Please commit suicide and save the American people the trouble of having to assassinate you. The idea of taxing people to hand over money they don't want — and can't afford — to spend, to a private insurance company they don't want to deal with, is STUNNING in its highhanded, indeed tyrannical madness and evil. You really want to go back to Montana after you have stolen 13% of Montanans' income? Aren't there a lot of ropes and guns in Montana? I've been to Montana, and the people there didn't strike me as a bunch of passive losers willing to be taxed to death. You really think a state that has no sales tax is going to welcome the Max Tax? If you are suicidal, I'm sure there are simpler ways to do yourself in. Check the website http://www.angelfire.com/moon/101ways/. No Montanan should face trial for killing you. You should kill you.

I have heard you express some concern about the constitutionality of some approaches being considered in healthcare. You are quite right that forcing people to buy health insurance against their will is completely unconstitutional, forbidden by the Fifth Amendment prohibition on governmental taking without just compensation FROM GOVERNMENT. The taking that Senator Baucus is talking about would not be "for public use", which is the only way Government has any right to take private property (income). So Government cannot constitutionally take people's income for the benefit of a private company — any private company, for any purpose whatsoever. Stealing from Peter to pay Paul is not permitted by the Constitution.
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The further requirement of the Fifth Amendment is that private property cannot be taken except with "just compensation". But Government provides no compensation whatsoever for this taking. Rather, it will leave the compensation — if any — that is to be made by the private companies to which they move an employee's money, to be determined by that private company, not by Government. Such a proposal is insanely unconstitutional.
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It is not for Government to claim that they are entitled to seize money from our paychecks because the private companies to which they give that stolen money will provide "just compensation". If a health-insurance company can deny a claim, then the person who needs that claim paid will have had his property (income) stolen by Government but receive NO benefit. But it doesn't matter: the just compensation for Governmental taking must come from GOVERNMENT.
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The comparison often made to automobile insurance is not remotely valid, because people do not have to drive. Further, the Government does not deduct the cost of car insurance from people's paychecks and pay it over to a private insurance company. The only things people would have to do to fall afoul of the proposed "individual mandate" are (a) be present in the United States and (b) breathe.
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Government cannot tell people they must, as a requirement of simply living in the United States, buy health insurance, life insurance, a car, a house, or anything else that Government tyrants highhandedly tell us we SHOULD, according to them, have to buy as a condition to living in the United States. Government does NOT have the right, most especially, to SEIZE money from a person's paycheck to TRANSFER it to a private company, any private company, for any purpose whatsoever. Using the model of a car or house, again, on what conceivable provision of the Constitution would the Federal Government — a LIMITED government in the Constitution as written by the Framers in 1787 — be empowered to require people to buy a car or house, and take the payments for that car or house out of their paycheck to transfer to a private carmaker or real-estate company?
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The only way Government can impose an individual mandate and deduct moneys from a person's paycheck is to make health insurance a Government service and levy a tax to pay for it. If we create a single-payer system, the Government would be entitled to levy a tax to support it. But such a tax would properly fall only on the wealthy.
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I know that the Constitution has been very seriously weakened in recent decades, to the point that many people in Government seem to regard it as merely a statement of druthers rather than, as that Constitution itself says, "the supreme Law of the Land" (Article VI, paragraph 2). But if we are to avoid complete social disintegration and the rise of insurrectionary movements all over the country (not just in the South, where talk of secession is already rampant), we must return to first principles, the principles that we all agree on: limited government, and Government as servant of the people, not master. It is not for the U.S. Government to become a corporatist state that uses the power of governmental coercion and seizure to benefit private corporations.
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If the "Max Tax", in any guise, is part of a health-reform bill, you and all defenders of the little guy (which includes some genuine Conservatives) must remove it or defeat the bill. Aside from the constitutional issue, there is the basic economic reality that people cannot afford another tax, and not just because of the current recession — especially not a tax that will NOT cover all the expenses of healthcare but will leave co-pays on TOP of the money seized by the Government and turned over to private corporations. It appears that the bulk of members of Congress have no idea how hard-pressed the great majority of people are, despite all the talk in media about foreclosures, bankruptcies, unemployment, and consumer debt. So let's remind them: real wages have FALLEN for over a decade, as jobs shipped abroad have produced a labor surplus here that has empowered the owners of corporations to cut wages and benefits, as by increasing the cost to employees of such health-insurance as people still have thru their employer.
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There has been a stark and astonishingly rapid redistribution of wealth UPWARD, FROM the poor and middle class TO the rich, since the Reaganite Plutocratic Revolution carried off by the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The income-distribution profile of the United States now approaches that of the most unequal and unfair nations of Latin America. The typical American family, thanks to usury, overlimit fees, and usury on such fees more than just on money actually borrowed — all of these being problems that Congress refuses to fix — is falling further and further into debt every year. THEY HAVE NO MONEY LEFT OVER FOR A NEW HEALTH TAX! Are you people serious? How ignorant, or blind, is Congress that it has no idea that almost NO ONE can afford a new tax, of any kind, but especially not a 13% tax for something they don't want and could not afford to use unless there were NO co-pays whatsoever? A new 13% tax — or 7% tax or penalty, or even 3%; and when you're talking about a seizure that Government has no right to make, and also talking about people who are falling further into debt every month, ANY rate is too much — would ruin millions of American families. They will lose their house; and their car might also be repossessed, so they can't even live in it after they lose their house.
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Congress seems to believe that tens of millions of Americans will consent to have their lives destroyed by Governmental thievery in service of the insurance industry. May I remind Congress, thru you, that there are 200 million GUNS in the United States? How many Americans who lose their house, and car, and furniture, and security of every type, will still have their guns?
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Congress is even talking about cutting Medicare! Are you insane? First off, I face having to lose $95 a month from my Social Security check when I turn 65 at the end of this year, when prices have gone up (despite the recession), my homeowners insurance has gone up, my property taxes have gone up, and I have, now, only $308 a month left from my Social Security check after my mortgage payment (which includes homeowners insurance and property tax) is deducted! $308, for every other expense: electricity, gas, car insurance, food, heating (in winter, which is now racing up to us), clothing, Internet access — everything, for an entire month. No increase in Social Security payments is planned for 2010. Once I have to pay $95 a month, which will be taken out of my Social Security check, that $308 becomes $213! And Medicare benefits are to be reduced?!?
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As it is, I, who rely upon Social Security and have very little money in IRA's, am to pay the same $95 a month for Medicare as people who have tens, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of dollars in IRA's, and a company pension as well as Social Security. Why should they get Medicare at all? But even if they should get Medicare, why do they pay only what I pay, when my total income is less than $15,000 a year? Put the other way around, why do I have to pay the same $1,140 a year that relatively wealthy people pay? That $95 a month will require me to go into my little IRA's every month, and if I can't find some other source of income, I will be destitute within three years. This is what Congress regards as fairness. Working people are to be destroyed by a new tax; retirees are to be destroyed by Medicare costs they cannot afford, while their benefits are to be cut.
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I am ashamed of what this country has become.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:45 PM