I am almost always astounded by the fact that consequences are seldom tied in people's perception of events to the causes. I have some understanding as to why this happens, but the phenomenon is still a surprise to me, each and every time I see it in action. I can see by the reaction I am imagining on your face that you might need a few examples of what it is that I mean with this statement.

The good people of California have passed some of the most idiotic laws known to exist anywhere concerning the creation of new energy producing facilities in their state. They have passed air emission standards laws that requires the air in their state to possess air quality not seen in Yellowstone National Park, a place with no industry, very few cars, even fewer farting cows, and probably the lowest concentration of human activity seen anywhere in our nation. When they made it clear that they wanted nothing to do with electricity, cars, industry, air conditioning, who did they blame when their state was forced to do without those things? Why they blamed the energy producers, auto manufacturers, and industrial leaders, of course. For those of you who live in Arizona, were it my coal burning power plant, I would just disconnect those transmission lines that headed off in a westerly direction and tell the residents who inhabit the land of the fruit and nut to stand under one of their windmills and blow really really hard.

We have made it a point in this country to oppose new sources of domestic oil production based on oft times discredited environmental statements. Truth in matters of the EPA's war against energy production is considered a flexible and expendable commodity at best. I have sat at the dinner table with some of my liberal friends and listened to many of them, on multiple occasions declare that they would be perfectly willing to pay double the price for gasoline if it meant that they could tell themselves that they were cleaning up the environment, even if they really were not doing so. So, now that the gas prices have doubled at the pumps, just like Barack Obama and his DOE Chief, Steven Chu, promised they would, guess who is grumbling loudest about how this is all the fault of the big oil companies.

The reason for the disconnect from reality of course is that nobody wants, even on a subconscious level, to accept responsibility for creating the problem. Elections have consequences. Policy implementation has consequences. Politicians, in far to many cases, are able to get themselves elected by telling people that they can make the impossible, possible after all. Just like any poor soul who has ever purchased a fake painting, where the more one has paid for its purchase, the less inclined on admitting to oneself that it is in fact a forgery that person will be. Part of the art of the political swindle is how to keep spinning perception so that blame goes somewhere else, anywhere but where it belongs. Not bad work if you can get it.

What is even more exasperating to many of us is this. When these attempts to socially engineer the universe of commodities and rewrite the cold emotionless laws of economics end in the disaster that happens each and every time, why on Earth does anybody listen to the very same clowns who created the problem when they suddenly appear and start bleating about how they have the cure? All that the snake oil salesmen of our day are doing is offering solutions that will at best, somewhat mitigate the jawdroppingly disastrous results that they created in the first place. From their perspective, that's just terrific. They get to lead lives far away from the negative impact that will be inflicted upon the rest of us. Even if perception does eventually catch up to them, and they are removed from elected office, they just get themselves appointed back to the table by their cronies.

While experiencing the horror of Thursday's Obamacare decision, as decided by 5 of our Supreme Court Justices, (not just John Roberts.) I realized that the Constitution's purpose of acting as a protector of we the people against a tryanical federal behemoth grown in scope and power beyond any possible conception that any of our founders could possibly have ever had, has been forever rendered null and void, (At least, this will be the case until some future court revisits this horrible mistake.) One thought struck me that I have not seen written or discussed anywhere else. Those five fine individuals, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayer, Kagan, and Roberts are in fact exempt from the consequences that they have deemed acceptable to be inflicted upon the rest of us. Again, the job of Supreme Court Justice is not bad work if you can get it.

Perhaps we should add a Constitutional Amendment which makes it illegal for any class of American, most especially federal bureaucrats and elected officials to be exempted from any law, like Social Security or Obamacare, that has been deemed good enough for you and me. If we fail to get this sucker repealed, 20 years from now, I want John Roberts to be visiting the same DMV style of office that I'll need to visit for his hip replacement surgery, and have to fill out the very same forms pleading for his life to some bureaucrat who really could not care less if John Roberts lives or dies. I bet if he faced that prospect himself, he would have stopped this sucker dead in its tracks, just like the other four Justices would have.

Cross Posted at Musings of a Mad Conservative.