Excerpt: "The ideological nature of the health care case was obvious on the last day of oral argument. By the time the proceedings were over, much of what the conservative justices said in court seemed like part of a politically driven exercise."
File photo, Supreme Court building. (photo: America's Voice Online)
Activism and the Roberts Court
08 April 12
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he ideological nature of the health care case was obvious on the last day of oral argument. By the time the proceedings were over, much of what the conservative justices said in court seemed like part of a politically driven exercise - especially because the issues addressed on Wednesday were not largely constitutional in nature. In fact, they were the kinds of policy questions that are properly left to Congress and state governments to answer, not the Supreme Court.
On Wednesday morning, the court heard arguments on the issue of "severability" - the question of what should happen with the rest of the 2,700-page statute if the requirement that most Americans obtain health insurance is struck down. The insurance mandate was effectively reduced to a bumper sticker by the opponents in their constitutional challenge, and the entire law reduced to little more than an appendage to the mandate.
"My approach would be to say that if you take the heart out of the statute, the statute's gone," Justice Antonin Scalia said, a position held by the law's opponents, who want to demolish the whole thing. But H. Bartow Farr III, the lawyer appointed by the court to argue for upholding all other parts of the law if the mandate falls, showed how careless and wrong that view is. His presentation compellingly explained what Congress actually passed: a thoughtfully constructed, comprehensive solution to the enormous problems of insufficient insurance coverage and ever-mounting costs of health care.
As Mr. Farr made clear, the fate of the mandate should not determine the survival of the other elements of the law - like prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or charging them higher fees - which can operate without the mandate.
Under general principles, courts must avoid nullifying more of a law than is necessary. Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested that it would be more extreme to preserve part of the statute than to strike down the whole thing because that would alter Congress's intent. He could avoid this problem by upholding the mandate.
The last issue before the court was the law's expansion of Medicaid, which will be financed mostly by federal funds. The challengers contend the expansion coerces them to cover more poor people and that the penalty for refusing to do so would be a cutoff of federal money.
This is a bizarre view that treats Medicaid, a voluntary federal-state partnership, as an affront to state sovereignty. There is no legitimate constitutional question on this issue. It is disturbing that the conservative justices seriously entertained the opponents' argument.
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https://www.lewrockwell.com/2007/08/charles-burris/americas-first-fascist-president/
Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal: An Annotated Bibliographic Guide
roosevelt did not talk about socialism because he knew the owner class thought of socialists as people who would steal their money and than make slaves of them.
of course socialists don't see themselves that way. they see themselves as defending workers from employers who steal their money and make slaves of them.
it's still not smart to call yourself a socialist in american politics.
it's even less smart to run around "demanding" the rich pay for everything you want.
FDR made sure Social Security was NOT "welfare" but insurance for workers paid for by the workers themselves it turned out to be a really good idea.
no wonder both the insane right and the far left both hate it.
the right settling for nothing but law of the jungle and the left settling for nothing but "make the rich pay."
and the pundits knowing nothing about it.
In principle I don't care if the rich get richer, UNLESS they do so at my expense, which is generally the case. But emphasizing that muddies the issue.
Ultimately the one percent are better off if they understand that they have a lot in common with everyone else. Having as much money in comparison with even, say, the 50th percentile as the one percent currently does insulates them from the real tribulations of everyone else to the extent that they see themselves as a different KIND of person, or maybe not a person at all but some kind of inherently superior beings.
DINO'S. =. Democrats In Name Only
because so few "get it!"
and media does not care to explain it!
We have just been through a week of acrimony over what makes a "concentration camp" different from, say, a Boy Scout camp or an outdoor prison surrounded by razor wire whose occupants are abused, starved and treated as sub-humans. Similarly, the word "socialism" is used to mean more different arrangements than there are people who identify as socialists, with virtually everyone who uses the term claiming that their definition is its one and only true meaning.
Words that have such broad and disparate meanings have no meaning at all, so become bludgeons to say "You're wrong, COMPLETELY wrong, and I'm completely right" (cf. "liberal," "conservative") . The issue is not what socialism is or isn't, nor is it whether socialism is good or bad, but "cui bono?" (for whose benefit--Latin, so this has been an issue for a very long time). Propagandists for every tyrant who ever lived insisted that their every act was for the good of the people, and enough of the people believed it enough of the time to keep the tyrants in power most of the time, and it is still the case today. The only real remedy seems to be universal public education in BS detection.
But, in any case, Bernie doesn't get too far ahead of what he thinks is possible to accomplish in the intermediate term. The programs he has outlined may not meet some peoples definition of socialism but they will lay the groundwork for more after he is out of office.