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Dept. of Homeland Security To Test Iris Scanners
SonicSpike writes "The Homeland Security Department plans to test futuristic iris scan technology that stores digital images of people's eyes in a database and is considered a quicker alternative to fingerprints. The department will run a two-week test in October of commercially sold iris scanners at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, where they will be used on illegal immigrants, said Arun Vemury, program manager at the department's Science and Technology branch. 'The test will help us determine how viable this is for potential (department) use in the future,' Vemury said."
Brought to you by all those people who thought this administration would be better than the last.
From deciding this is a great idea and putting it everywhere? They already fingerprint (foreigners), so iris scanning isn't really that far off. I won't bore you anymore with the slippery slope argument, I think we all know where this is going.
I wonder what it'll take to rally the docile United States citizens to fight back. You guys have guns and shit, don't you? Maybe you should go confederate on the government's ass.
GAP Sign: Hello Mr. Yukkamoto and welcome back to the GAP!
John Anderton: *Mr. Yukkamoto?*
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
its not worse either, and whats it got to do with this new administration, really?
-- brought to you by the captcha "totality"
Finally! The US government is putting technology to work for good in scanning flowers...I can only assume that it will be used for public art displays?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_(plant)
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
...when the damn things are working, anyway!
A few of our airports have them for inbound passengers, Gatwick in London being one of them.
I found them quite useful to avoid the customs queues when I flew back into the UK but a lot of that is because so few other people registered to use them. It also took me three or four uses before I'd worked out the optimal positions to look into the mirrors, I would imagine that if a lot of people signed up to use them, it would be slower than going via a human customs officer.
Plus, as I implied earlier, about 50% of the time they were Out Of Order anyway, so the benefits seem quite negligible.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
At last, personalized mall marketing!
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
I just hope that the first person that gets scanned, doesnt have pink eye! Then all of DHS will be out for 3 weeks.
How many times have you heard of people leaving their iris prints on a doorknob, or wine glass, or a gun?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Methinks the scenarios will go like this: "No [specific official paper(s)]? Ok, step this way and look in here at the pretty picture. Thanks, now turn around and go back."
As a US permanent resident, I get iris scanned and fingerprinted every time I enter the US. Or at least I thought that's what it was - I'm always asked to look into some scope with my right eye. This happens every fucking time. Now there's even a separate "permanent residents" line at Terminal 4 in JFK, and wouldn't you know it, it moves at a glacial speed. BTW, this country is seriously starting to suck.
about those poor illegal immigrants selling flowers by the side of the road?
Oh, nevermind.
Hopefully, it will burn out all their irises.
Age of Minority Report?
Well, at least not until they compile a database with everyone's confirmed identity and a gaggle of biometric data to go with it.
(Don't you hate it when people answer their own question? I do.)
If this is anything like retina scanning, they're just scanning the eye for 360(or a multiple of) arc samples and storing the average value, maybe 12 bits greyscale or 12 bits RGB.
Consider the amount of variability(or lack thereof) of your iris. No zebra red/blue stripes.
Consider how much your eyes look like your parents'/mailman's eyes.
Consider how much the scanner fudges for head rotation and eye movement.
What's the false positive rate?
Nope, it does not yet.
But you just wait for our startup's anal probe deployment in every KFC near you!
Why can the DHS and the rest of the government spend so much money on fences and stuff but don't strike at the root of illegal immigration: The fact that legal immigration is full of problems. I really don't see any base for this xenophobia, if we wanted to get rid of illegal immigration, we should make legal immigration easy to do.
It is a bit like the piracy debate, make it a pain to buy legitimate content and suddenly piracy is attractive. Make the legitimate content easier to buy and give no advantage to piracy other than the price and then piracy isn't that big of a deal.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Don't cut out my eyeball, bro!
Actually, I knew damn well this administration would be better, and it certainly is much better. Anybody who compares this administration to the last and concludes there is no difference is not paying attention. Anything short of perfection brings people with very short memories like yourself out of the woodwork. It is very, very sad.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Their eyes are too bloodshot!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
s/illegal immigrants/illegal aliens/
HTH!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Warning! Do not look directly into iris scanner with remaining good eye!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Identify for retina scan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsr-XtuKuSw
I can choose whether or not I buy oil.
No you can't. Virtually every product available today depends directly or indirectly on oil or oil derived products. Gasoline, fertilizer, plastics, diesel, lubricants, fabrics and many more are all produced from oil. Even the food you eat and the water you drink depends on oil in order to produce it and get it to market. The manufacture of any power production equipment requires oil at some point in the process. Claiming you can choose not to buy oil is somewhat like claiming you can choose not to breathe air. The only way you could not use oil would be to go completely primitive and remove yourself from modern society completely.
Thanks to Obama I will not be able to choose whether or not I buy health insurance, at least not until SCOTUS strikes down that portion of his "reform" legislation.
Were you seriously planning to NOT buy health insurance? If you have the means to do so and choose not to then you are an idiot.
Perhaps that could have mitigated if the White House had accepted the offer of skimming skips from the Dutch?
Right. I'm sure that would have fixed everything. If only the Dutch had come to the rescue everything would be fine... [/sarcasm]
Virtually every product available today depends directly or indirectly on oil or oil derived products. Gasoline, fertilizer, plastics, diesel, lubricants, fabrics and many more are all produced from oil.
With the exception of fabrics you haven't named a single product that I can't live without, albeit with varying degrees of difficulty. There are also fabrics (hemp comes to mind) that don't rely on oil.
If you have the means to do so and choose not to then you are an idiot.
I have the right to be an idiot if I so choose. I'm in my 20s and healthy. My most likely source of expensive medical bills is an automobile accident and I've already got insurance for that.
Right. I'm sure that would have fixed everything. If only the Dutch had come to the rescue everything would be fine...
Don't be an idiot. I didn't say it would have fixed everything. It just would have been better than doing nothing. They rejected those skimmers because of EPA regulations that prohibited the discharge of the small amount of oil they couldn't collect back into the ocean. Apparently it's more logical to leave 100% of the oil in the ocean than it is to collect >90% of it and return the rest.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm a Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer, you insensitive clod!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The root of illegal immigration is the lack of enforcement of employment law.
The root of illegal immigration is economic imbalance. More money and higher paying jobs exist in the US than exist in Mexico. Accordingly we should expect to see people migrating to where the economic opportunity happens to be. It's like osmosis - people will move in the direction of money an opportunity. Laws can do little more than slow the movement. Expecting people to obey the law when the alternative is abject poverty and possible starvation is absurd. We don't have a problem with Canadian's immigrating illegally because there is no economic incentive for them to do so. Help Mexico build up its economy and the problem will go away. Continue to ignore Mexico's economic problems and the problem will continue indefinitely. Building bigger fences and enforcing more and more restrictive laws will NEVER solve the problem but it will cost vast sums of money.
This is an iris scan.
buy telling someone that if they have the means to by health insurance and don't that there a idiot proves that you are uninformed. some one at a young age that has no health problems can save a lot of money by not purchasing something they don't need. the only reason to buy health insurance at an early age is peace of mind. but really the people who do are the ones that pick up the tab for the older less healthy group. so you are paying for someone else's health care.
The quote says that the scanners will be used on illegal immigrants. They didn't say that it would be used in order to find illegal immigrants. If you already know that someone is an illegal immigrant then why bother with the scanning? Just send them back to where they came from.
it's almost like you're a strawman. Fact is, the majority of uninsured people fall into two categories: illegal immigrants (who shouldn't be here in the first place and won't be covered by any insurance/health care reform) and people who have the means and ability to pay for health insurance but choose not to.
but the TSA will be administering them rectally.
hi!
With the exception of fabrics you haven't named a single product that I can't live without, albeit with varying degrees of difficulty. There are also fabrics (hemp comes to mind) that don't rely on oil.
Think so? Good luck with that. I would love to see you try to live up to your boast. I'm pretty sure you would fail miserably.
Bear in mind that you will have to live as a subsistence farmer or hunter/gatherer in the most primitive conditions you can imagine. You will not be able to utilize steel or any other metal because you can't get them today without oil. You'll have to forage for seeds because modern agriculture is completely oil dependent. You will not be able to utilize rubber, most fabrics, most chemicals, and most animal products which require feed that is grown using oil products. You also will not be able to travel using any modern equipment.
So good luck there tough guy. Let me know how much you enjoy living without oil. I'm sure it will be a hoot.
I have the right to be an idiot if I so choose. I'm in my 20s and healthy.
For now. That can change in an instant. And if you choose to be an idiot I can likewise choose to support legislation to minimize the impact of your stupidity on me. Your behavior has consequences beyond yourself whether you know it or not. If I have to protect myself from your dumb decisions I will do so with any means at my disposal.
My most likely source of expensive medical bills is an automobile accident and I've already got insurance for that.
You don't buy insurance because of what is likely to happen. You buy insurance for what is unlikely but catastrophic if it does happen. Insurance isn't to save you a few bucks on your dental checkup. It's to keep you from being homeless when you need chemotherapy. You buy insurance so that if you are in an serious accident or become SERIOUSLY ill, you will not lose everything.
Unlikely events happen every day. People in their 20s and every other age get cancer and other serious illnesses. My wife is a doctor and sees people in their 20s with cancer literally every day. If you don't have insurance your prognosis is FAR worse because you simply will not get high quality treatment. What's worse, the rest of us will have to pick up the tab for your irresponsible behavior which I don't especially appreciate.
And btw, your auto insurance almost certainly does NOT cover major medical expenses in the event of an accident. Auto insurance is for liability and damage to the vehicles. No hospital in the US will accept your auto insurer as payment. You can get some supplemental riders for some types of medical expenses but they are not in any way shape or form a replacement for real major medical insurance.
Seriously man, you're playing with fire. You might come out all right (and I hope you do) but you are playing a very dangerous game of Russian roulette.
Don't be an idiot. I didn't say it would have fixed everything. It just would have been better than doing nothing.
If you think nothing was done you weren't paying attention. The fact that BP couldn't fix the root of the problem had little to do with the fact that the response to the oil spill was massive. Hundreds of ships were utilized including skimmers. It's easy to play arm chair quarterback after the fact but I'm pretty sure you weren't there, you weren't making the decisions given what was known at the time and you definitely don't have all the facts.
Which is why we need to take that economic opportunity away from them unless they play by our rules.
Unless you plan to make illegal immigration a capital crime, you will not stop it no matter how well you enforce the laws. The economic incentives greatly outweigh the consequences. If the choice is between starvation and breaking immigration laws, the choice is easy.
It's not our job to help Mexico build up its economy.
No it's not required but that doesn't make it a bad idea. We didn't have to help Europe or Japan after WWII either but it was a good idea to do so. An economically healthy Mexico would benefit the US far more than the few illegal migrant workers do now. We reap the benefits of trillions of dollars in trade each year with the EU and Japan, countries we helped. Had we crushed them when they were down things would almost certainly be worse than they are today.
But if you prefer to be short sighted and selfish, that's fine. Just recognize that by your actions have consequences - in this case, illegal immigrants by the millions. You also need to recognize that you are wasting money on a futile, greedy and spiteful response.
... used to enforce artificial boundaries. If we have the technology to make iris scanners, made with very delicate nanoscale components, doing immense amounts of pattern matching, hooked to a huge networked database, then we have enough technology to make a world of abundance for everyone, and essentially, there is no reason to restrict immigration anywhere in the world, and no need for wars over resources, etc. Something I wrote related to that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I think instilling uncertainty in leadership is a practical function of civilian weapons ownership.
I could be wrong.
Our leaders could be that stupid.
Then again all their security might just be that good.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
And here you missed a perfect goatse opportunity... :P
Down with the career politician! SUPPORT TERM LIMITS
and people who have the means and ability to pay for health insurance but choose not to.
See, that's the problem. Liberals/leftists/progressives can't stand the thought of people having free choice (*) They feel the need to control everybody and everything because they are obviously more educated and in a better position to decide for you than you are.
(*) Exceptions: Killing your unborn child.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm buying sunglasses!
I got passed by a new Cadillac
Had 10 people pilled in it, California Tags
Tried to catchum by you know my Yugo don't go that fast
So I pulled into the station where he was pumping gas
I said hey there Amigo whatchu got under the hood
He said Jes so I guess he don't speak English that good Illegals
Down at the Piggly Wiggly I was standing in line
There was an Army of Illegals just a taking their time
2 baskets ful of groceries and one full of steaks
Just me and Captain Crunch and they still made me wait
I said feedin all your buddies must hit your wallet hard
Said no problemo all the Nino's they got Welfare cards Illegals
Chorus
I called up the congress to see what they would do
Said for Spanish press 1 For English press 2
Now we're overpopulated with undocumented people
They word hard bless their hearts but their still Illegal Illegals
I been building houses for about 10 years
I showed up for work this morning said you don't work here
He pays them cash under the table and its half the cost
And his accountant found a way that he could write it off.
Now their diggin and their brickin drivin new Backhoes
And there sending my money back to Mexico.......Illegals
Chorus
Ummm, how do you dust for irises?
"Fact is, the majority of uninsured people fall into two categories"
Fact is, the majority of uninsured people can't pay for insurance.
I'll cite my reference when you cite yours.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
From my non-American point of view, the difference between American Liberals and Republicans is like the difference between getting bitten by a cobra or mauled by a bear. One might be somewhat less painful than the other but the end result is not that different. From what I have seen, it does not matter who is the American president or from what party he is from since all of them will stick to the status quo on foreign policies (preserving American "greatness") while also eroding the rights of not only American citizens but by setting bad examples to other foreign governments to follow.
Why is this so horrible? Several years ago, I planted some very nice dwarf irises, and they're doing well. We'd welcome the government people who want to come over and scan the cute little things when they're in full bloom. They'll be up some time in March, but of course we don't know when exactly. Maybe there's an email address we can write to about this? We'd be happy to notify them that our irises are up.
If everyone cooperated with this, and with the government's help, we could flood the country with lots of nice flower pictures over the next year or so.
Huh? What?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
you haven't named a single product that I can't live without
The number of people truly capable of living in the US without consuming petroleum-based products is incredibly small. While you could theoretically live without it, in practice I would bet almost anything you do not actually possess the skills and resources to do so. Having the choice to try and do so isn't the same thing. You can choose to try and fly to the moon. Without the proper skills and resources, though, it's a forgone conclusion that having the option to try is not the same thing as actually being able to follow through.
Anyway, if you follow that logic, you also still have the choice to not buy health insurance. It's not like they've made it illegal not to purchase it. It's actually far easier to live free of health insurance after the mandate than it is to live without consuming petroleum products, and neither is illegal. You can't hold an impractical theoretical up as an example for comparison without abstracting what you're comparing it to just as far out. It's intellectually dishonest.
Pretty much with you on the rest of it.
Anyone seen this pathetic scifi movie starring Pamela Anderson? The whole movie revolves around a pair of contacfts than can help to fool iris scans at an emigration checkpoint. Interesting that the same situation has happened, wonder when the contacts will follow.
Might as well mod the whole thread off-topic.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The summary makes it sound like nobody is using iris scanning technology now, but Homeland Security has been using it for the NEXUS program (to cross between Canada/US without talking to anyone) for years. I've been looking into a machine's "eyes" for a couple years now, and it's been really reliable from my point of view. It looks like what is actually new is that this system can pick up irises from a few feet away, instead of 8-12 inches.
This is all part of a broader effort, at least amongst the United States and its allies.
Since Kosovo, biometric data (at a minimum pointer fingers, usually full hand-slaps and iris) has been collected in the field on enemy combatants who have been captured or killed. New hires at US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are scrutinized with this information, and recently you have probably noticed non-US citizens being put through similar rigors at border crossings and airports. Lately criminals and government employees have been entered into biometric databases that ultimately dump into the same central repository of biometric information. All of these databases are interconnected and shared between agencies (ie, the TSA can easily scan a suspected extremist in JFK and recover a criminal profile created on him in Afghanistan by the Army, and this happens more often than you think).
The system uses primarily the L-Scan Guardian (think the green-lighty box) for static collection sites, and this thing [http://www.l1id.com/pages/47-hiide-series-4] for tactical field collection. I am mostly okay with this system as I architected a significant portion of it. Without going into too much detail, it collects only on felons, extremists, suspected extremists, population in nations within which we are currently engaged in war, and the governments' own. This doesn't mean 'suspected extremist' like 'suspected WMD', it means that the person collected on perpetrated, witnessed, or was found near the site of an attack on US forces. Citizens in Afghan/Iraq are collected on for population tracking purposes and it is always on a volunteer basis if they are innocent.
What frightens me is the advances in technology and the potential for abuse. With a few million biometric profiles on tap, the potential for mis-matches becomes statistically possible beyond a very occasional nuisance. Biometrics are always assumed to be 100% accurate in practice (although we always stress the potential for mis-matches), so at best you are flagged at an airport and released after questioning, but at worst you are rolled up by a less savory agency and taken on a free vacation to a polish CIA gulag because you matched a high value target. Furthermore, during my tenure on this project there were some stirring advancements in iris scanning capability. For instance, a gyro-stabilized camera in a blacked-out van that could identify irises with more than 95% reliability from a distance of over 100 meters. Iris matching is extremely accurate and with exotic optics it is quite possible to park a van next to a crowd of protesters and simply slew the camera across their faces. You begin building profiles on dissidents, you begin cataloging and correlating iris signatures with RFID signatures, voice-prints from GSM intercepts in the area, fingerprints from broken bottles next to police or rocks thrown at guardsmen. It becomes trivial to do very scary things like 'randomly' question such protesters or dissenters at airports and government buildings. Mr. Snuffy has been spotted at 5 G-8 protests and on 3 occasions his fingerprints were recovered from molotov cocktail bottles that failed to explode. Blah blah.
I'm not saying the government is going to round up people and put them to the zyklon-b, but I will say that the abuse potential is critical. It's referred to as 'identity dominance' in the business. Check it out.
Iris Scanners? The author of this article needs to go back to school and relearn the anatomy of an eye. It is the retina which is scanned because the pattern of blood vessels are as unique at fingerprints. The iris is the membrane with the opening called the pupil that expands or contracts to control the amount of light entering the eye. Come on I learned this in 7th grade science back in the 80's.
Even though I've never used one, I'm always afraid needles or daggers will shoot out into my eye. No thanks.
Holden: "Tell me about your mother".
Leon: "My mother? I'll tell you about my mother".
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you also still have the choice to not buy health insurance.
Yes, and the Federal Government will punish me if I decide to exercise this choice. They will not punish me if I decline to purchase any other product, so it's obvious that the intent was to make it harder to exercise the freedom to choose whether or not to purchase health insurance.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Really? How are they punishing you by not buying healthcare any more than they can punish you for not buying oil?
It's as easy to live without a job as it is to live without oil (actually, much easier). If you have no job, a tax penalty is not a punishment. Ergo, if you're going to go so far as arguing it is possible to live without oil sans punishment, you have to admit it is as easy (again, arguably far easier) to live without health insurance sans punishment. If you're not willing to admit that, we're pretty much done here. I can't make up for a lack of ability on your part to abstract both sides of a comparison equally.
Did you read the health care legislation? If you don't have health insurance they will hit you with a penalty on your taxes. I'm pretty sure the Federal Government doesn't raise my taxes if I decline to purchase gasoline.
I'd rather keep the money that I would spend on health insurance and put it to more productive ends. The Federal Government is (starting in 2014) telling me that I can't do this without paying a tax for the privilege. That is a net reduction in freedom no matter how you slice it.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Did you read the healthcare...
Yes, and I'm aware of the above.
Are you really unable to see, or are you just unwilling to actually respond to the complete comparison? The "gasoline tax" bit is a major reversion, and, while superficially they are similar, so are import taxes and capitation taxes. Comparing them directly to one another doesn't make much sense without a much broader context. That context is something you've consistently only applied to one side, which is intellectually dishonest.
You say you can live without penalty for not buying products that are produced using oil. I agree with you to the extent that you can as easily live without paying for health insurance without penalty. That you apparently are capable of deducing that you can, in fact, avoid the tax penalty by *gasp* not doing anything that incurs a tax liability in the first place makes the fact that you still fail to actually make the connection even worse. It can be logically deduced from your statement about the liability mechanism used to enforce payment. That liability mechanism is engaging in other activity that produces a tax liability. You can refrain from engaging in that activity as easily as you can refrain from engaging in the liability mechanism for oil taxes (purchasing, well, pretty much anything).
Let me make it easier: say you were to couch-surf or live with your parents (or in a hut somewhere in the woods, it matters not) and are unemployed by choice, will the government fine you and have any way to enforce the collection of that fine as a result of the new healthcare legislation?
The above question can be answered with a simple yes or no.
It's pretty easy to be a bum. Not so much to live in US society and not purchasing or consuming, well, almost anything at all. It's really sad this went even half as far as it's gone. Either is arguably as much a reduction or increase in freedom, depending on your point of view. Unfortunately, the ability to neutrally analyse sides of issues one may not agree with is a skill almost completely extinct, at least in the US.
You should at least have the decency to answer the yes-or-no question if you want to continue flailing about. I'd be interested to see how close you can get while still maintaining the illusion.
So your theory is that I can quit my job and become a ward of the state (or my parents) to avoid the health care penalty? Yeah, that's compatible with freedom and liberty. Don't like what the Government is doing? Abandon your livelihood so they can't punish you!
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Hey, you're finally catching on! Not completely, since I never brought up freedom or liberty.
Now, let me complete the picture and comparison: it takes a whole lot more than that to live without paying the taxes on oil products.
So, you've finally gotten around to realizing you can actually live without penalty for not buying health insurance. It's also as absurd for most people as what is required to live without penalty for consuming petroleum-using products.
Comparison complete. Neither is really palatable for most, though both are possible. That, and only that, was my point. Your original comparison took the blithe position that you could avoid oil taxes but not healthcare insurance penalties. In practice, avoiding either is nearly impossible for most people, but still theoretically possible. You can't legitimately claim one is and one is not, because if you're going to take one to it's extreme you need to do that for both.
For the record, I'm against oil cronyism and subsidy as much as I'm against healthcare subsidy and cronyism. I'm just against torturing logic to suit an ideology (rather than developing an ideology through proper use of logic) more.
The only tortured logic here is yours, as your comparison is patently absurd. I can live without oil -- the penalties that I endure for doing so are of my own making. Starting in 2014 I will not be able to live without health insurance without enduring penalties that are inflicted upon me by my Government. Saying that I can quit my job to escape those penalties rather misses the point I'm afraid.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'd like to hear how you would possibly live without using oil products that is any more realistic than living without tax liability.
Should be an interesting work of fiction, to say the least.
How easy or hard it would be is beyond the point. The point is that the Federal Government does not compel me to buy oil. They are going to compel me to buy health insurance. Your "quit your job and you won't have to pay the penalty" rationalization is absurd. What if I wanted to save up the money that I would otherwise spend on insurance and invest it into a business or other such venture?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The government doesn't compel you to have a job either, but there is a cost to having one if you choose to. One stupid rationalization does not excuse another. I simply used one stupid rationalization to highlight that another stupid rationalization was just that: stupid.
You aren't making any sense whatsoever.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Not understanding something is not the same as that something not existing.
I understand perfectly. You are making a bullshit comparison between Governmental imposed hardships and personally chosen hardships.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
All taxes are governmentally-imposed hardships, and all can be avoided legally in one way or another through some extent of personal hardship. Every. Single. One. The two types of hardship are not mutually exclusive; government hardships are all, at some level, personal hardships. There are many that are not directly, but even those contribute indirectly to financial burden on someone.
I fail entirely to see how the above paragraph is bullshit. I also fail to see how it does not apply to either issue: healthcare tax*; petroleum tax. In what way does it not?
If it is true, and applies to both issues, it logically follows that it is not a bullshit comparison.
This is what it appears your argument is based on, and while I use absolute statements, I obviously cannot know that they are really true. As I said, this is what appears to be the subtext of your entire commentary here:
The fact that you don't like the comparison does not invalidate it, and that seems to be the real issue underlying your argument. You don't like the thought that they are actually the same. You pretend you can avoid the petroleum tax but at the same time can't avoid the healthcare tax. This is likely because you don't mind the petroleum tax as much as the hassle to avoid it, and it's not something that you see all the time: it's invisible. You don't want to stop either taxed activity (and I completely understand and can sympathize with why), but you also don't want to pay a new tax. This mandate makes it so you have to choose one or the other, and that pisses you off.
Again, I may not be right, but that's how what you've written reads.
Nobody is forcing you at gunpoint to engage in any activity you don't want to, nor are they preventing you from engaging in an activity you want to engage in. Like all taxes, what is happening is you are being given a choice: Pay up, or go without the activity being taxed. Now, if you want to talk about what Congress should be able to tax, that's a whole other ballgame (Personally, I think they shouldn't have the power to tax hourly wages at all, let alone impose fines on those wage taxes for something completely unrelated). However, as long as they're taxing something, every single tax issue boils down to "pay to play." A given tax may exceed Congress's authority, but those that don't are all the same: you pay them to make it easier to engage in activities you want to, and they tax activities to make it easier to collect taxes from the majority of people. Health insurance, petroleum, whatever. All the same system, all for the same underlying reasons, all using the same mechanisms to ensure high levels of compliance.
* The "fine" is levied under the taxing power of Congress, so it is a tax in function, regardless of what they call it.
Calling it a tax does not change the fact that the Federal Government is COMPELLING me to buy a product. Taxes on products that I DECIDE to buy are not a valid comparison no matter how you try to spin it.
It's a moot point in any case. Even if the mandate survives Judaical review (unlikely) it will not survive a future Congress. The people won't stand for it. Nobody supports it outside of a handful of leftist partisans.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Using taxation to influence purchasing is nothing new. People let that horse out of the barn long, long ago. Of course, that was by allowing Congress to get away with banning through taxation. If they can do that, it's only logical that eventually the scum will try the opposite. Ballsy yes, but different? Not really.
So, while I hope you are right about it not surviving a judicial challenge, it would not surprise me in the slightest for it to survive. A lot depends on whether Obama wants to try the same road FDR did, and how that turns out. Even if he doesn't, politicians have a nasty habit of embracing and extending controls they claimed to disagree with in order to get elected.
The mandate is different though. Tobacco is taxed to make it more expensive and discourage the consumption thereof. High efficiency furnaces and insulation qualify for tax credits to offset the cost of making those worthwhile improvements to your home.
The Feds have never before penalized someone for NOT buying a product though. They don't raise your taxes if you decline to replace your boiler or buy a hybrid car. Less stick and more carrot. If the Feds had offered tax credits for people to buy health insurance I would not be raising these objections. That's perfectly fair -- buy this product and we'll offset the cost a bit.
They didn't want to do that though. They want to compel everybody to have health insurance because of some perceived notion of the "Greater Good". Never mind the fact that I can do far more for the greater good with my money than a scumsucking for-profit insurance company can.
The other rationalization also holds no water with me. "Uninsured people cost society money!" Yeah, so what? Every single person that defaults on their mortgage or credit cards raises the cost of using credit for the rest of us. I haven't heard any mainstream politicians suggesting that we ditch the bankruptcy code in favor of debtors prisons though.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Oh, I'm certainly with you on all that.
It is different, but only in appearance. In actual practice it is not, because even if it were marketed as an incentive instead of a penalty, the ultimate effect is no different. They just screwed up the delivery of the pretense this time, or decided to dispense with it entirely. I don't know which was the rationale, but it's not really different. Similar to how there's no functional difference between a surcharge on credit transactions vs a discount for cash. One is seen as punitive and one is seen as incentive. The cost differential is the same for one person charging it and another paying cash. In the former, prices in general are lower and they add the charge. In the latter, prices in general are higher, and cash users are discounted. Incentive and penalty are a marketing ploy, nothing more.