Obamacare Upheld, Roberts Joins the Left

Discussion in 'Politics' started by madanthonywayne, Jun 28, 2012.

  1. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    12,461
    Good one.
    Bullshit. That is misleading if not outright dishonest. Yes, one conservative think tank supported the idea and a few conservative politicians agreed with it. Even among conservative think tanks, however, the idea was controversial. Here's a quote from a 1994 New Republic article:

    The idea of an individual mandate was never one that was popular, or even heard of, among the grass roots conservatives.

    Furthermore, while I'll admit there is a certain logic to the idea of an individual mandate as a way of preventing someone from becoming a burden on society thru his or her reckless lack of insurance, this argument would only justify a basic high deductable policy that would cover a catastrophic medical bill. This would be analogous to the requirement to carry liability insurance on your automobile. There is no requirement to have full coverage, only a requirement to protect other people from any damage you might cause to their vehicles.

    But Obamacare doesn't require a basic policy. It requires "full coverage". Worse yet, it doesn't just require insurance cover at least certain things. Oh no. That would leave the US citizen with too much freedom. Too many choices. It also penalizes (taxes) any coverage that is too good.

    In other words, you'd better have the exact coverage Obama wants you to have, or he'll penalize you (tax you, as per Justice Roberts).

    Even putting aside the individual mandate and the issue of whether or not "conservatives" in general previously supported such a policy, there's also the issue of the blizzard of new regulations and taxes in Obamacare. The cuts to Medicare. The expansion of Medicaid at a time of fiscal crisis. The perverse incentives for any small company to never hire that 50th employee and/or to fire a few employees should they find themselves over the magic number. There's much to hate in Obamacare even for someone who totally agrees with the concept of an individual mandate.
    Inside baseball from some jackass politician. Most conservatives were thrilled that Clinton signed welfare reform into law and balanced the budget. I certainly was. Clinton, unlike Obama, actually cared about the opinions of the American people and responded to the drubbing he took in 1994 by adjusting his policies. Once the Republicans took over congress, Clinton wasn't a bad president. Obama, on the other hand, is completely oblivious to the will of the American people and responded to the drubbing he took in 2010 by doubling down on the very policies that spawned the 2010 backlash.
     
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  3. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    What is important in my view is what works regardless of the originator. Obamacare works, we have similar models that prove it does work. While I think there are better solutions, Obamacare is light years better than the current setup.

    Repeal of Glass-Steagall was a bad idea and remains a bad idea. I don’t have to agree or disagree with every idea coming out of a think tank. I can support those that make sense and reject those that do not.

    There are two very different parties in the US. Let’s remember that The Heritage Group only developed what we now know as Obamacare when Hillary Clinton attempted to advance a single payer system -an idea that would have wreaked havoc with the healthcare industry’s lucrative profits. So when Clinton’s healthcare endeavor failed, Republicans promptly shelved their healthcare plan as the threat of a radical restructuring of our healthcare industry was no longer in the offing. The Heritage Group healthcare plan was and remains the most healthcare industry friendly reform available. But no reform for as long as possible is the most profitable solution for the healthcare industry. Were it not for President Obama and the Democrats that Heritage Plan would still be on the shelf.
     
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  5. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    The People: A factor seemingly unaccounted for

    We seem to look at this issue as a problem of parties vs. people insofar as the whole problem rests with the parties. Yet what role do the people play?

    Social issues make the most striking example: Why did President Obama move so slowly on civil rights for homosexuals? Well, the same reason Democrats in general have been so weak on gay rights: They're terrified of voters.

    Bill Clinton should have vetoed DoMA, for instance, since it defies Article IV of the Constitution. It would have been a symbolic veto, of course, as both chambers clearly had override numbers (342 yea in House; 85 yea in Senate).

    Why did the "liberals" vote for DoMA? Because they knew what would happen at the ballot box if they didn't.

    Politics is not like the game of Life, where you spin a wheel in an orderly fashion each time it's your turn. It's not Candy Land, either, where you draw a card that tells you what to do. It's something akin to chess. That is, it would have been nice to have Democrats stand up to DoMA, but with the right wing's capacity for generating and exploiting fear, it is also easy to see why 1996 was not the time to make that stand.

    Obamacare is much similar. Liberals are, naturally, disappointed that the public option was pulled from the possibilities so early; it looked like Obama had no intention of fighting for it. To the other, look at how badly conservatives have responded to their own plan. As I recently told Joe:

    Remember that we, as supporters of the Democratic Party's efforts, have been cornered into defending a policy we never much liked from the outset. This is no small feat ....​

    If the Democrats lost additional seats in '96 because of DoMA, or got buried by swing bloc ambivalence or disdain toward the public option, what are the longer-term implications? Republicans have already shown that their jobs agenda consists of two parts: repeal the PPACA and ban abortion.

    We cannot simultaneously criticize politicians for both ignoring the voters and playing to them. Certes, our public discourse is a mess, but that's part of the point. Accepting that politicians appear incompetent on the best of days, we, the people, aren't making their jobs any easier.

    There is an ideological notion of the political "center", and there is also a practical version. The practical center has been creeping rightward for decades. Now, as the Democrats are holding formerly Republican ground, they have virtually no fear of being outflanked and hit from the rear—i.e., Republicans are not about to circle around and attack from the liberal side.

    In the last decade, the political center has seen fit to approve of Gitmo, the Iraq War, and even the reasonability of the claim that Teri Schiavo was still "alive". Republicans are a hairsbreadth from effectively banning abortion in several states. The Heritage Foundation health plan is now considered liberal.

    Yes, we know the politicians are completely screwed in their heads. But what the hell is up with voters?
     
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  7. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Overlooking Godwin Was Apparently a Bad Idea

    Overlooking Godwin Was Apparently a Bad Idea

    Gov. Paul LePage (R-ME), decided his "gestapo" remarks weren't quite severe enough. This morning, at a fundraiser for Vermont gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock, LePage took his argument—such as it is—even further:

    Standing by Brock's side at the Sheraton in South Burlington, the Maine governor said, "What I am trying to say is the Holocaust was a horrific crime against humanity and, frankly, I would never want to see that repeated. Maybe the IRS is not quite as bad — yet."

    LePage then said, "They're headed in that direction."

    Asked if he had a sense of what the Gestapo did during the second world war, LePage said, "Yeah, they killed a lot of people." Asked whether the IRS "was headed in the direction of killing a lot of people," LePage answered: "Yeah."


    (Heintz)

    Mr. Brock attempted one of those sorts of positional maneuvers that is only really possible in science fiction and politics, simultaneously distancing himself from LePage's comments while also trying to move closer:

    Brock, who stood side-by-side with LePage during the nine minute interview, at first declined to disavow the Maine governor's comments, saying,"Each of us has friends who make comments that they stand by. Those are their comments. They're not necessarily my comments."

    Asked again whether he disagreed with LePage's contention that the IRS is on its way to killing people, Brock said he interpreted it differently.

    "What I interpreted the governor as saying is that the policies that we're following may lead to unintended harm, and that's my interpretation," he said.

    Giving LePage the benefit of the doubt here, we should simply remind that using ludicrous hyperbole to express a political truism—e.g., "the policies that we're following may lead to unintended harm"—isn't always a good idea.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Heintz, Paul. "At Brock Fundraiser, Maine Gov. Paul LePage Doubles Down on 'Gestapo' Comment". Blurt. July 12, 2012. 7d.Blogs.com. July 12, 2012. http://7d.blogs.com/blurt/2012/07/m...n-gestapo-comment-after-brock-fundraiser.html
     
  8. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    Well that is partly my point. The people are being manipulated. Why aren't Republican voters looking at their representatives with skewered glances as they lambast their own plan they happen to call socialist? Why are Democratic politicians allowing the lambasting without noting that they are in fact representing a Republican plan? Why is everyone for example even calling it Obamacare.

    Social issues is probably the only area where I see any real difference between the parties. Republicans by and large are always advancing their conservative family values and Dems are always open to liberalization. On the other hand it seems to me that even though these issues are important they can mask the more sinister aspects where the two parties converge, I'm speaking specifically of how they both pander to large financial and corporate institutions and allow and undue presence in government, both parties advancing war agends, neither party willing to introduce finance reform. I know gay rights are important to a lot of people but I think they are side issues, as many social issues are like immigration for instance, when government is co-opted in other areas.




    Well that represents a crisis of values on the part of the Democratic party, if they can no longer hold their ground and compromise at every intersection. Instead of asking what's up with the voters why not ask what choice do the voters have? When you say they need to vote for the lesser of two evils then you are asking them to make the same compromises their party has made. What can voters do if government is more responsive to the highest bidder and not the electorate (Citizens United)? When you have lobbyist writing bills then both parties just look like technocrats for financial interests. Yes I blame the people but what are the people to do if they find government unresponsive to their own agendas? I notice Democrats making no serious attempts at reigning in the powers of government (patriot act), making no serious moves to reign in financial institutions while offering watered down options such as Dodd-Frank, and meanwhile you have congress ejaculating in the presence of Jamie Dimon (the gambling crook

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    .).

    I only wish Stanley Kubrick were alive to make a Dr. Strangelove version of Washington politics. But what do you think? What do you think is happening with "the people"? What should they be doing?
     
  9. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    9,879
    Which portion of the American people? Right or Left? I always feel now that when anyone speaks of "the people" have to ask which side of the dividing line they're talking about.
     
  10. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    Matters of Degrees

    To some degree, they let themselves be manipulated.

    There is also the question of the media. As long as we fight about left/right bias in media, people tend to overlook the overriding media bias: money.

    Superficial controversies sell better than boring wonkery. Watch the Fast & Furious scandal; major media outlets, political cartoonists, and an overwhelming majority of the punditry seem to disregard a recent Fortune article that exposed how ridiculous the controversy is.

    People's priorities are elsewhere. The information is there, and Fortune isn't some obscure corner of the publishing world or internet. But in the days since the article emerged, the mainstream narrative hasn't changed much.

    To some degree, voter ignorance or apathy is explicable and expected. But there is also a matter of degrees. A friend once criticized me for having an informed opinion, because not everybody gets to pay as much attention to the news cycle as I can. Yeah, that was an interesting moment.

    But there is a nasty cycle in the "free market": Marketplace providers give consumers options, and consumers choose between them. The problem here occurs if none of the options are satisfactory. Like the whole, "Five hundred channels, and nothing's on," bit. Media companies are understandably reluctant to become too obscurely wonky; they'll get blasted in the ratings. Yet at the same time, people won't stop consuming the product. There is no capital incentive to provide better media coverage of the public discourse.

    The idea of the average working voter taking time out to read seven thousand words from Fortune magazine? Well, there are many voters who don't bother to read the Voter's Guide that comes out for each election, just as there are plenty of Christians who don't bother to figure out what's actually in the Bible. They're not necessarily willful in their apathy; it's symptomatic of the American way of life. People are busy, and even in good years they're fretting about a billion little things.

    Well, the problem is that the process is similar.

    Like your mention of Dodd-Frank. The case explaining what's wrong and why a proposed solution is expected to work is often complicated. The response, however, is simple: What about the jobs? It will destroy jobs!

    Doesn't matter if it's true. To wit, we had in Washington state, in the 1990s, an "any willing provider" initiative before the people that would allow people to take their health insurance to any doctor who meets policy standards. You know, the whole, "If I change plans, I have to change doctors," thing. The idea was to do away with this particular issue.

    Insurance companies got together and released a statement saying, "If you pass this, we will raise policy rates." They didn't even try to justify necessity. The whole message was, "If you pass this law, your rates are going to go up because we say so." Opposition to the initiative focused on the prospect of rising rates, and the vote rejected "any willing provider". Nobody ever explained to voters why rates must go up. As far as anyone can tell, rates would have gone up to punish people for passing the law.

    But it was enough to defeat the initiative.

    While left-wing direct action has long been reviled, the Tea Party movement seems to have altered the general outlook on such demonstrations. Indeed, the Occupy movement probably could not have been as influential as it was if not for the Tea Party.

    But setting that aspect aside, yes, voters have been complacent long enough that they might well have to get out in the streets and shake things up before the politicians listen to them.

    What choice do voters have? Take their civic duty beyond the ballot in order to make the point clearly.

    Compromises? Well, okay: What do you think two terms of unilateral Republican control over the federal government will accomplish?

    If Democrats bury themselves standing on principal? Well, okay. Have fun in the conservative utopia.

    Marx recognized after the 1848 debacle that the middle class has just enough to call too much too lose. That's why they broke in favor of the bourgeoisie.

    McMansions, satellite hi-def television, blazing fast internet connections, a latte stand on nearly every corner ... people have become accustomed to the privileges and expectations of the middle class. Will they risk it for single-payer health care? Probably not. Did they risk it to stop the insane war in Iraq? No. To protect their civil rights in the War on Terror? No. For what will they risk unsettling the way of things? In truth, I don't know. But I do understand why they're hesitant to take the risk.

    Give me my agenda, and life will get better for Americans and, likely, our international neighbors as well. Put that agenda on the ballot, and voters will bury it.

    Aye. It would be interesting, to say the least.

    Well, it's a complicated enough consideration that I'll have to give it some thought, but the first thing they should do is inform themselves. Hopefully, everything else will come naturally.
     
  11. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    22,910
    Yes and it is the truth. The Republican Party as it has been for the last two plus decades is a shadow of its former self. It has become far more extreme and deviated far from its stated principals.


    You should read your own references.

    “It is certainly true that the Heritage Foundation and many Republican politicians supported it. Although this fact hardly establishes that it is a good idea or, when imposed at the federal level, a constitutional one, it is a fact, and it’s worth noting. Conservatives were not always as dead-set against the mandate as they are now, and some influential conservatives supported it.” – National Review

    “So yes, conservative opinion on the mandate has changed.” – National Review

    The facts are your Republican House Speaker supported the individual mandate (Obamacare) back in 1994 when it was created by the Heritage Foundation and as recently as a few years ago before the election of President Obama, before Limbaugh and company turned it into a drama queen du jour issue for the Republican Party.

    So you are saying for more than two decades the Republican House Speaker and his fellow Republicans in Congress did not represent the Republican Party?

    Given how uninformed the Republican grass roots have been and continue to be, I don’t find that too much of a stretch. The fact is as I previously mentioned, Obamacare was the Republican solution to our healthcare crisis. It was created by one of the most prestigious conservative think tanks in the nation and adopted by Republican leaders in Washington and around the nation as the Republican solution to Hillarycare.

    Hogwash or perhaps I should use the more dramatic, Bullshit! Yeah there is a lot of logic in requiring people to be responsible for their health insurance expenses to the degree they are capable of doing so. Obamacare does require everyone have access to an affordable basic healthcare insurance policy (AKA full coverage). Obamacare is replete with choices. Most importantly it gives people who do not have and cannot get insurance, the choice of getting healthcare and healthcare insurance – something they did not have before Obamacare. Additionally, it does not tax healthcare insurance that is “too good”. It taxes overly expensive healthcare insurance. There is a difference Mad. Obamacare created healthcare insurance exchanges are all about choice. And yes deductibles have to be affordable to the policy holder. That is just common sense. It does no good to require health insurance policies with holes in them so large (e.g. deductibles) that they make healthcare unaffordable.

    More hogwash! Conservatives did support Obamacare as the Republican healthcare solution until it was adopted by the Democrats a few years ago and Limbaugh used it as a wedge issue (e.g. death panels, etc.). You are repeating the many and frequent lies created by Republicans and right wing media. Let’s start with Medicare. Obamacare does not cut one benefit from Medicare. In fact it adds benefits to Medicare (e.g. eliminates the prescription drug donut hole). And Obamacare does not take even a single a red cent from the Medicare Trust Funds.

    Obamacare does use Medicaid to fund healthcare for the poor. And that is a good thing to do during a time of fiscal crisis (macro econ 101). Additionally, it reduces the expenses born by the state and transfers those expenses to the federal government. Spending Medicaid dollars to help provide healthcare creates jobs – that is a good thing Mad.

    As for that magical 51st employee, 97 percent of small businesses are not required under Obamacare to provide healthcare insurance or be burdened by regulation. Because they have less than 51 employees.
    I am rather tickled with this sudden and recent Republican appreciation for the Clinton presidency, because it was certainly not present during the Clinton 8 year administration. After the 1994 interim election and the election of a Republican majority in congress, one of their first actions was to create a special prosecutor to hound President Clinton for the remaining 6 years of his administration – even going so far as to issue articles of impeachment and try Clinton in the Senate. These are the same Republicans who accused Clinton of murder. And now you think he was a good president.

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  12. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    I was speaking of the will of the people as expressed in the 2010 midterm elections and contrasting the response of President Obama to the massive Republican wave that occured in response to his first two years in office to that of President Clinton. When Clinton's attempt to pass national healthcare caused a public backlash which saw the Republicans take the house for the first time in forty years, he changed course and declared that:



    He subsequently balanced the budget and passed landmark welfare reform.

    Obama, on the other hand, ignored the public backlash in the 2010 election which saw the largest number of seats change hands in over 40 years. He was oblivious to the fact that his policies were infuriating a large segment of the American people and, in contrast to president Clinton, proceeded as if the midterm election had never happened. Except, of course, for the fact that he found it much more difficult to enact his agenda now that the Republicans were there to stop it.
     
  13. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    23,049
    Maybe because inspite of what you and Michael might belive he knows dam well SOME form of universal health care will be good for the nation and its the right thing to do even if it means sacrificing his reelection. Maybe he sees the numbers of people left bankrupt or with barely any savings and assets left after there deaths or serious illness because it all went on medical bills and then looks at the rest of the world and realises it doesn't have to be like that. Maybe he sees people killed because insurance companies refuse to pay for treatment and conciders this an unacceptable situation. Maybe he conciders the fact that the US being the ONLY first world nation without UHC to be a national disgrace which he will fix no matter the cost
     
  14. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    Support for an individual mandate in principle does not imply support for Obamacare any more than support for the internal combustion engine implies support for the Edsel. Also, the former speaker of the house (Newt) has supported a lot of crazy stuff.
    Yes. The sort of choices you give a child. "Do you want to clean your room or go to bed?" Do you want to eat liver or meatloaf?" A free and responsible adult shouldn't be led around by the nose by an intrusive and overbearing government. That is not freedom and it is not the American way.

    That's "hogwash". High deductible insurance is real insurance. Where does this idea come from that "insurance" should pay for everything? Insurance is meant to protect you (and society) from catastrophic events. If you want insurance that covers everything and are willing to pay for it, fine. Go ahead and get it. But there is no logical reason to require such insurance.
    Just saying "maco econ 101" doesn't make it true. The fiscal crisis is largely one of government spending. We are going over a trillion dollars into debt each year. Adding a bunch of people to the federal tit at such a time is illogical.
    It does not create jobs on net. The money to pay for it must come from somewhere. That means higher taxes or higher debt which removes money from the private sector. Thus more government jobs means fewer private sector jobs.
    That's right, and many of them willl never grow beyond that number either if Obamacare goes into effect.
    Indeed. Compared to Obama, Clinton was a great president.
     
  15. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    It's rather funny that in Australia you pay, what? A 1 1/2% tax which covers your national healthcare for everyone. In the US we already pay 2.9% just to cover those over 65. Better yet, under Obamacare if you don't have insurance after 2016 you'll pay the 2.9% Medicare tax and an additional 2.5% Obamacare tax and still have not insurance if you're under 65!

    As if that's all not bad enough, there is the 3.8% tax on investment income, a 40% tax on "Cadillac" insurance plans, a cap on flexible spending accounts of only $2,500 (they're presently unlimited), an excise tax on charitable hospitals ($50,000 per hospital: why the hell are we taxing charitable hospitals?), the raising of the amount of your income you must spend on medical expenses to qualify for a tax deduction from 7.5% to 10%. a tax on "innovative drug companies", a tax on health insurers.....

     
  16. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    Who's fault is that? Who's fault is it you don't have an Australian type medicare with state owned and run public hospitals, state owned and run ambulance services and a federal goverment pays system?

    Hell our system isn't anywhere CLOSE to the best in the world because of BMA v commonwealth of Australia. You want gold standed look at the NHS
     
  17. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    So you're saying that the individual mandate is a great idea?

    Or, are you saying that the individual mandate is a crazy idea, and that Newt - and the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romney and c. - are evidently silly nutcases for having supported it?

    You seem to be unaware that you are presenting a persuasive argument for the superiority of single-payer national healthcare - with full negotiating powers - over alternative systems and, in particular, over the status quo in the USA.

    Normally I only hear complaints that ObamaCare isn't more like nationalized healthcare from critics on the far left. It's strange to find you in their company - and failing to take a clear stand on the individual mandate above - which kinda suggests that your position has become incoherent and politicized. Tell us, what is your ideal healthcare system, and can you demonstrate its superior efficiency and effectiveness?
     
  18. Startraveler Registered Senior Member

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    113
    You're mixing concepts a bit here. The size of the deductible doesn't necessarily tell you anything about an insurance plan's covered benefits, it just tells you how much you'll have to pay before you can access them.

    The health reform law not only allows high deductible plans, it explicitly references the existing definition of them (taken from decade-old GOP legislation that allowed such plans to be coupled with a Health Savings Account). Indeed, arguably the reform law encourages their use, for better or worse, through some of the policy changes it makes.

    That doesn't mean high deductible plans aren't required to offer "full coverage," which I assume you're using to mean the basic slate of essential health benefits. If you're not at a self-insured plan (e.g. one offered through a large employer), your plan will cover at least those benefits. But it can still have a high deductible to discourage overuse.
     
  19. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Roberts has received quite a public spanking in Republican circles (Fox, Clear Channel, Limbaugh, Levin, Hannity, et al.) for his decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It remains to be seen what impact this public whipping will have on Roberts. Will it move Roberts more towards being an independent arbiter of the law or will it force him back into the conservative/Republican party wing of the Supreme Court from whence he came?
     
  20. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    The whole justification for appointing Justices for life is that they will have no reason to give a shit about politics like that. What are they going to do? Complain him into submission or something?
     
  21. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Aye, that is the way it is supposed to work. But in the final analysis, the Supremes are human and subject to all the frailties thereof.

    http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2012/07/persuasion-v-coercion-and-manipulation.html

    “Wednesday, July 11, 2012
    Persuasion v. Coercion and Manipulation
    In my Verdict column for this week, I discuss Chief Justice Roberts's apparent change of heart on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) individual mandate. Some have suggested that the Chief Justice changed his vote in response to worries about public disillusionment if he and the four other Republican appointees on the Court invalidated the individual mandate. In the column, I assume arguendo that Chief Justice Roberts did take public opinion into account in his decision, and I analyze whether doing so would necessarily have been improper.

    In this post, I want to focus on the behavior of the other four Republican appointees in response to the Chief Justice's ultimate decision. As we can observe in the four Justices' opinions, the four other Republican appointees on the Court gave Chief Justice Roberts the silent treatment -- they failed to join any part of his opinion, even portions that adopted their own view that, for example, the Commerce Clause did not grant Congress the power to pass the individual mandate. Rather than join his opinion in part, however, the four Republican appointees instead took the unusual step of issuing a joint dissent (without one author taking credit for the opinion), thereby symbolically merging their identities and leaving Chief Justice Roberts out in the cold.

    At one level, the evident conduct of the Chief Justice's fellow Republican appointees is very immature and suggests that the Supreme Court functions in a manner that better resembles the interactions of a dysfunctional family than those of the people who head the judicial branch of the United States government. At another -- not entirely unrelated -- level, the dissenting Justices' behavior appears to reflect manipulation and coercion rather than the process of persuasion by which many of us imagine or hope that judges reach the decisions at which they arrive.

    Consider the difference between persuasion and manipulation. Say I am thinking about moving to a different city, and my friend John Doe does not want me to move, because he and I are friends, and he will miss my company. John Doe could attempt to convince me to stay where I am in a number of ways, on two of which I shall focus here. First, John could point out the many benefits of living where I currently live and the great opportunities that I have here. Second, he could instead tell me that if I decide to move, then he will interpret my decision as a rejection of his friendship and will no longer be my friend. In both cases, John is attempting to influence my decision whether to remain where I am or to move somewhere else. In the one case, however, he is addressing me in an autonomy-enhancing manner -- he respects my freedom by offering me information that might alter my own view of the merits. In the other case, by contrast, John is challenging my autonomy by threatening to disavow our friendship if I decide that the best decision for me is to move. He is, in other words, threatening me with the cold shoulder as a price for deciding that the best choice for me would be to leave.

    The two modes of persuasion are more than simply distinct strategies for achieving the same result. The first affirms our relationship and implicitly supports the legitimacy of my freely making the best decision for me, while the second uses our relationship instrumentally, to manipulate me into selecting the outcome that he prefers. The result of this behavior is to diminish my connection with John Doe, such that if I were to stay in place, I would no longer treasure his friendship and would, in fact, be inclined to avoid him. It is when relationships have completely broken down -- when one party is taking little-to-no account of the other party's needs -- that threats become the means of persuasion.

    We can observe the analogous threats in the ACA case in the four dissenters' effectively shunning Chief Justice Roberts for departing from the party line in his vote on the ACA individual mandate. Doing so suggests a relationship between some of the Justices that is far shallower and far more instrumental than I would have supposed. To punish Chief Justice Roberts (and thereby implicitly threaten further punishment in the future, if he should again depart from them on a significant issue) is to attempt to manipulate him rather than to show respect for his reaching the result that he thinks is best, even if in doing so, he parts ways with his frequent-fellow-travelers.

    In addition to being a reprehensible way to treat a colleague, the four Justices' evident attitude of entitlement to the Chief Justice's vote on every important issue could also prove counterproductive. As Judge Richard Posner said after the ACA decision came down: “I mean, what you would do if you were Roberts? All the sudden you find out that the people you thought were your friends have turned against you, they despise you, they mistreat you, they leak to the press. What do you do? Do you become more conservative? Or do you say, ‘What am I doing with this crowd of lunatics?’ Right? Maybe you have to re-examine your position.’” Exactly. “
     
  22. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Of course - and it bears mentioning that the GOP has made a habit of appointing Justices who are themselves movement conservatives in the first place. Roberts is the only exception to that, in fact.
     
  23. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    How would you define "liberal," exactly? Does it mean something otherr than "people who are not movement conservatives - or at least, reliable Republican voters?"

    Whatever anyone thinks about our own joepistole, it bears keeping in mind the fact that the GOP is far-right these days. One can perfectly well be a committed Democrat partisan and clearly in the center, or even center-right, of the spectrum. Indeed, most of the famous Republican Presidents in US history would be so situated, if they lived today. Likewise, the hysterical GOP paranoia that casts Obama - a business-friendly centrist and assertive foreign policy realist - as some kind of far-left Communist goes to the same point.
     

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