#Obamacare: “Law Of The Land”, or Presidential Whimsy?

We’ve all experienced it: the shrieking alarm that for whatever reason won’t/can’t be silenced. When faced with a noise (or a smell, or any other negative stimulus) which continues unabated, eventually over time it can become so commonplace, so constant, that we no longer pay it any notice.

Practically speaking, it ceases to exist.

The psychological term for this is “desensitization“. Unfortunately, it perfectly describes the Obama era and the White House’s repeated, extra-Constitutional delays of the politically problematic aspects of Obamacare. They’ve now happened so many times that they are barely even news.

Just like the shrieking alarm that we no longer hear, we filter them out. They no longer exist.

The most recent example occurred Monday:

(via the Wall Street Journal) – ‘ObamaCare” is useful shorthand for the Affordable Care Act, not least because the law increasingly means whatever President Obama says it does on any given day. His latest lawless rewrite arrived on Monday as the White House decided to delay the law’s employer mandate for another year and in some cases maybe forever.

Under the new Treasury rule, firms with 50-to-99 full-time workers are free from the mandate until 2016. And firms with 100 or more workers now also only need cover 70% of full-time workers in 2015 and 95% in 2016 and after, not the 100% specified in the law.

The new rule also relaxes the mandate for certain occupations and industries that were at particular risk for disruption, like volunteer firefighters, teachers, adjunct faculty members and seasonal employees. Oh, and the Treasury also notes that, “As these limited transition rules take effect, we will consider whether it is necessary to further extend any of them beyond 2015.”

So, the law may be suspended indefinitely if the White House feels like it.

To hear the Democrats tell it, this is completely normal, there’s nothing to see here, yada, yada, yada… Which I’ll kindly request that you to keep in mind the first time a Republican president tries this someday down the road. Rest assured, the terms “lawless” or “imperial presidency” WILL be rolled out, accompanied by copious amounts of outrage.

Ron Fournier and the brilliant Dr. Krauthammer clashed over this last night, although Ron didn’t offer his normal level of pro-Obama exuberance:

And while I agree with Charles’ opinion in full, any self-respecting Banana Republic should bristle at being compared to this White House right about now.

Additionally, it is not insignificant that even folks like Fournier, long an enthusiastic Obamacare proponent, is finally showing signs of fatigue from having to continually defend Obama’s machinations and delays, and who can blame him? When even CNN is admitting that this move is purely and nakedly political, no one outside of the MSNBC greenroom is likely to try to spin it otherwise.

Wait a sec. Did I say “no one outside of MSNBC…“?

My bad:

And speaking of “Screams of Politics”, we now have THIS newest aspect of the law.

(via HotAir.com) – Treasury officials said Monday that businesses will be told to “certify” that they are not shedding full-time workers simply to avoid the mandate. Officials said employers will be told to sign a “self-attestation” on their tax forms affirming this, under penalty of perjury.

As Ed said later in the same post: “…They’ve certainly gotten the “bully” part of the bully pulpit in mind these days at the White House…”

Now, the question is simple: will we comply with this most ephemeral of laws, now essentially a product of daily Presidential whimsy? Or will we refuse, and demand that our elected leaders adhere to their sworn oaths to uphold our Constitution?

You go ahead and decide which laws you feel like enforcing, we’ll decide which laws we feel like obeying http://t.co/bvZnCiC5Je

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 10, 2014

Desensitization only occurs until a third-party “breaks the spell”, and points out what heretofore your brain had been ignoring. Faced with an utterly lawless Executive Branch, we cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized this way. We must make ourselves hear the alarms going off, and then must respond in kind.

Or, to quote one of my favorite lines from The Gipper many years ago now, when our country was faced with another lawless regime:

“…He counted on America to be passive. He counted wrong.”

-(Ronald Reagan, April 14, 1986)