Anarcissie, November 28 at 1:06 pm

Anyone using Nancy Pelosi as an example of “liberal” contempt for the Constitution has already lost the argument.

Ardee—For heaven’s sake, look around.  In the present and many other cases, the Constitution is being treated with contempt.  When it’s considered at all, then people like Ruth Marcus and whoever writes for Media Matters appeal to pure authoritarianism—“experts” and “constitutional scholars”, not evidence and reason.  Read about how Pelosi derided constitutional objections to the “health care” bill.  I’ve been discussing this same issue in some other venues and I’ve gotten the same thing.  Of course, this attitude is not peculiar to progs.  If you want some seriously twisted constitutional logic, try Gonzales v Raich as decided by the right-wing Supreme Court.  Of course, the liberals on the Court (if there are any) went along with it.  As you noted, the three dissenters included Rehnquist and Thomas, which leaves us with just one sort-of liberal, O’Connor, on the side of the angels.

I have to admit I’m sort of surprised by the depth of the liberal contempt I’ve observed; they usually try to put on a better act.  But in fact the present bill is going to be very difficult to justify constitutionally without the kind of absurdities we observe in Gonzales and the cases it depends on.  On the other hand, I recognize that Mr. O could not possibly get this bill passed without paying off the insurance companies, and that requires the old gun-to-the-head (to the heads of the working class, that is).

I believe this sort of thing is going to lead to a very unpleasant rectification at some point in the future.  Not what I would choose, but apparently the ruling class is going to keep skating on thin ice until it breaks.

To make such a statement, that liberals or progressives ( same folks) care not for the Constitution, is simply silly.

It is always the left that points out the Constitutional violations of the right, demands investigation and prosecution for those , like Alberto and Dickie and defends that document as a living breathing and vibrant guide to our democratic process.

Arnicissie:

You’re probably right on that. The echo chamber of the left wants a political win and will claim a convoluted constitutionality to have it whether its a working solution or not. However, I’ve also seen Democracy Now and a couple others point out some of the things you’ve mentioned, mainly in the “gift to big business” vein. I suppose it shows once more that there is no difference between the two parties. I do think its helpful to distinguish between partisans and progressives/conservatives, though. The former is a foot soldier and the latter tends to be more independently minded in my opinion.

The irony: Obama ran on a platform of uniting the nation and he just might do that with progressive and conservative opposition to this bill.

No_Man’s_Land, November 27 at 1:11 pm:
‘Arnicissie:
“The Constitution to some extent was supposed to protect us from unlimited governmental power like the above, but liberals and progs don’t care about the Constitution any more. As witness the article that begins this discussion.”

I’m not sure that’s an entirely fair statement. ...’

It’s not entirely, 100% fair, but it seems to be about 90% true, or “true enough”.  I should add, of course, the most “conservatives” and “moderates” have also stopped caring about the Constitution.  Media Matters, a liberal Democratic web site some of you are probably familiar with, brought the issue up and gave the most specious grounds for the Constitutionality of the present bill, mostly authoritarian references to “Constitutional scholars”, and when several commenters pointed out how illogical they were they stopped updating the comments.  Like Ruth Marcus’s article, this seems to be the typical way of dealing with the issue: power first, power last, power always, forget the rules we supposedly agreed to.

Arnicissie:

“The Constitution to some extent was supposed to protect us from unlimited governmental power like the above, but liberals and progs don’t care about the Constitution any more. As witness the article that begins this discussion.”

I’m not sure that’s an entirely fair statement. I think a lot progressives and conservatives alike are concerned about individual mandates to the insurance industry. I can’t think of any product we are required to purchase carte blanche as we are about to have happen. Personally, I think extrapolating the right to regulate comerce and to levy taxes to private purchase requirements is quite a stretch and most likely just legal spin. A private purchase requirement is not a tax. That money is not returned to the population in the form of benefit. Nor does it do anything to regulate an industry. If anything, it removes any incentive of the industry to self-regulate. They will become Toll Trolls all the more.

I think, or at least I hope, what we are seeing is something of an an awakening to the corporate aristocracy we have become, or as Chris Hedges puts it, “Neo-Feudalism.” Either way, we are witnessing the fusion of government and corporate power to an extent we have not seen before. I think we can expect more of this in the future.

A lot of people simply can’t afford to have medical insurance, and a lot of people choose not to.  In many cases there is something of a trade-off between one expense and another.  Forced payments to insurance companies will have to come out of some other part of the family budget, like perhaps the part that pays for nutritious food, warm clothing, or decent housing; thus, more people will get sick and the medical industry will make even more money.  The insurance payments themselves will go to the wealthy profiteers of medical insurance.  Those who can’t pay can get down on their knees in front of social workers and beg for Welfare, which means having their whole private lives exposed to and judged by petty bureaucrats.  The extra expense will be borne by their neighbors, because it’s the working people, and only the working people, who pay taxes.  It’s not a pretty picture.

The Constitution to some extent was supposed to protect us from unlimited governmental power like the above, but liberals and progs don’t care about the Constitution any more.  As witness the article that begins this discussion.

Ummmm, For the most part i would have to assume that people dont have health insurance because they cannot afford it, not because they CHOOSE not to have it. This health care debate and all of its accompanying nonsense has really thrown people off course.  My wife and i used to live in vermont and it would have cost me so much to obtain health insurance that i would not have beenable to pay my bills, so put back in that same position i cant see that a government mandate for me to have health insurance under threat of penelty would help to solve the problem, actually it would have put me in the poor house.  The reason we are having this debate is because there is a fundamental flaw with our healthcare system, not the people who use it.

“…Health insurance is NOT central to health care as the single-payer systems
around the world prove and as the millions of people who do not have it prove.”

This is an incredibly stupid statement, even for you tropic girl. When people don’t have insurance, they don’t get health care, and they subsequently die as a result. We KNOW this, and the stats are all over the place, and have been for decades. So, how to you figure that health insurance is NOT central to health care, for that 99% of the population who are NOT holding 90% of the wealth? And who exactly do you think is providing the funds for the so-called single-payer systems around the world. WHO are these ‘single payers’?

Answer: TAXPAYERS!!!

I keep hearing all of these repugnant republicans claiming a ‘government’ takeover of the health care system, and the same morons are claiming that we should have a ‘single payer’ system like some of the other countries in the world. In those systems, WHO is providing the healthcare?

Answer: The STATE! They are government operated health care systems.

Auto insurance wasn’t central to driving a car (at least in California) until maybe 2 decades ago. When I first started driving, the ‘law’ required that one either have auto insurance OR show proof of enough money (in the form of a bond) to cover up to something like $120,000.00 of coverage to the injured party, and that was 40 years ago. Can you imagine what that would be now? (nevermind, the bond alternative is no longer applicable - everybody has to have insurance to drive a vehicle).

So, how many Americans do YOU know who can just whip out the checkbook to cover that cancer treatment or any other killer disease, or even a cesarean section delivery for that matter?  I mean come on. How many people don’t know that 90% of individual bankruptcies in the US are a result of health care expenses?

Now from the article..

“Balkin cites a 1950 Supreme Court case upholding a tax on marijuana distributors.”

THIS startled me, seeing as how I never knew there were marijuana distributors back in 1950. What a hoot. As far as I know, they still aren’t charging taxes on marijuana in the states where it is legal, and THAT tax would sure as hell provide a goodly portion of the revenue required to provide health care to all. It’s the biggest cash crop the US has.

Single-payer is certainly more constitutional than the present offering—in reason.  But as I’ve pointed out, reason doesn’t matter.

We certainly don’t have to abolish the Constitution.  Clearly, it has already been abolished, to whatever extent it has become inconvenient for our lords and masters.

This is a problem only for those who think the idea of limiting the powers of the government is a good thing.  It appears that they are a small minority of the population.  Most conservatives, liberals, progs agree that quibbling about whether something is constitutional or not is ridiculous, as long as what’s happening is part of the program of their particular team.

However, I do wish the purveyors of arbitrary and total state power would not bother with silly, illogical pretenses at constitutional justification such as the article we’re commenting on.  That’s not because I think they carry any political weight, it’s just literary criticism.  If Gonzales v Raich, as given by the Supreme Court, is valid, anything is valid—logical gyrations and contortions are unnecessary—and that’s the end of the story.

“The clause empowers Congress “to regulate commerce ... among the several states,” which may not sound terribly sweeping. But since the New Deal, the Supreme Court has interpreted this authority to cover local activities with national implications.”

Precisely what is used for our ongoing Drug War (some of ) and the idea of a Tax on illegal substances was overturned because it is ridiculous to tax something while it is illegal.

However we need medical coverage for everybody. Not the forced insurance coverage they want where we can be fined and even put in jail if we can’t pay. That is evil. That is state tyranny in service to the corporation and that could easily be identified as fascism and that is a poison in our system of gov’t. A contagion that needs to be eradicated now and forever or else it will overwhelm and kill the republic of which it infects. The patient is in the ICU and the code blue has been averted but nothing else. Another code blue is imminent.

Dissenting from that ruling were Justices O’Connor, Rehnquist and, strangely enough, Thomas.

But the point of the matter is not that, because of such a ruling we need to abolish the Supreme Court, but that we need to understand that the law is a living entity, as is the Constitution, and to hold that because mistakes are made we should simply abolish that body is childish indeed.

Inevitably, as our society and our culture changes, our governing bodies sometimes lag behind the curve, and sometimes, as in our present situation, desperately need reforming, not abolition with no plan or scheme as to what will replace it.

I have raised the constitutional issue myself in some other venues, mostly out of curiosity.  The consensus seems to be that the Supreme Court can do anything it wants, even if the conclusion is absurd.  Thus, in Gonzales v Raich, the Supreme Court held that Congress could, under the interstate commerce power, prohibit a person from growing marijuana in her own house strictly for her own use.  There is no reasonable way of twisting the Constitution to that extent, but the Supreme Court did it, and it’s settled law.

The constitutionally unusual thing about Congress’s present “health care” bill is that it mandates payments by private citizens, who may not be engaged in any kind of commerce at all, much less interstate commerce, to other private citizens (the instuance companies).  It is not a tax, which the Constitution certainly legitimates, but a taking from one person for the benefit of others, a power which the Constitution clearly does not give the Federal government.

But such considerations will not bother the Supreme Court.  This does not mean it will necessarily find a particular version of the bill constitutional; it means that the Court will follow its own calculus of political power regardless of the Constitution.  If it thinks this bailout of the insurance companies, as Kucinich called it, is what the preponderance of ruling-class power favors, it will hold it to be constitutional.  If not, then not.

Not to worry about the Constitution, then—the Constitution, as Alberto Gonzales understood, is a scrap of paper.  Like the Geneva Convention it, too, is “quaint”—and evidently dead.  Worshipers of state power, like Ruth Marcus, can rejoice.

If health care is a right then our govt would be obligated to provide such care to promote the general welfare. To ensure the profitability of the Insurance Industry seems a shoddy motive to me.

Reduce everything to dollars.  Socialize all costs… privatize all profits.  Stolen fair and square and according the whore called law.
 
“Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government.”
(Pierre-Joseph Proudhon)

“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
(Martin Luther King, Jr.)

I’m so sick and tired of lawyers and politicians I could puke!  They throw constitutionality out there as if it’s precious and so American when it suits their corporate filthy greed, and tell the same people that parts are not necessary when they want to fuck over whatever part of the world they are choosing at that moment.
I say - screw mandatory insurance when insurance companies have done nothing in the past to honor insurance coverage.  The second you tell me “for profit”, I tell you “no paying out claims” it is that simple!!!!!  You can’t get these filthy maggot politicians to even talk of their social insurance or what is a reasonable cost for us to pay.
I simply can’t understand all of these people out doing the bidding for insurance companies, many that don’t have any insurance, while saying no to a different “not for profit” health scheme.

The USA stinks with health care - I know for a fact what health care is like in several countries and even have my health care in a different country.  I don’t give a rats ass what your idiot politician is telling you about other methods - these guys don’t even care as they have socialized medicine for themselves. 
Wake up Amerika!!!!!