Winning Progressive

(By Fay Paxton, cross-posted as The Pragmatic Pundit)

Republicans have been spewing hateful, ignorant nonsense since Obama threw his hat in the ring.  They ramped up their Tourette’s after the 2010 election and despite the most racist, anti-homosexual, anti-women, anti-worker and frankly anti-American rhetoric,  they’ve been excused with a wink and a nod, and childish postulations that “both sides do it”.  So the idea that another Republican said something inflammatory, especially about women, should come as no surprise.

How is Todd Akin able to run for office, anyway?  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that he has been voting from an address where he has not resided for a decade.  For a “normal” citizen that would be “felony” voter fraud, worthy of jail time and the loss of voting privileges for life.   But clearly, there is no such criteria for politicians.  Mitt Romney had the same issue, but he was able to simply change a tax filing and then run for governor.  But that’s another issue.  The issue at hand is the Republican obsession with women’s reproduction.

Hoping to take down abortion and Obama, Republicans thought they had a winning issue in the debate over “personhood.” Lawmakers in Virginia passed a personhood bill in the House of Delegates; in Oklahoma, the Senate overwhelmingly gave the green light to a similar plan; referendums were introduced twice in Colorado and once in Mississippi.  And in at least a dozen states, anti-abortion activists are attempting to place such initiatives on the ballots this year.

The laws are intended to override the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling, Roe v. Wade and effectively prohibit virtually all abortions.  It is of interest to note that in 2011, Supreme Court Justice “Broccoli” Scalia argued that women do not have equal protection under the 14th amendment as “people” because men’s rights are guaranteed by specific language in the Constitution, but women’s rights are not mentioned.

It’s no secret that I believe  many republican men hate their mothers (even the ones who help them lie).  Insensitive, stupid statements have been made across the nation as Republicans try to drag women back to the dark ages.  Men who like and respect women don’t have ideas like this:

* Rep. John  LaBruzzo  of Louisiana proposed that women who receive public welfare benefits receive $1,000 if they voluntarily choose to be sterilized.  I suppose that’s better than the government reigniting eugenics, but it strikes me as an odd position for politicians who want to protect an embryo.

* Rep. Dan Burton sponsored an amendment that would promote contraception for wild horses while he voted against contraception for women.  I guess impregnating a horse would be a political disaster.

* Rep. Chris Smith of Nevada wants to redefine rape. He feels pregnancies resulting in women who were raped while drugged or extremely intoxicated,  mentally incapable, or victims of date rape would not be considered  the result of [“forcible rape”].  You drunken retards are just a bunch of shameless hussies.

* South Dakota Rep. Phil Jensen proposed to make homicide  permissible if committed by a person “while resisting an attempt to harm” that person’s unborn child or the unborn child of that person’s spouse, partner, parent, or child…making it legal to murder doctors who perform abortions. Pre-natal Stand Your Ground.

* Two Maryland Republican officials, C. Paul Smith and Kirby Delauter, justified their decision to cut Head Start by saying that women should really be married and home with their kids, thus rendering the program unnecessary,

Romney and Ryan both support personhood. In fact, Ryan also cosponsored a federal personhood bill, the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which declares that a fertilized egg is entitled to the exact same legal rights as a human being.

Republicans have actually been crazy for a long time.

In 1988, in an abortion debate Rep. Stephen Freind, R-Delaware County, the Legislature’s leading abortion foe, said:

“It is almost but not quite impossible to become pregnant on the basis of rape. The odds are one in millions and millions and millions. And there is a physical reason for that….Rape, obviously, is a traumatic experience. When that traumatic experience is undergone, a woman secretes a certain secretion, which has a tendency to kill sperm.”

In 1995, Republican Representative Henry Aldridge debated a proposal to eliminate a state abortion fund for poor women:

“The facts show that people who are raped…who are truly raped…the juices don’t flow, the body functions don’t work and they don’t get pregnant…. “Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever.”

In 2003, Democrats sought to block the appointment of  James Leon Holmes, a Bush nominee to a Federal Judgeship. Among other things, Holmes had written in a 1997 article that

“concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.”

Anyway, I’ve said it before, men have the right to their beliefs, I just don’t want them imposed on me. I respect the opinions of people who speak from experience and have a stake in the outcome of the problem they seek to resolve. To my way of thinking, if they really want to have credibility about the abortion issue, then men should get knocked up. Until then, I for one would appreciate it if they would just shut-up.

(By Fay Paxton, cross-posted at The Pragmatic Pundit)

If I hear that right-wing narrative about how the federal government and its do-gooder programs are holding America back one more time, like Rick Santorum, I’m liable to puke.  “If only government would get out of the way, along with its regulations, its taxes and its social safety net.. “ they sing.   They spout platitudes about bygone days, a rose-colored social construct, and the sanctity of the Constitution.  The irony is, the very politicians and citizens who can lay claim to middle and upper class status (and fight so ferociously to withhold it from everyone else) can do so only because of a government “New Deal” that lifted their parents or grandparents from the ravages of the Great Depression.

The Tea Party and Justice Broccoli invoke the Tenth Amendment and “states rights”, but, in fact, the Constitution represents the shift of power from the states to the national government.  It eradicates states’ sovereignty which had existed under the Articles of Confederation.  The goal of the Constitutional Convention was to create a federal system that could address national problems and make the country competitive with Europe.  It also sought to protect the new nation from outside forces as well as those within.  Unlike the idiots who represent our government today, the Founders who drafted the Constitution, quite sensibly saw danger in disunity.

The Tenth Amendment states simply that: 

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the  Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.” 

Now think about it, what exactly does that mean?  Then consider that the very first Article of the Constitution, the touchstone of our nation,  states,  “ALL LEGISLATIVE POWERS herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.”  So what then are the powers not delegated to the Congress by the Constitution?  The Tenth Amendment is nothing more than a seed of peace, added to appease the State’s Rights advocates, who even today are still fighting the Civil War and that includes Justice Broccoli, et al.

I speak of the Tenth Amendment because the tortured interpretation of its meaning places us where we find ourselves today.  It is the basis for the “laboratories of democracy” concept that many refer to regarding healthcare.  Never mind that we’ve already had healthcare experiments.  In 1994 Kentucky enacted reforms regarding preexisting conditions, but without an individual mandate. Kentucky was forced to repeal the reform when insurance costs rose so steeply insurers pulled out of the market altogether. Initiatives introduced in New York and New Jersey faced similar problems.  While, in Massachusetts, where reform was coupled with an individual mandate, the system has worked.  How many laboratories do we need?

And finally, there’s that pathetic whine about “loss of liberty”.  A decision that Congress has the power to enact the individual mandate speaks only to whether the government has the power to require citizens to participate in health insurance.  Nothing more, nothing less. The framers gave Congress the power to address problems of national scope that could not adequately be left to the states. Healthcare is precisely such a problem. One that has been broached by both Democratic and Republican presidents for nearly a century.  Clearly, were states up to the task, we would not have this dilemma.  The same can be said of the Republicans, who now have ALL the answers, but apparently had none when they occupied the House, Senate and White House from 2001 to 2007.  They should change their name to the Reactionaries.

My friend argues that if the government can tell us to buy health insurance, they will soon tell us we must buy an electric car or place solar panels on our homes.  An asinine theory, for we have a choice to purchase a car or not, to buy a house or not. Illness, an accident or debilitating disease is not a choice.  Besides, the individual mandate is aimed at people who fail to acquire insurance, and then cannot pay the cost of their own health care when they need it. That cost is ultimately borne by the rest of us. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that in 2008 the uninsured shifted $43 billion of health care costs to those of us who are covered.

Have you noticed that those who yell loudest are already insured and are therefore not affected by the new law?  Whatever the case, absolutely nothing in the Constitution even remotely guarantees a right to be a free rider and to shift the costs of one’s health care to others.

According to Justice Broccoli,  “If every person comes within the Commerce Clause power of Congress to regulate by the simple reason that he will one day engage in commerce, the idea of a limited Government power is at an end.”

Congress plainly can tax for the purpose of providing health insurance. It does so already, through Medicare and Medicaid. Of course, Medicare contributions are a tax, not a purchase.  Or is it?  Isn’t it a purchase of insurance?  Whatever, to my way of thinking, an obligation to pay has the same effect whether we call it a tax, purchase, fee, fine, penalty or contribution. In fact, Medicare is even worse than the Affordable Care Act, because it requires an investment over a lifetime, that God forbid, one might not live long enough to collect.  But of course, Medicare forces us to buy health insurance from the government, rather than from private insurers, even though the option is available. In the final analysis, the problem, solution, intent and end result are the same.

The four justices said people who don’t want health insurance are “quite simply not participants in that market, and cannot be made so (and thereby subjected to regulation) by the simple device of defining participants to include all those who will, later in their lifetime, probably purchase the goods or services covered by the mandated insurance.”

This ignores the very purpose and idea of insurance.  It provides  protection against a possible eventuality.  Medicare presumes that people will reach age 65 and need medical attention.  An employed 22 year-old is not exempt because they refuse to project 43 years into the future.  Consequently, in that same vein, the  Medicare mandate legislates “inactivity” for 43 years. Would it really be erroneous to suggest that Medicare “purchases” future healthcare coverage?  And since the 22 year-old cannot actually benefit from the purchase, can the purchaser be considered “inactive”? Such knit-picking analogies could go on forever.

Justice Broccoli wrote:  “Indeed, the main objection many have to the Mandate is that they have no intention of purchasing most or even any of such goods or services and thus no need to buy insurance for those purchases.”

Despite proclamations about Justice Broccoli’s superior intellect, this is far-flung reasoning.  People require medical care and in fact die, at every stage of life.  The question is not whether one wants it, but whether it is needed.  One may not want a vaccination, afterall who actually plans to contract polio, yet it is mandated none the less.  Such a statement indicates that he was less worried about the interpretation of the Constitution and the economic viability of the nation than he was about the boundaries of government authority.

The argument  that the framers could not possibly have envisioned a congressional power to force purchases is upended by the fact that in 1798, Congress required seamen to buy hospital insurance.  Some believed the Justices felt the Merchant Marine law outdated, but when giving his snide dissent to the immigration law, Justice Broccoli had no problem reaching all the way back into the caverns of abolitionists.

More importantly, the Justices initially determined they could hear the case because the mandate did not represent a tax.  Only to turn full circle and determine the mandate could only be legitimate because it is a tax.  But wait!  If the mandate is a tax, how does the court have the right to pass judgment at all before it goes into effect?  This is the kind of insidious legal beagle double-speak one should expect to hear at a bond hearing.  Instead of hallowed halls of deliberation, the Supreme Court sounds more like  “Let’s Make a Deal” with Justice Roberts assuming the role of Monty Hall.

I see absolutely nothing heroic or commendable about the Robert’s decision. The justices ignored precedent, Congress’s right and duty to regulate and secure the economic welfare of the nation,  and the Constitution in favor of an ideology that is entrenched in the defunct Articles of Confederation.    I do not accept that any of them had serious doubts about the Constitutionality of the minimum coverage provisions of the Affordable Care Act, but were simply determined to reinterpret the limits of the Commerce Clause, undermine the Federal government and who knows, perhaps even this President.  So it came down to, you give me the Medicaid that Conservatives mortally despise and I’ll give you the mandate.

People who shudder at the prospect of the nation becoming a “nanny state” should be equally concerned when “nanny judges” tell us what laws we can write.

(By Mark Bridger, cross-posted at ThatMansScope)

Almost none of the commentators on the recent Supreme Court hearings devoted to “ObamaCare” (the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”, which I’ll refer to as ACA) dare to question whether the 4 out-and-out “conservative” justices have any intention of actually fairly evaluating the issues in the light of logic or precedent. Perhaps the commentators are uneasy about outright criticism of the Court, or are worried that they may be held accountable for predictions as to the outcome (to be announced in a few months). One of the few sources that have criticized the Court on these grounds is Talking Points Memo, which recently noted that Justice Scalia’s questions and remarks have exactly echoed Republican talking points about healthcare; another is Scot Lehigh, writing in the Boston Globe.

Recent pivotal cases seem to suggest that the conservative justices, whoever they may be, put their personal politics, not law or reason, first in their decisions. In Bush v. Gore, for example, justices Scalia, Rehnquist and Thomas reversed nearly all of their previous interpretations of “states’ rights” and the “Equal Protection” clause in over-ruling the Florida Supreme Court. In the recent “Citizens United” case the thin conservative majority created new law and over-ruled previous precedents in claiming free-speech rights for corporations, rights that they had been rather stingy in granting to actual people. At least one of the justices, Clarence Thomas, almost never asks a question, and seems to have been clearly and predictably guided throughout his career on the bench by an internal ideology, inflexibly reactionary.

(This is not to say that liberal justices aren’t predisposed to vote their biases, it’s just that the conservatives are far more “activist” — willing to overthrow established legal precedent — and the conservative philosophy is so much more predictable and simple-minded.)

Let’s take a look at the quality of the conservative questioning so far in what is officially called Florida v. Department of Health & Human Services.

First, Justice Kennedy asked administration lawyer: “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?” and further asked him to state “some limits on the Commerce Clause.”

This is disingenuous and an obvious attempt to get Solicitor General Verrilli to overstep. ACA does not create the commerce in health insurance. A large majority of Americans have some form of health insurance, and a majority of the others would buy it if they could. ACA no more creates a market for insurance than the Patriot Act creates a need for security measures against terrorism, or Medicare creates a need for healthcare for senior citizens. Furthermore, even if one were to concede that ACA creates commerce by forcing people to have healthcare insurance, that would certainly be entirely reasonable in the case of insurance, where the whole point is to protect large numbers of people at controllable cost through the central idea of insurance: spreading the risk. If only sick people bought insurance, the rates they would have to pay would be prohibitive. Invoking the Preamble to the Constitution, to “promote the general welfare” by instituting universal healthcare, the Congress would have to have either a totally government-run system, or else enforce an individual mandate as provided by ACA.

Belying his reputation as a deep thinker, Justice Scalia later stated: “Everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food. Therefore, everybody is in the market. Therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.”

The naivete and childishness of the remark is astonishing. Yes, the market is food, so we could demand that people buy food: that is the correct analogy. Would anyone make a test case against forcing people to buy food (or grow it)? This is indeed an individual mandate that seems entirely harmless because we rarely think about it. If you can’t afford this individual mandate, then the government provides food stamps. Any problem with that? If you refuse both, then you can either starve yourself and your family or steal — both of which are strongly discouraged by law.

So what about broccoli? There would be no logic in the government demanding you buy broccoli since the issue is starvation, and broccoli alone won’t prevent that. No government would ever require a particular food or foods any more than it would require that you buy a particular  brand of health insurance. The government does regulate the food that is available, and does provide guidelines for healthy eating. If you choose to starve yourself, then you’ll either die in seclusion, or you’ll be taken to a hospital and (force) fed nutrients to save your life. The costs of such a treatment, of course, will be picked up by others. People who make a habit of doing this are not generally considered hearty independents, but rather loonies or social parasites.

So what about healthcare? Like food, everyone needs it sooner or later, but this need is distributed statistically. It can be rationed by insurance companies — they may not cover pre-existing conditions, for example, or certain procedures or certain high-risk people. It can be rationed by expense/income. However, for all classes of people except the very young and healthy, it is least expensive when the pool of people covered is very large. So, those who can afford but refuse to buy insurance are, in the same sense as those who refuse to buy food, social parasites: they raise the costs for everyone else, and they occasionally must be underwritten by others. This is the correct analogy, not the infantile one of a government forcing us to eat broccoli.

Of course Justice Scalia may have meant broccoli to stand for “healthy foods” or a healthy lifestyle, and is worried that the government might be using the Commerce Clause as a way of setting our menus for us — sort of a Commerce Clause “domino theory”: Eating healthy food is good for you, hence lowers the cost of healthcare for all, hence the next step is to force everyone to eat broccoli under the guise of regulating interstate commerce. I wonder whether Scalia ever worried about the implications of asserting that corporations are people and thus have the same rights as people. Should they vote? Hold office? (They clearly have all sorts of sexual rights: they’ve been doing nasty stuff to us for decades.) Talk about inventing constitutional law.

Just a few weeks ago most legal experts felt that it was clear that the individual mandate was constitutional, and that even Scalia might end up voting that way. So now,  let me be among the first to predict: The conservatives will once again vote their ideology to overturn all sorts of legal precedent and declare the individual mandate unconstitutional.

A few days ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that California had to reduce its prison overcrowding crisis by 30,000 inmates within the next two years.   The conservative outcry was predictable, led by dissenting Justice Scalia’s fearmongering about violent criminals roaming the streets.  But the reality is that many in prison are there for non-violent drug possession offenses, and we need to find ways to reform our criminal justice system so that we can free up limited resources for spending on education, rehabilitation, and economic development, rather than continuing to imprison more than two million Americans.

Here is Winning Progressive’s comment on the Supreme Court’s California prison ruling:

The prison overcrowding epidemic in California is a direct result of the ridiculous war on drugs in America. Ending that war and focusing on treatment and rehabilitation rather than criminalization would go a long way toward relieving prison overcrowding, reducing crime, and saving resources that could be focused on providing education and economic opportunity, rather than imprisonment.

California has a prison system designed to hold 80,000 people. At one point, they housed 160,000 prisoners, and it currently has 145,000 inmates. Approximately 20% of those inmates are in jail for non-violent drug possession offenses. A focus on treatment and rehabilitation, rather than prison, for such drug offenders would bring California a long way toward eliminating its prison overcrowding.

The funds freed up from not paying $50,000 or more per year to imprison people for drug possession could also be used to fund programs to reduce recidivism of people who have served their sentences. For example, Michigan has developed the very successful Michigan Prisoner Reentry Initiative (“MPRI”) that takes a comprehensive approach toward helping parolees re-enter society. The program has helped reduce Michigan’s recidivism rate by 27%, and has enabled the state to successfully release more people on parole. It is a successful program that should be replicated in other states.

The U.S. imprisons more than 1% of our fellow Americans. The total incarceration rate in the U.S. has increased by 700% between 1970 and 2005. Such imprisonment costs our country well over $60 billion every year, using up limited state and local resources that could be better spent on education, infrastructure, and creating jobs. It is time to stop the war on drugs and the ever-escalating imprisonment rate that results before every state ends up in the same situation as California.