Gary North weighs in on The Dread Pirate Roberts:
In upholding Obamacare, which is in fact Pelosicare, Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion. He indulged in some lawyer-like deception, as lawyers are paid to do. The law specifically says that the mandatory payment for not buying insurance is a penalty, not a tax. He determined that this penalty would be unconstitutional if it were a penalty (commerce clause), so, lo and behold, it’s a tax!
This is all nonsense, of course. The government has regulated lots of things under the commerce clause, telling people what they must do, can do, and cannot do. If the Supreme Court gives any regulation a thumbs-up, the regulation continues. No single case is going to reverse the federal bureaucracy from pursuing its agenda under the commerce clause.
One man’s opinion on what the commerce clause means is merely his opinion. This opinion does not bind the federal bureaucracy or any future Court decision. It just gave Roberts a way to justify his theory of the legality of unlimited federal taxation, now to be collected as fines for not buying health insurance.
He argued that the government can now force residents and citizens of the United States to buy health care insurance that they do not want, or else face a government-imposed fine for not buying it. He called this a tax. The majority five accepted this.
To the extent that his opinion has established a precedent, Roberts has at long last legalized open economic fascism to America. Of course, it has been alive and well ever since the New Deal, and really since the First Bank of the United States (1791 to 1811). But now it has been placed under the judicial umbrella of a Supreme Court decision.
Economic fascism is the doctrine that there is a government-business alliance that makes the nation wealthy or strong militarily. This idea has never had a judicial basis before. Now it does.
Read the rest here.