Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Oboomercare & The Dumbest Generation

We are going to need more Millennials.

While I was neglecting my blogging duties last month, the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act aka ObamaCare.  Since then the debate reignited on several points:  Did the Supreme Court get it  right or wrong by ruling the individual mandate constitutional because it was really a tax?  Did Chief Justice John Roberts bravely rule on the constitutional merits of the law or did he hide behind the fig leaf of congressional taxing power? Did he show judicial activism or judicial restraintIs ObamaCare the biggest tax increase of all time or is it not? Will ObamaCare reduce the deficit or take the deficit to new heights?

Some of these questions answer themselves. If ObamaCare costs $1 trillion dollars to provide new benefits (and it does), and it does not really control costs (it doesn't), and it really is deficit neutral (as the CBO asserts), then simple arithmetic tells us it must also raise $1 trillion dollars of new revenue (which SCOTUS identifies as a tax to be constitutional).  And that pretty much makes it the biggest nominal tax increase in our history.

Monday, July 09, 2012

Carnival of Divided Government
Quattuor et Quînquâgintâ
Special Back and Blogging Edition


Welcome to the 54th edition of the Carnival of Divided Government - the Special "Back and Blogging!"Edition.

NOTICE: The Dividist hereby retroactively announces that the Dividist Papers Blog will be taking a six week Blogging Sabbatical effective at the conclusion of the Facebook IPO post six weeks ago. We did not know we were taking a six week hiatus at the time. It just sort of happened.

NOTICE: The Dividist has returned from our recently announced blogging sabbatical. We are back and we'll kick off with this slightly late edition of the Carnival of Divided Government. Nothing gets those blogging juices flowing like reviewing and correcting the misrepresentations, misunderstandings and general ignorance about the nature and value of a divided federal government. Somebody has got to do it. If not the Dividist, who? If not now, when?

Carnival of Divided Government LIV

As explained in earlier editions, we have adopted Latin ordinal numeration to impart a patina of gravitas reflecting the historical importance of the series. In this the Carnival of Divided Government LIV (Quattuor et Quînquâgintâ), as in all of the CODGOV editions, we select volunteers and draftees from the blogosphere and main stream media writing on the single topic of government divided between the major parties (leaving it to the reader to sort out volunteers from draftees).

Consistent with this topic, the primary criteria for acceptance in the carnival is to explicitly use the words and/or concept of "divided government" in submitted posts. A criteria that, to our endless befuddlement, is ignored by many of the bloggers submitting posts, which sadly results in The Dividist reluctantly ignoring their fine submissions. Among the on-topic posts, essays and articles we choose our favorites for commentary and consideration. We hope you enjoy these selections, and fresh from our blogging vacation, we submit for your consideration this month's selections: