Thoughts On The Supremes and Obamacare

Despite CNN and Fox News getting it wrong so spectacularly, most of the media got it right: The US Supreme Court ruled today, in a typical 5-4 decision, that President Obama's signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, is fully constitutional. 

In a complicated decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court held that the individual mandate, which requires all Americans to purchase healthcare insurance or pay a penalty, did not violate the Constitution if viewed as a kind of tax.  Congress has broad taxation authority and this is where Roberts hung his robe.  He did not agree with the Obama administration's argument that the federal government had authority to regulate insterstate commerce in this way, but bought the "backup" argument.  As they say in sports parlance, "A Win is a Win."

What this means is that millions of Americans who were unable to purchase health insurance, due to pre-existing conditions or other exclusionary criteria, will now be able to purchase it.  And those who elect not to will be forced to pay this penalty (which is far, far less than the amount one would pay for an annual premium).  As the linchpin for the program, the mandate makes sure that those who opt out of insurance are still going to have to foot part of the bill for those who would have been priced out.  This is how the insurance industry works anyway; healthier individuals who have lower premiums and don't ordinarily use health services offset the cost of individuals who consume more healthcare and pay premiums that never equal what they get in benefits.  The payment of this penalty is handled through the IRS, so enforcement exists.  Those who refuse, for whatever reason, either to purchase insurance or pay the penalty run the risk of fines and/or arrest.

Also, the ACA had a provision for Medicaid expansion that, on its face, is a bigger deal than the mandate.  States would have faced a cut-off of all Medicaid funding if they opted out of the ACA's insurance exchange.  The justices, including Roberts, held that the federal government could not cut off all funding, but could withhold new funds if states declined to participate.  This will certainly happen, as Tea Party-supported governors and elected officials will cry foul at the draconian, socialistic, government-run death panels that decide who lives and who dies.

The interesting this here is that Roberts, for the second time this week, has sided with the court's liberals on huge legal issues.  First, on the Arizona immigration law, then today on ACA.  There are lots of commenters out there with opinions on this, and I invite you to do some searching to find them.  I won't link to them here, but there is a LOT out there to see. 

Andrew Sullivan did, however, post a reader's email that speculated on what might have happened behind the scenes during the court's deliberations.  Apparently, Justice Scalia's opinion might originally have been a majority opinion, as it cite's "Ginsburg's dissent."  The suggestion is that Roberts jumped ship from the majority for some reason and joined the liberals, effectively changing history.

What this means for Obama is anyone's guess.  Republicans will cry that the president is raising taxes on the middle class (true for those who do not purchase health insurance), but in truth, how many middle class Americans who do not have health insurance don't want it?  Perhaps some younger people, but those who are under age 26 can stay on their parents' policy under ACA.  Those who are older will more than likely need health insurance in the future if they decide to raise families.  So in the end, it's pretty much a paper tiger issue.  The GOP will try to repeal the law, and that's exactly what Boehner is vowing to do (so is Romney, but more on that in a minute).  But they need a filibuster-proof Senate to do that, which, regardless of the outcome in November, is unlikely.

As for Romney, this ruling eviscerates a major campaign issue for him.  Now he is going to have to run against his own healthcare law in Massachusetts, which he had earlier said was fine on the state level but was unconstitutional at the federal level.  Now that a conservative, Bush-appointed Chief Justice has written the majority opinion negating Romney's chief argument, he's put in yet another difficult bind, running against the Supreme Court as legislating from the bench.  But, as it turns out, Roberts has done very little legislating from the bench, and is on record during his confirmation hearings as being firmly against such behavior.  Perhaps this is why he sided with the liberals and took the lightest approach possible.  There is historical precedent for federally-derived individual health-care mandates.

Gonna be a great summer!

Winding Down

Hello, readers -- As you may have noticed, my posts here are getting fewer and farther between.  In truth, I've considered winding down the blog altogether.  With business picking up and the ever-present fathering duties, I've been using Facebook an awful lot to link to stories I find interesting.  Often I get to provoke a more immediate reponse than what I post here.  Sometimes I link to the blog on Facebook, but I haven't noticed a tremendous amount of traffic clicking over from there.

So, if you're not already a friend of mine on Facebook, go ahead and look me up there.

My guess is that I'll be done here in a few weeks unless sufficient demand exists for me to keep this an active site.

Cheers!

Breitbart RIP

Andrew Breitbart died earlier today at age 43, reportedly after collapsing while walking near his home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood.  The LAT has a profile here.  David Frum's piece is here.  Money quote:

[It's] difficult to honor the Roman injunction to speak no ill of the dead. It’s difficult for me to assess Breitbart’s impact upon American media and American politics as anything other than poisonous. When one of the leading media figures of the day achieves his success by his giddy disdain for truth and fairness—when one of our leading political figures offers to his admirers a politics inflamed by rage and devoid of ideas—how to withhold a profoundly negative judgment on his life and career?

I tried to avoid listening the shit the man spewed a lot of the time.  Whenever I did hear him speak, or read what he had read, I was disgusted.  Frum is right: "The attack was everything; the details nothing."

In Twitter-land, there were just as many tributes as insulting ones.  My fave so far was by fellow Blogger writer The Rude Pundit which linked to his quirky obit.  Best bit from that:

At first, he thought he was on a drug trip, it happened so fast; his soul popped out of him like a cork on a shaken champagne bottle. He saw his corporeal form on the ground and thought it was a wacky out of body experience, perhaps some flashback from the time he licked LSD off Michelle Malkin's ass cheeks, perhaps some residual peyote dream from that Western walkabout he did with Sean Hannity, when they got naked and rubbed each other with red dirt until they howled out that they wanted to kill the Indians again.

There were plenty of other comments that actually celebrated his death.  I can't join them, although it is somewhat comforting to know that he won't be heard from ever again in real time.  And if there's a hell, he's surely roasting marshmallows with the Prince of Darkness just because of his body of work.  But I didn't know the man personally.  At 43, he was a young one simply to have dropped dead like he did.  He was a family man, the adopted son of "moderately conservative" Jewish parents, who had a Latina sister, also adopted.  That he was as unctious, as confrontational, as uncaring about being truthful, around them as he was in his public persona is simply something I don't know.   It's tragic when someone dies suddenly in medias res.  So I'm ambivalent about speaking ill of him.

I think the worst part of this is that his death, coming so suddenly and before he could, as Frum put it, "have aged into greater self-control and a higher concept of public service," might spawn imitators who want to take his particular brand of political thuggery to new lows.  Usually, when someone loathesome dies, there are at least some people who say, OK, he/she is gone now.  We all know what an asshole he/she was, so can we at least agree that we no longer have to have his/her kind of bullshit around anymore?  But I'm afraid that reasonable voices such as that will be drowned out, and are, in fact, being drowned out now.

Great legacy, Andrew, huh?  Glad you didn't suffer for too long before departing this life.

Romney Totally Tone-Deaf in Michigan

Think about it: Mitt Romney, whose father George was governor of Michigan, is trailing Rick Santorum by double digits in the state ahead of their primary, which will be held this month.  He will go all-in with attack ads against Santorum in the state, the way he did against Gingrich in Florida, with an eye toward winning the state by being the biggest propagandist in the field.

And yet, Mitt still carries on publicly insulting the residents of the state by suggesting that the Obama administration was callously reckless and stupid to prop up GM and Chrysler, when those business should have been allowed to fail.  Never mind that the stimulus has revived the American auto business, that the government will likely make money on the deal in the long term, and that millions of people still have the jobs that the GOPers in Congress and in the presidential candidate field think is so sorely lacking from Obama's domestic agenda.

Tone-deaf.  And he really might lose his daddy's state.  And the nomination if Santorum's momentum keeps up.

I relish a showdown between Senator Frothy Mix and The President.

GOP is the Party of the South

Nate Silver and others show that GOP voter turnout in non-southern states so far has been down, but in South Carolina, as well as panhandle counties in Florida, see higher voter turnout.  Lends strong support to the idea that the GOP has largely become the party of the South.  While there are, of course, Republicans all over the country, even in the bluest of blue states, there are also Democrats in the reddest of red states.  The highest concentration of Republicans per square mile is definitely in the South.  And, Nixon notwithstanding, the South can no longer win an election for the GOP.

Game and set -- Obama. 

Full, Unconcealed Panic

Erick Erickson at RedState practically begs for a new candidate to take on Obama:

[T]his election is more volatile than any we have seen in a very long time because the party leaders, after years of learning to corral its base activists have now lost control and lost the respect of the base.

The deadly consequence is a cage match between the base and the establishment both of whom are backing two deeply, deeply flawed candidates with the odds heavily against them in a general election.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it is time for both sides to let the scales fall from their eyes and in a bit of sanity rethink this thing.  Time is short, but there is still time.  Surely there is someone out there that both the Romney supporters and Newt supporters can agree on who is not named either or Newt.

... So maybe we ought to to all find someone who we all kind of like instead of heading to Tampa in August all licking wounds and pretending to rally to the man the voters chose between the evils of two real lessers.

Italics mine.  The GOP is in full panic mode right now.  "Surely there is someone out there (!!!)"  Erickson is not stating fact; he's pleading to anyone who will listen to enroll another candidate to restore some respect to the party.  The question is, just whom might that candidate be?  Jeb Bush?  Uh, not another one of those.  Mitch Daniels?  His wife won't let him. John Thune?  Excuse me, who?    

Let's face it: in its zeal to move further to the right while under the delusion that the voting populace is mostly a collection of far-right wingnuts, the Republican Party has been decimated, reduced to a collection of (mostly) far-right wingnuts.  They have no one compelling to offer who isn't also radically out of step with the great majority of people in this nation.  That means any up-and-comer who was a darling of the Tea Party in 2010 (and remains so now and into the near future) will have to make a serious dash toward the center to appeal to independents in 2016.  After this election that Erickson rightly characterizes as volatile, and after otherwise intelligent people right of center realize that their President can and does govern with them in mind too, the urgency of finding a Great White (Christian) Hope to take back the country will begin to fade.  However, it could just as easily mean the creation of the "Wingnut" Party, as I've predicted for months.  Either way, I believe as many others do that the GOP needs to be soundly crushed this November for any progress to be made in improving partisan relations on every level.

Given Erickson's somewhat limited influence, it's pretty apparent that the GOP has ceded this election.  The best they can hope for is a candidate who will not hurt the party down-ticket.  As Erickson writes:

I am part of the base that will do everything I can to defeat Mitt Romney because I believe he will be a disastrous nominee who will cost us the House, the Senate, the White House, and consequently the Supreme Court.  There are Mitt supporters who feel the same about Newt, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul.

Quote of the Day

"You kind of get your panties in a wad and you may say things that you regret later. And I think that that’s what Chris Christie did." -- Sarah Palin, reacting to NJ Governor Chris Christie's comments about how Newt Gingrich has embarrased the Republican Party.  Pot, meet kettle.

Down to Four

Rick Perry will announce his withdrawal from the race today, before he faces more embarrassment in the South Carolina primary.  The last couple of weeks have seen Perry get a little more vocal, a little less bumbling, but the damage was completely done well ahead of his dismal performance in Iowa.  One of the most spectacular crash-and-burn failures I can remember.

CNN reports that Perry will endorse Gingrich, not Romney.  Not surprising: a loser supporting another loser.  But, combined, their poll numbers in South Carolina don't equal Romney's.

Once Gingrich quits, he'll probably endorse Santorum, but that will backfire as it becomes clearer who will be the nominee of the party -- Romney.

Obama must be pissing himself with abject fear at having to debate Romney in the general.

Juicy!

The friggin' New York Post reports on some pretty damning stuff regarding the companies purchased by Romney's Bain Capital:

*Bain in 1988 put $5 million down to buy Stage Stores, and in the mid-'90s took it public, collecting $100 million from stock offerings. Stage filed for bankruptcy in 2000.
* Bain in 1992 bought American Pad & Paper (AMPAD), investing $5 million, and collected $100 million from dividends. The business filed for bankruptcy in 2000.
* Bain in 1993 invested $60 million when buying GS Industries, and received $65 million from dividends. GS filed for bankruptcy in 2001.
* Bain in 1997 invested $46 million when buying Details, and made $93 million from stock offerings. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2003.

Four companies, $116 million invested, $358 million returned (average annual return roughly 132%), four subsequent bankruptcies.  Yeah, that's a job creator!  This needs to be in every ad about the economy/jobs created by all of Romney's opponents.  He'll eventually get nominated, but with this stuff floating out there for the next six months, he'll have a lot of 'splainin' to do!

Romney to The 99%: You're Just Jealous

In an interview with The Today Show's Matt Lauer after the New Hampshire primary, Mitt Romney encapsulates the entire concerns of the Occupy movement and those who agree with or support it as "the politics of envy."  What a callous statement that is!  He goes on to say that the discussion over income and wealth/power inequality in this country is one we ought to have, but in "quiet rooms" rather than in public settings.  Basically, he's admitting that the top 1% are cowards.  Is this why he still won't release his tax returns?

I'm really interested to see how this argument plays out with the public during the general election.