Conservative HYPOCRISY alert--striking down Obama's HC mandate

[mistertrickster]

For the record, I agree with the conservative judge who said that requiring people to buy private health-care is unconstitutional.

I always wanted a public option, and this is one way we may still get it.

But ignoring the merits of this particular issue, the CONs have a major hypocritical disconnect going on here:

Remember when the CONs were all gung-ho for people to "opt out" of Social Security by buying their own (wait for it) government mandated private securities.

Oddly, no CONs worried about the constitutionality of that, yet now they argue just the opposite, that gov't mandated requirements to buy a private service is unconstitutional.

Sorry, CONs, you can't have it both ways . . .

[RegieRocker]

1. Sure insane people can have it both ways and

you sure as hell can't get them to believe they're crazy.

[Hello_Kitty]

2. Their support for school vouchers also fits under that hypocrisy rubric

They want to dismantle public education and give people vouchers to send their kids to private schools. They are in favor of allowing home schooling but that is not the same as allowing people to opt out of educating their kids entirely. In either case, they're for a mandate for parents to educate their children via private means - tuition to a private school or the materials necessary to home school. And they are willing to subsidize it for lower income people.

That said, Dems who think a mandate to buy private health insurance with no public option is just fine have no basis to object to privatized education with vouchers.

[Igel]

3. You miss the point.

It's commonly missed.

Here's a digression, to start off. Some people point to Xians hypocrisy, saying that since the book of Acts shows clear communism--the early Xian group in Jerusalem is reported to have "held all things in common," so how can modern Xians be against any of the various forms of collectivism. But the early church collectivism was voluntary and done to be good and righteous, while current collectivisms are typically forced, where there's government coercion to make sure that those who don't want to participate still participate. It's all for one or none for all, and "none for all" isn't permitted. If you view it religiously, it's government-decreed righteousness imposed by force. It's a good thing I don't view it religiously.

Same here. The point is that the HCRA mandate is not optional. They want it to be optional, their own variety of pro-choice, which defeats the entire point of the mandate. Whether or not the SCOTUS' reading of the Constitution will agree with theirs, dunno.

Social Security is similarly not optional. The battle's long since been lost, some such thing, whatever the Constitutional merits, is so culturally required for most people that while they want it to be optional, and are willing to cede the point about the mandate because, well, sometimes the end has to justify the means--the same goes for vouchers, except in that case they'd still pay their property taxes and just want the optionality in where to direct their kid's "share" of education funding.

This "end justifies the means" for retirement savings isn't true for all conservatives. (Stereotyping is a nasty habit to break.) Note that many conservatives do *not* want a government mandate to invest at all--if you don't want to save, don't save and screw yourself. They wanted government approved/certified sorts of things to reduce risk or at least have it regulated in such a way as to reduce fees. There's a certain degree of hypocrisy in that, of course, still a bit of the "If you give the plebes the same freedom to invest that we want, they'll screw it up and say their need justifies their taking, so limit freedom in the name of expediency." Eh. The more libertarian fringe of the electorate doesn't fall for that hypocrisy. If you're pro-choice, you're pro-choice, even if you don't like the choices that are made available to others.

Note that I've known people who had opted out of Social Security entirely. It used to be possible. In the '50s if you belonged to certain work categories you could elect to irrevocably waive Social Security benefits for yourself and your dependents. You and your employer would then not have to pay FICA taxes for your wages. Those I knew did not leave their widows destitute but had savings and had their houses paid for and in good shape.

[applegrove]

4. Great catch!