Well well Justice Roberts, I am writing your obituary right here and now, and should you precede me I'll publish it too, even if it costs me a lot of money to do it.

"Justice Roberts was single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the American Government via its Treasury via his idiotic and legally-infirm contortions in ruling the Affordable Care Act was in fact a tax, rather than a constitutionally impermissible command."

As I wrote at the time Roberts destroyed what little was left of the Supreme Court's legitimacy, putting the final nail into a coffin built since Wickard .v. Filburn.  He justified this in his opinion through what is really called by any means possible I shall torture the law to save it, in that he cited a claim that the Courts are required that any fair means of interpretation exists that leaves a law intact the courts are required to find it.

Of course there was no such "fair means" which he also set forth in his own opinion, stating clearly that the statute reads as a command to buy insurance ("enter into a regulated activity") and that the Constitution prohibits that.

Indeed the Congressional record on the drafting and debate makes clear (if you bother to read it, which Roberts clearly did and then intentionally ignored it, which I also pointed out in a further article) that Congress knew they could not draft the PPACA as a tax because direct taxation on other than strict capitation is unconstitutional.

In other words the US Government can assess a $10 per person tax, per person, but they may not condition the amount of the tax or its imposition on anything other than being a person.  The 16th Amendment makes legal the imposition of taxes on income.  Indeed multiple other attempts to impose such a tax without a Constitutional Amendment had been previously struck as unconstitutional, so there's not only a legislative record but a judicial one as well.

Roberts didn't care.  I've often mused if someone has a video of him buggering a little boy and used it get him to write that "opinion."

But what Roberts didn't have, because he couldn't, is the ability to time travel.  And when Congress passed the TCJA reducing the penalty for not having coverage to zero starting January 1st of next year they destroyed the Constitutionality of both guaranteed issue and community rating, since both were by the Congressional record inextricably tied to the imposition of the penalty and thus are non-severable, as is specifically stated in the Congressional record.

Without the penalty there is no tax since the inherent property of a tax is that it raises revenue.  That's now gone and it was the sole pillar on which the Roberts court decision rested.

The problem is that the rest of the law isn't inseverable and the way law works is that except where severance is specifically declared inapplicable it applies unless the result would be nonsense.

That the result of non-severance will bankrupt you does not enter in the analysis.

Thus the brief referenced herein argues that both community rating and guaranteed issue are Constitutionally infirm and thus void come January 1st.  This is a winning argument, and if there is anything approaching a justice who can actually read it wins by declaratory judgment since the precedent to judge it by is in the original opinion and as a result there is no legal ground to cover in presentation of a case or argument before the court!

But once you do that both Treasury and private industry are irrevocably and instantly fucked.

Without community rating and guaranteed issue anyone with a pre-existing condition who becomes unemployed becomes permanently unemployable as they are uninsurable without destroying the business they go to work for.  Further, they can't engage in entrepreneurial activity either because there is no possible way for them to buy health insurance.  And finally, since the cost of that care has more than doubled since this problem was allegedly "addressed" by Obamacare they have no other option available.

I have often written about the utter necessity of getting rid of the medical monopolies as a political imperative, and for individuals to do everything in their power to get off the medical teat, which for most people means you damn well better not not be overweight or obese, you better have normal blood sugar which means no damned carbs to any material extent in your diet and it certainly means that intentional high-risk behavior like buttfucking, IV drug use or drinking to excess is an instant economic death sentence.

Of course what has occurred in the decade since Obama came to office and Pelosi and her pals rammed through their "vision" is that all of that has gone downhill in statistical terms for America.  There are more obese and abnormal-insulin and blood-sugar level people in this country than ever before, including a shocking number of teens for whom such was unheard of as recently as 30 years ago.  There has been an explosion of IV drug use including heroin and fentanyl.  And we have removed not just legal strictures but have mandated "tolerance and acceptance" under the law for extraordinarily-high risk social behaviors and in no small part covered that up with expensive, lifetime drug regimes that are utterly dependent on public financing to remain "affordable" for the vast majority of people.

The social issues are real but the cost issues exist only because neither Congress nor any State or Federal executive will take their justice departments and prosecute, throwing in jail, the medical monopolists.  Instead they kowtow to their lobbying, whining and claims of "necessity" to continue the trend of taking medical expense from 4% of GDP to nearly 20% today and beyond into the future.

Well, now the scheme is about to blow up in everyone's face.  As of January 1st those who are healthy do not need to participate and most will not.  I won't.  The "donut hole" where $25,000 - $50,000 in income has an effective tax rate of more than 80% everywhere (and close to 100% in high-tax states) is gone if you simply stick up the middle finger.

But without some means of forcing transfer payments from "someone" (the taxpayer across the entire population) to fork up $900 a month for someone like me, who needs zero routine and chronic medical care so that someone else can run up $5,000 a month prescription drug bills the latter's bill becomes unfundable.

Mr. Roberts will burn in Hell for this, as had he not tortured the Constitution in 2012 Congress would have been forced to deal with the medical monopolists and so would have Obama's administration, saving the US Government and taxpayer several trillion dollars.  You'd also be able to pay cash for virtually any medical situation, save an immediate crisis for which (if you chose to do so) reasonably-priced insurance would be available.  We're talking $100 a month or less here folks, because even the "really awful" stuff would cost one fifth of what it does now.

But all that money has now been stolen and it's gone, while the nuclear fiscal bomb left behind by Robert's outrageous twisting of reality on the back of Obama and Pelosi's intentional set of actions is now about to detonate in his, and everyone else's, face.

Here it comes folks, in two reports -- one from the Medicare trustees, and the other from Social Security.

Let's start with the easy one: Social Security.

The "fear" is that it will be unable to pay full benefits (because it will have run out of bonds that are there as a buffer) in 2034.  This is predicated on a few things, so let's list them:

• Income levels will not generally lift.  Oh really?  More to the point, neither will the cap-out point (where you stop paying every year.)  But the latter does lift every year (it's gone up a lot since I was running MCSNet) and the former is a rather-pessimistic view of the world.  It's one that might prove correct, but it's still quite pessimistic.
  
  
• Disability has actually improved due to fewer people going on the rolls.  Gee, how many were disabled and how many didn't want to work?  Funny how people who were and are disabled suddenly become not disabled as the economy improves.  That's fraud folks, but nobody cares.  You should, because the money being stolen is yours.
  
  
• Through 2039 (five years beyond the projected depletion date) expenditure goes up.  However, the system was designed for this; that's why it holds Treasuries and built a huge surplus while the boomers were working.  Granted, the "surplus" was immediately spent but it was replaced by Treasury bonds, which can and are being (right now) sold.  The Fed, Congress and Obama intentionally destroyed the actuarial health of the system; the current yield on a blended basis is only 3% which is about half of what it should be for a ladder of bonds of appropriate duration.  This is not small potatoes when you're talking about a couple of trillion dollars! I want to know where the handcuffs are for Congress and the entire Federal Reserve plus all of the administrations back to the 2000 tech wreck who have all deliberately suppressed yields and continue to do so today.  But for that the retirement program would probably be sound on an actuarial basis.  Note that had interest been at normal levels the difference last year would have been roughly $80 billion, along with the years prior back to 2008 and on a forward basis.  $80 billion a year is real money, especially over a few decades and in fact it's probably enough to make it through the "bump" when the boomers die!  Too bad America has forgotten what a pitchfork and torch is.
  
  
• Note that Social Security is fairly easy to "fix."  First, we can stop tampering with rates on a forward basis.  Second, we can (and probably have to) lift either the cap on wages at a faster rate (or once on a step-function basis), modestly increase the FICA tax, or some blend of both.  A less than 3% increase in the FICA rate (both halves; you pay both even though you don't see both directly) is roughly where the line is, assuming wages do not lift faster than inflation (payouts.)  If they do some or all of that will disappear; the reason is that Social Security is a progressive system; that is, your first dollar of earnings (taxable) get you more benefit when you retire than higher earnings dollars do.  So if people shift toward the higher end (before the cap-out, at which you neither pay or get more) then the deficiency closes.

The bad news is found in Medicare.

Medicare goes bust in eight years and there is no rational revenue-raising way to fix it.

For most of us who are not 75+ it will not be there unless the medical monopolists are jailed, hung or both right now.

Yes, after trial and conviction (I still believe in due process) but if we don't do it, and I remind you there is 100+ year old law that is more than sufficient to go after this issue right here and now everyone in this nation is absolutely and irrevocably fucked if they need medical care and are over 65 just eight years from today.

Period.

There is no payroll tax adjustment that can plausibly be passed and fix this.  Medicare was designed for a medical system that consumed four percent of GDP.  Today it's nearly 20%, or five times as much.  Cost-shifting from Medicare and Medicaid is already is screwing the rest of the public blind; there is little or no more of that which can be possibly foisted off on working people.

THIS IS WHERE THE EMERGENCY IS AND WHY I HAVE RAISED HELL ABOUT IT FOR MORE THAN TWO DECADES CONTINUALLY.  IT IS AND WAS OBVIOUS EVEN IN THE 1990s WHERE THIS WAS GOING TO GO IF NOT STOPPED.

Well, it not only hasn't been stopped the scamming has accelerated and unless the government puts a stop to all of the scams now within the next few years you are going to get reamed up the chute. 

This is no longer a "distant" threat.  It now will occur prior to the end of the next Presidential term, and any acceleration in the deficit in these programs, which will happen instantly when there is a recession, will likely bring forward that date by three to four years immediately rendering the problem both instant and catastrophic.

I have published several articles on real fixes for these issues.  One can be found here, and it's a good place to start.

We either demand it as a nation and back that demand up with whatever we need to in order to make it happen or this nation, it's economy, and our government are all gone inside of the next ten years.

Politicians will not act until and unless we, the people force them to do so.  They only care about the next election and being able to "retire" into some lobbying position at five times their government salary.

You either get off your ass now and force your government to hold the entire medical system to account under anti-trust law or you had better make damn sure you don't need medical care of any sort -- no prescription drugs, no doctors and no hospitals -- and are willing to either get on a plane (if you can) for treatment or die should that change for you.

Nope, nope and nope.

Quick demo of the lock support in the HomeDaemon-MCP app including immediate notification of all changes (and why/how) along with a demonstration of the 100% effective prevention of the so-called Z-Shave hack from working.

Simply put it is entirely under the controller's choice whether it permits high-power keying for S0 nodes.  For those controllers that have no batteries and no detachable RF stick, which is a design choice, there's not a lot of option.

But for those who follow best practice that has been in place since the very first Z-Wave networks you're 100% immune to this attack unless you insist and intentionally shut off the protection -- even in a world where S2 adoption becomes commonplace (which certainly isn't today but will become more-so over time.)

HomeDaemon-MCP is available for the entity that wishes to make a huge dent in the market with a highly-secure, very fast and fully-capable automation, security and monitoring appliance, whether for embedded sale (e.g. in the homebuilding industry) or as a stand-alone offering.  Look to the right and email me for more information.

Come and get it!

There's a story making the rounds that appears to have some corroboration at this point, but my sourcing is too thin (and specific to people) to document.

Apparently if you bought an "Alexa" and activated it you can wind up with an un-asked for Prime subscription and it can wind up linked to some other card you have out there that Amazon managed to get their claws on.

Of course some people won't care because their entire point of buying one of these "Smart speaker" things is to link it with Prime for their "shopping" purposes.  Well, ok, but whatever happened to informed consent?

There might well be, somewhere, one of those "buying this will subscribe you to X at price Y" deals somewhere in the fine print on the startup or registration page.  In fact I wouldn't doubt it if it's there somewhere, maybe in the "click-through" terms and conditions that nobody actually clicks through and reads the entirety of.

My question is why is this sort of thing happening at all?

Let's be real here: These so-called "smart speakers" are anything but.  They aren't "smart", they're pattern-recognition devices and you're the pattern.  They're linked to "the cloud" because the CPU, RAM and similar requirement to run voice recognition is quite high but extremely bursty since you only give the unit a command once in a long while; the rest of the time it is either idle or (and you hope it's not!) simply recording what it hears.  Putting the capability for fast, decently-accurate response in the unit when it would be active 0.1% of the time at most is why these devices are all "cloud-powered"; they would be stupid-expensive if not.

But these things don't exist for your benefit, they exist for someone else's benefit.  If you want to know what sort of imagery gets conjured in my mind when I hear of people installing and using them it's from the first part of WALL-E..... you know, this one.

Yeah.

That looks appealing.

Not.

Heh, I get it.  You like convenience.  So do I.  I like being able to see what's going on in my house, even if I'm not there, especially if I get alerted to something sketchy going on.  After all that video evidence is useful for the cops to prosecute someone with if they try stealing my stereo.  I like sitting in the bar, pushing a button, and having the hottub ready for me when I get home a half-hour later.  That's convenient.  And I like knowing with hard confirmation that I really did remember to close the damned garage door on the way out.  Peace of mind and all that.

But all of this nonsense in today's world seems to be centered around not your convenience and security, but rather someone else mining your data for profit, not telling you what they're doing with it, or even lying about when they collect it, for what purpose they use it, and who gets access to it.

In our world of today we don't jail executives for that sort of crap.  We should, but we don't.

I get the limitations as well. But what I don't get is the insane price ripoffs that come with it, never mind the privacy and data security implications, especially when you bring something like this into your house or, even worse, your bedroom.

For an example price out a "NEST" thermostat.  You'll blanch.  For half the price I can buy a Z-wave enabled thermostat from Trane.  You probably heard of them -- they make air conditioners and heating systems and have a decades-long history of building high-quality, reliable gear.  It doesn't need "connectivity" to work; it's a thermostat.  Indeed, the one on the left at that link is the one I have in my house.  Oh, and it monitors service intervals too (e.g. for your filters), which is nice -- and you can set them to suit the level of general dust and such in your environment.  But, you can talk to it over Z-Wave and both see what's going on and control it if you want to.

Like, for example, right here:

That's real-time, right now, and if I tap it I can change the temperature it's set for.  HomeDaemon-MCP has an outdoor temperature sensor and switches its mode automatically; there's no need to be in "auto" or "heat" mode around here for half the year or more; if it's 70+F outside you won't want heat!  But in the "middle seasons" it's nice to have it automatically switch between the two because there might actually be a reason for that, and in many other parts of the country (especially at higher elevations) where temperature swings of 30-40F are not uncommon during a single 24 hour period it's very useful.

Someone who buys HomeDaemon-MCP and stands up the business to retail it could easily sell the entire package including the controller, a software license and the thermostat for the same sort of money as one "Nest."  But what you'd get is not just a thermostat in that case -- it can run your entire house at the cost of simply adding more modules that are reasonably priced.

Want a camera too?  Nest wants $200 for them.  What?

Amcrest wants $81 for an indoor camera with double the resolution!  If you're happy with the same 1080p that Nest offers and shop around you can get 'em for about $60, or less than a third of the price.

Instead of demanding you use a "cloud" service which inherently means no security as the data is not yours and is being stored and transmitted to a big company that might use it for "whatever" (good luck proving it if they do and you'll need an act of God to hold them accountable if you catch them either doing so or someone hacks it and uses it to target your house for a break-in) with HomeDaemon-MCP only you ever have the data, your cameras can be 100% firewalled from the outside so they cannot speak in or out beyond the perimeter of your network directly and yet you can have access to both snapshots (which you can have it take when it sees movement, etc) and real-time, streaming video any time you'd like over a high-grade encrypted connection from anywhere.

Oh, and the second camera isn't another $200+ either -- or $300 if you want one in an outside-rated enclosure!

With a couple of motion sensors and a garage door sensor (magnetic) you can set it up so that the camera automatically points at the wall when you're home (for the paranoid), when you leave it "arms" itself and points at the room, and if there's motion seen without the "authorized" path being taken (e.g. opening your legitimate garage door with the button in your car) you get alerted immediately so you can grab a video or screen shot for the police. 

What the hell is wrong with people?  Do you really want a copy of video of your house to be in someone's cloud machine ever?  Think about it folks -- we're talking about data that if some malefactor gets ahold of it and pattern-matches it they can figure out if you're home, when you're home, when you go to work and when you're on vacation!

Why the hell would you want that data anywhere except on your premise and on your personal device on demand only and delivered only over a secure connection if it ever leaves your home at all?

Never mind that it's better, faster and cheaper to do it that way.

So who wants to make a billion dollars?  The ask for the entire package will never be lower than it is now; there is exactly one thing needed to deploy it commercially and that's a customer-facing web interface to automate the certificate keying the license system uses.  The code to actually use those certificates and enforce them is already in the package as is the server side which can hit a Postgres instance (in other words nearly-infinitely scaleable and easily extended as you may wish.)

Is there actually a desire to sell products and services to people any longer that are theirs, that deliver value to the customer, or has everything turned into a scheme to data-mine you, get you to pay two, three, five or ten times as much for less functionality and try to stick you with a recurring bill you can't opt out of without turning your investment into dust?  Adobe anyone?

If you want to be that guy or gal that disrupts this space, look to the right and email me.

The answer to the problem is ready to go -- right here, right now.