Taxation without representation is tyranny...

So said James Otis, an American patriot whose views helped shape the views of a new nation in the 1770s. It was no less true then as it is now. Our "representatives" in Washington, DC have seen fit to levy all sorts of taxes on us regardless of how we feel. This is certainly nothing new, but this latest debacle takes the cake. It is obvious to any literate American that takes the time to read the various polls that the majority of Americans are opposed to Barack Obama's version of "health care reform". So deep was the discontent that the seat held by Ted Kennedy, the leading champion of this issue, was won by a Republican who campaigned, in large part, on ensuring that this travesty of a bill would never become law.

This presented all members of Congress, Democrat and Republican alike, the perfect chance to do the right thing - to gather around a table, start from scratch, take ideas from both sides, and craft truly meaningful reform, rather than an ill-advised takeover of 1/6th of the nation's economy.

Did they do that? No, my friends, they did not. They resorted to the basest chicanery and parliamentary gimmickry to ram this thing down our collective throats. We didn't want this bill. We don't want the taxes that it imposes. I think most of us agree that reform is necessary, but this isn't it. Genuine tort reform, selling insurance across state lines to increase competition and thereby lower costs, providing government oversight to ensure that insurance companies can't raise rates arbitrarily, exclude for pre-existing conditions, and drop you when you are sick - this is the list of things that would truly create reform. It is, coincidentally, the laundry list of Republican ideas, most of which were discarded out of hand.

This, my friends, is taxation without representation. It is, as was observed by Mr. Otis, lo these many years ago, tyranny.

On the brink

I haven't posted in quite some time. I think that's because I have been (figuratively speaking, of course) holding my breath. Or maybe I’ve been paddling rapidly upstream on the river of denial. I guess I was thinking, “Surely they won’t really do this, will they?” Seriously, passing legislation that affects 17% of the nation’s economy without a SINGLE Republican vote – nobody would be that stupid, would they? As it happens, they would, they could, and in the next few hours we will find out that they did. They’ll rationalize it every which way but loose. They’ll tell us it’s for our own good. They’ll say that they did it because it needed to be done. They will say all sorts of things. And in the end, we will see a fundamental change in the way our country works. For the first time (and I will predict right now that it won’t be the last time), you and I are going to be compelled by force of law to purchase goods and services. Maybe not quite at gunpoint, but when the compeller is the United States government, that doesn’t matter much, now does it?

So – I have to wonder what we can do now. Obviously, a big part of it will come down to money. The only way to vote the scoundrels out is to get out the message that we don’t want this, and that we will not under any circumstances allow the insulated “majority” in Washington to fundamentally change our nation without the consent of the governed. This is going to require time, effort and money. The National Republican Congressional Committee is a good place to start. We need to fund true reformers that will vote to repeal this travesty of a “law”. We need to put on notice those who have ignored our voices. We need to let them know that their jobs will go away in November. We need to target every single Democrat that voted for this in the House and Senate. Let’s get ‘em, guys. If we let them take away this bit of freedom, what is next? Do we really want to be the people that someday tell our grandkids that there used to be a thing called the Constitution of the United States of America that actually meant something, but we let that slip away from us?

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." – 10th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America