Wickard must go

For those who aren't familiar, Wickard v. Filburn was a Supreme Court case that is being cited as a defense of ObamaCare.  I wasn't familiar at all with the Wickard case.  What I've learned was enough to convince me of its wickedness.

What Wickard was about:  To put it simply, Wickard said that the government can tell a farmer what he could grow on his own farm.  The government claimed that Filburn, the farmer, was engaged in interstate commerce, even though his wheat wasn't being sold on the market- the wheat Filburn grew was just for his own purposes.   Since it is supposedly interstate commerce, the Congress has to power to regulate this the theory goes.

On the face of this, it is mind boggling that the people of the time accepted this.  It is totalitarian.  In a free society, it shouldn't be any of the government's business what the man grew on his own farm.  But that's been the law since 1942.  Perhaps too many people just didn't know nor care about this.  If you weren't a farmer, it wouldn't matter as much to you, I suppose.

Now its 2012 and the government is once again claiming for itself the power to tell people that they have to buy medical insurance, or pay a fine, which is being defended as a tax.  It is being defended as a tax because it can be claimed that there can be no court case until the tax is collected.  In the meantime, the private insurance business is being wiped out and people will have no choice but do what the government demands.

The tax, if it is a tax, is itself is a capitation tax, which according to the Constitution, is itself illegal.  It isn't an income tax, which itself was illegal until the Constitution was amended.  If it is a penalty, it is a penalty for not doing something.  It seems that you should do something wrong before you are penalized.  Just breathing and minding your own business shouldn't earn you a penalty, but the government says otherwise.

This looks like one abuse of power stacked up on top of another abuse of power.  If there were no Wickard, there would be no ObamaCare as it is now constructed.

If people are passive as in 1942, there will be even more things like this in the future.  Wickard must go.