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SCOTUS Predictions for the Health Care Bill
[6/28 Edit: Those 19 constitutional scholars were wrong about the Court. Reax on my blog “Holy Shit Mandate” here.]
Sarah Kliff of Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog does some of the tightest health care news blogging I’ve ever seen.
Kliff on the SCOTUS individual mandate decision:
Bloomberg surveyed 21 top constitutional scholars and found that, while 19 think the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act ought to be upheld on the basis of legal precedent, just eight think the Supreme Court will actually do so.
Sigh. Yup, pretty much. Kennedy is supposed to be the swing Judge, the new Sandra Day O’Connor, but he really does bend conservative. It’ll probably turn out to be a 5-4 ruling against the mandate. There’s hope though, according to Kliff.
The other thing they are ruling on, but people are talking about less, is the proposed Medicaid expansions. States are arguing that it puts excessive burden on them and suing. Suck it, Red states. Eat your own Christian values, and help your poor people have basic human dignity.
I think, hopefully, a lot of the bill should remain intact. Otherwise everyone with a college kid under 26 is going to be pissed.
The “Do Not Kill” List
Ahaha. Maybe what that hipster told me, “We’re living in a dystopia!” wasn’t so crazy after all. Even Americans can be enemy combatants. Rejoice in our executive branch’s power.
http://www.donotkill.net/about.php
The National Agency for Ethical Drone-Human Interactions (N.E.D.H.I.) was founded in September of 2001 to monitor and regulate the use of drones both domestically and internationally.
Disclaimer: Adding your name to the ‘Do Not Kill’ Registry does not guarantee that you will not be the target of a drone strike but only that an additional review process will be undertaken before you are labeled an enemy militant and added to the national kill list. For further information on the drone program and newly instated ‘kill list’ click here.
Sign the Whitehouse.gov petition to get Obama to officially create a Do Not Kill list. 25,000 are required by June 29 to get an official response from the White House.
The Daily Show Live: Indecision Tour 2012
Can’t argue with free buttons.
In Central Park last night with Wyatt Cenac, Al Madrigal, John Oliver, contributor Kristen Schaal, executive producer Rory Albanese, co-executive producer Adam Lowitt and hosted by John Hodgman. A nice lady let us sit on her blanket with her. Lewis Black made a surprise appearance at the end. It was the best free show ever.
One of my favorite parts was when Wyatt Cenac talked about white supremacists criticizing Thor for having a black Norse god and then agreed with them. Hah, it’s like I said, Thor had all the “political inclusivity of the Power Rangers.”
Kristen Schaal is better on stage than she is on the show. She did a sexy chair dance with water and then John Hodgman did a not so sexy chair dance with water. She does a weekly gig in Brooklyn every Monday that looks fun.
Even the lesser-name guys who went on first were pretty funny. “Passion attack.” “Did you just rename rape?”
I can’t find a tour date schedule. Tthe Indecision 2012 site doesn’t have one posted. I didn’t know about this show until yesterday. Maybe they’re all free and so popular that only the venue promotes it.
Huh. Whatever. Not my loss. I’m going to go spend the heat wave tomorrow (er, today rather) watching the rest of John Oliver’s New York Stand-Up Show on Netflix, because he is so fantastic.
Marco Rubio’s Book Comes Out. He Does Not Do Himself Favors.
“Many people who come here illegally are doing exactly what we would do if we lived in a country where we couldn’t feed our families,” Rubio writes in his memior, An American Son, which went on sale today. “If my kids went to sleep hungry every night and my country didn’t give me an opportunity to feed them, there isn’t a law, no matter how restrictive, that would prevent me from coming here.”
Ooh, that’s going to hurt his intrade numbers. I think Rubio just shot his VP nomination in the foot. The fear of picking someone too bold still haunts the GOP.
Latinos are underrepresented in swing states and remember that the immigrants in Rubio’s home state of Florida are largely Cuban, who tend to vote more conservative anyway.
Also, WaPo: Marco Rubio isn’t being seriously vetted by Romney campaign, adviser confirms.
[Edit: Nevermind. WaPo: Romney: Marco Rubio is being seriously vetted as possible vice presidential choice.
Double Edit: John Avlon says Romney lying about vetting Rubio for VP. Haha. What the hell, Romney campaign.]
I’m going to go ahead and put my money down on Paul Ryan, whom I already have going on in a private bet. I’m a little hesitant because he doesn’t have great foreign policy cred, but economics is a bigger debate topic this year than foreign policy. And I think he has higher name recognition than Rob Portman.
I haven’t been through many primaries in my adult life. I’ll be a little impressed if i’m right.
We will see by the RNC convention on August 27.
Supreme Court Shits on Habeas Corpus for Gitmo Detainees
As someone who has has their habeas corpus rights violated in the past, this news really depresses me.
Four years ago, the Supreme Court did its duty as a guardian of the Constitution by ruling that Congress couldn’t prevent inmates at Guantanamo Bay from filing petitions for habeas corpus, a venerable feature of Anglo-American law that allows prisoners to challenge their confinement in court. This week, the justices walked away from that responsibility by refusing to review lower court rulings that have narrowed the protections of its 2008 decision to the vanishing point.
Democracy Now! interviews two guests on the matter: Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney of the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and investigative journalist Andy Worthington, who reports that of the 169 prisoners still held, over half — 87 in total — were cleared for release by President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force.
The Systematic Death of Financial Reform
President Barack Obama meeting with Rep. Barney Frank, Sen. Dick Durbin, and Sen. Chris Dodd
Political polemic wonderboy, Matt Taibbi, wrote another great article in this May’s RollingStone on how exactly Dodd-Frank has been undermined by Wall Street and the Republican Congress that caters to it. Yanno, that law Obama said two years ago would end taxpayer bailouts for good. Dodd-Frank is one of those things a lot of people who care about the world mean to read, but never do because financial legislation is fucking boring. So thanks, Taibbi, for reading it for us and laying out the implications of its slow repeal. “How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform” gave me some terms I didn’t know and expanded with useful information on others.
Commodities Futures Trading Commission: The independent agency (required by Congressional statute, but outside the Executive dept. purview) that is tasked with regulating certain derivatives markets.
-Last year, Republicans tried to cut the agency’s budget by more than a third even though the financial market they were overseeing soared from $40 trillion to $340 trillion.
-Corporations love to sue to the CFTC (as well as the Securities Exchange Commission) for being “unreasonable.”
Son of Supreme ConvservaJudge Antonin Scalia, Eugene Scalia led the Chamber of Commerce’s legal team to sue on the proxy access rule
Proxy Access Rule: A rule that would allow shareholders of a company to remove directors from the board via a proxy ballot, which would increase democratic power among stakeholders.
-Wall Street then employed lobbyists from The Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable to sue the SEC, claiming they had not done a proper cost-benefit analysis.
-They would use this lawsuit strategy again and again to rip apart the rest of Dodd-Frank rule by rule.
Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA): Title II of Dodd-Frank. It was supposed to create an FDIC-style fund in the event of a catastrophic liquidation, so that taxpayers would never again foot the bill (at least $19 billion) for a bailout.
-Ted Kennedy died mid-2009, Republican Scott Brown took his seat, and then the watering down of the bill began.
-The $19 billion required corporate pay-in to the fund disappeared.
Positions Limits: The maximum number of contracts an investor is allowed to hold on one underlying security.
-Dodd-Frank regulation designed to prevent one speculator from controlling over 25% of a commodities market at any one given time. This is done to prevent crazy speculation, like what was seen in 2008 when average gas prices jumped over $4 a gallon.
-The CFTC was supposed to enforce the rule for energy and some other contracts starting January 17, 2011. But the machine-work of bureaucracy turned, it never happened, and if lawsuits go the way they’ve been going, it never will.
Volcker Rule: Proposed by former United States Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, this rule would restrict United States banks from making certain kinds of speculative investments that don’t benefit customers.
-I.e., it would restrict banks from making risky gambles with taxpayer-insured money.
-Dodd-Frank mandated the Vlocker Rule be implemented July 21, 2012. But after 17,000 comment letters representing Wall Street interests, the Federal Reserve announced in April that it actually won’t go into affect until 2014. Two more years time for potential lawsuits.
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Read Taibbi’s article online to learn the five steps that corporations use to kill any legislation. There is plenty of ammo in there for debating libertarians, including how this tedious, technical legislation affects us all.
Quebec’s Crack Down on Student Protestors’ Civil Liberties
Arcade Fire on SNL last week wearing red student solidarity patches.
Here’s some Orwellian bullshit from our northern neighbors.
On May 18, Quebec’s legislative assembly, under the authority of the provincial premier, Jean Charest, passed a draconian law in a move to break the 15-week-long student strike.Bill 78, adopted last week, is an attack on Quebecers’ freedom of speech, association and assembly. Mr. Charest has refused to use the traditional means of mediation in a representative democracy, leading to even more polarization. His administration, one of the most right-wing governments Quebec has had in 40 years, now wants to shut down opposition.
The bill threatens to impose steep fines of 25,000 to 125,000 Canadian dollars against student associations and unions — which derive their financing from tuition fees — in a direct move to break the movement. For example, student associations will be found guilty if they do not stop their members from protesting within university and college grounds.
The bill is deliberately vaguely-worded and the article reports that use of force among the police has increased since its passage. The recent protests in Canada fall in line with the trend of indicators of a global problem in education and tuition inflation.
Hat-tip for the link goes to a Canadian Clantily Scad reader.
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