The Hotel California State
Today's WSJ highlights the recent decision in Hall v. Sebelius in which a federal district court held that seniors could not opt out of Medicare Part A, unless they also forfeit their Social Security. Here's the logic: only Social Security recipients are entitled to Medicare, ergo, if you want to opt out of Medicare, you have to dis-entitle yourself, by also dropping out of Social Security. As the WSJ notes, the judge's decision rests on an "implicit argument that to be "entitled" to a government benefit is to be obligated to accept it. . . . This might explain why the Obama Administration fought this suit so vehemently."
The only way to get to the liberals' promised land of an all-smothering nanny state is to make welfare into an all-inclusive Hotel California, where you and I can never check out.
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May '10
Re: The Hotel California State
The time for revolution is coming.
Oct '10
Re: The Hotel California State
Sounds like the triumph of the "general will"...
"Rousseau advocates a new corrective social contract as a blueprint through which a proper society can be built. He says that we should seek unanimous agreement with respect to a new social contract that eliminates the problem of dependence on one another while permitting each person to obey only himself and to remain as free as before. This can be accomplished through total alienation of each associate to the whole community. He calls for a total merger in which each individual gives up his right to control his life in exchange for an equal voice in setting the ground rules of society. Rousseau appeals to people to surrender their individual rights to a new moral and collective body with one will.
The public person formed by social contract, the republic, has a will he calls the "general will." What it wills is the true interest of what everyone wants whether they realize it or not. When you are forced to obey it, you really are obeying yourself, the true and free you."
Nov '10
Re: The Hotel California State
The Judge is wrong. The statute doesn’t support this conclusion, it’s a stretched interpretation of the statute by the Social Security Administration. I think it’s an interpretative regulation and not a legislative regulation because the enabling statute does not delegate that authority, and if I’m right about that it doesn’t have force of law and is not entitled to as much deference by a court. This judge just happens to agree with the strained interpretation the SSA has given it. Another court could just as easily go the other way. If such a radical result is to be the law of the land it should be made by Congress, not the SSA or some hack judge.
I thought Medicare was going broke. Why not let people opt out? Wouldn’t that help? There was the age of enlightenment, the romantic age, the progressive era. Will this time in history be remembered as the age of stupidity?
Edited on Mar 24, 2011 at 10:09pmOct '10
Re: The Hotel California State
Oh you can check out any time you want Adam but you can never leave
Aug '10
Re: The Hotel California State
Playing to the mob and promising entitlements is a power play at least as old as the Roman Republic, and caused its collapse in the First Century B.C.
Alexis deTocqueville warned America in the 1830's that "The end of their republic will come when the people discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury."
Here we are!
Oct '10
Re: The Hotel California State
So... when Obama decides that those who disagree too loudly with his administration, are entitled to a 10 year vacation at the gulag, it's an offer you can't refuse?
Re: The Hotel California State
Right you are! Sorry, I'm so bad with lyrics. And River - you're right, of course, this is all "bread and circuses," but the amazing thing is that this is not an example of the American people being corrupted by entitlements. Rather, this is a concerted attempt by the government to prevent people from exercising the virtue of self-reliance.
Jun '10
Re: The Hotel California State
Adam: It's been a long time since I took the Antitrust course in law school. However, if the government in this case were a private enterprise, wouldn't it be engaging in an unlawful tying arrangement (using its economic power over one product to compel a consumer to buy another, less desirable product)?
In other words, if my analogy is correct, the government is doing something that, were a private company to do it, would subject it to civil and perhaps criminal remedies.
Government, the ultimate monopoly, thus continues to rack up new powers over its unwilling customer: the poor citizen. Lincoln's great statement, "of the people, by the people, and for the people" seems less true every day.