He didn’t last time.
1 Like
I’ve been waiting since the middle of 2009 to see the much promised Republiscum health care plan. And so far, Alan Grayson’s version, “Don’t get sick. And if you do, die quickly,” is by far the most detailed. Rots of ruck. Republiscum, in coming up with something, anything, vaguely plausible in the next few weeks.
7 Likes
The real healthcare tragedy is that John Boehner isn’t getting treatment for his serious alcoholism addiction. Boehner continues to act irrationally and swings with the hour of the day and how long it’s been since martini hour. I’m just surprised the main stream media (conservative news corporations all of them) are letting this very important issue slide by.
The US House of Representatives is being led by a really bad alcoholic who desperately needs to get help.
5 Likes
The American people have voted with their feet, or in this case, their mouse clicks. With every passing day, more Americans depend on, and see the benefits of, Obamacare. And as Mr. Dooley noted, the Supreme Court follows the election returns.
The vote will be 6-3. You heard it here first.
4 Likes
I have been wondering how the ultra-reactionary wing of the court will justify gutting the ACA.
We have a hint in the way that Scalia justified overturning the Voting Right’s Act by saying:
“I don’t think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote against continuation of this act. And I am fairly confident it will be reenacted in perpetuity unless — unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution.”
In other words, “legislators were afraid to vote against the VRA, so we (SCOTUS) will do their job for them.”
The ultra-reactionary justices will use a similar justification to destroy the ACA. Their opinion will read something like this:
“The House of Representatives, the branch of government that most represents the will of the people, have voted 56 times to repeal the ACA. The repeal has been prevented by a handful of Senators and this President using procedural tactics. The only way for the people’s will to be expressed is by this court respecting their wishes.”
3 Likes
Hard to imagine this not being a vendetta, a battle over four words - “established by the state” - to not also include four other words - “or the federal government”?
And with the possible consequences of a favorable Republican decision we have Rep Ryan saying:
“We don’t have [a plan] yet, so I can’t tell you what it is,” Ryan said when pressed for specifics."
The War on Terror is right here at home.
5 Likes
That one quote puts the lie to everything Scalia pretends to believe in.
3 Likes
Justice Roberts take the republicans at their word that will
have a brand new healthcare plan that works as well as the ACA does even though
republicans have no plan or idea of what they are going to do and must do it in
3 months. Please Justice Roberts stake
your reputation and the worthiness of the Supreme Court on the word of a bunch Obama
haters who can’t and won’t govern.
1 Like
Because they don’t have to. At least they are limited, in their political need, to love only those who can assist them on the paths to political power and money. But, our peculiar constitutional system is predisposed to allow it. In many ways it’s fundamentally undemocratic - the electoral college; states with less population than the city of Phoenix get the same number or senators as California; no explicit right to vote in the constitution; the devolution of voting rights to individual states creates an inherently dysfunctional and unfair elector system; currently, free speech for abstract entities - corporations.
The founding fathers [were there mothers?] were not wizards or the 18th century equivalent of Marvel Comic Book heroes. I dare say, some of them may have been deemed truly contemptible people, if we really could have gotten to know them. But our constitution is not holy writ and the political system it produces is no longer exceptional, if it ever was. Jefferson thought it should be reviewed every twenty years, if I recall correctly. The question should always be: Is it working for the common people and the common good? I leave the answers to you. But for me the parchment flogging is becoming an end in itself. “Was man made for the law, or the law made for man?”
Sorry for the rant
5 Likes
The SCOTUS is not going to gut the subsidies. The legal case against them is incredibly weak and the consequences are enormous.
If somehow they did, it would be a huge political loser for Republicans. People won’t realize how good Obamacare until they are forced to go back to the old system.
The states will have to scramble and find a way to keep the subsidies coming and prevent their insurance industry from having a death spiral. Either Republican governors will be forced to grudgingly accept Obamacare or face a huge backlash from the public.
1 Like
Republicans are not working on a “fix.” They’re working on an entirely new plan that would replace the ACA. Either they get Obama to sign it and Republicans get credited for saving Americans’ health insurance, or Obama vetoes it and gets blamed for Americans losing their health care.
If a snake swallows a speeding train, it can be harder on the snake than it is on the train. Maybe Roberts is smart enough to realize this would be the end of the Supreme Court as we know it. Certainly Boehner is not smart enough to realize that the remains of the Republican/TEA party would be scattered in tiny pieces along several miles of track.
2 Likes
“We feel obligated to have a contingency plan if King v. Burwell
goes to King,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a key committee chairman
overseeing health care policy, told reporters Friday on Capitol Hill.
“The idea is to show what our alternative to Obamacare would look like.”
This is what gross incompetence looks like. They don’t have a plan for getting people health insurance. Five plus years into the fucking debate, and they still don’t have an alternative They just want to destroy what is in place. That’s all they’ve got.
5 Likes
If the congress would just change the name of ACA-(OBAMCARE) to (BONER RYAN-CARE). I believe the American people would accept it as is.
They’re not working on a plan. They’re talking about having a plan. There’s a huge difference.
6 Likes
It’s basically the Republican strategy of driving the car into the ditch and then claiming that it doesn’t work.
6 Likes
But consider this. The main issue at the heart of this case is the Chevron Principle, which basically says that the courts cannot substitute their interpretations for an agencies interpretation of a statute, if the agency’s interpretation is at least reasonable. That has been a precedent since the early 80s and upheld unanimously as recently as 2012 (twice that year).
If that precedent can be unwound, administrative law will be tossed on its head, with countless challenges to tons of agency interpretations coming forward. Sounds pretty dire, unless of course you happen to be in the camp that wants to do away with government regulations. Which, given their extensive backgrounds as corporate attorneys, both Roberts and Alito are. As well as most of Wall Street.
Much ado it being made today on twitter about when the “deadline” for the GOP to have a fix would actually be in order to give Roberts a thumbs up to go ahead with gutting Obamacare and not worry about the ensuing chaos. The arguments seem to be either the day in March after the oral arguments when the SCOTUS would go to conference and determine who writes which opinions, or some time in early June when such opinions are actually given. But from a Wall Street/Insurance company perspective, they have until the end of the year to respond to such radical changes in the market. (when the next coverage buy in period starts).
So its quite plausiable that Wall Street is figuring that Insurance companies will have plenty of time to reap their last harvest from Obamacare and be prepared to profit from the inevitable economic chaos once the death spiral starts. Plus, hey, it would signal the start of an era of removing regulations in nearly every industry. What Free Marketeer on Wall Street wouldn’t be giddy at that possibility??
3 Likes
Indeed. Every body knows that DC Comic Books heroes are where the real mojo is at, not Marvel 
Though I would argue, that the Constitution isn’t as hopeless as you seem to be feeling it is today. The issue with representation being skewed against densely populated urban areas for example, is not a fault of the Constitution…its the fault of a Congress that decided they didn’t want their special club to be any bigger, so, without an amendment or even a law, they set a cap on the number of Representatives. The Constitution guarantees 1 representative for every 30,000 voters, and while we can quibble if that number should perhaps be amended, there is no reasonable argument in my opinion, to back putting a hard cap on the total number of representatives and then doing the math backwards to make it fit. Go back to a model of assigning Representation based upon actual number of voters and suddenly those densely populated urban areas have a LOT of representatives…many more than the rural areas.
The way it is right now, though, this false ceiling on the size of the House, tends to mirror and exasperate the problems that every state having 2 Senators causes…which is, an over representation of rural voters. But that’s not the fault of the founding fathers. That’s the fault of a Congress 100+ years after they adopted the Constitution.
2 Likes
IMHO, a true democracy can only exist if there are totally impartial arbiters – and those folks do not exist. I can compare our Parliamentary system to yours, and think that yours is much more democratically laid out. And yet, the parliamentary system has existed far longer than the American experiment (even though it gets a bit messy at times, largely due to the presence of more than 2 opposing parties). Judging by the dysfunction brought about by 2-party extreme partisanship in all 3 branches, along with decisions such as Citizens United, I worry that your democracy (or sorry, your democratic republic!) is devolving into a plutocracy.
And, as I see it, the biggest problem lies in the judicial branch, whereby supposed-to-be-impartial judges are appointed on the basis their political leanings, by the party in government.
1 Like
The brillant mind of Jeff Sessions from Alabama isn’t working on an entirely new plan. His advice is to force Democrats to come up with an alternative for them. Which, as laughable as that is, is still better than what Lamar Alexander is offering up with is quite literally that Congress do absolutely nothing.
3 Likes