"I prefer 'extortion.' The X makes it sound cool."

At last, an excuse to work a Futurama quote into this blog. I'm stunned that it actually took me three years.

In a recent interview with George Stephanopoulos, (Hat tip to Psychopolitik) Barack Obama was asked to address one of the objections to Obama's proposal to force everyone to buy health insurance. (This is in large part to subsidize the costs of another common liberal goal- forcing insurance companies to insure more people at a loss, thereby turning insurance into disguised welfare. Most of the people uninsured by choice are fairly young, and the old are on average wealthier than the young, so this is a nice example of how much of the modern welfare/paternalist state actually redistributes income upwards.) Anyway, the following words were exchanged:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You were against the individual mandate...

OBAMA: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ...during the campaign. Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don’t. How is that not a tax?

OBAMA: Well, hold on a second, George. Here -- here's what's happening. You and I are both paying $900, on average -- our families -- in higher premiums because of uncompensated care. Now what I've said is that if you can't afford health insurance, you certainly shouldn't be punished for that. That's just piling on. If, on the other hand, we're giving tax credits, we've set up an exchange, you are now part of a big pool, we've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you've just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's...

STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it's still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That's not true, George. The -- for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I'm not covering all the costs.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it may be fair, it may be good public policy...

OBAMA: No, but -- but, George, you -- you can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase. Any...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Here’s the...

OBAMA: What -- what -- if I -- if I say that right now your premiums are going to be going up by 5 or 8 or 10 percent next year and you say well, that's not a tax increase; but, on the other hand, if I say that I don't want to have to pay for you not carrying coverage even after I give you tax credits that make it affordable, then...

STEPHANOPOULOS: I -- I don't think I'm making it up. Merriam Webster's Dictionary: Tax -- "a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."

OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what...

Notice how hard Obama works to dodge the question. His entire initial reply ignores it completely; even after Stephanopoulous presses the issue, he tries to focus on his alleged rationale for the mandate and not the aspect of it he was actually asked about. The fact that this sort of rhetoric routinely works is a demonstration of how many people simply switch off their minds when their attention turns to politics. Consider how obvious this sort of evasion would be if it were applied to private life:

JT (Friend of mine, full name withheld to protect the innocent): Hey, where'd you get this high-definition TV?

John: The neighbors bought it a few months ago, so when they were gone on vacation last week I broke into their house and carried it away.

JT: What? You just took their property without permission? Isn't that stealing?

John: Well, hold on a second, JT. For years, we've been missing out on the superior image quality modern storage media make possible because we've been watching a standard-definition television that's nearly a decade old. Now I can play Call of Duty 4 in the resolution it was made for!

And my version doesn't even cover the best part, when Obama kicks things up from mere non sequitur to outright surrealism by arguing that the definition of the word "tax" is not relevant to the question of whether or not the mandate is a tax. A child could see through this in normal life, but in politics it often slips by people.

This puts me in mind of an old movie trope. You've probably seen it at least once: The villain, negotiating with the hero, promises not to kill somebody- one of the hero's friends, for instance- in order to gain the hero's trust or win some concession. The hero believes him, because federal labor regulations apparently require anyone who engages in fictional heroics in a visual medium to drink a bucket of lead paint before they begin their struggle against evil. The villain then says that he only promised that he wouldn't kill the person in question, and orders one of his minions to do it for him while he mwahahas in amusement. In like fashion, Obama's proposed insurance mandate doesn't force people to give their money to the government, it merely forces people to give their money to private companies strongly connected to the government. Completely different!