and if you do not check-mark it, you will be taxed in addition to your general tax level. That is, do you own a Chevy Volt? NO, pay additional $500 in taxes. Go to church? NO, pay an additional $300. Have solar panels on your roof? NO, pay an additional $1,000. etc. Also, I have seen a picture meme that claims the whole idea of a mandate to impose additional fees for not having health insurance came from the Heritage Foundation, a Conservative think tank, and then was endorsed by a conservative congressman, and then endorsed by a conservative House of Reps. So, it was not brought about via the Leftists only -- the Conservatives had a hand in it from the get-go.

Moderators: What happened to my link to Onkar Ghate's essay regarding egoism versus altruism and the founding of the United States? I highly recommend this essay by Onkar Ghate regarding the fuller meaning of America's founding as expressed in Atlas Shrugged as a good antidote to those things seeking to destroy America at the very root of her existence: Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence by Onkar Ghate

Also, for a comprehensive overview of what is wrong with ObamaCare and all socialized medicine, I recommend the links available via the Ayn Rand webpage that has many essays about the problem and how to fix it.

http://www.appliedphilosophyonline.com/independence_day_special_2012.htm Independence Day Special 2012 Losing the Battle By Thomas M. Miovas, Jr. 07/04/2012 I’m hesitant to write much on this Independence Day due to the fact that I think we are losing the battle for individual rights on two fronts: domestically and internationally. On the domestic front, The Supreme Court, through the Chief Injustice, re-affirmed what the anti-rights proponents have wanted all along – the unbridled ability to force us into doing anything they command us to do, so long as it is done through the tax code; internationally, the re-affirmation that individual rights are not the proper standard from which to form a new country, expressed in the positive sanction by our own government that Muslims in the Middle East have a democratic right to form a suppressive government based upon Islamic Sharia Law that subordinates rights to religious edicts. In a more rational time, the Chief Injustice would have been impeached for abrogating rights in such a manner, while the President of the United States would have been put on trial for treason for ensuring that our enemies abroad will win the war. Some people might think that I am exaggerating on both accounts, that insofar as we still have a system of checks and balances in our government that ObamaCare and the rest of the tax hikes going along with it can be repealed, while the War on Terror and seeking out specific terrorists in the Middle East will win the day in the long run. But I think taking this sort of stand obliterates the primary cause of both troubles. That is, by stating that the damage done can be undone, without taking the specific causes into account, will only bring more rights violations, not less. If the proper cause has not been identified, then how can these efforts lead to anything aside from more rights violations? I think the cause of both issues – domestic usurpation of rights and international sanctions of rights violations on Americans – stems from the same source: The refusal to think in terms of rational principles according to objective methods of thought. Individual rights, properly understood, stem from the fact that man is the rational animal, and that he is the rational animal by choice, and that this rationality – of thinking about the facts with man’s life as the standard – can only be suppressed by one means: by the initiation of force; and that a proper government would outlaw the initiation of force or fraud against the individual, giving rational individuals the green light to live their lives as they see fit according to their own self-chosen standards, so long as they do not use force to appropriate their values. Arguably, the United States of America was founded upon such sound principles as elucidated above, though it wasn’t made quite this explicit in the founding documents of this country. The Declaration of Independence set the terms for breaking free from Great Britain, but unfortunately considered the issue of rights to be self-evident, requiring no proof or foundation, and therefore did not need to be expressed as a guide for the formation of new laws in the United States Constitution. Hence, over the centuries -- and while rationality as a guide was swamped with Kantian collectivism and non-reason -- many laws were considered proper, so long as the politicians and the Legislature jumped through the hoops of the Checks and Balances set up to insure that individual rights would be maintained as the proper standard of governance. In other words, the advent of bad philosophy made it possible for law-makers to put forth whatever they wanted, with no standards whatsoever aside from collectivism, so long as they followed the proper procedure outlined in the Constitution. So, on this Independence Day, take a few moments to realize that the proper role of government is to secure your individual rights -- NOT to impose upon the individual whatever the majority deems necessary -- and that if we are to have many more Independence Days to celebrate, then this truth must be re-learned via a new philosophy more explicitly upholding reason and reality as the proper guides to human thought and action. I highly recommend reading the works of Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism to more fully understand the proper underpinnings and support of individual liberties and proper government – before it is too late.

I should also add that the Ayn Rand Institute has a new page up consolidating their positions on Health Care with many links to excellent articles.

I think the idea that we have some sort of savior in the likes of Greenspan and Roberts and that they are acting secretly to safe us is to place fantasy above reality. For one thing, while it is true that top judges went on strike in AS, they did not promote irrational laws before going on strike, as this would be immoral. In other words, Judge Narraganset did not promote laws against individual freedom in order to hasten the collapse brought about by the strike. But regarding Roberts, the Chief Injustice, there is a new theory floating around out there that he was following a philosophical Justice and dealing in Judicial non-activism -- not overturning laws based upon a principle, but rather giving the American people what they want via the Legislative process (a form of Pragmatism). In this respect, his decision to pass ObamaCare was more philosophical and not the immediate range of the moment in what others would think of the Supreme Court not to pass a voted for Law. There's a new theory floating about that the Chief Injustice was following Oliver Wendell Holmes' theories about judicial restraint regarding the not passing of laws made by the House and Senate. http://en.wikipedia....dell_Holmes,_Jr

Another angle on this issue of induction is that while it is true that government does violate the rights of its citizens in many cases, in the USA the government will still protect your life and property from those who seek to do you harm through physical force or fraud. So, the inductive anarchist is not even taking all of the relevant current facts into account, let alone a good history of the USA.

I think it is utterly ridiculous and without any facts or reason whatsoever to think that Roberts did what he did out of any motivation related to the Strike in Atlas Shrugged.Both he and Greenspan before him are just utter betrayers of individual rights and the proper role of government. Supposedly, Roberts did it out of a threat from the Left that they would hound him until the day he died by not letting the USA "catch up" with the rest of the industrialized world as the only such country that did not have socialized medicine. In a face-off between the selfishness of individual rights and the altruism of maintaining the socialist dream, he caved -- and we will be paying the price for it for the rest of our lives. To hell with him and Greenspan, people who ought to have known better, given their background, but who gave in anyhow in the face of Leftist smear campaigns.

Here's the Constitutional amendment suggested by Atlas Shrugged. Given the new ruling that the government can tax us into doing or not doing anything, I'm not sure it would be enough to deter the tyrants: "The rectangle of light in the acres of a farm was the window of the library of Judge Narragansett. He sat at a table, and the light of his lamp fell on the copy of an ancient document. He had marked and crossed out the contradictions in its statements that had once been the cause of its destruction. He was now adding a new clause to its pages: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade …" In other words, if the power to tax is unrestricted and can be used as a whip to control our behavior explicitly, then can they eventually come up with a tax to deter us from speaking out against the Leftist government -- a fine for voicing an opinion that is contrary to Marxism? I think it would be an interesting case. Which is more fundamental? The power to tax or the First Amendment?

The Chief Injustice recusing himself if ObamaCare gets challenged on taxation principles might not be a bad idea, but I don't know that he can be forced not to participate (since he helped write the law) and because there is no higher court in the land to take his ruling to court. I'm not a Constitutional scholar, but there is a solution, at least in theory, and that would be to impeach the Chief Injustice for violating the Constitution. My understanding is that this would have to be done by the Senate, but since the Senate (majority Leftists) fully support ObamaCare, I don't see them doing this. But it is part of the checks and balances of our type of government. The primary problem is that no one in the government makes rulings based upon individual rights any longer. The whole purpose of having all those checks and balances in the first place was to reign in the government, making it necessary for each and every Bill to be duly thought through before becoming the law of the land, and the Founders seemed to have taken the rights orientation of legislators for granted. In their day during the Age of Enlightenment and the rational grounds for individual rights being understood at least implicitly, this might have been an understandable mistake. But by not making it explicit in the Constitution, legislators were left with no legal standard from which to generate new laws. So, these days, they jump through the hoops and pass what they can pass, with no principle of individual rights to guide them.

Yes, there seems to still be some confusions about how induction works even after the publication of The Logical Leap. Your own personal experience in and of itself is insufficient to come to a proper generalization, because all relevant facts must be taken into account. It's like coming to the conclusion that sunlight is bad for you because you have spent 40 days and 40 nights in the desert without proper food or water, discounting the fact that without sunlight, there would be no life on earth. So, while I do not disagree with those who come to the conclusion that if it wasn't for government they could live their lives more fully, they are not including the context of past history or examples of better government that was put in place (at least implicitly) to protect the individual from the initiation of force or fraud.

I've run into a user problem with oo.net. When I get an email reply and click on the link to be taken to the thread ending, I get redirected to the front page of the oo.net forum. I then either have to re-click the link or look for the thread on the opening page. Thanks for any future corrections.

The whole issue of whether or not ObamaCare originated in the House or the Senate is an interesting one; and according to the Forbes article mentioned above, it did originate in the House. Nonetheless, it was not presented as a tax bill, and in the language of the Bill / Law itself, the money an individual must pay if he doesn't get insurance was presented as a penalty, not a tax. So, I still say that the Chief Injustice arbitrarily considering a penalty to be a tax is UnConstitutional, since the Supreme Court has no authority to tax the people of the United States, and I don't think they have the authority to arbitrarily change the wording of a Bill / Law to make it semi-constitutional. Besides, the Leftist supporters of the ObamaCare monster are running around proclaiming that it wasn't a tax at all and that therefore, Obama et al did not violate his proposal not to raise taxes on the middle class. You can't have it both ways, though we have a whole lot of politicians trying to split the difference, so long as they can continue to have the power to whip us as they please through the tax code. But so long as the idea that the government has the authority to manipulate non-violent activity is alive and well, we will get more carrots and sticks from the politicians; so that fundamental principle is what needs to be challenged and outlawed.

Here is OnKar Ghate's take on the in explicit terms, down to the fundamentals about the proper role of government.

Here is an interesting argument against the Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare that I don't know if I read somewhere recently or thought of for myself. One of the founding principles of the USA is no taxation without representation, and so the Founders put the power to tax in the hands of the House of Representatives. By arbitrarily changing the words in ObamaCare from "penalty" to "tax" the Chief Injustice is arbitrarily imposing a new tax onto the American people, which he has no authority to do. This is certainly one angle from which to challenge the ruling of the Supreme Court, and yes, I would love to see a great tax lawyer take up the challenge and throw it right back into his face!

I don't disagree with SN and others who claim that the Federal Tax Code already uses the rulings to attempt to govern behavior of the individual. However, this was never made as explicit as it is in this ObamaCare ruling. Previously, the Government could always claim that their primary purpose in imposing a tax or offering a tax rebate was for the purpose of generating revenue for the government; the power to regulate behavior through the tax code was only implicit. So, I do think this SCOTUS ruling crosses a new line in setting the "Constitutional principle" of the power to tax. As far as I understand the ruling that the penalty for not getting insurance is a legitimate tax on behavior sets new grounds for the purpose of the tax code. And there is a big difference between offering you a carrot (tax credits) for doing certain things versus sticks to beat you with (a higher tax) for doing certain things. If you don't know the difference, then maybe you ought to be beat each time you do something wrong and yet not rewarded if you do something right. Nonetheless, I don't think one can make a case that extra taxes could have been levied against the individual for NOT doing something. Of course, the fundamental problem with the whole attack on the "individual mandate" as the only complaint brought to the Supreme Court is that it does not challenge the government's power to get involved in anything they please so long as it is not specifically against the specific language of the Constitution. In other words, I think we no longer have even a minimal guidance on Federal regulations based on rights whatsoever. While some may claim there were silver linings in the ruling (supposed limits on the Commerce Clause and such), I think this really pales in comparison to the fact that the Supreme Court has just about upheld slavery, so long as it is done through the tax code. The Federal government can now beat you as it pleases, so long as it in the form of a tax.

The full impact of the Supreme Court decision Re ObamaCare is sinking in: The government can now compel you to do *anything* so long as they do it through the tax code. Previously, they could offer incentives / tax breaks to encourage you to do something (buy a house) or offer disincentives / higher taxes to discourage you from doing something (smoking cigarettes /alcohol); but they couldn't use the tax code if you didn't engage in the purchase of something. Now the door is wide open for special taxes solely for the purpose of modifying behavior. Don't want to get married by age 25? We'll tax you! Don't want to buy a house at all? We'll tax you! Don't want to go to church? We'll tax you! Don't want to send your kids to government schools? We'll tax you! Don't want to open your webpage to all views? We'll tax you! The list is endless, and it was all brought to you by Conservatives, who claim to be on the freedom side, but don't mind modifying the tax code to modify behavior. So, in that sense, no, there was no contradiction of the final ruling coming down from a Conservative who drew out that implication and made it explicit.

I've decided not to get into endless arguments with the likes of Crow Epistemologist who has no conception of money and who thinks that by selling one's gold to a store the store is accepting the gold as some sort of payment and is dealing with gold as money in the transactions.

While it is true that the whole issue of currency and cash came about due to barter and having a convenient means of keeping track of barter exchanges and storing those trades in something more convenient than, say, carrying your cow around with you to dish out milk to trade, this doesn't mean that barter is the proper alternative to not having an objective currency system like we have today with the Federal Reserve Notes. A proper money must be standardized and possibly open to further divisions of the same stuff in order to accommodate sales in that currency -- i.e. if trades made in ounces of gold (coins) always leads to not getting an exact deal, then the coins can be melted down to make smaller denominations. This is not something that can be done with fiat / paper currency not backed by anything. A good example is the Krugerrand of South Africa, which has been made into smaller denominations and could be used as a great currency because it is actual gold and hence can store actual value due to the demand for gold. There are many barter associations and even gambling houses that offer their own type of tokens / barter cash to help keep track of the sales that meet *some* of the provisions of having an actual currency, but the problem is that these barter cash systems require you to do business with the barter trade association only, since their barter cash is not good anywhere else. For example, those plastic tokens one has to buy in Las Vegas to do gambling at the casinos are not tradable anywhere else without having to go back through those gambling houses to trade them back in for cash. This places a severe limit on their use as currency, which is why we don't see gambling chips being traded at the local grocery store. By contrast, something like the Krugerrand, which is real gold and real value in and of itself, could be traded anywhere and could be the basis of a nation wide currency, but it isn't legal *. One reason the Liberty Dollar was shut down was that they were trying to initialize a nation wide if not world wide currency based upon silver coins. The US Government does not want a competing currency to the Federal Reserve Note, because if people discovered the difference between real money and the fake crap the Feds put out, they'd be out of business in a heart beat. This was the real motivation behind arresting those involved in the Liberty Dollar "scandal." And NO I don't mean that it is illegal to own Krugerrands, but it would be illegal to set up a store whereby the only type of currency one would accept would be the Krugerrand and smaller denominations of gold coins.

I think those who don't understand real money (CE) nor understand how the US Government has a lock-down on currency used in the United States (CE) ought to really check their premises about the legality of opening a private bank / mint for the sole purpose of creating a new currency to be used in monetary transactions. As far as I am concerned after doing more research, all the charges against the Liberty Dollar were trumped up against them for the sole purpose of shutting them down. There might -- and I stress might -- be some grounds for something like a trademark violation and the coin was too similar to US issued coins of silver, but that could have been changed easily, and no it wasn't counterfeiting in the least bit. If you are going to be extremely dense about currency and extremely gullible about what the Federal Reserve / US Government is up to, then go right ahead and create you Crow Epistemologist Bank issuing CEB Dollars. Maybe they will even let you post to oo.net from jail; who knows? But is most certainly should not be illegal to mint coins from silver or gold as issued by a private bank / mint. As to the other "local currencies" listed, hardly any (if any) had a link to check them out, and most are just tokens anyhow, like Aladdin's Castle has token to use in their gaming machines. But none of these are intended to be real money in real circulation and run by a private company. Collector editions of coins is not illegal (The Ron Paul coins), but this is not money. See this search page for images of the Liberty Dollar -- and by the way, I don't think either "liberty" nor "dollar" nor "liberty dollar" is a registered trademark of the US Government.

I'm going to repost think Wikipedia Link regarding the Liberty Dollar and how the government handled this private creation of tradeable money. It's illegal to coin your own money, even if you claim that it was never intended to be anything other than some sort of collector's item. The founder of the Liberty Dollar is in jail, charged with so many crimes so as to be a test case for future violators attempting to run their own mint for the purpose of creating sound money. Liberty Dollar.

I guess if you are going to live in the fantasy world "Second Life" which uses virtual money (Linden Dollars), then anything is possible and one can imagine that the polices of the Federal Reserve since 1933 when gold was confiscated and no longer served as the basis of US money, then, no, nothing happened of any consequences. Get real.

No one has brought this up yet, in this thread, but it is the US Congress who has the final say on what is and what is not money within the USA. It was a power granted to Congress by the Founders, and in my opinion, one of their mistakes that is coming back to haunt us.