There’s been lots of smart things written about the ACA ruling. Here are a few I found particularly on point:
from Forbes, who are not known for their lefty politics: Don’t Buy the GOP Narrative That Obamacare Is A Tax On The Middle Class — It’s a Lie Designed to Mislead
Wil Wheaton points us to a Daily Show bit wherein Romney is quoted as promising to a few changes (via repeal) to American health care policy — all of which are already part of the ACA. Romney is transparently scaremongering here, and it’s shameful.
Also via Wheaton: What exactly is Obamacare, and what did it change? Seriously, read this.
Finally, John Scalzi has some very smart thinking on the issue of Roberts’ vote in this case. He closes with “I don’t think there’s any question that Roberts is a conservative judge; a look at his track record and even at his ACA write-up makes this abundantly clear. I don’t think there’s any question that Roberts will continue to be a conservative judge. What the ACA ruling serves notice for, perhaps, is that Roberts is following his own conscience and reasoning regarding what it means to be conservative, rather than taking his cues from the the current right-wing orthodoxy. Ultimately, that’s what sending the right wing into their rage about Roberts: That now it’s possible he’s his own man, not theirs.” (By the way, the fact that Roberts has a chronic condition may well have played a role in his thinking here.)
So it is not a tax though it is legal If applied like a tax and so much so that The Service can collect. So even if you are technically correct, when Bubba has to pay the IRS do you think it makes a fuck politically whether it actually is a tax? I know this much, next year I am supposed to pay another 5% on each employee due to this Non-tax.