President Obama in an unbelievable display of arrogance and hyperbole has stated in the New York Times, Magazine, that the new Republican Congress will now be forced to learn to work with him. Obama explains that he will have the Republicans in a position where they will have no choice but to work with him (as if he will train them like dogs):
“either because they didn’t do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn’t work for them, or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.”
The president’s approach to defeat and rejection is at least novel and bold, but a bit lacking in realism; however, reality is a stern task master and the president is about to learn that he must work with the American people instead of relying on his own radical ideology. President Obama obviously has plans of intimidation for congress while pleading to the American people to accept his Socialism and One-Society, Open Borders nonsense, a plan that might have worked with RINOs, but RINOs are fast becoming an endangered species, because of a new Conservative commitment among the American people. Many of whom are planning to make the RHINOs like Graham, extinct in the near future.
The president is now conceding that he might possibly be mortal and that the public expected way too much from him. He also confirmed once again that he should never speak, not even in an interview, without a script and a teleprompter.
“The mythology has emerged somehow that we ran this flawless campaign, I never made a mistake, that we were master communicators, everything worked in lockstep,” Obama is quoted saying. “That’s not how I look at stuff, because I remember what the campaign was like. And it was just as messy and just as difficult. And there were all sorts of moments when our supporters lost hope, and it looked like we weren’t going to win. And we’re going through that same period here.”
A quaint play on words, but little more than desperation from a man facing catastrophic losses, by associating his successful 2008 campaign with the impending disaster looming for 2010. He is flustered by being portrayed as a common tax and spend Democrat: surely the people should realize that he has taken the concept beyond limits never thought possible.
Among the regrets the president said he felt during the 111th Congress is letting Republicans make him out to be “the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat.”
Obama said he also realized too late that “there is no such thing as shovel-ready projects,” a familiar refrain made by the president when he was trying to sell the stimulus package.
“There are almost 100 shovel-ready transportation projects already approved,” he said in August 2009. As recently as July of this year, he said, “Shovels will soon be moving earth and trucks will soon be pouring concrete.”
“Right now what I’m hearing from Democrats is the president is only useful for fundraising,” he said.
From his rants a few days ago and the exasperation of Soros with his billions, it is doubtful if the president can even be counted on for raising campaign funds.
The president also feels that he failed to communicate well, he admits his administration took “perverse pride” in being focused on policy at the expense of public relations. He now realizes “you can’t be neglecting of marketing and PR and public opinion”. The president should have included ‘neglecting of telepromptering’ and a script; otherwise his genius or lack of genius becomes all too obvious.
Former White House Secretary under Bush, Ari Fleischer, maintains the message is not the problem.
“I think he’s more out of touch than anybody ever thought if he believes the problems are from marketing and not substance. Cap and trade its not a communication problem it’s a substance problem.”
It is becoming more and more obvious to even the least astute of Americans that a Community Organizer with an Affirmative Action pedigree is hardly qualified to run the country despite his charisma and skin tones; unfortunately, he chose the wrong career path, he could have been an overwhelming success as a judge on American Idol. Audacity and weasel like rationalizations of 20 months in office will hardly be a consoling factor to those Americans that have lost their homes and fortunes to the asinine Socialist Dreams of the Great Pretender in the White House; who wasted valuable time pursing his personal rainbows, when that time should have been spent rebuilding our economy. Now he has the audacity to assume he will have power over the new Republican congress; hopefully, that will be the high water mark of his audacious behavior before he is assigned his well earned spot as an embarrassing foot note of history.
More here.
A professional horseman for over 50 years, Skook continues to work with horses. Skook has finished an historical novel, Fifty Thousand Years, that traces a mitochondrial line of DNA from 50,000 years ago to the present. The story follows a line of courageous women, from the Ice Ages to the present, as they meet the challenges of survival with grit and creativity. These are not women who whimper of being victims, they meet the challenges of survival as women who use their abilities without excuses or remorse, these women are winners, they are our ancestors.
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Welcome back, Mata! You rock, my dear. I seriously doubt that B-Rob will have the cajones to reply to you.
P.S. Remind me to never piss you off…. 😉
@ilovebees #46 – Thanks! You ain’t so bad yourself. 8)
Just about ready to duck into Canada for a few long haired horses, will be communicating intermittently from borrowed computers for awhile. Antics, Mata, Aye, OT, JR, Aqua, and a few others, keep up the good work: you guys make me laugh when I read all the comments for the last 48 hours all together. Liberalism could become an endangered species with you guys on the prowl! 😆
SKOOKUM, hi, I see you don’t want to miss on that BEAUTIFUL INDIAN SUMMER,
NOW IN full glory of COLORS. good day,
@ Tammy — You don’t rescue failure? That is the entire purpose of bankruptcy — to try to rescue the business and maintain some future value and pay off creditors (not shareholders, not bondholders — CREDITORS) as best as possible. The ranting against the unions being treated “better than the bondholders” is simply nonsensical — the union represented a class of creditors, i.e., retirees owed benefits in the future. They were, in that sense, just like the companies’ suppliers — they were owed money and cut a deal to get paid while keeping the business functioning.
@ James — In the spring of 2009, I remember listening to Limbaugh blaming Obama because the market tanked to about 7700 or so. About that time, Obama said the market was oversold so it would be a good time to buy. I remember Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt ridiculing that. Hewitt said “Would you take investment advice from this guy?!” In retrospect, Hewitt should have. The Dow is near 11,000 because there are great corporate earnings and confidence in the market. To say that that is “irrelevant” to our economy is the height of lunacy. But then you wrote this:
This is utter nonsense. The idea that a productive plant “would have survived” is speculative and wrong. First, the credit markets were so tight, there is a very real question whether anyone could have gotten financing to buy an automobile plant. Second, who exactly was wandering the globe looking to buy auto plants in 2009? Who? Third, the president’s job is to think about the entire economy, not mere pieces. That is why the BUSH ADMINISTRATION first proposed the bailout. Remember, the auto companies were appearing before Congress before Obama even took office. He was handed a mess and followed Bush’ lead on how to fix it.
Fourth, you call it “a complete corruption of the system” that GM and Chrysler got bailed out. This is claptrap. As with any other bankruptcy, the deal had a creditors committees weigh in, the union was involved, and the shareholders got wiped out. A judge signed off on it and the creditors were apparently satisfied enough with the deal, hence the few objections and the speed in which it went through. Maybe you and Tammy think we would have been better off in the long run with a few million extra unemployed individuals, a shrunken or disappeared domestic auto industry, etc. Well if your guy had won the election, maybe we would have had that. (Aside — I doubt it because I can’t see President McCain saying “Sure, add a few million more unemployed people to the line. It’s good for America.”) But Obama won and he took the deal in a different direction and the companies survived and did not add a few million more auto workers, supplier employees, dealership employees, etc. to the unemployment lines, the welfare roles, or the Medicaid/Medicare lists.
In fact, I have yet to have any of you cons ever address that side of the ledger — the added costs to the states, and the decrease in tax revenues, if your had had your way. You only focus on the fact that the bondholders got wiped out, but you refuse to address the costs to the states and the system as a whole if those huge employers went down. Please explain why we would have been better off if your plan had been followed.
Finally, you mention “taxes should be reduced” on small business. I’m all for it. But unless you reduce spending DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR (none of this Bushie era “dynamic scoring” b.s. that got us the Bush deficits) then you will increase the deficit with those tax cuts. I cannot grasp why cons refuse to admit this simople fact, but y’all don’t. Which gets to the pet peeve I mentioned earlier — GOPers refusing to proposed ANY spending cuts when they press for tax cuts! If you are actually about smaller government, then explain how to actually shrink it, cons.
@ B-Rob, Bankruptcy Courts were created as the court of last resort for failed Businesses. Not bailouts from the US Treasury. Rewarding failure allows the US Treasury to become an ATM for poor managers and that is NOT a Constitutional Mandate. Even an educated Fool like you should know that. Cite the sections of the Constitution that should put Taxpayers on the hook for failed businesses. Be specific on that.
No Business is too big to fail. Period. Charity is Voluntary, NOT Mandatory. Rewarding incompetency is not cited anywhere in the Constitution. Period.
Mata, you are all over the map. Chamber of Commerce? W.t.f.? I will try to hit the high points:
1) by Dems “outpolling” GOPers, I am n ot referring to opinion polls, but to who goes to the polls. The Dem got more votes than the GOPer in 1992, 96, 2000, and 2008; the GOPer won a narrow win in 2004. In fact, all the GOPer “victory lap” talk now is so hilarious to me because it says nothing about who will actually go to the polls and vote. In fact, I predict it here: the Dems will keep the Senate by a few seats and keep the House, too. Although, frankly, I sorta hope the GOPers win the House. It would make them actually manage something instead of permitting them to just b*tch and moan all the time about how they are mistreated by a mean and intimidating 70 year old grandmother, Nancy Pelosi.
2) I think your chart is interesting. Truman, Johnson, Kennedy, Carter and Clinton all had lower debt as a percentage of GDP. Then look at how it exploded under George W. Bush! It went from about 50% up to 80%! What the hell were you cons thinking?! Imagine how much better off we would be had you just not f0ed things up and kept the percentages that Clinton left you! But, no . . . . You had to do the same thing that Reagan and Bush I did — borrow and spend. Totally irresponsible!
3) You call me “racial”? I said NOTHING about race! You brought it up. But even better, you bring it up in the context that “Obama only won because of minorities.” What? Their votes ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO COUNT? Why did you single out minority voters when I was talking about college educated voters? Who is really “racial” here? You, Mata . . . . And here is a hint, Mata — minorities are going to be an even larger percentage of the electorate in 2012. If you cons don’t figure out how to appeal to those growing groups, you are doomed to another four years of Obama. Better get to it. (Here’s a hint: keep Tom Tancredo, Pat Buchanan, and any other illegal bashing types away from the damn microphone. You may think you are railing against just illegal Latinos or just Muslims; but the Blacks, native born Latinos, East Asians, Arabs, Chinese, etc. all think “Damn, what do they say about me when I leave the rooom?” Cons still haven’t grasped this simple fact . . . .)
4) I did not say that there are no college educated GOPers; hell even Palin, as dumb as she is, sorta counts as “college educated.” I just asked the question: why has the party of William F. Buckley lost the educated voter? Read the data, Mata! (LOL!) College educated voters were about even GOP/Dem split as recently as 2000. Dems now dominate among the better educated voters. I am pointing out the facts and asking you to explain why this is. You tell me, Mata!
5) Obama teaching law — notice I did not get into the b.s. “he was a lecturer not a professor” argument with you? I just said he taught law at a Top Five law school. But I find it interesting that you could not even let that obvious fact go! This is the mark of lunacy. Look, everyone in the law school called him “Professor Obama”; they called Judge Posner (another Senior Lecturer) “Judge Posner.” There is no rational dispute that he was a member of the faculty, is there? And there is no dispute that he taught a foundation Constitutional law class, is there? OK. Then why did you waste keystrokes even addressing it? Tilting at windmills . . . .
But you then, again, go after “the minorities.” What is your obsession with minorites about?
By the way — I stopped posting a while back because y’all kicked me off. Couldn’t stand the heat, I guess.
@ anticsrocks —
Obama was “not vetted” — This is, in a word, insane. If you google the name Rezko, this is the first article that pops up:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/watchdogs/757340,CST-NWS-watchdog24.article
Is there anything more mainstream media than the Chicago Sun Times? No. Your claim that “only bloggers” brought up all the conspiracy theories is simply wrong.
But let me ask another question of you: all the con bloggers put all the “controversies” out there — Rezko, whether he was gay, a Communist, birthed in Kenya, narcissistic, whatever. And he STILL won in a walk. This tells me two things: even given what you said, the voters preferred a possibly gay Kenyan Communist narcissist to the GOPer offering, or your side lacked any credibility so voters ignored you. I think it is a bit of both, personally.
But then you go all goofy on me again, with:
A serious discussion by WHOM? OK, I’ll do this slowly —
Obama signed his book contract in like 1992, then it was released a few years later. Ayers’ book was released in 2001. Normal people would conclude that it is more likely that the second book was written by the first proven author, not the reverse. Because, as of 1996, Obama had proved he had the ability to construct a memoir; Ayers had not. How you flip logic on its head is beyond me.
In fact, let me ask you — what is the EVIDENCE that anyone other than Obama wrote the book, which languished in the market until 2004? Not you baseless speculation, but actual evidence. Hell, is there even a plausible argument? No. It’s just silliness on your part.
By the way — His money came from two book deals. This is a matter of well documented public record. He made a few million in royalties one year, which was on his income tax returns released a few years ago. THAT’S where he got the money for the Rezko house. In fact, that was documented in some of the Chicago Tribune articles about it.
Mata — On health care, check this out:
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/75292
I saw an article that basically looked at the Obamacare reform and divided it into eights parts. I am doing this from memory because I can’t find it:
mandate
insurance pools
prohibition on lifetime caps
prohibition on pre-existing conditions
kids up to 26 on insurance policies
closing the donut hole in Medicare D
decreasing Medicare expenditures
There is another element that I have forgotten. Can’t recall if this is the exact list, but I think it is. Anyway, the pollsters reveiled that by a 2-1 ratio, the people polled like the insurance pools, the prohibition on lifetime caps, the prohibition on pre-existing conditions, closing the donut hole, and the kids up to 26 on insurance policies, and the one other thing. By a 2-1 ratio they did not like the mandate and decreasing Medicare.
This is why the GOPers went from “repeal Obamacare” to “No, no, no, we will ‘repeal and replace’ Obamacare.” There is too much good stuff in the bill for them to just throw it all out.
You may not like the mandate, but that is necessary if you are going to force insurers to drop lifetime caps and eliminate the pre-existing conditions exclusion. Likewise, hospitals LOVE the mandate because it will drastically reduce the problem of uncompensated medical care, which is costing hospitals billions each year. You may not like the reductions in Medicare, but we can’t continue to spend the way we are on Medicare and Medicaid. It takes a liberal congress to cut entitlements; don’t go fcuking this up by trying to ADD BACK MORE MEDICARE SPENDING!
In fact, I ask you: given the projected Medicare deficits, how can anyone in their right mind propose even more spending?
The GOPers had six years of solid GOP control of the House, Senate and White House to address the health care problems. They only made it worst by adopting Medicare D (over Dem objections, mind you) and not paying for it and, further, not including any cost controls. You had your chance to adopt a conservative approach, but you did nothing — no tort reform (a bogus issue since state law controls that), no elimination of the prohibition on interstate insurance policies — nothing. Y’all did nothing and the problems got worse and worse. So please excuse those of us who are interested in the issue if we do not buy the latter day GOPer claim that “No, we realize there is a problem and we will fix it.” Because having seen you do nothing before (except weaken the system by expanding government entitlements), it is only reasonable to assume you will do nothing good in the future.
@ OldTrooper — You might want to call the Bush administration and tell them that their proposal to bailout GM and Chrysler was unconstitional. They came up with the idea.
The Constitution was intended to “promote the general welfare.” If an adminsitration determines that the general welfare is promoted by investing money into an industry as important and as large as the automobile industry, I bet it would past muster. In fact, are you aware of any lawsuits claiming that the bailiout was unconstitutional? I am not.
@ B-Rob, You cannot cite a Law that supports throwing Tax Payer funds down a rat hole that rewards failure but cite the over abused and too frequently misinterpreted General Welfare Clause or are willing to use the Commerce Clause to justify the rape, pillage and plunder of the US Treasury.
Bailouts done under any Administration are not Constitutionally mandated or legal. So it always ends up on Bush? I resent illegal activity that goes beyond the Constitutional limits on Federal power from either the Executive, Legislative Branches. I would have let GM or Chrysler/Daimler/Benz file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, which is legal under Federal Law. Bailouts from the US Treasury are not regardless of what stretch of the imagine you cling to. Investment in Private Industry by the Federal Government is quite simply beyond the scope of Elected or Appointed Officials. Cite the Law that allows this practice if you can find one but I know that it quite simply does not exist.
Mis-appropriation of Taxpayer Funds is illegal and is a Felony and even you know that.
No Business is too big to Fail and my Tax Money is not paid to reward incompetence or failure. That tried a$$ed Clause crap pops up as I knew it would. It justifies the rampant abuses of the Law?
Cite a the specific Law. “Clauses”, much abused, are not Legal and you know that.
No surprise you’d miss the parallel between you, demanding responses to unsubstantiated and made up BS, and Axelrod/Obama falsely accusing the US CHamber of Commerce of injecting foreign cash into the campaign. That dubious activity is, of course, an Obama specialty. But I believe reading your horse manure comes down to something like the below exchange:
Typical lib/prog tactics… toss the mud, and see what sticks.
Tell ya what, Billy Bob, I won’t be disappointed if you decide to hang a neon hand in the window and take up tarot card reading. The nation could always do well without one more lawyer of substandard quality. But that’s all you’re basing your “out polling” commentary… meaning anticipated turnout…on. And in case you haven’t scanned the Constitution lately, the US POTUS is not elected by popular vote, but Electoral College and individual state elections. If you prefer the popular vote, I’m sure many of us would be happy to chip in for that one way plane flight I mentioned.
Missing the Roosevelt/Truman years out of convenience, Billy Bob? Skipping the Nixon/Ford years as well? Then, of course, I’m sure you’d love to ignore the deep recession Carter dumped the nation in to. So let’s try again. The Reagan years did bring increased debt, but also increased GDP potential. Thru the Bush 41, Clinton and early Bush 44 years, most of the numbers… tho not to my liking… were sustainable, if not desirable. But you’ll notice that the “explosion” occurs in just three years, starting 2007 thru now… under Pelosi/Reid/Obama. It’s already up to Truman levels in that short span, and is still running amok.
Billy Bob.. this ain’t your first appearance here. Archives are full of your commentary. The “racial” remark was contained within a sentence that described you – in general – as arrogant, pompous and racial. This is your usual MO, and you haven’t changed a whit. You have been offensive as a human every time you show up here. There are no instances I can think of where you have tried to express comments without verbal assault. You warrant like kind responses… nothing more.
And that is proven simply by your leap that my factual statement that minorities easily took Obama over the top meant that their votes shouldn’t count. But of course they should. I, unlike you, am very much the Constitutional conservative. But your mind always thinks race is at the bottom of everything.
Now, INRE the “da won” won because of minorities.
Total voting turnout in 2008 was 131,463,122 (or 131.463 million). In reality, 61,963,694 voters – or 47.2% – did NOT vote for Obama. But since all you progs like to think in popular vote… dang that inconvenient Electoral College, eh? – we’ll talk just about the GOP vs Dem.
Obama came in with 9.549 mil more votes than McCain. Got your shoes off, Billy Bob? The Black/Hispanic constituents numbered 25.6 million for the 2008 election.
*95% of the black voters went for Obama, or 15.1 million.
*67% of the Hispanics voted Obama, or 6.693 million.
Total minorities votes cast for Obama? (still got your shoes off, Billy Bob?) 21.793 mil
Last I looked, 21.793 million was more than the 9.549 million votes spread between Obama and McCain.
Let’s take your and Axelrod’s tactical approach, shall we? Is there evidence that minorities did NOT take Obama to a win? Even more importantly, can you prove that the 95% of the black population did not cast their vote based on race?
What data? Source please… Or is this another of your omnipotent observations we should take on faith? Hold your breath, guy.
And here’s where your education judgmental snobbery continues… that you assume a college education makes you superior to another who doesn’t hold a degree when it comes to election issues. In fact, you may want to check out Zogby’s poll of Obama voters, where only 54% of the responders could answer just half or more of 12 questions correctly.
Guess Obama/Biden genuine issues and vetting didn’t capture their interest like Palin’s pregnant daughter, or the manufactured “clothes scandal”, eh?
Of course you will diss this poll…. instigated by Ziegler after he was so appalled at the unmitigated stupidity of some of the voters he met at the polls. Guess he wanted to find out if that was a common quality, or if he just got unlucky with a few people.
But fear not… I will concede that far too many Americans have been underinformed on political issues in the past – both parties. But the advent of the new info age media, combined with the effect of dastardly policies is changing all that. You, however, remain rooted in past performance as future projections.
I’ll be smiling after midterms when all your theories come crashing around your ears … and midterms is a hump I need to get over before I even cast a glance at 2012. Right now, the balance of power needs to be restored.
Downright scary that an attorney has such deplorable reading comprehension, Billy Bob. I didn’t argue whether Obama’s status was as a teacher, instructor or lecturer. I don’t care if anyone calls him professor.
My sole observation was the fact that they’d have anyone “teaching, instructing, lecturing” law students who had one trial as lead attorney under his belt, and a glorified paralegal as the balance of his law career.
I’ll tell you what… how about I take a few courses on ship building, watch one small 34′ Chris Craft yacht get built, then go teach cargo ship building at a local university?
No wonder what our education churns out these days are substandard….
And of course, you again prove your judgmental racist approach when you link his lack of experience as an attack by me on minorities. Must be chaos, living in your skin, seeing hate and oppression in every word, eh?
Ah… another Axelrod/Alinsky “toss the mud” moment?
Here ya go… Jack Cashill’s research – hardly “baseless”, and certainly not “smoking gun. Load your pipe and read.
Who Wrote “Dreams” and Why It Matters
Breakthrough on the Authorship of Obama’s “Dreams”.
On your healthcare commentary above:
O’healthcare…. I figure the Dems got it 95% wrong. Of the 5%, I don’t mind a central portal – exchange, if you will – as a proposal. But I don’t want it government run. I also don’t mind streamlining medical history records, providing there is ample privacy protection.
And I’m truly fatigued at the “pre’existing” mantra you progs bandy about. Pre’existing conditions can only be denied on individual insurance applications. It’s federal law they cannot deny treatment for more than 12 months on any group plan. The simple answer is to have everyone able to be a part of a “group” plan… duh wuh. And if there needs to be a government safety net as a bridge, it only has to cover it for 12 months.
The mandate is advancing in the court system as we speak. It’s a mutilation of the Commerce Clause (just like you mutilated General Welfare above…), as an unfunded mandate on the states and a violation of States’ Rights as well… IMHO. SCOTUS will ultimately weigh in on this, and as we all know… that will take time.
I’m not interested in cutting Medicare, nor adding to the costs. What I’m interested in doing is phasing out both Medicare and Social Security, transitioning so that it doesn’t screw those of us just a few years away from finally being able to get back some of the money absconded from us for 4 or 5 decades. For the young, other contingencies should be made. It’s those halfway in between that will be hit the hardest… but guess what. Gotta be done. There isn’t a Euro nation with these entitlement programs (health, pensions, whatever) that isn’t on the way to (or already is) insolvent.
All that said, I have equal distrust of both GOP and tea partiers. I’m forced to give them a shot since it’s obvious that Obama/Pelosi/Reid do not intend to alter course, despite the nation’s opposition to their agenda. But I don’t have confidence that the GOP or tea party conservatives have the clue either.
So my intentions would be to see them get into power, and ride them hard on first doing a blood bath in sundry federal agencies and waste… from NEA and Ag to Homeland security. The grants also need to be looked at, as well as foreign aid that does nothing to contribute to our national security. And the UN? You can dump that place down the disposal, as far as I’m concerned. That will also save a tidy sum.
After we see where we are in debt and deficits, then it’s construct the way out of Medicare and Social Security… the bulk of the nation’s expenditures. For the existing, it may be status quo. For those near, it may be give us our cash back, and let us best decide how to obtain our healthcare and pensions (sans unConstitutional mandates). For the young, it may be tax credits for medical and pension savings accounts. Perks if you do, but not fined if you don’t.
I only know one thing, Billy Bob…. you and your supermajority comrades have taken us down the financial tubes so quickly, you’ve lost credibility at a rate I couldn’t even have envisioned.
And oh, BTW, the “solid GOP control” you imagine since 1996 has been slim margins at best. Hardly the bastion of power you like to portray it as.
@ Old Trooper —
You have your opinions about what the Constitution permits and does not permit. No court, however, has ever agreed with your interpretation. Bailouts and “too big to fail” started with Chrysler and the savings and loans in the early 80s under Reagan. Now you might think that the GM bailout is just the latest in a 30 years string of unconstitutional governmental investment in private business; its just that no court has ever agreed with you and your pinched reading of the Constitution. Not my problem, though . . . I am just glad we did not have a few million more people added to the unemployment lines. You disagree and think it was a bad move. Whatever. If you cons ever get another GOper president, maybe given the same situation he or she will do what the Bush administration did with Lehman Brothers and just let it die . . . hmm . . . interesting that I mentioned that, since the Bushies, in retrospect, all regret not doing anything about Lehman Brothers.
See there is conservative theory, then there is reality. Conservative theory might say 15% unemployment is OK and the minimum wage is a bad thing, but reality says that no thinking person would risk our economy by following such a cockamammie theory.
B-Rob: your shooting your mouth at the best we have here at FA:
AND you and your
side look so desperate doing it; you affirm what you want,It does not make you CREDIBLE
by anyone,naming, the top smarts and the less smart like me,can see you coming with the last effort to demonize people here that are too courteous and tolerant for your side,
you will say anything to make our own look ignorant at this time of your failure to get the AMERICANS behind your side, they have decided for no more of that hell no.
I’m sure not speaking for OT, but using TARP funds for GM and Chrylers is outside the scope of the TARP bill, meant only for financial institutions. It wasn’t a blank check for “the general welfare”… whatever the heck that means. God forbid we ever allow any branch to decide they have that authority based on such a vague phrase.
Therefore, that’s why I call TARP funds for auto bailouts… and Pelosi/Reid’s idea to keep it around as a slush fund for whatever in the future… as illegal and unConstitutional.
As for a lawsuit challenging TARP in general, Freedom Works was supposed to be filing one last year. Cato calls it “beyond the scope” of powers. The NYT’s did an article last year on some of these arguments, and Bloomberg had reported on the Freedom Works intent to challenge.
Personally, I didn’t think it would go anywhere. But my problem with TARP… aside from the bailout concept at all… was that Congress delegated unmitigated authority to an unelected appointee with little to no oversight. And then they decided to start spreading the “institutions” that qualified for such government intervention. While it’s their right to “delegate”, their wisdom in doing so most certainly comes into question, and should. Even their authority to place that much power in a single entity.
But as Cato and others point out, the New Deal has resulted in SCOTUS decisions that have clearly muddied the lines of Congressional powers. My guess is that both the AZ immigration law and O’healthcare is going to dredge up some better judicial guidelines … or else we’re all in deep manure.
Secondly, I really must correct your misinterpretation. Bush admin gave GM $13.4 bil of TARP back in Dec 2008. This was hardly the “bail out” and ultimate public take over that this temporary resident of the Oval Office constructed six or seven months later. And he managed to throw bankruptcy and contract law out the window simultaneously when he seized control.
But I wasn’t pleased when Bush/Paulson, with Pelosi/Reid, not only decided to pass TARP, but also abandoned it’s intent for MBSs and toxic assets at financial institutions. However Obama had control of more than half of that original money, then piled on with ARRA. And his, Pelosi and Reid’s spending frenzy hasn’t quit yet.
TARP may, in fact, be caught in repercussions when O’healthcare goes thru, or even the AZ immigration… as both are dealing with questionable overreach of the feds.
Mata, “promote . . . the general Welfare” is straight fromt he Constitution listing Congress’ powers! Odd that you would call it “vague” as if relying on the plain text of the Constitution is somehow inappropriate. More importantly, as I said before, the Obama administration’s actions are consistent with actions taken by previous administrations.
You object that TARP finds were used for the auto bailout. My response — meh . . . .
Here’s the other point that you and Randy refuse to acknowledge — the Obama administration did not and could not FORCE any deal. If the creditors committee thought it best to oppose the bailout, they could have done that. They didn’t because it was a good deal. Likewise, the Obama administration could not and did not force the judge to approve the restructuring plan. He did so because it was the best deal possible for the creditors — all the creditoprs, not just the bondholders Randy is so enamored with. You may wish to claim that the Obama folks forced this deal on someone, but that is just not factually supported, or supported in law.
Perhaps you need to delve back into history during New Deal days, and read about the 8 of 10 rejections of New Deal legislation by SCOTUS…. prompting the father of our descent into socialism, FDR, to say in his fireside chats:
Until that point, such a broad interpretation of Congressional or Admin powers was not undertaken. Is it “vague”? Absolutely. Exactly “who” decides what is “promoting” the “general welfare”… what is the definition of “promoting”, and what constitutes the “general welfare”.
Prior to 1935, the court bounced 4 out of 5 cases brought before it without taking on the merits of “general welfare”. California v. Pacific Railroad Co. and Smith v. Kansas City Title Co. both involved public money for public purposes… i.e. internal infrastructure and stock in federal land banks. SCOTUS does have this tendency to dodge major issues, providing the oral presentations give them that wiggle room. And in fact, the Federalist authors, Hamilton and Madison, had dueling dissent on just what “general welfare” actually construed.
The first time we got some sort of SCOTUS opinion (other than commentaries) was Justice Roberts in United States v. Butler, writing for the majority:
Since Butler was about processing floor stock taxes, Congressional ability to abscond with the tax was expected. But “taxing” and “spending” are two different critters. And as Roberts notes, such “general welfare” is limited…
… also quoting Hamiltonian concept supporter, Monroe, saying:
National as distinguished from local “welfare”, and the clear ruling that Congress does *not* possess the power to appropriate money to any and every willful purpose places the very “local” welfare of a privately held business – auto industries – clearly in a class that does not meet the precedent standards.
James @ #11.
Just saw obama on MSNBC, he can’t sleep again. He’s up all night cause people are out of work.
The guy’s such a joke.
Good god, man… please brush up on your reading skills. I said I objected to ALL of the concept of TARP. However the illegal use of TARP funds was for the auto industry… clearly not the financial institutions the original TARP bill language dedicated the funds for.
Apparently we need your paralegal here to interpret the simple stuff for you. Suggest you may have to bypass the linked SCOTUS opinion above until you have some help, guy. But at least you could keep your shoes on. 😉
You really need to get out more, Billy Bob. As the WA Post points out, the Obama admin bullied and applied pressure… i.e. forced and coerced… to achieve their aims.
MATA: this guy has the nerve to make point as if he know what obama would do or cant do.
Can you be this dense? Chrysler was bailed out under the Carter admin… dumb mistake then by another lib/prog idiot who took our nation down the fiscal toilet. Carter had a Dem supermajority in the Senate, and about 3 seats shy of a Dem supermajority in the House. Reagan didn’t take office until 1981.
The liberal “Times” rag, dissing the Carter bailout/too big to fail as a dumb move.
Additionally, while S&L remedies were being dealt with thru the 80s, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 was enacted Aug 1989… six months into Bush 41’s term, not Reagan’s. BTW, both chambers were Dem majority… no surprise.
… fish in a barrel…
B-Rob, I really do pity you. You are a far left, racially motivated, narrow-minded bomb thrower who always sees the worst in anything that even comes close to criticizing Obama.
It is a definite fact that Obama’s writing skills are lacking and many more people than myself have doubted whether he actually penned those books. All one has to do is read an Ayers book next to one of Obama’s books. But then again, I forget how many times Mata has called you on your lack of reading comprehension, so evidently it will have to be pointed out to you.
You just keep blaming Bush on the “exploding” debt, all the while conveniently forgetting that after 2006 it was Pelosi/Reid who were to blame on said debt. Yes, Bush signed the budgets, which I have a huge problem with; but THEY are the ones who are responsible for the increased spending.
And it is funny how when it props up Obama’s agenda, you are happy with shredding the constitution, but then you use the same document to prop up your OWN feeble arguments.
Also, I noticed that you claim Obama’s actions are consistent with “previous administrations,” but NOT Constitutional…
Very telling slip there Silly Bob.
@ Tom in CA,
This is another piece in the mountain of evidence on the personality that now runs America’s Administration.
MataHarley’s well delineated presentation above, noted the book Dreams of My Father, and the question of its authorship. Obama’s refusal to acknowledge a “ghost writer,” for this book is a critical tell. There is not a chance that he wrote it. Any reader or listener of his daily teleprompted speeches should at least have doubt. But then when you consider his answers in interviews by the sycophanting media, you realize that his mastery of the English language is wanting, and his intellectual acumen is incapable of presenting cohesive or tight responses. This is so even if one ignores his lack of understanding of most critical subjects on which the country has anticipated leadership, . . . economics and business being priorities.
This speaks loudly to Skook’s title for this post. The narcissist will not acknowledge receiving help, nor give credit where credit is due. Obama’s speech is splattered with “I this, and I that,” and he is the center of his Universe. He is now trapped by his lie on the book, which received accolades from non-questioning reviewers. Perhaps a review of Ayers’ bank accounts might tell enlightening stories about his “quiet.” Obama didn’t write this book. He couldn’t have, IMHO, and he can never admit it. Perhaps he can blame the fact that he was born in an age of Entitlement – in his mind becoming President was an expectation as natural as the ubiquitous notion that everyone has a right to own a home.
To follow where he is going, . . . we should see an implosion of this Administration, because sycophanting creates gods who not only believe the adoration and fall in love with it, but they also believe the worship is deserved. The narcissist doesn’t understand how fleeting the reverence can be. When the crowd and the money runs down the street to adore the next new star in the firmament, the narcissist’s anger will surface, and will create a pressure that leads to self destruction. Until then he will invest all possible energy to convey an image that is “likeable,” or “lovable,” but his audience will continue to turn away from him. The way this Administration is going, it will not last much beyond the mid-terms, before all hell breaks out. We can anticipate some great tell-all books coming out from the hands of the rats scurrying from the ship.
It is entertaining to read the corrosive frustration seeping out of the anger so entrenched in comments posted by Obama faithful. This Billy Bob commenting here sounds like a Huffington Post regular, with the added likelihood that he has had a serious career reversal, possibly at the hands of a “business.” Surely, he can’t be this angry, or self-deceiving, strictly because of ideology. Perhaps he pretends indignation, because like his idol, he is at his core, insecure.
Evidently he and his friends aren’t aware of the truth that the best way to destroy people is to provide them all the welfare they can eat. Free money to take care of your needs will over time completely destroy the human spirit. Completely Destroy it.
So to “promote the general welfare” (and to make everything “fair” – a common liberal sentiment,) why not allow the government to enact the following – under the guise that the government has the constitutional authority to do so?
Establish a Department of Assigned Labor that identifies the most appropriate job for every able-bodied citizen based on the Department’s assessment of how each citizen’s abilities would best serve the general welfare of the populace.
Establish a Department of Ability Assessment whose duties are to determine each citizen’s abilities. This would obviously be needed to ensure that people don’t pretend to be too ill (or find other “excuses”) to keep from doing the jobs the government decided were their duties for maintaining the general welfare of the country and its citizens.
Require every citizen to see a government-appointed physician at government-determined intervals to ensure that each citizen is maintaining his/her health as required to do his/her government-appointed job properly.
Require each citizen to engage in physical exercise according to government-determined guidelines, as necessary to keep each citizen in the correct physical condition for said citizen’s government-appointed job. This is obviously reasonable under the “general welfare” clause.
And to ensure consistent and adequate nutrition, require each citizen to consume only those foodstuffs determined by the government to be healthful. Of course, this would be easiest (and fairest) if everyone had only one type of bread, meat, produce, etc. given to them by government Food Agents, so that nobody would have more or less than anyone else. Imagine no more “class warfare” to worry about. Everyone would have the exact same automobiles, television sets, houses, everything the same! There would be no poor and no rich!
Sound like Utopia to you? Just ask former USSR citizens about their experiences in such a Utopian society.
@B-Rob: Do you still like that “general welfare” clause when taken this far?
REAL or FAKE: Can you tell which of these government spending projects are real or fake?
Not to worry, those members of Congress know better than you do about how your Tax Dollars should be spent… 😯
JVerive — This (along with “can the government force you to eat your vegetables”) is the kind of argumentum ad absurdem, “slippery slope” arguments that show the weakness of your side. Let me make the kind of argument that I made at another cite.
Currently, hospitals are required to give emergency care to all comers, regardless of their insurance status or their wealth. The insured person in a car crash gets treated the same as the uninsured person; the difference is that the insured person’s $234,089.77 bill is paid by the insurance company. If you are uninsured and not wealthy, your bill just doesn’t get paid. Why? Because if the uninsured person did not have the $5,000 to health insurance, they certainly don’t have $234k to pay the hospital. Most likely, the hospital will never get paid. It will eat that cost, which is then passed on to the rest of us with insurance or who pay cash (like the Amish community).
People who argue that they should not be forced to get insurance are really saying “I should be permitted to shift the risk of non-payment to the hospitals, to all the suckers who have insurance, and to the Amish. They can pay my bill for me.” This, of course, is socializing your own financial irresponsibility and punishing those who pay their bill, and punishing the hospital for fixing you up.
The health insurance mandate is meant, in part, to require individual to show financial responsibility and not force that $234k bill on the rest of us. It is “prove you can meet your financial responsibilities if you get sick or injured,” which is a far cry from “you must get a Pap smear.” Is the socialization of your $234k medical bill something that impacts “the general Welfare”? You bet it is. But “eat your vegetables” and “get a Pap smear” really only impact you.
That is why I think the mandate is not only a good idea, but also will pass Constitutional muster. Because the mandate is a “necessary and proper” way to “promote the general Welfare” by eliminating free riders.
@ JVerive,
. . . And the USSR’s Russia pillaged and impoverished satellite countries such as the Ukraine, to keep itself fed. Without such abuse of surrounding countries, Russia would have caved in within one generation of the communist rule.
The damage to people throughout the USSR, including Russia, was so extensive, that all these years after the breakup, even the supposedly healthiest, Russia, cannot get their act together, and people succumb to dictatorship for government leadership.
Russians are aware of the absolute corruption that permeates the Kremlin, and they know that the thugs are in charge, . . . they just can’t bring themselves out of their stupor. The ones who can stick their necks out the window, run as far away as they can places like Dubai and Canada, Canada being really easy to get into.
@B-Rob,
Absurd is precisely the point! Life isn’t fair, and any government that attempts to try to make things more fair necessarily rides the slippery slope. The bailout of GM was is a perfect example of how government abuses the general welfare clause. The bailout was supposed to be for the “general welfare,” so why then did the Obama administration “play hardball” to assure that certain groups (unionized labor, for example) got preferential treatment? That’s not “general” welfare; it’s pandering to those who buy political influence. What about the non-union workers who got stiffed? Don’t they deserve equal protection? If the Dems and other “progressives” are so concerned about the rights of the politically disconnected and dis-affected, where was the outrage? Mostly what I heard was (… crickets chirping …)
G. W. Bush and his administration wasn’t any better pushing TARP on the taxpayers. Too Big To Fail is purely fear mongering. Remember how the markets could crash “any day now,” for day after day after day after… I sure hope you get the point; because of the incestuous relationship between big money (special interest groups) and big government, the general welfare clause simply gives government “cover” to continue to screw anyone and everyone who isn’t near the top of the donor list.
As for the healthcare situation, let’s take money out of the picture, since it is merely used by government to obfuscate matters. Doctors and other health providers under universal health care have to provide services for anyone who walks through their doors. That’s too close to involuntary servitude for me and many others who value personal responsibility. The more the government “gives” (paid for by taking from someone else,) the less incentive there is for individual advancement. The real “slippery slope” is the one that taxpayers stand on; when the government forces “the rich” to help pull “the poor” out of poverty, it’s always the middle-class that slides down.
I support charities and charitable acts, but when they’re imposed by a politically-motivated elite minority who would never subject themselves, their families, and their politically-connected friends to the same laws and regulations as they impose on the rest of us, it’s obvious that government is no longer looking after the “general welfare” of the governed.
THAT is what true Conservatives want to change, even if the “liberal” majority of the population continues to buy into the propaganda from the ruling elite.
@Silly Rob: You said:
THAT’S the best you’ve got??
Really?
Any educated, thinking person knows that the phrase “general welfare” as used by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution was never intended for the Federal Government to be so intrusive into our personal liberties as to force citizens to purchase a product from another citizen.
James Madison, the Father of our Constitution maintained that the general welfare clause authorized Congress to Lay and collect taxes, etc…; but only withing the specifically enumerated powers that appear in the Constitution – NOT to meet a plethora of near infinite needs of the general welfare.
So, now you are saying you know MORE than James Madison? You remember him right? The guy who WROTE the Constitution.
anticsrocks, it’s yours go get it now, bye
Apparently, Judge Hudson thinks both the subject matter jurisdiction and legal sufficiency of Virginia’s complaint , plus the fact that the SCOTUS has never ruled on Congressional ability to tax and regulate a citizen’s decision NOT to participate in interstate commerce viable enough to deny Sebelius’ Motion to Dismiss.
@ JVerive —
Nowhere in my post did you see the words “fair,” “equitable,” “equal” or anything like that. Rather I focused on the obvious problem — people who do not have health insurance, unless they pay cash for all their health care, put a burden on everyone else.
You know what this problem is like? Pollution. Polluters want the freedom to socialize the costs of creating noxious sludge and they resist having the responsibility put back on them to ameliorate the harm they produce. Why should I have my property values reduced because you want to dump solvents into the stream that runs along our properties? Similarly, I suppose you might think that you are healthy enough that you don’t need health insurance. Maybe you are right. But if you get sick, or get injured, you are then going to put that cost on me and all the other people who did the right thing and got insurance against the same risk that you declined to insure. That is a free rider problem.
Again: why should I have to bear the cost of your health care when you are too cheap, too bad a risk analyst, or too lazy to get health insurance before you run up a $200,000 bill from a car accident? A mandate puts the burden back on you, the consumer, and prohibits you from socializing the costs of your care. It is a matter of personal responsibility, which is why the Heritage Foundation and Romneycare both supported the concept of a individual mandate to cover your own affairs.
The other alternatives to a mandate are (a) you don’t get health care unless you can show your ability to pay (e.g., a $1 million checking account balance when you come to the hospital) or we put everyone who does not have insurance on Medicare/Medicaid. Which would you prefer? Because the system we have now, socking hospitals and insurers with your unmitigated costs, is simply not workable.
As for your request to “take money out” of the health care issue . . . sorry, can’t do that. And why should we? Isn’t that what the people opposing the mandate are arguing about, that they should not be forced to spend money insuring their own health care costs? So how are we supposed to ignore the money issue when that is what the dispute is all about — money and who bears the financial risks for people who don’t want to buy insurance. And “involuntary survitude” claims by people who make six figures? Please stop the nonsense! That is an insult to all the people who REALLY were slaves! And how can you say you and your type “value personal responsibility” when you are advocating and actively suing to write into law the “right” to be a freeloader? Because that is what “no mandate” means — continuation of the freerider problems we have now.
anticsrocks — Your screed, in which you assume that the Founding Fathers would approve of uninsured deadbeats foisting their bills off on non-profit hospitals and for-profit insurers, is stunning — you know now what someone 200 years ago would answer about today’s problems? Really? Look, those people could not CONCEIVE of women voting, slaves being free, or a Black president. There were no health insurance companies 200 years ago, they had no concept of disease, and there were no med schools, either. So the idea that they would agree with you on this issue is, at best, a reach. James Madison may have THOUGHT that the “necessary and proper” phrase and “general Welfare” regulated the power to tax, as you claim, but that is not what was adopted, now is it? It does not say that. So Madison’s becomes one of many opinions about how the Constitution “should be interpreted,” no more authoritative than any other learned voice on the subject in the intervening 200 years.
Mata — Defeating a motion to dismiss is no big deal. A plaintiff is only required to show that a claim is plausible, not that any facts actually support it. Don’t go betting your rent money on a victory either. Because the fact that the feds have no significantly regulated health insurance until now is not decisive either; because we did not have an interstate highway system until we had one, now did we?
Glad to see you, as a minority O’faithful, still cling to that “hope’y/change’y” thing, Billy Bob. I’m well aware that shooting down a Motion to Dismiss is not judicial victory.
Then, on the flip side, were it so clear cut as you wish to believe, the motion to dismiss would have been granted.
Me? I’m quite content for this to wind it’s way to SCOTUS. And I suspect it may be fast tracked, as the AZ immigration lawsuits.
As far as comparing it to an interstate highway system – initially federally funded system with monies shared among the states, and implemented by Eisenhower – the bulk of the funding and maintenance are covered by gas taxes and vehicle registration/taxes by both federal and state. However to compare mandates to citizens to participate in interstate commerce to a transportation system that was vital to national security is a leap of absurdity.
No, no and no. The “burden” is not the uninsured… most of which of the oft quoted millions are actually illegal/undocumented aliens… but the cost of administering medical care running amok. A problem that Obama and Dem’s agenda has done nothing to solve save to swoop more “schmoes” into the net to try and stay ahead of out of control costs.
Why don’t you show us the links you seem to depend on that says the burden of rising costs is the uninsured, and not the rising costs of medical care? Then we’ll have something to chit chat about instead of your erroneous assertations.
Well that’s one interesting statement, Billy Bob. Especially with your expansive “general welfare” ‘tude. Why should we be expected to bear the costs of bailing out banks and/or individuals thru Obama’s various “rescue plans” (all which were major flops, BTW) because low income, poor credit borrowers opted to sign on the dotted line and abscond with a mortgage or cash out equity they could not afford to repay? In fact, why is my tax dollar paying for other peoples’ weatherization on their house? Why is my tax dollar subsidizing unemployment benefits long after the employers’ contributions have run out? The list is endless.
But the major point you may be missing is that the bulk of those without insurance cannot afford it now. And a mandate is going to cure that… how? Other than the young/healthy (that small category of the uninsured) who can afford it, and opt out, the mandate only exacerbates the problem for the uninsured. It’s certainly missing the Obama promises of being “more affordable” even now. So what they are now faced with is a “tax” to purchase a product that they can’t afford… even when they want it. And if they don’t, they blow more money in “taxes”, disguised as “fines” or “penalties”.
Brilliant. Again I ask, this cures the problem… how?
Talk about tangents out of nowhere…. geez, dude. The Founders and Framers didn’t have to specifically “conceive” of the women’s vote, slaves, or race of POTUS. They constructed a Constitution that was to accommodate for the unexpected because it was meant to either fall under federal duties and regulatory power, or to the individual states. It’s called a Republic, if you remember what that is.
And if you’ll notice, nowhere in the Constitution did it outlaw women or blacks from voting. Voting criteria was left to the states. Neither did it address slavery as legal or illegal.
Lastly, the qualifications for POTUS never included exemptions for race, nationality, gender, or religion.
So why in the the world did they have to “conceive” of a future world? That is the beauty of the construction of our government – to be minimal in power, and timeless in those limited powers. They wrote it to accommodate for things they’d never conceive because it was irrelevant. Federal powers are limited. States are left much to what their own denizens agree to.
However I will take away from your little paragraph there that you’re a “living Constitution” type.
INRE the general welfare and Federalist papers, I covered this above. There were two schools of thought on that between Hamilton and Madison. Even with SCOTUS taking the more lib/prog interpretation from Hamilton (also Monroe), that general welfare was still limited to national interests, and not local (effective busting out auto industries and their personal financial woes).
Trying to tie citizens *not* engaging in interstate commerce as a “general welfare” argument is going to be very uphill… and very fascinating. A “living Constitution” interpretation of that can have far reacing consequences… i.e. just what else will they demand a consumer “purchase” in order to hold up Congressional spending for nanny welfare programs? Since Obama decided to get into the automobile manufacturing business, will we all be required to purchase VOLTS from GM?
But like most lawsuits in a court room… even SCOTUS…. it is all dependent upon how good the “actors” (i.e. attorney presenting the brief oral arguments and tied to precedents) in the stage play perform.
B_Rob; you know , they should have started with the first priority,before dealing with healthcare
programs, that is monumental, did you read all the pages by the way?,
so the first priority as I mentioned are the closing the BORDERS;
EVEN as we talk and write,now there is thousands of people who have been
AND still are crossing the border, all kinds of sickness spreading among the local people
AND not counting the drugs and release prisoners or any terrorist minded;
Is in it more important to AMERICANS? just ask the ARIZONIANS, if it is;
AND their smart GOVERNEST, if IT’S important, she said it before, so what else you are pushing is IRRELEVANT compare to that PRIORITY, and the AMERICANS are smart enough to see that .
@Silly Bob: You said:
That is a hoot! The author and father of the Constitution is but one of “many opinions?”
You really don’t expect to NOT to get called out on that little gem, do ya’? As Mata so eloquently put it, the Constitution was framed to fit the evolving Republic, not the other way around. You don’t go changing the Constitution on a political whim.
Tell me, would you like your mortgage carrier to view the agreement that you signed with them as a “living, breathing” document? One that they could “interpret” as meaning whatever the hell they wished it to mean? Or would you rather they uphold the terms and conditions layed out in the mortgage that both you and they agreed to?
Silly Rob, you are a short sighted ideologue. For if you get your way and change the Constitution as you see fit, why then should succeeding generations abide by the changes you make?
Again, I refer to your earlier remark –
With you, precedent trumps constitutionality because you have zero respect for our US Constitution.
anticsrock —
For about the third time this weekend, this new laptop with the sensitive mousepad has caused me to delete a pithy, cite filled response. I will just give you bullets on why you are flat out wrong.
1) In essence, you say “anyone with a brain” KNOWS that “the general Welfare” would not extend to forcing someone to buy a product. You then claim that Madison understood that clause to mean that Congress could tax, etc., but only within the “enumerated powers” of the Constitution. There is one thing wrong with both positions: that is NOT what the Constitution actually says.
2) The Constitution’s provision empowering Congress’ to pass “any Laws” it deems “necessary and proper” to “promote the general Welfare” and govern interstate commerce is Article 1, Section 8. The same Section mentions that the power to pass “any Laws” relates to the above enumerated powers and ANY OTHER CLAUSE IN THE CONSTITUTION. Why is this important? Because . . .
3) Article 1, Section 9’s Limits on Congress do NOT prohibit Congress from requiring any purchase. Read it. This is especially obvious if you consider the Commerce clause. To use an analogy, Congress could obviously pass a law requiring anyone to have $200,000 liability insurance if they drive across state lines. Just because they have no passed such a statute does not mean that it could not be done.
4) None of you cons have bothered to argue that the mandate does not promote the general Welfare. Probably a smart argument, since the mandate to buy insurance forces each person to have financial responsibility for their own health care, instead of socializing those costs on hospitals, insurers, and employers and unions who provide benefits, and individuals who pay for their health care costs in cash. The interstate commerce effects on a failure to have insurance coverage is also quite obvious, especially of you think about those border areas where people live in one state and frequently get medical care in another (like my doctor friend in Louisville, who also worked in southern Indiana).
5) The problem with the Madisonian position (assuming he actually said that; you do not give a direct quote or a cite) is that the Constitution is not nearly as precise as you claim. For example, cons hate Roe v. Wade and claim there is no “right to privacy.” But what do you do with the Ninth Amendment which specifically refers to “unenumerated rights” that are retained in “the people” . . . not “the states” but “the people.” I have contended that you cons would have been BETTER OFF claiming that the mandate somehow interfered with the Ninth Amendment, which Brandeis called “the right to be left alone.” But cons “don’t like” the Ninth Amendment (see Robert Bork). And instead, you are forced to argue the nonsensical, that there is a consitutional “right” to the free-riding status quo, where uninsured mopes get to go to my local hospital, run up hundreds of thousands of dollars of care, then not pay because they don’t have the money.
6) The Constitution also permits the Congress to seek a balance between conflicting Constitutional rights. The examples include free speech versus property rights in the union/management collective bargaining context; the balance between Second Amendment rights and the Fourth Amendment (i.e., why a cop can only shoot you under certain circumstances, but can take your gun from you under lesser circumstances), and in the abortion context, between the states right to regulate medical care versus the woman’s Ninth Amendment right to be left alone by the state. Any “right” you might have to refrain from buying a “product” must be balanced against everyone else’s right to not have to subsidize your health care.
7) The question of whether the mandate is “necessary and proper” turns on whether it promotes “the general Welfare.” Unless and until you cons make a sound policy based argument that the mandate is either not necessary or not proper, I think you lose, for all the reasons I set out above.
8 ) As far as my mortgage is concerned, any contract will contain clauses that are open ended, such as “best efforts” or “reasonable.” They will also have a clause that states something like “a failure to enforce any clause does not constitute a waiver of that clause unless the waiver is in writing.” That wiggle room is there to permit, for example, changes in technology, transfers and assignments of the loan. So unlike my mom’s old mortgage, which required a check and a mortgage payment slip, now youu pay by a wire transfer over the internet. In that sense it is a living document. And shouldn’t it be? After all, the Constitution and its founders did not anticipate crack cocaine, the internet, public schools, or grenade launchers. So why should the laws governing commerce, war, criminal conduct, etc. be limited by the imagination of guys who died two hundred years ago, but left some pamphlets? Seriously — do you honestly think the Founding Fathers could have conceived of kiddie porn on the internet, pictures transmitted from Russian into a person’s home in Jersey? Of course not . . . which is why the constitution’s meaning HAS to be expended on and applied differently today than 100 years ago.
Mata — so far, the court in Michigan held for the administration on all claims. The judge in Florida dismissed four of the six claims of the complaint, leaving the mandate issue for the individual plaintiffs and the “unfunded mandate” issue for the states. The problem with the unfunded mandate argument is that states have ALREADY STARTED POCKETING OBAMACARE MONEY. It is not, therefore, about an “unfunded mandate” in reality, but about a claimed “underfunded mandate.” Weak argument when you put this in the context of Congress’ spending power and authority to put strings on money sent to the states. Hey — the easiest way to get out from under all aspects of Obamacare is to not take the federal money. But the states want to have their cake and eat it too . . . especially the Red States.
anticsrocks —
You made a statement that “With you, precedent trumps constitutionality because you have zero respect for our US Constitution.” This evidences one of those laymen’s misunderstandings of the Constitution that make it so difficult to discuss these matters without people getting pissed off. Let me use an analogy:
When I was a kid, my mom explained to me the difference between “a fact” and “a legal determination.” The example she used was “guilt or innocence.” Guilt is a legal determination by a jury, finding you culpable for some conduct that they find that you committed. A finding of guilt does not mean you actually did anything, only that a jury determined that you did. There are people in prison today, and people who have been executed or otherwise died in prison, who did nothing wrong, but were determined to be guilty.
Your personal concept of the Constitution is simiilar. You believe in your heart that something Obama done that is “unconstitutional.” You have the right to believe that. The problem, however, is that what is constitutional or unconstitutional is not left to the individual interpretations of 310 million Americans. We have a federal court system, writ in Article III of the Constitution, which decides whether the Congress has overstepped its bounds, or whether the President has done something improper.
Let’s go back to your comment again:
Precedent is the guideposts for Congressional and Presidential action. They are no more authorized to interpret the Constitution than the other 310 million Americans. They take their cues of what is proper to do, or improper to do, from prior court decisions. If an administration does not follow precedent, you have anarchy — with the Ford administration, for example, ignoring the Nixon era court decisions and the Bush II administration claiming immunities that Clinton was told he did not have. Obama is following the district court’s decision on don’t ask don’t tell for the same reason a mentor of mine was among the paratroopers that invaded the campus of the University of Mississippi — to uphold the rule of law as established by precedent. If a court rules X, a society of laws requires us to follow X.
Think Miranda — the Constitution does not say “you must Mirandize someone” — but it says your words cannot be used against you, you get a trail by jury, you have the right to confront witnesses, and you have the right to an advocate. So the precedent established by Miranda — requiring a government seizing your body to inform you of your rights — is now the practice and procedure in the criminal and the civil context, too. Why? Because the Court, more than 40 years ago, set the rule and government has to follow that rule.
You might disagree with past precedents, be they Roe, or Kelo, or something relating to Obama’s conduct. But unless and until a court of competent jurisdiction rules that something is unconstitutional (a legal determination) it is not unconstitutional. Even this is a matter of law, i.e., acts of Congress are deemed constititional unless and until a court rules they are not. For example, after Plessy v. Ferguson, minorities did not have many rights to challenge segregation laws until they were able to show (starting 50 years later) that what they received was separate and not equal. And even a finding that something is not constitutional may not settle the matter if one court’s determination conflicts with another’s. So when you put “precedent” in one space and “what is constitutional” in another, and accuse me of having “zero respect for the US Constitution”, you are simply misstating how Constitutional interpretation works, you are ignoring the importance of precedent, and you are ignoring the essential role of the courts, which is to order the actions of the government.
Mata —
You said “But the major point you may be missing is that the bulk of those without insurance cannot afford it now. ”
This is fascinating, because during the health care debate, the conservatives argued that there was no need for such a big reform program because the vast majority of uninsured people did not have insurance because they just did not want it, i.e., NOT because they could not afford it.
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/03/20/the-myth-of-the-46-million
Interesting . . . one conservative economists’ visit to a GM shop floor. As I said before, you cons will need to explain why it would have been BETTER FOR AMERICA if this company had gone under.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/10/dont-call-it-a-comeback-yet.html
Billy Bob… please, another fish in a barrel moment. No where in Section 8 Congressional powers is the phrase “any laws” that you use repeatedly above. Nor is the “necessary and proper” phrase attributable to the passage of “any laws” deemed “necessary and proper” to “promote the general welfare”.
Lawdy… you be schizoid in your reading!
The two phrases that incorporate some semblence of your distorted potpourri of interpretation are:
That you wish to puzzle piece all this together to mean Congress can pass “any law” that they deem “necessary and proper” to “promote the general welfare” is just a living Constitutionalist’s wet dream.
Recognizing proper useage of grammar, and sticking to one sentence at a time for continuity, as written, the Congress has been empowered to:
1: lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts & excises (which used to have to be uniform until they decided to implement progressive taxing via amendment)
2: to pay the debts of the nation
3: to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the nation
Because common defense and general welfare of the nation are conjoined, I find your “general welfare” interpretation to be even further beyond the more liberal interpretation of Hamilton/Monroe’s in The Federalist. Personally, my reading of it, combined with common defense, has to do with safeguarding of the nation… as is a federal Constitutional duty… and confined only to the enumerated powers delegated.
It’s not combined with the tax & duties phrase, which may have linked it to fiscal “general welfare”. i.e. it did not say they could “lay and collect taxes to promote the general welfare”, as you’d like to believe. In fact, had the Founders intended to throw any and all decisions to Congress as to what actually “promotes” the “general welfare”, there would have been no reason to enumerate the specifics such as establishing courts and maintaining the armed forces. It would have all been encapsulized under a blanket “it’s for the general welfare”.
As Jefferson, wary this phrase would be abused, said in 1791 (speaking on the national bank):
No such expanded power – as you envision, Billy Bob – was ever the intent of any of the Founders/Framers. Even the most liberal of interpretations.
Secondly, again it’s a living Constitutionalist’s wet dream to assert because something is not prohibited in enumerated powers, it’s fair game. No, no and no. The Constitution gives boundaries to the power of government they are not to cross. Period. And your extremely Marxist interpretation of “commerce clause” is (hopefully) about to see it’s demise. Congress has been overstepping that boundary for quite some time and, as Judge Hudson points out, there is no SCOTUS opinion that addresses mandates to participate in interstate commerce.
Well, there will be one soon…
First of all, you’re not addressing “you people”, you are addressing my personal opinions. And I will once again remind you that I got a judge to recuse himself by his repeated use of “you people” to me as discriminatory.
So once again, I’ll remind you of your inability to read, and now perhaps add you can’t retain anything either. Above, in my comment #62, I told you how I felt about health care “Reform” from both the Dems and the GOP. To speak in language you revere, “let me be clear”…. the GOP’s ideas are the pits as well, save for the repeal bit. That needs to be off the books, and real reform to control the costs to medical providers (bringing down the cost of receiving medical) needs to be done in incremental steps.
When your car is having issues, you don’t run in there willy/nilly and replace the engine. Nor do you replace every part you think is possible at one time… you do it part by part.
I’ve been on this horse for the duration, Billy Bob. But I can only speak for myself. Now I know you come from the party of clones and drones, but that’s now how conservatives work. We recognize we are individuals, not the bots of a community organizer, talking BS propaganda.
And it’s a nice little distortion there about conservatives arguing that the bulk of the uninsured didn’t want to buy insurance. That all depends on what you consider the legitimately uninsured, doesn’t it? But let’s go with the Senate’s breakdown… put into a pretty picture for you, the reading impaired.
Now that you’ve gone down the wrong rabbit hole one more time, why don’t you provide the links that the increasing costs of medical actually has whit to do with all these uninsured… some of which who may have put a burden on the system, and others who may have paid cash for their services. I mean, Billy Bob, are you trying to tell us – using the optimum number even – that all these 47 million uninsured (for various reasons) are in constant medical treatment, in comas, have debilitating diseases, etc?
One more time, I will try to pound reality into your head… the cost of premiums is tied to the cost of providing medical care. Medical providers who opt into the Medicare/Medical clientele are underpaid for their services, so they over charge the privately insured to get to a break even fiscal status.
The costs of drugs, state of the art equipment, salaries, pensions, overhead etc is going up every year… which means their overhead gets higher.
All this fiscal doom and gloom because of 12 million of Americans who have “no options”… and not all of those 12 million are in need of medical care at this moment, and providing a drain on the system? Or the 5 mil legal immigrants?
Your pie in the sky talking points are truly irritating. The disinformation campaign “you people” run is counterproductive. Just like your POTUS, you start with one campaign on health care reform, and then switch the thrust of your propaganda to be all about the price of insurance premiums and the big bad wolf that is the insurance company (with their 2-3% profit margins)… all the while happily pocketing the cash from medical unions and pharma (the number one “windfall profit” industry), and doing back room deals for patents.
For the same reason it would have been better to let Chrysler go under instead of CARTER and his Dem Congress bailing them out. Restructuring with bankruptcy would have been even better numbers for lowering the costs of manufacturing a car, tho your beloved union types, and the pensioners may have had to take a hit. But that’s the nature of bankruptcy. Piling on the debt to this nation now spreads pensioners taking a hit across the board, totally unrelated to GM or Chrysler.
I suggest you go back and read that Times Mag article I linked above INRE the bailout vs bankruptcy benefits. But I assure you, it was not for the nation’s “general welfare” to seize control of an auto manufacturer, and most certainly does not fit the national “general welfare” criteria that SCOTUS noted in Butler.
GM’s ultimate fate will be to enrich the Chinese instead of the US. The Chinese are already planning on manufacturing the batteries there in competing facilities. Why? The VOLT is a danged expensive car for Chinese income. It can be made more cheaply in the Chinese GM factories… which they are building more of along with the battery facilities.
When the public options become available, it will be interesting to see who actually will end up owning one of America’s former big three auto makers… but it’s not likely to be American anymore. Congrat’s….
Mata, you also wrote the following:
No, it is really not all that fascinating or “uphill” a battle. Because I explained to you the stresses that the uninsured put on the system, socializing the cost of their health care on everyone else. The Urban Institute estimated that, in 2004, the cost of uncompensated medical care totaled $41 billion. With a significantly larger population of uninsured today, as well as steady increases in medical costs (due, in part, to that uncompensated care being passed on), I bet it totals somewhere in the $60 billion range today.
Why have cons continued to dodge discussing this impact — an impact so notable that it was THE VERY REASON the hospital industry supported Obamacare? Funny, I mentioned the same issue on the voklokh conspiracy blog (a bunch of conservative law professors pontificating on various and sundry issues) and they, too, refused to engage the issue when discussing the mandate. This is nuts; it’s like trying to ignore a 600 lb. pink gorilla at your dinner table. “Pass the peas, Shelly.” Indeed, when he listed the alleged “purposes” of the mandate, the lead volokh discussor didn’t even list the cost of the uninsured’s care as a reason for the mandate being necessary.
Here is another take on the issue:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/04/heritage-foundation-argues-for.html
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/03/21/right-wing-obamacare/
As I see it, as long as hospitals are forced to give care to all comers, we will need the mandate. Otherwise, you just continue the gravy-train of uninsured people enjoying health care on your dime and mine.
I gave you so much time to do your homework, Billy Bob. Disappointing you reappear to regurgitate the same, and only dug up a few blogs you think support your notion that the commerce/general welfare bit is so very Constitutional. But then, since you’ve consistently demonstrated yourself as math challenged, I can see why you remain clueless.
The Kaiser 2004-2005 study of the uninsured also confirms the $41 bil as of those years.
But for grins and giggles, let’s run with your pull it out of thin air $60 bil figure as of this year. I’ll even give you point spread, and use the 2007 health care spending of $2.24 trillion, which I’m sure also has increased in the past three years. I, however, won’t be waging a guess on the latest figure, and sticking with what is known… unlike you.
Which means… shoes off, guy?…. the uninsured costs were tantamount to 2.698% of all the nation’s health spending.
wow…. Let’s tear the system apart for that amount, eh?
Now that I’ve pointed out the error of your thought, we will once again try to get your brain cell into reality… the cost of providing medical. Did you hear me? THE COST OF PROVIDING MEDICAL CARE!
Hey, I know you won’t absorb this information willingly from one of “you people”, so how about I use someone on your side… Ezra Klein at the NYTs, when he spent time interviewing Kaiser Permanente’s CEO, George Halvorson, last November. The subject? Why are health costs so high?
Did the uninsured make it to even an honorary mention? Hang no….
Now, since you do better with pictures, go open the charts that show the exorbitant cost of various medical services in the US.
Game, set, match. You lose, Billy Bob. Now, do us all a favor and, as lib/prog pundit Klein asks, and try to be a “bit more informed” instead of parroting diversionary BS.
Here’s another jolt of reality for you, Billy Bob. Kaiser’s report on what’s driving costs of health care.
See “uninsured” in there as a reason? Nope… just a talking point by “you people”. heh
Mata —
You are correct: it says Congress is empowered to make “all Laws” not “any Laws.” My error. I contend it is a distinction without a difference, just as putting “any and all” in a contract is redundant.
Here is where you really lose it, though:
I like your Jefferson quote; I really do. But, to state it simply, in a Scalia-type way, that is not what the Founders actually wrote, now is it? They did NOT limit the “general Welfare” to the power to tax; they could have written that, but did not.
See, the Constitution says pretty much that: that Congress has the power to write “all Laws” to fulfill its duties. It drafted Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as part of its efforts to regulate the military. I mean, seriously, what is your supposed alternative? The constitution includes the phrase “general Welfare” for a reason; the clause is not properly ignored just because you cons don’t like the legislative possibilities the phrase implies. After all, this is the US Constitution; the words must mean something. If the Founders did not intend to give Congress the authority to write all laws primoting the general welfare, it should not have been, and would not have been, included in the Constitution.
I provided some links that discuss the cost of care to the uninsured. But let me say one thing — for you to opine about health care reform and not acknowledge this fact is downright scary. I mean, seriously, this is one of the FIRST PRINCIPALS of health care reform, that uninsured people still get care, but its not paid for. Did you not KNOW this fact when you developed your opinions about health care reform?
Hmm . . . maybe this is the health care reform version of the abortion debates, where cons start off with the assumption that pregnancy is a benign condition that causes no risks to pregnant woman and. therefore, is an appropriate area to legislate with the power of the government. Or you assume that there will be no insurgency in Iraq and, therefore, there is no need to prepare for one. Yeah, if you assume away a known contrary fact, the analysis become much easier. But serious people don’t do that.
You also claimed in your post that “the bulk” of people do not have health insurance because they can’t afford it. How they hell does me correctly quoting your quite dubious statement show that I can’t read? You are really drifting toward fugue state, man! I would ask you whether you have any stats backing you up, but I know how cons play this game: adopt an position no matter how contrary to factual underpinings, then stick with it and throw insults at anyone who disproves the logic of your position . . . like the guy getting mad when a reporter pointed out that Palin supported TARP when he thought she opposed it . . . .
Another thing about the 47 million uninsured: did i ever say that they are all in comas or have debilitating conditions? No. You created a b.s. statement to hide the fact that you can’t address the uncompensated care problem.
ou say the “problem” is the 12 million who have no options. B.s. Look at the chart and think about “How many of these people know that their kid will break an ankle next week at school while goofing around on the stairs?” Answer: zero. They also don’t know if they will be diagnosed with diabetes, get pregnant without planning it, have child contract whooping cough, or get in a car accident. But when they roll into the hospital with these conditions and no insurance, they will get treated, anyway. This is true whether they are illegals, earn more than $75,000, or a homeless drug addicts. THAT is the problem: uncompensated care by ALL THESE PEOPLE. Because a 26 year old guy earning $100,000 per year may not THINK he needs health insurance costing $3,000 per year, but when gets a closed head injury during a late night bar fight, you and I will wish that he had it, because WE will be paying the bill.
Don’t you think it would be better if they had insurance, instead of the cost being passed on to me and you? THAT is the question for a mandate as the answer; forcing people to spend their own money on their health care instead of putting the burden on you and me.
I am trying to talk about an actual ptoblem and a solution; you rely on name calling an b.s. pablum, like calling me a “Marxist” because I don’t want to have to pay for some uninsured person’s medical care. Talk about an Alice in Wondeland World . . . I’m the bad guy because I think there should be no free riders . . . .
Finally, you show your ignorance on the subject by saying “Medical providers who opt into the Medicare/Medical clientele are underpaid for their services, so they over charge the privately insured to get to a break even fiscal status.” This shows a lack of understanding of how the syatem works vis-a-vis private insurers.
http://www.familiesusa.org/issues/private-insurance/legal-rights/usualcustomaryrates.html
Insurance companies agree to pay hospitals at a “usual and customary rate.” The hospital will TRY to pass on the cost of the uninsured care on to the insurance companies, but the insurance companies push back by only paying the Medicare reimbursement rate, or something close to it. Then the hospital sues them for several million dollars because they did not pay “usual and customary” as the contract provided, or the insurance company sues the hospital because the hospital cut a deal with another insurer and did not pass that discount on as the new (usual and customary rate), it goes to arbitration, then settles. My soon-to-be-ex (a doc) mentioned that her hospital collect only 55% of what they send to the insurance companies. And they are not allowed to “balance bill” the unpaid amount back to the insured customer, either. So the hospital ends up eating a LOT of uncompensated care because it can’t all be spread back to the insurance companies. In short, even if a hospital took NO medicare patients, they would still have the same issues with uncompensated care. As its stands, though, they take the Medicare money because, among other things, it is a relationship that is not subject to annual contracting vaguaries and it covers the overhead.
THAT is the problem: the hospital gives uncompensated care to one of the 47 million uninsured. It goes uncollected. The hospital during the next budget cycle then tries to increase its rates to insurance companies, which push back but end up paying some of that. Why? Because insurance with no hospital relationship has very little value in the marketplace. The insurer, of course, marks those expenses up and tries to pass it on to the unions and the employers who provide insurance. Those entities, of course, try to stay ahead by passing the increase on to employers (in the case of unions) and employees and customers (in the case of employers). That is why we have to deal with the uninsured — all of them — and we can’t just wish the issue away.
As for the rest of your verbiage: *yawn*. Very smug and self important, aren’t you?
Mata — The phrase “some of the major reasons” should have clued you in to the fact that the list of five factors was NOT an exhaustive list of the major factors, only some of them. But if you truly believe uncompensated care is not a significant issue (despite me attaching the articles from the Heritage Foundation discussion the “free rider” problem, and despite Romneycare’s inclusion of a mandate to solve that very problem, and despite inclusion of the mandate in Obamacare to addres that issue), then there is nothing I can do to extract you from your fairie tale world of denial.
Mata —
Uncompensated hospital care in Texas in 2006? $11 billion . . . .
http://www.hhsc.state.tx.us/reports/UncompCareReport.pdf
Again you prove you can’t read. The context of “the bulk” not being able to afford insurance was tied to O’healthcare cures this problem how? Placing a mandate they purchase what they can already NOT afford is absurd and counterproductive. Especially since there is nothing in the O’healthcare that actually reduces the costs of administering medical treatment.
And oh, BTW… evidently you’re suffering from understanding picture problems too. The “stats backing me up” are the graph above, clearly showing 26% or 12 mil, not having affordable options. That is the largest percentage of the pie. The 23% that have alternative options, plus the over $75K income group opt out of interstate commerce by choice? They are not the victim “uninsured” you love to tout.
Of course they do. Where you go off the yellow brick road is your assumption of their Constitutionally enumerated “duties”.
Why would you assume I am unaware of the cost of care to the uninsured? How many times have I asked you to provide proof that the 2.698% of total health care spending is the driving factor for what “you people” label reform?
You cannot find a solution until you recognize the problem. And it ain’t the uninsured. It’s the costs. If you could bring down the costs, those 26% that cannot afford insurance may be able to afford it. Then I’m sure you’ll want to go strong arm those that qualify for employer or existing government insurance, and still don’t take it.
But then, when you bring the costs of providing medical to affordable levels, that $41 billion that has your knickers in a twist will also come down. Will you ever get “everyone” covered? Unlikely. Even if you get your mandate thru, there will be many that opt for the penalties if, for nothing else, to make a point. Utopia is only a state of mind, and will never exist as long as humans inhabit the planet.
And I really laugh about that “first principle” bit. Funny how when this whole debate started, your party was all about controlling the costs. Since they found out they couldn’t do that without alienating some of their biggest lobby/donors, they switched the rallying cry to that 2.698% of uninsured to tug at the heartstrings. Another “for the children” presentation.
What was that you were saying about “new positions” above? The flip flop by your party reasoning takes the cake.
Unlike you, Billy Bob, I’m not all consumed with “uncompensated care” problems. Address the big problem of costs to medical providers, and that one will slide into more manageable levels. You see, I don’t get off tangent with your talking points and prefer to stay focused on the real problem.
You mean that 2.698% cost being passed on? Dang, Billy Bob, your terror trio of politicians spends that amount of cash at the drop of a hat. Like I said, cure the real problem of costs, and you can untie your knickers about the pittance of % that will be left for the uninsured recompensation.
It becomes very frustrating trying to talk to the reading challenged. What did I say INRE marxist?
Now, did I call you a marxist in every aspect of your belief system? You may very well be, but that’s not what I said. I said you have a marxist interpretation of the commerce clause. Couldn’t be more specific or direct. You sure are a thin skinned SOB. Hyperventilate much? 😆
There’s no end to what bogs you are willing to mire yourself in, is there Billy Bob? Cost shifting is enigma to you? I’m reticent to post either links or pictures since neither seem to gel with you. But MarketWatch was talking about this back in 2003.
Health Affairs also ran an article about the same time discussing the myths, realities etal of cost shifting. Your anecdote about the ex has a tiny ping of truth. Where you didn’t go far enough is recognizing all the repercussions. The hospital:
1: attempts to recuperate govt underpayment from the private insurers
2: opts out of Medicare/Medicaid patients or
3: goes out of business, and/or becomes absorbed in a merge
Yes, when they attempt to cost shift to private insurers, and they refuse, they have the choice to keep losing money until they go out of business, or bust out the govt option clientele.
What has happened is that the hospitals merged, formed deals with HMOs in the effort to stay afloat on their overhead, which continues (and will continue) to go up in the wake of O’healthcare. Since cost shifting, which could be used to attempt to solicity higher govt payouts, just drove up costs, it’s just resulted in less competition.. which is one of the paths that should be taken to reduce costs.
The difference, as the MarketWatch PDF report I linked above, back in 2003 has only gotten wider.
More graphs in the PDF linked above.
Cost shifting still remains a very real practice, despite your anecdotes. As SHRM reports even this June 2010, it’s seen as the number one impetus for higher medical costs in 2011. In fact, here’s their March 2010 article, ID’ing the cities where the hospitals are attaching a “hidden tax” on the private insurers to compensate for lost revenue for underpayments.
And the fact that 2.698% of uninsured costs didn’t even make the honory mention list should have given you a clue as to where it was in the scheme of “reform” import. As I have repeatedly said, when you fix the skyrocketing costs problem, this problem becomes more manageable.. and in fact may make a huge dent in the uninsured by making it affordable.
As for Heritage… I guess you assume one more time that I was in lockstep support of the GOPs arguments and debates. I have told you repeatedly that the GOP is missing the boat on all this as well. What I would hope is a balance of power, and some citizen pressure to address the real problem of costs, and not this dance around, feel good BS. That may be hard to do since both sides tend to be beholding to big medical pharma, equipment manuf, medical unions, etc.
MackMata the Knife strikes again. How’s that blade taste B-Rob?It’s not paid for? Say what?
It sure is paid for. The $20 Tylenol and its brothers and sisters offsets that cost. Our rates and insurance premiums offset that cost, but not entirely.
And now with Obama eliminating copays and deductibles, usage is going to go astronomical and with zero appreciation. People place no value on things that cost nothing. It would have beden far better for everyone to “have some skin in the game” but that’s only for taxpayers.
There are two issues here- is the bill constitutional and does it accomplish what they said it would?
Nowhere in the Constitution does it state that Congress or the federal government has the power to force someone to purchase a service or product. If those who support the bill want to give the federal government that power, they need to put forth a Constitutional amendment granting them those powers. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. I discussed this bill with a fellow VFW comrade who is also a lawyer. Him and his colleagues say this bill is clearly unconstitutional (along with some other shennanigans like the GM takeover). They predict that unfortunately there will be so much political pressure on SCOTUS that they will, on a split decision, uphold the bill under the Commerce Clause. Hopefully they are wrong because if not, our system of checks and balances that our Founding Fathers put forth in the Constitution are out the window thus rendering the Constitution meaningless. A lot is at stake here.
As for the second issue, this bill was supposed to provide universal health care and lower costs. It does neither. There’s no arguing that prior to its passage those with health insurance were paying more for coverage and health care to pay for those who didn’t possess it. Health care costs and premiums have gone up meaning those with insurance are now paying even more than what they were before thus negating the argument about those of us with health insurance not being burdened by those without coverage. We are now burdened even more. I know people who thanks to this bill have had to pay double of what they were for health care services prior to its implementaion.
@Silly Rob:
OUCH! I was going to come back atcha about your misinterpretation of the Constitution, but Mata has destroyed you in a very effective manner.
BTW Silly Rob, thanks for your concern that I understand the definition of a precedent. I am well aware of what a precedent is thank you very much. I was merely pointing out that precedent is good enough for you because your words so amply demonstrate the disdain you have for our Constitution.
The Constitution is the bedrock of our Democratic Republic and without it, we cease to be the greatest experiment in democracy the world has ever known. It is the foundation for our country and you know what happens to a building when you weaken it’s foundation.
You made stupid, wrong headed claims about tax cuts and “exploding” debt.
Mata and I proved you wrong on that.
You then claim that the uninsured is what is driving the rising cost of medical care.
Mata clearly took you to the cleaners on that one. Less than 3% of the cost of medical care is the uninsured and THEY are responsible for driving the cost through the roof for the rest of us? HA, not.
Your latest weak attempt is to try and tell us what is and isn’t in the Constitution.
Again, Mata cleaned your clock on that one.
———-
That you are so wrong on so many things doesn’t really bother me.
That you behave with such pomposity doesn’t really bother me, either.
But when faced with rock solid facts, from reliable sources you never admit you are wrong. One of the true marks of being a mature, intellectually honest adult is to be able to admit when one is in error.
To my knowledge, you have never admitted here on FA when you have been shown to be wrong.
I pity you that you do not have that ability. It is sad.