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Saturday, March 25, 2017

Health Care, Hubris, and Happenstance




The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.
--Hannah Arendt


Today came and went and Obamacare stayed, despite draconian efforts by Paul Ryan and his puppet master, the antithesis of a human being, Donald Trump.

After seven years of symbolically voting to repeal the ACA, the Republicans in the house could not agree upon a plan that was going, according to the Donald, "be a terrific alternative to Obamacare."  It was going to be repealed on the "first day" after his inauguration.
It was going to replace a plan that, although flawed, that through its replacement, the Congressional Budget Office predicted would eventually throw 24 million Americans off health care, and decimate Medicaid in the states by scotching federal subsidies for the poor, and providing a huge tax cut for the wealthy. The audacity of it all, espoused by Paul Ryan, failed miserably because Republicans could not agree on its features and after seven years, could not come up with anything better.   Trump, of course, blamed the Democrats,(who had always been against the repeal of their president's signature legislation) failing to mention that his own party could not muster the vote of its own members.   It is an enormous defeat for the President.   Will Trump learn that he cannot order members of congress to do what he wants as he does members of the Trump organization?
With an already dismal 37% approval rating there still may be room for even more downside.

Trump's pick for the Supreme Court, wrote an opinion about a truck driver who when faced with freezing to death or moving his rig, contrary to his dispatcher's orders, detached it from its trailer and drove to a place to warm up. Fired from his job, was blackballed from ever driving a truck again,  brought an action against his employer.  Unfazed by this employee's Hobson's choice, Gorsuch voted that he followed the law in voting against the driver. Gorsuch was reversed 8-0 by the Supreme Court.  In other cases, he voted against a disabled child receiving a more than a "de minimus" education.   Behind his smooth, brilliant exterior he finessed his confirmation hearings by avoiding even a slight hint of his prospective judicial philosophy.   "I followed the law" was also an argument posed by war criminals during the Nuremberg trials.  All this business of textualist/originalist/strict constructionist loses its meaning when a judge loses his humanity or does not understand the Framer's intent that the Constitution needs to move with the times we live in. 

However, when it came to defending his writings, his phlegmatic predisposition toward corporate interests shone through.  Under intense questioning by the brilliant senator from Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse, every bit Gorsuch's intellectual equal, Gorsuch failed to opine about the presence of dark money financing his push for a seat on the highest bench in the land or that same money financing opposition to Merrick Garland.  The enraged democrats will rightfully filibuster him, regarding that Merrick Garland's seat was stolen.  Mitch McConnell, who refused to give Merrick Garland a hearing, or even to meet with him called the democrats "obstructionists," blocking an highly qualified candidate, perhaps even more qualified than Gorsuch.   McConnell obsequious hypocrisy is legend even before this fiasco.


Trump, meanwhile, is under investigation by the FBI for potential collusion with "strong leader" Putin who, it seems by coincidence, had another opponent fall out of a hotel window this week "while moving a piano."

So far, we have seen nothing accomplished by this president, except a sea of vindictive tweets, accusations, alienation of allies, and solicitude for our adversaries.  Even the Wall Street Journal excoriated him this week, fearing that he is devolving into a fake president, his paranoia debunked by the FBI director and the director of national intelligence.


The fact is that Trump will need members of his own party to vote with him, and through his mendacity is losing more and more of them every day.

2 comments:

  1. David,
    I want to take two opposite issues with you. One is your use, which is certainly common enough, of the word "Obamacare." What you mean is not Obamacare. It's not about Obama, and it's not for Obama. To use the word "Obamacare" is simply to slant the issue, to excite adherence or resistance. The thing to which you refer is the Affordable Care Act. It is for and about all the rest of us (except people like you and me, who are on Medicare). Interestingly, surveys have shown that there is a segment of the population who are opposed to "Obamacare," but who are in favor of the ACA. They make the stupid mistake of opposing Obama, not universal health care, even though they are the same thing. So don't participate in nonsense like that.

    On the other hand, you refer later to the theft of "Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat." The seat was not Garland's. It was Obama's. The resistance was not to Garland. Everyone on "both sides of the aisle" likes Garland. The resistance was to Obama.

    So it's not "Obamacare" that was preserved, at least for another month or two. It was the ACA, and the millions of people who are its beneficiaries. And it wasn't Merrick Garland who was deprived of a Supreme Court seat. It was Obama.

    As I have tried to tell conservatives, it's easy to rail against "big government," when the resistance to it can be conceptualized as a victimless crime. But when reducing government actually compromises Americans, it's not so easy to do it, at least not without being criticized.

    Fred

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  2. By the way, David, I think it's curious how conservatives have dealt with the Trump presidency. They almost all collapsed, having first resisted him, and got behind him before the election. I assume they were afraid that their constituents might like him, and they couldn't be seen as not liking him. I think they might secretly have hoped that he could get elected (he was their only real choice to beat Hillary Clinton), after which, they could afford to call him on his nonsense and maybe even get rid of him. They've done a little bit of challenging, as with the ACA, although that one is complicated, in part because they made a show of not liking it, either. But what I find most curious is that they have passed along almost all of his wacky Cabinet and Secretary choices (not really Trump's, of course, since he would have no idea whom to nominate, but rather Bannon's), and they have not taken the painfully obvious opportunity quickly to install an investigation panel.

    Maybe they're still not sure their constituents won't get mad at them, although many of them have had some interesting "town meeting" experiences. They should be able to tell by now that they're really very free to get rid of Trump, now that they don't need him any more. The Executive stays Republican for four years, with or without Trump.

    As I say, curious how they're handling all this.

    Fred

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