I predict that, in ten years’ time, whatever the new health care reform looks like, Tennesseans of all political stripes will be milking it for all its worth.
In the meantime, though, we have to put up with this nonsense, where only seven state senators will stand against demanding that the State’s Attorney involve us in a very costly and time-consuming lawsuit which we will surely lose at a time when our state budget is in the shitter. When your state senators come to you campaigning on fiscal responsibility, if they aren’t one of these seven senators, they are liars.
Because, let me tell you something–if a bunch of states bring a lawsuit against the federal government and the Supreme Court were to rule (which they will not in this case, but let’s just say…) that the underlying issue is unconstitutional, it is unconstitutional. Not just for those states, but for the whole nation.
This means that we do NOT have to be a party to those lawsuits in order to benefit from them, if they go our way (whatever way “our” way is in this case). So, you can hate health care reform all you want and still take the position that we should stay out of the lawsuits and leave it to people who think they have money to burn to advance the cause.
Wish them well, hope and pray they succeed, but keep our money in our pockets.
But of course, we don’t. After all, all this talk of “fiscal responsibility” only applies to things that affect ordinary people here in the real world. If our betters want to command the State’s Attorney to spend our money to fight this losing battle for the sake of “principles,” well, then, by god, we should open up our pockets. That’s sarcasm, for you politicians who were starting to think I’d seen the light.
But just when you think that it can’t get any more embarrassing than “We’ll spend your money to give ourselves nothing more than an awesome talking point on the campaign trail,” you’ve got the State House asking Congress to not pass the healthcare overhaul. I will repeat that–the State House voted to ask Congress to not pass legislation that has already been passed.
That doesn’t make us look like stupid assholes or anything. I’m sure Congress will get right on being concerned about us not being smart enough to realize that the vote has already happened.
I have to hand it to John DeBerry for speaking the truth.
Memphis Democrat John DeBerry, who eventually sat at his desk and refused to cast a vote on the resolution, criticized his colleagues for wasting time on the matter.
“You know this is the very reason folks think we’re out of our minds down on this House. Now look at what we’ve down [sic] for the past two hours. On a bill that has already passed in Washington, We’ve talked on it and talked on it and talked on it and talked on it. On both sides of the aisle, both of us are guilty of this.”
Thank you, Representative DeBerry.
Just remember this, folks, when you or people you know are still out of work or working in the only jobs you could find and not the jobs that pay enough to support you, the State Legislature spent the time they could have been spending helping you spending your money on frivolous lawsuits and asking that legislation that has already passed not be passed.
Let me be clear: They did this because they think it will play well with you and they don’t think they you are paying close enough attention to realize how stupid this is. They will say “I demanded that Congress not pass Health Care” and they think you are too stupid to remember that they did that weeks after it already passed. They will say “I demanded that the State’s Attorney take this to court,” and expect that you’ll think this was an appropriate use of your money at a time when the state is so short of money that it’s having to lay off folks.
They are doing this because they are using the time they are in Nashville–which we pay for–to generate talking points for them to run on. These aren’t real issues that the state can actually address (either because they’ve already happened or they’re just on the wrong side of the Constitution). These are campaign issues.
They’re using your money, that you’re paying them to do the State’s business, to generate campaign issues.
Tiny Cat Pants 
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Aunt B.,
I think that the legislators should collect money from themselves to pay for the suit. Let them put their money where their ideology is.
As for whether the health care reform bill will be found to be constitutional or not, I would not be surprised if the Court overturned it. The Conservative majority may decide that this is the last chance to rein in federal intrusion in interstate and private economic activity using the Commerce Clause.
I get it that there are those who say, “the government can’t require me to purchase insurance.” But why bring the whole abortion issue into it? I’ll tell you why. Because the conservatives love to stand up in chambers and talk about how they are defending the little baby fetuses. They know that there’s a certain segment of the electorate that gets really riled up by abortion. Nevermind that this legislation is probably unconstitutional and probably won’t impact abortion rates in Tennessee at all anyway.
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The Conservative majority may decide that this is the last chance to rein in federal intrusion in interstate and private economic activity using the Commerce Clause.
Meanwhile, you can have an insurance company call your newly-diagnosed malignancy a “pre-existing condition,” as is happening to a 32-year old friend of mine.
Is someone going to bother to rein in the private insurance regime, which is something clearly in the public interest?
Andy,
I hope that the centrists in both parties will get together and do exactly that. The problems that most need fixing in health care can be dealt with without dramatically increasing federal power of individuals or states.
So, absent federal regulation, how does one propose to limit the power of insurers to continue to play Calvinball with peoples’ futures, especially when it involves critical or chronic care?
I’ll bet you can come up with at least a dozen examples from friends or family that have been royally screwed by insurers.
Friend with a chronic back problem can’t get an MRI because the insurer would rather pay to have her doped up. Friend is looking at a double mastectomy in her 30’s and has to fight to so much as get an appointment with an oncologist, and are now seeking to classify her cancer as “pre-existing.” Cousin gets laid off but is disqualified on his wife’s plan because he’s being treated for sleep apnea. Dad dies with over a quarter of a million dollars in uncovered expenses after a couple years in treatment, a couple of years that he wouldn’t have lived if he hadn’t had chemo; leaves his widow both without a husband and near bankruptcy. Coworker has to take his mother out of assisted living because he gets dropped from elder care coverage. Your own coverage is subject to routine increases in premiums, increases in deductible, reductions in coverage. That one doctor that you had a great relationship with is now not taking your insurance.
Illness has no respect for political affiliation or ability to pay. I have no complaint with the quality of care that one can receive in this country — it’s just that the barriers to quality care are increasingly raised. For everyone.
That’s your common ground right there.
While people dicker over who’s a bigger socialist, while Ron Ramsey bellows about state’s rights like he’s the second effing coming of John C. Calhoun, there’s a very human toll being exacted.
Andy,
I think that dealing with specific problems is preferable to a huge and over-broad bill that will allow greater empire-building by the ruling class in DC.
You should not speak too disrespectfully of Calhoun. His theory of the concurrent majority is alive and healthy today in arguments for protecting the rights of all sorts of minorities from domination by the majority.
A professor of mine in college loved to observe that, love him or hate him, Calhoun was the most important political philosopher America ever produced exactly because he understood the importance of protecting minorities. That contemporary applications of his philosophy would cause him to spin in his grave is a lovely irony.
I think that dealing with specific problems is preferable to a huge and over-broad bill that will allow greater empire-building by the ruling class in DC.
You say specific. I say systematic.
he understood the importance of protecting minorities.
Other than those classified as 3/5 of a person at the time, of course.
Kind of like John Wayne Gacy understood the value of sharing physical contact with young men and boys.
Talk about the importance of context.
So, Mr. Rogers, the best way to approach an entrenched, systemic problem is to tinker with its individual symptoms? The problem with the Democratic health care bill isn’t that it gives the government (i.e. the people) too much power; it’s that it gives too much money to the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, who already wield too much power.
And I don’ t know what you meant by “empire-building.” Unless it’s a euphemism for corporate servitude, you’ll have to explain that one.
Ha, score one for Andy!
Andy,
My point was that ideas transcend a particular context. Of course Calhoun was not interested in slaves but it is ironic (not to mention Justice) that his ideas now serve to defend all sorts of minorities.
Sam,
I don’t think I denied that. Jefferson owned slaves. Does that invalidate his argument for inalienable rights?
Or, do Margaret Sanger’s quaint views on eugenics discount her contributions in the area of women’s rights?
As for health care, I agree that it gives too much money to insurance and drug companies. Breaking up big companies into smaller companies would help hold down costs and reduce their political clout.
Regarding big pharma, my first idea is to require that the federal government get a fair percentage of profits from research funded by federal grants.
As for ’empire building, when the Obesity Task Force starts regulating what we can eat and what targets for cholesterol, weight, etc, that is what I mean.
Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure nobody knows what this look like, including Congress.
I mean, when the people who wrote the damn law created a system where they were instantly forced out from their current Congressional plan, and yet the plan they are legally required to join won’t be running until 2014….
Seriously, I’m sure that just because our own legislators didn’t know how they were going to be
completely dicked overaffected themselves by this legislation, doesn’t mean that all the glowing promises made about deficit reduction, keeping of policies consumers like, lowered health care costs etc., won’t come to pass for the rest of us in something as large, dynamic, and complex as the American economy.Read the NY Times article, and have a bitter laugh.
My point was that ideas transcend a particular context.
So sayeth every neo-Confederate with whom I’ve ever had a conversation.
Of course Calhoun was not interested in slaves but it is ironic (not to mention Justice) that his ideas now serve to defend all sorts of minorities.
There’s an essential difference between the Fugitive Slave Law and the idea that a civil union between consenting adults should be accorded with universal reciprocity among states. Let’s see if you can figure out what that is.
Andy,
“So sayeth every neo-Confederate with whom I’ve ever had a conversation.”
Sorry to disappoint you but I am not a neo-confederate. Are you saying that Ideas cannot transcend a particular context? Your desire to be politically correct is carrying you into the land of absurdity. Lots of bad people have had great ideas. Lots of good people have had remarkably bad ideas.
More importantly, the same ideas have been used for good and ill.
I don’t really see much in common between the Fugitive Slave laws and the idea of reciprocity relating to civil unions. People who reach free states should have been regarded as free. Tough luck to their ‘owners.’
Denying reciprocity for civil unions is restricting the legal agreements between individuals as sanctioned by the state. Unless there were a state that forbids all civil unions (including the legal obligations of marriage), it would seem an unenforceable contradiction.
Which ideas, and what context? Calhoun’s ‘defense of minorities’ was quite specific. If you wish to take the passion and eloquence of his discourse out of context and apply it to something else, that might be a fascinating thought experiment. But don’t pretend that the context didn’t define Calhoun’s position. And what Andy said.
Also, this:
In a sense, it did. Read the Gettysburg Address. The nation wouldn’t have required “a new birth of freedom” (one that arguably didn’t fully emerge until the 1960s) if the founders had been more consistent about living up to their stated principles.
And this:
Is that all? Really? Well, rest easy, comrade. I expect that will happen right around the time Punxsutawney Phil starts controlling the weather.
Sorry to disappoint you but I am not a neo-confederate. Are you saying that Ideas cannot transcend a particular context?
No, I’m saying that people with a revisionist axe to grind tend to speak about this shameful period in our history in much the same manner as you have. I didn’t say that you were one of them.
Are you denying that John C. Calhoun is something of an avatar amongst people of the neo-Confederate stripe?
Your desire to be politically correct is carrying you into the land of absurdity.
Your habit of jumping to conclusions leads me to believe that you’ve taken up permanent residence there.
As far as political correctness: You really should reserve your statements for things you actually know. And my desires are not among the things you can accurately claim a scintilla of knowledge.
(If you’ve seen any of my online exchanges with apologists for the TNDP incumbency, you would know the priority that I place upon PC-ness.)
Damn, Lee, that’s a good point. Our wonderful representatives were so intent on hedging their bets (and keeping their big campaign donors happy) that they may have forced themselves to create a special legislative patch to cover their own asses. It’s so beautiful it makes me weep sweet tears of sarcasm.
Um, how do we go about this: Breaking up big companies into smaller companies would help hold down costs and reduce their political clout. without federal “power grabbing”?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH….
John C. Calhoun as a defender of minority rights???? He just didn’t want to pay more for the imported goods he purchased because South Carolina had virtually no industrialism. And his lovely little state didn’t industrialize because of the greed of plantations owners such as Calhoun.
He nearly ripped the Union apart so he wouldn’t have to pay a tax that was essential in allowing the United States to industrialize in the face of Britian’s mighty industrial complex.
Calhoun is no hero.
Casey, you took the words right out of my fingers. Not to mention that the “idea” that Mark is discussing as one thing is at least three different ideas, situated in three different historical moments. That’s why the discipline of intellectual history exists, to demonstrate the historical contingency of ideas and their interrelationships with cultures and societies.
Casey,
I never said that Calhoun was a hero. I simply observed that his theory of the concurrent majority influenced our modern view of the importance of minority rights and limitations on the majority. I just find that ironic. Particularly in light of many of Calhoun’s other views.
Similarly I find it ironic that Margaret Sanger maintains a place of high regard in many circles despite some of her views which are, if anything, more objectionable than Calhoun’s, given that her historical moment was considerably advanced from his.
Sanger achieved many great things but they cannot be disentangled from her views on eugenics. But that does not diminish the value of her achievements.
Andy,
My point to you was that I wasn’t defending Calhoun’s whole career, just highlighting an important idea and its ironic development.
Sam,
I hope you are right but I am not optimistic. You can legislate bake sales and cupcakes out of schools and you can put the content labeling on the front of foods in bold letters and you can even put a skull and cross bones on certain foods and the impact will not be what the advocates for healthy eating want.
That is why when these advocates talk about fast food taxes and mandatory checkups, I don’t dismiss the possibility that they will succeed.
Mark,
Buddy, I think Bridgett and I are trying to point out to you that your position is flawed. Calhoun never represented minorities. The minorities in South Carolina at that time would have been slaves and up-country whites with no political representation.
Calhoun represented the Charleston, South of Broad fat cats who lived off the income of plantations they never visited. They were selfish and wanted to continue to buy as much cheap British crap as they could damn the consequences for the nation.
Sounds like Bush Republicans and their tax cuts to me!
Mark, at a generous estimate, Calhoun “represented” the interests and opinions of about 5% of the residents of his state. I guess you could call that a minority if you wanted, but the political science term you’re looking for is “oligarchy.”
And you might also like to celebrate the Calhoun who sponsored public works bills, supported high tariffs, and put federal interests above all until it became clear that he was never going to be President. Then he flip-flopped on every particle of his staunch federalism like a sulky kid who runs home with his baseball when he’s not made pitcher.
You see, historical context does matter.