F*** Obamacare

This year when I filed my taxes, I had to pay $260 (or 1% of my income for 2014) as a "Individual Mandate Penalty".  The reason for this was that I did not have health insurance.  I looked into health insurance, it was around $175 a month, with $50 copays, that barely covered anything.  Not something that makes sense to pay for considering my income, and that fact that I've made one visit to the doctor since 2000.  I'm the healthiest I've ever been at 32.  I don't believe in yearly check ups.  I'm a naturalist, and prefer to have modern medicine as an "ace in the hole" if ever anything were to go terribly wrong.  Yet, in 2016, I will be forced to pay a fine of 2% of my 2015 income, in 2017, 2.5% of my 2016 income, and in 2018, it will cap out at 3% of previous year's income, every year, until Obamacare is repealed.  So, in essence, I'm being forced to pay taxes for something I chose not to participate in, that truly only effects me.  Wait, isn't that very similar to what the Revolutionary War began over?  Taxation without representation?

Did you know that many of the Senators and Representatives that passed Obamacare didn't even read it?  Nancy Pelosi, House of Representatives Minority Leader and California district 12 representative, said "But we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."  WHAT? Ron Paul, ex-representative for Texas' 22nd district had his team read the whole thing, and they believe it is unconstitutional. 

That money that those of who wish to not participate in the sham, and those who can't afford to, pay as a "penalty" goes to fund the system, that pays for subsidized health care for those below a certain income level.  Yet, wait, don't I already pay a medicaid tax out of my pay check?  YUP, 1.45% of every dollar I work hard to make.  So now I get to pay more to fund health care that I don't agree with or have for myself (or want/need).  And I don't get a choice.  Isn't this suppose to be the "Land of the Free"?

When I have voted, I've usually voted Democrat. In 2008, I voted for Obama. However, if Obama and the rest of the Democrats would have said that they were going to force me and other hard working, healthy Americans, to pay for a system we don't agree with, or at least, don't want to be a part of, I would have told them to go have sex with themselves in a not so delicate manner. In the 2016, I support the Republicans taking power, because I see that as the only way that Obamacare will get repealed.

Obamacare favors the big insurance companies. It requires the young and the middle class to fund a system that from which they have little to nothing to gain. It does far more to hurt the American public and the economy, than the little it helps. I believe in socialized medicine, yet it needs to be optional.

Obamacare is tyrannous and unconstitutional. It has to go. The sooner the better.

Guns vs Mental illness + Trump being an idiot, per usual

Guns, Trump, and Mental Illness

This is an article talking about Donald Trump's recent response to the recent shooting on the community college campus in Oregon.  The article quotes Trump from a recent MSNBC interview that didn't get much publicity (probably because Trump's PR people paid for it to be silenced) yet it was reported on by NewMax.  The general gist is that Trump cited mental illness as the cause for the shootings.  He also insinuated that people with mental illness choose isolation, instead isolation being forced upon them by the stigmas attached to mental illness by our society and individuals.  The author goes as far to insinuate that Trump would like come up with a way to visually profile people with mental illness, much like what happens with black people.  The author overall argument is that Trump is an idiot, talking about mental illness like he's an expert on the topic, and makes a fool out of himself by doing so.  I agree with the author on this.  Maybe not to the extreme the author did, yet that's probably because I'm a moderate and the author is quite liberal.

The author's second, and bigger argument, is that Trump's argument is invalid, that mental illness had nothing, or little, to do with the shooting, and that the real culprit is our country's lack of gun control and our over inflated gun culture. "the plain fact is that the Chris Harper-Mercer, the Oregon shooter, didn’t shoot 9 people because he was mentally ill, he shot them because of the ready availability of guns and the general habit of using violence to solve your problems as modeled for the nation and the world by the US government."  This is where I can not agree.  First off, nobody of sound mind goes into a school, a movie theater, or anywhere else, and shoots people at random.  So yes, mental illness is to blame.  Yes, our country has an over inflated gun culture that might give some mentally ill people add "fuel to their fire".  Second, strict gun control isn't going to solve anything, as much as uber liberals like this guy believes it will.  Point in case, Switzerland and Australia.  In Switzerland, all citizens of a certain age must own a gun and be trained on it's use, however, historically, Switzerland i one of the most peacefully nations with one of the lowest violent crime rates worldwide.  Australia on the other had has much stricter gun laws than the US and in the 90's confiscated guns of certain varieties, and yet still suffers from violent gun related crime at a rate about equal to the US.  I don't have an answer to all this.  Yet, I am a pacifist, and a buddhist, and have a concealed weapons permit, and own a hand gun.  Guns and peace can coexist.

The author is Ben Debney, a Ph.D candidate in International Relations at Deakin University, Burwood, Melbourne.  He is studying moral panics and the political economy of scapegoating.   I feel this makes his opinion on Trump's scapegoating valid and well presented.  However, I feel his opinions on gun control and the amount that mental illness being a cause of tragedies like this is based off of his super liberal political leanings, and therefore are nothing more than unsupported opinion.