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Matt,
From what I understand about the individual mandate, the primary way healthcare costs will be cut for all Americans is for everyone to join & pay into the risk pool. Without spreading the risks to and collecting premiums from everyone, the rest of the bill pretty much falls of its own weight. Don’t we do pretty much the same thing with social security, Medicare and unemployment insurance? Everybody pays in to finance the costs for those who need it. Not so revolutionary at all. FDR did it with social security and Johnson with Medicare. And for all of us those are givens. The healthcare mandate is based on the same principle although it bugs people more because, rather than having money deducted from their paychecks, they have to go out and proactively buy something. Oh boo-hoo – get over it. In the long run it will help everyone. Obama has owned the commitment to reduce healthcare costs, provide coverage for those excluded by the insurance companies and those who can’t afford it. Those who can’t afford it end up in ERs at taxpayer expense. Well, either that or they just die. That isn’t America as shown by past presidents who have implemented other “hand outs” such as Social Security and Medicare.
We’re living in an age where healthcare costs have spiraled out of control with your cost as one example. If everyone had to buy insurance then the costs per person would be less. Yours included.
As to the Commerce Clause, it’s been tortured for decades by SCOTUS to allow just about any federal regulation of anything. I won’t bore you with case law but the lengths to which it’s been tortured are almost laughable as federal programs & regulations have been approved since the early 20th century relying on the power of the federal government to regulate interstate commerce. My Constitutional Law professor in law school hated that and pointed out every major case that tortured that clause.
I didn’t know and am not so sure that the federal government has regulated the healthcare industry as the Obama healthcare bill seeks to do. I didn’t know that insurance companies have to get federal approval for rate increases or who they will accept for insurance, or that pharmas have to get approval for drug pricing. In fact, there are shortages these days of critical drugs and the federal government is powerless to do anything about it. Why are there shortages? Well, I really don’t know but I’ll bet it has something to do with profit for the pharmas. Health insurers don’t want people w/ preexisting conditions as that cuts into their profits. They also don’t want to continue insuring people who are sick as that too cuts into their profits. And how has allowing those mega companies to operate in a free market making exorbitant profits helped Americans? It hasn’t. In fact it’s done the opposite.
A slippery slope? That’s the “primrose path” argument – if the government can mandate the purchase of health insurance then what’s the next thing they can mandate – gym memberships, broccoli, colonoscopies? Yeah well – that’s just ridiculous. You can take any federal regulation and ramp it up to the absurd. Federal regulations are there for their stated purposes, not for what people could see as their next “logical” steps. Oh – you mean the IRS is entitled to 15% of my income? OMG, the next step will be 50% of my income. But it won’t because we have a congress that won’t allow that to happen. Checks & balances work both among the branches of government and within each branch itself. Just the stultifying partisanship in congress is enough to bring federal overreaching to a screeching halt.
As to the oral arguments on healthcare before SCOTUS, as pointed out by all legal experts, it is extremely rare that oral arguments influence the outcome of a case. I saw that clearly when working at the NYS Appellate Division in Albany. Cases are decided on the briefs and the justices’ own views of the law. (In fact, word has it that the Court has already decided the healthcare case and now it’s a matter of writing the opinions.) What is gained by oral arguments is a peek at how individual justices view the case through their questions. And even that is an iffy way to predict an outcome. The Solicitor General had a bad day at the office but that is almost certainly irrelevant.
SCOTUS has become (if it hasn’t been all along) an unelected political entity. We all know that and to deny it is denying political reality. The conservative are still fighting the Court on abortion, pleading for it to overturn Roe v. Wade. It had been the conservatives who’d fire up the base, citing SCOTUS as a motivator to get out and vote against Democrats. Now it’s the Democrats who are doing that in light of a conservative SCOTUS. See “Court’s Potential to Goad Voters Swings to Democrats”:
For anyone to accuse the president of being ignorant of the role of the Supreme Court is simply ludicrous. I dare say that even Joe Blow knows the role of the Court. There is nothing wrong with Obama offering his opinion on the case. I mean everyone else has – the citizenry as well as member of congress. Once again, the Court is a political body despite its alleged esteemed apolitical role as spelled out by the Constitution’s framers.
Another example of Obama scolding the Court was in his State of the Union address after the Court decided Citizens United v. FEC. That was probably a first in SOTU history and caused CJ Roberts to cringe. That decision granted corporations the right of free speech, thus allowing unlimited contributions to PACs. If you haven’t already, please read my take on that horrific decision:
Like you, I am 100% behind Israel and have been my entire life. In my book, Israel can do no wrong which is why I studiously avoid discussions with anyone who doesn’t feel as I do. That’s the one subject on which I’m totally biased and unreasonable. Have you read or heard anything about the consequences of a preemptive strike on Iran by Israel or the US? The consequences are mind-boggling. Yet, it is the firm policy of the US (and Israel of course) that Iran will not be permitted to be a nuclear-armed country under any circumstances no matter the consequences. It is the consequences of a preemptive attack, though, which has compelled the US to try any & every alternative to military action. Furthermore, there has to be (and will be) clear evidence of imminent nuclear capability before military action is employed. That is contrary to the Bush administration’s trumped up reasons for the ill-advised war on Iraq.
This country has had it with wars which, in the eyes of the people, are for causes that don’t directly affect us. Look at the outcry when the US was involved even tangentially in Libya. There’s also plummeting support for the Afghanistan war despite it being precipitated by 9/11. What soured the country on wars in foreign lands that don’t directly affect us was the Iraq war.
I agree with you about the world “allowing” massacres to go on under its nose and on the watch of the world’s leaders. Are you proposing that the US be the world’s policeman? Should the US fire up its allies and together put an end to all the world’s horrors? Hey – ideally I’d love to see that. Nothing would make me happier than seeing NATO use smart bombs to take out Assad in Syria, Iran’s nuclear facilities and, while we’re at it, those lunatic ayatollahs and that Holocaust-denying midget with the big mouth. That’s not the way things work anymore in our world. Even Pakistan got its panties in a wad when we killed bin Laden, and those fucks were hosting him in luxury.
You’re also right about despots always finding targets whether they’re religious minorities or ethnic minorities. And they will continue to do so no matter what anyone does. We have that in our own country – let’s get the Muslims; let’s get the Blacks (although Muslims seem to be the flavor of the times). Worldwide, of course, the Jews are the historically popular, tried & true scapegoats.
What has Obama not done that wasn’t due to bloc-nay-saying by the Republicans? No matter what he and his administration have proposed, it’s been beaten or watered down by the Republicans – not so much on the merits but because it’s an Obama plan. I will never forget Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s statement in 2009 that the primary goal of the Republican party is to deny Obama a 2nd term. And from there the country was presented by the Republican party with obstructionism and partisanship to the nth degree. I also think about the bill to aid 9/11 victims. While it was eventually passed, even that was opposed by the Republicans.
Obama has owned the economic recovery. What he hasn’t owned and shouldn’t own are the economic conditions when he took office. Yes, time to stop blaming Bush for the pace of the recovery, but never time to stop blaming Bush & the GOP for what got us into the mess in the first place. That’s historical fact, not political posturing. And yet despite that historical fact, the Republicans are still campaigning on the trickle down theory of economics. Less regulation, tax cuts for the rich and let Wall Street and the rich create jobs and boost the economy. Yeah well isn’t that what got us into this in the first place under Bush? Obama says economic/job growth comes from the middle class, not by trickling down from the über-wealthy.
Something else to keep in mind is that the economic conditions when Obama took office were the worst since the Great Depression. It took the US 12 years to recover from that. It was WW II that skyrocketed the economy out of a grueling 12 year recovery. These days, though, everyone wants everything now. No patience; no understanding in a historical context. I lost my job and it’s Obama’s fault. I’ve been looking for a job, can’t get one and, therefore, it’s Obama’s fault. How fast do average Americans expect recovery from the worst recession/borderline depression since 1929? Now. Or, better yet, yesterday. Do people understand that unemployment is the last part of the economy to recover? No. Is the economy on a slow but steady path to recovery? Yes. Is it fast enough for Americans who want everything now? No. So let’s blame Obama for not fixing the worst economic situation in 80 years within a few years. Oh and the Republicans haven’t been much help with their bloc-voting partisanship – caring little about the American people as they’re so very involved in increasingly right wing party dogma and their own reelections. One classic example is consistent national polling indicating that an overwhelming majority of Americans want taxes raised on the wealthy. The Republican don’t care that their own constituents want tax hikes on the über-wealthy as it’s those same über-wealthy who finance their campaigns and PACs. And I’m not naïve enough to believe that Democrats aren’t also motivated by self-interest as the parties dig in on party lines creating partisan gridlock in congress. I almost fell off my chair when I heard that, in a rare display of bipartisanship, congress passed Obama’s jobs bill. Bet Mitch McConnell had a serious case of indigestion after that vote.
In general, though, the trend of not taking responsibility for one’s actions, choosing to blame others is a troubling one. We see it with the younger generations. Looking at each generation’s “kids these days” complaints, I think of our parents’ generation saying the same about us. We turned out pretty well as did our contemporaries who are running today’s world. So I have faith based on history that “kids these days” will do just fine as they grow into positions to run the world after we’re gone.
Foreign policy tends to be less political, with members of both parties coming down on opposite sides of issues. That is where presidential leadership has been allowed to trump partisanship and come to the forefront. I think Obama did a masterful job with Libya. His boldness and daring by sending Navy SEALS into Pakistan to kill bin-Laden was also masterful. Being able to operate in foreign policy without congressional obstructionist partisanship has allowed Obama to shine. Also don’t forget Obama repairing relationships around the world that were damaged by the Bush administration. Obama’s actually more popular internationally than he is at home – the same domestic vs. foreign policy dichotomy.
Matt – gotta say that I always enjoy our back & forth political emails.
Doug
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