Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Legislature / Phillips Susan Lynn, I'm on to Your Dastardly Plot
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 10:30 AM
I'm reading Jeff Woods' story today about Susan "10th Amendment Fetishist" Lynn's
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newest plot to stick it to the federal government, and it got me thinking, "Shoot, when even Campfield thinks your crazy idea is crazy, it's pretty dang crazy."
Lynn wants to amend our state constitution to grant the state the power to nullify any federal laws the state disagrees with. In this case, Lynn wants to "protect" Tennesseans from health care reform.
Now, if you don't think about this too hard, it seems like a smart move for Lynn. She can tap into the tea partiers' anti-government sentiment and, while the whole mess is being hashed out in court, she can ride that anti-fed sentiment into a state senatorial seat.
Her plan has one tragic flaw. You still have to pay federal income tax.
So, at the end of the day, Lynn has to say to voters, "I want to make it so you have to pay for a government program that I want to make it illegal for you to participate in. Your tax dollars will go toward something I want to forbid you from having."
This is a pretty ballsy move, because if there's one thing Tennesseans hate more than paying taxes, it's paying taxes so that other people can get stuff we don't have. Shoot, we'll begrudge a poverty-stricken mom some chips if she uses food stamps to get them. "You don't see me eating chips when I don't have money," we say, even though we totally do eat chips when we don't have money. We just "borrow" that money from our brothers when they leave their gas money in the visor of the car. But if that poor mom "borrowed" gas money from the visor of our car, we'd totally call the cops. So it's a "damned if they do it their way, damned if they do it our way" situation.
Anyway, it doesn't matter about the poor chip-eating mom. Focus on Lynn.
Would she really prevent Tennesseans from enjoying the health care reforms we'll still have to pay for?
I don't think so. Here's what I think is going on--a dastardly plot. Lynn is not running for State Senate so much as running for Supervillain. And what does a Supervillian need? An evil-genius plot.
And I, being a student of said plots, have discerned what Lynn's plot is. First, she runs for State Senate on an anti-federal government platform. Then she amends the state constitution to claim that the state has the right to nullify any federal laws the state doesn't like. Then she nullifies health care reform.
But people get angry. They don't want to pay for reforms they don't get to enjoy.
So Lynn tells angry Tennesseans not to pay their federal income tax, so their tax dollars won't go toward health care reform. And the angry Tennesseans are all arrested, tried and convicted of tax evasion.
But where to house so many convicted felons? Lynn has her buddies in the U.S. Senate help bring a federal prison to her district and the people in her district are put to work by the federal government, first building and then administering the prison. Jobs galore for everyone not in prison, and--being federal jobs--complete with the very taxpayer-subsidized health care she campaigned against. And everyone in prison gets food, shelter, and, you guessed it, taxpayer-subsidized health care.
Genius. Who wouldn't reelect the politician that brought jobs and health care to everyone in her district? The only thing left to sort out now is what kind of Supervillain costume she's going to have.
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