a few comments from Karl's website:

Some examples of where this can (and might in the near future!) go include:


You make cars. You're told to sell a car to anyone who makes under $25,000 a year for $5,000. This is of course under your cost of production. If you refuse, every car you make is subject to a $5,000 tax. This is now Constitutional, as of this last week.

You would like to have three kids. The government decides that you may have only two. If you have get pregnant with a third and refuse to have an abortion you must pay $10,000 a year in additional tax forever. This is now Constitutional, as of last week.

You may have all the abortions you want, but each costs $10,000 in tax. This is Constitutional, as of last week.

You must eat Broccoli and submit receipts with your 1040 proving you bought 1lb of Broccoli per person in your household per week. If you do not, you must pay $5,000 in additional tax. This is Constitutional, as of last week.

If you are more than 10lbs overweight you must pay $2,000 of additional tax for every 10lbs overweight you are, with no cap. This is Constitutional, as of last week.

You probably think I'm kidding on this. I'm not. This is what the Roberts Court held. There is literally nothing that Congress cannot mandate that you do, or not do, under penalty of paying a tax. All that was unconstitutional before the ruling now is explicitly constitutional if the only "compulsion" to do (or not do) a given thing is that you will be taxed if you refuse. The court promised to review "reasonableness" of any such taxes in the future, but note that at the same time the court ignored two other problems with the Health Care law, making a lie of their claim of "future reasonableness" tests right up front:

Direct taxes are unconstitutional without being apportioned. This is clearly a direct tax and it is not apportioned. It is therefore unconstitutional, but the USSC simply ignored this. (The 16th Amendment was required to make income taxes constitutional for this reason.)

The Anti-Injunction Act prohibits suing the government over a tax until you have actually paid it. This means that if the PPACA "penalty" is a tax then the entire lawsuit that went to the USSC is moot as it's not yet "ripe" (since nobody has yet paid the tax.) If they were going to find that this was a tax they were thus bound to dismiss the entire complaint as unripe. They ignored that too.

In short the USSC has become no more legitimate than the North Korean government and is unworthy of your respect.