Category Archives: Government
Health Care Tax
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-up (1936)
Here’s Justice Alito, quoted in the NYT:
“Today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax,” he told Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the administration’s lead advocate. “Tomorrow you are going to be back and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax. Has the court ever held that something that is a tax for purposes of the taxing power under the Constitution is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act?”
Here’s President Obama answering Alito’s question.
Sketchy
How Peggy Noonan sees Romney’s Etch A Sketch problem:
…then-Sen. Barack Obama, in 2008, was widely viewed as a blank slate, an empty canvas on which people painted their hopes and yearnings. He knew it; he admitted it was part of his mystique. So he was a kind of Etch A Sketch too, only he let the voters turn the knobs. The other is that it illustrated with a disheartening vividness the essential Romney problem, which has never gone away after all this time: that he’s making it up as he goes along, that he’ll be one thing today and another tomorrow.
The Road
Paul Ryan took on government debt by offering another budget this week. The president offered a home movie – The Road We’ve Traveled.
All of the Above
The president angered his union base to please his green base by stopping the Keystone pipeline. Now he’s taking credit for building a part of the pipeline that doesn’t require his approval. He’s also taking credit for drilling that didn’t require his approval. This could anger his green base. He calls it his All of the Above Strategy.
Etch A Sketch Candidate
A Romney aid said the campaign is like an Etch A Sketch – you can shake it up and start all over before the general election. Just like Romney Care. Or Bain Capital. Etch A Sketch stock has tripled since both Gingrich and Santorum started waving the things around on TV last night.
