Here’s the article, Obamacare Pre-Existing Condition Fee To Cost Companies $63 Per Person

SORT OF RELATED: Obama tax plan no small deal to small businessmen (Kudos to Yahoo! for including that in its top headlines: (more…)

I’ll start off by saying, I’m not totally agnostic on gay marriage, but I’m pretty close. I think both sides argue the wrong points in turn, and since I’ve never really felt the need to appeal to the government for validation (let alone validation of my personal relationships), I say let the chips fall where they may.

In fact, the more libertarian I become (by the day, it seems), the less I care, frankly about gay marriage. My partner and I love each other and we don’t need a government stamp nor piece of paper to make it official. Heck, even if we didn’t have the support and acknowledgement of our family and friends (we, ftr, do), we’d be content just to “watch the world die”, so to speak, our love strong as it is.

Personal mushyness aside, however, Reason‘s Scott Shackford has me confused today. Fair enough, his post last week on the site’s Hit & Run blog (which I read habitually and I recommend to you as well) is after all entitled “The Libertarian Gay Marriage Paradox“. But it seems to me the paradox is misplaced.

He first suggests that the actual libertarian argument against gay marriage (that marriage as an institution itself isn’t any of the government’s business) “is indeed a conclusion, not an argument”, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. In fact, it’s the argument supporting basically all libertarian positions, isn’t it? It’s the one I use all the time on a wide range of issues.

Be that as it may, he goes on to build then knock down a strawman libertarian argument that doesn’t exist, to wit: “Opponents of gay marriage recognition are not arguing for smaller government; quite the opposite” because, he suggests opponents feel “we need government to make certain that humanity continues to procreate.” Sure, social conservatives are making that argument, but do you know of any libertarian who’s saying that? I sure wouldn’t. “Paradox”? I don’t see it.

What is paradoxical, however, is his approach to support for gay marriage:

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The day after meeting with House Speaker John Boehner to “talk about avoiding the fiscal cliff”, he jetted off to  Michigan to criticize right-to-work legislation that both houses of the elected legislature of the Wolverine State passed.  The elected governor, Rick Snyder, has pledge to sign the bill when it reaches his desk.

Obama win in Michigan to “pressure Republicans in Congress to raise taxes on the nation’s top earners“.  Funny way to pressure Republicans—attacking a policy that Republicans in the legislature overwhelmingly support.

(Do wonder if Mr. Obama’s predecessor ever traveled to a state to criticize legislation based by Democratic legislatures in that jurisdiction.)

Instead of weighing in on state policies in a campaign-style event, the president should instead do the job to which he was elected, that of chief executive of the federal government.  Attacking the GOP in a state which just voted to send nine Republicans to the House of Representatives (out of a fourteen member delegation) won’t help him reach a compromise with the Republican-majority chamber.

Seems Mr. Obama would rather speak to friendly crowds than work with his partisan adversaries, even when the latter work is part of his job description.

Although Barack Obama saw his support among twentysomethings decline from 2008 to 2012, he still won a solid majority of those voters.

Their support seems based more on a blind faith in the incumbent than in an appreciation for his accomplishments. “The overall unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds for November 2012 is 10.9 percent“, with one out of every eight young Hispanics out of work and nearly one in five young African-Americans out of work.

Obama did much better among young Hispanic- and African-Americans than he did among white Americans.

The study linked above showed that the unemployment rate for twentysomwethings “would rise to 16.4 percent” if nearly two million young voters hadn’t dropped out of the workforce:

The declining labor force participation rate has created an additional 1.7 million young adults that are not counted as “unemployed” by the U.S. Department of Labor because they are not in the labor force, meaning that those young people have given up looking for work due to the lack of jobs.

That the Democrat’s support slipped among young voters suggests that at least some have woken up to the reality of Hope and Change™.

It’s not too late to RSVP for our Meatless Mondays Steak Dinner today, Monday, December 10 here in LA.

“For the first time in more than three weeks,” reports David Kerley of ABC OTUS news, “President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met face-to-face today at the White House to talk about avoiding the fiscal cliff.” Emphasis added.

It’s about time.

Wonder why the president dilly-dallyed so long, delaying this meeting.  This appears to be the first time since the election that the president met alone with the top Republican in Washington.

If he had been more serious about avoiding the fiscal cliff, he would have met more regularly with Boehner and other congressional leaders.  And have countered the Republicans’ offer made earlier this month.

The article goes on to note that “some Republicans were showing more flexibility about approving higher tax rates for the wealthy, one of the president’s demands to keep the country from the so-called fiscal cliff — a mixture of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that many economists say would send the country back into recession.”  Kerley did not indicate what some of the president’s other demand were.

And now that Republicans are showing some flexibility about raising taxes, will Democrats show some sincerity about cutting spending–and not just cuts from increases anticipated by the president’s past budgets, but real cuts.

As one Democrat put it, “spending is the biggest part of this problem, and the biggest part of that problem is the fact that healthcare is growing at a faster rate than GDP.”  And this even after Democrats passed (what they called) the Affordable Care Act.

SOMEWHAT RELATED: WH Running Out Clock on Fiscal Cliff Negotiations? FYI, that article was posted before the Boehner/Obama meeting, but I read it only after posting this post.

Council Winners

• *First place with 4 votes! Joshuapundit – ‘Palestine’ – A Celebration At The Funeral
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – The Right Planet -Obama Admin Refuses to Criticize Egypt’s New Constitution That Allows Slavery 
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Bookworm Room-From the same people who brought you the constitutional right to privacy: “You have no privacy.”
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – The Independent Sentinel – Dear Sarah Palin – Is A Third Political Party Being Formed?
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – The Mellow Jihadi- Self-Reliance Versus the Collective
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – The Razor- Why I Oppose the Nomination of Susan Rice to Secretary of State (and You Should Too)
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Noisy Room- Policing the Schutzstaffel
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Gay Patriot – Cut off* NPR & PBS in return for higher tax rate on “wealthy”? (more…)