Do you want to be interesting and constructive or another boring, blow-hard like Olbermann, Limbaugh, or Hannity?

But then “actually participate” in the debate, and help me clear it up. Do you agree w/ Clarke that, if the system were structured to act as an “incentive” rather than a “mandate,” it would be Constitutional? Here’s Clarke’s one-off idea along those lines: “You could have a ‘health-care head tax’ of $500 per person (or whatever), and you could rebate that amount to the individuals who purchase plans. This . . . would be indistinguishable from lots of junk that already litters the tax code.”

If it is the case that something like this would be Constitutional, then I don’t think I’m willing to stand corrected. If not, why not? That’s the thing I don’t get.

As it relates to the Consitution, it is the distinction that makes ALL the difference. This is the point that neither you nor Clarke seem to grasp.

The federal government has the power to create tax incentives but none to impose or enforce a mandate. It’s really that simple.

That said, now that you’re addressing his piece, I think you’re missing Clarke’s point. You take issue w/ what you perceive as his conflation of “mandate” (or “penalty”) and “incentive.” But the point of his post is that those two ideas are in fact two sides of the same coin. A clever person could come up with a way to frame the exact same policy as either one.

If you penalize someone for failing to do something by, say, taxing or fining them, that sounds like a “mandate.” But you could just as well reward everyone who is doing it but not those who aren’t, and voila, incentive.

That’s why Clark’s post contains such language as “Is it unconstitutional to face a tax penalty if you don’t do something (’purchase health care’) but just fine to enjoy a tax benefit if you do (’purchase a house’)?” He even provides a concrete example of how this might work in the health care world: “You could have a ‘health-care head tax’ of $500 per person (or whatever), and you could rebate that amount to the individuals who purchase plans. This would have the effect of punishing everyone who doesn’t purchase a health-care plan, but it would be indistinguishable from lots of junk that already litters the tax code.”

That was the whole point of his post, to discuss the fact that “incentive” vs. “mandate” is really a distinction without a difference. So to suggest that the “incentive issue” is a straw man because the op-ed writers were discussing “mandates,” not “incentives,” is off the mark. It actually seems like a straw man to me. He doesn’t so much argue against the “mandates are unconstitutional” point, as point out that if that’s really a problem you could structure it as an incentive and avoid the issue.

It strikes me as a lousy way to make the point that “straw men” are bad — taking a joke out of context and criticizing it while ignoring the rest of the piece.

Death panels is the obvious straw man on the right, but so is any invocation of Canada or the NHS. Perhaps the bill on the table may lead to a single payer system, but not anytime soon. We can’t even be certain that a public option will be in the final bill. What then, is the point of even mentioning the systems in Canada or Britain, which the right does very very often?

You are right in that there are sincere questions that deserve sincere answers, but you yourself are being disingenuous if you do not acknowledge the existence of much chaff getting in the way of those sincere answers.