By Matt Holdridge
This is an interesting column at the Daily Caller by Robert Laurie:
For the past hundred years, citizens of the United States shared one common holiday, regardless of faith, race, or sex. Though it has never appeared on any calendar, we marked a day upon which we managed to slip free of our shackles and buy our way out of indentured servitude. In 1900, it fell on Jan. 22. By 2009, the last year President George W. Bush scheduled the event, it had been pushed back to the first week of May. This year, most expected it to be held during the first week of August. It was, of course, Tax Freedom Day—the day when American workers stopped toiling to pay their government, and began working for themselves. Sadly, barring Constitutional challenges, we’ll never see another one.
True freedom, thanks to Obama’s health care reform, no longer exists in the United States.
What we have now is a system where, each month for the rest of his or her life, each American will purchase their freedom by writing a check to a federally approved insurance company. The size of that check remains to be seen, but there’s not a single estimate that shows it declining.
He goes on…
If they fail to pay the mandated bill, they’ll face investigation at the hands of the IRS. If the government decides they’re unable to cover the cost, someone else will be forced to pick up their slack. The more the population grows, the more there will be people who will be unable to pay. The cost to those who are footing the bill will increase in perpetuity. If Obama’s plan stands, our formerly inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will never be less expensive than they are right now.
If a citizen refuses to pay, they’ll face the consequences. So far, we’ve been told those penalties will be financial in nature. However, mere months ago, both Obama and Pelosi suggested they’d be fine with seeing jail time imposed. Is America really willing to trust that the concept of such punishment has been abandoned? That the United States has become a country where failure to buy a commercial product could even conceivably result in the loss of freedom simply boggles the mind.
Moreover…
In an instant, Obama’s legislation has paved the way for government involvement in every conceivable corner of our lives. From what we eat to where we live, from where we travel to how we get there, every single thing we do has some impact on our health. Our environment, our homes, our clothes – all of it – will now be subject to federal scrutiny. Should they decide that your diet, your lifestyle, or firearm ownership leads to increased health care costs, what’s to keep them from taxing you into submission or banning the offending practice?
This is not a battle to take lightly.