speculawyer
Member
Please proceed, Senator.
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PoliGAF 2015 |OT| Keep Calm and Diablos On
- Thread starter Aaron Strife
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Please proceed, Senator.
I agree about not running as GOP lite, but issues like minimum wage are such small ball though.
I've got an idea for Democrats, outline a sweeping vision full of really big ticket items. Single-payer healthcare, a nationwide high speed rail transit system, decriminalization of drug abuse, and massive infant industry subsidies for electric cars and renewable energy, all paid for by a carbon tax. Impress voters for a change.
It's just bargaining 101, when your opponents are asking to throw out everything and the kitchen sink from the books along with 3 Cabinet level departments and the EPA and you're asking for next to nothing, then any compromise will be halfway or more into favorable turf for them.
Jack Remington
Banned
Right, he's saying it wouldn't be serious at all if a death spiral were to happen, and that because a small minority of states enacted community rating without a mandate utterly destroyed the market for individual insurgence, clearly that wouldn't be a serious punishment to inflict on 37 states for not building their exchanges.
Making an argument this idiotic should basically disqualify Cannon from ever talking about healthcare policy.
Right, here you go on about a different definition of "intent" than the one Cannon is talking about. Because "established by the State", lolz.
I'm not going to get drawn into a debate about your lawyer definition of intent. I'm going to use the meaning of intent that Cannon is using here. What did Congress intend to do in passing the ACA?
It is utterly, utterly, incomprehensibly idiotic, to suggest that Congress intentionally wrote a bill that would destroy the individual health market in any state that didn't set up its own exchange. This is something that is so painfully obvious that I shouldn't have to explain why it is the case. If you don't know why it is the case, please stop speaking on the subject of King. Cannon fully suggests that this was the intent of Congress, indicating that he's a fairly massive fool if he believes it.
I will not. This man is the architect of the most disingenuous troll lawsuit in history, and he's built an offensively ridiculous alternate history to support his cause, all for the purpose of seriously negatively impacting the lives of millions. He is either a foolish little boy gleefully playing with fire, or he is a vile scumbag worthy of no one's respect. There isn't any middle ground for Cannon.
I don't actually think he believes everything he's saying: hence I'm going with the "he's evil" theory. I'd actually be kind of relieved if it turned out he was just an idiot. Hanlon's Razor and all.
I hope he wins the nomination.
I hope the base finally gets their super conservative candidate.
I hope they learn that they haven't been losing because their candidate wasn't 'conservative enough'.
I hope the fever finally breaks.
I hope.
Coriolanus
Banned
Why?
Maybe it will moderate the base a bit and they'll send people to congress who are willing to actually work and get stuff done.
Poodlestrike
Banned
It might lead to a moderation of the party, or even a split between social and financial conservatives.
This isn't going to happen. We thought it might after 2008. Then after 2012. It's not going to happen. Unless they accidentally nominate a Santorum type and get Goldwater'd, then it might.
If the conservative alternatives keep splitting the vote and delegates then they wont get their conservative candidate.
As long as the money trumps ideology, you wont get your Goldwater scenario and the Republican with the "best chance to win" will be chosen after all the kicking and screaming. That candidate that I still think will ultimately win the nomination: Jeb Bush
As long as the money trumps ideology, you wont get your Goldwater scenario and the Republican with the "best chance to win" will be chosen after all the kicking and screaming. That candidate that I still think will ultimately win the nomination: Jeb Bush
I know. Doesn't stop me from dreaming, though.
RustyNails
Member
Yes but the important question that never gets asked is what policies in what way? No one ever asks the follow up to the question, in what direction would you like the change?
NYCmetsfan
Banned
RustyNails
Member
"wealthy people will make conditions for me to become wealthy one day too!"
American Value #1: Poor = Immoral
PhoenixDark
Banned
gotta say I'm baffled by Obama's victory lap behavior lately. Things are still bad for a lot of people, the working poor continue to increase, yet he's out there acting like he won something.
Hillary could lose to a good GOP candidate IMO. I just don't think such a candidate exists.
CNN
Ha, sometimes electors are crazy, I check and this is the same poll that have Hillary defeating all the republican some by double digits.
This is definitely a poll worth skewing, as in Republicans are overwhelmingly skewing this by being insanely opposed to Obama. These people were likely never Obama voters nor would they throw their lot in with Democrats. And I would like to delve further into that 22% Dem figure as well. For example, I want to change Obamacare, drone strike program, and a few other things. But not in any way that would make me vote for a Republican to get the changes I want for those things.
Aaron Strife
Banned
The "do you want change or continuation" question seems inherently biased and not very useful.
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
You're still misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) his argument, which has numerous components: first, the Supreme Court has already held that imposing burdens on residents of a state on account of state action does not coerce states; second, foregoing subsidies offers other benefits to states, such as having employers be freed from the employer mandate and many individuals freed from the individual mandate; third, several states imposed ACA-like regimes on their individual markets prior to the ACA and its credits; fourth, several states filed lawsuits or amicus briefs asking that they be put to this choice; fifth, several states have enacted laws (and a few have enacted amendments to their state constitutions) prohibiting their state governments from participating in implementing the ACA's twin mandates; and sixth, the state-Exchange-for-credits arrangement is comparable to what the Supreme Court permitted with respect to Medicaid expansion in NFIB. From these points, Cannon concludes that the arrangement is not unconstitutionally coercive.
Here is every use of the word "intent" in the article you linked to:
Michael Cannon said:
Here's how Cannon, in past pieces, has defined "intent" with respect to Congress and the ACA:
Adler & Cannon said:Although this Article often refers to congressional ‘‘intent,’’ a body composed of 535 individuals cannot be said to have a single ‘‘intent.’’ This is a convenient ‘‘shorthand’’ for how to characterize what is actually the result of negotiation, compromise, and deal-making among many lawmakers, each of whom may have his or her own specific intent with regard to the legislation. See Matthew C. Stephenson, The Price of Public Action: Constitutional Doctrine and the Judicial Manipulation of Legislative Enactment Costs, 118 Yale L.J. 2, 14 n.25 (2008) (‘‘Characterizing the legislature, or the enacting coalition, as a unitary actor that ‘knows’ the effect of policies on outcomes and chooses the policy that would advance ‘its’ interest is a shorthand way of describing this more complex collective choice process.’’. Thus, to say that a bill provision was intentional is to say that it is a result of this process, and was drafted as intended by some of those involved in writing and amending the bill, and not to claim that every member of Congress who supported a bill desired each provision of the bill. This is particularly so given the unfortunate tendency of some legislators to not even read the legislation upon which they express opinions and cast votes. See generally Hanah Volokh, A Read-the-Bill Rule for Congress, 76 Mo. L. Rev. 135, 136-38 (2011).
Vox.com said:
Adler & Cannon said:
So, when you say, "I'm going to use the meaning of intent that Cannon is using here," you're misusing the phrase "Cannon is using here"--it doesn't mean (as you seem to believe), "I wish Cannon had used."
I didn't find this very convincing. Like, on the one hand it's obviously true that there's not really any plausible change to the system that would make every election a Democratic victory for the next century. But this is conflating partisan outcomes with ideological outcomes, since the nature of the system is that parties' platforms change over time in pursuit of votes. When liberalism isn't very popular liberal parties get less liberal - see the Third Way. So, yes, it's silly to expect that compulsory voting would give Democrats a huge advantage for a very long time, but that's because, if compulsory voting produces an electorate which is friendlier to what the Democrats stand for now, the parties would move left such that the median voter remains more-or-less between them.
And the political scientist linked to does believe that compulsory voting changes the ideological center of the electorate. He wants to make the case that it moves it in a way that no educated person wants, but the Volokh guy sums up non-voters like this: "They are more economically populist, as well, which translates into support for a larger welfare state, but also for various policies that go against basic economics 101 (including as understood by leading left-wing economists)." There's a potential tradeoff here, but it's not obviously a bad idea to give more say to people who want more welfare spending even if they have a relatively weak understanding of economics.
The political scientist's attack on what he calls the Demographic Argument is particularly unconvincing, I think. The idea is that voters typically vote altruistically in the sense that they try to vote for what's best for the country, and advantaged voters, by virtue of being more informed, are better equipped to determine what's best for the country. They're in a better position to make political decisions on behalf of disadvantaged non/voters than the disadvantaged themselves. His example is positions on free trade. But it's easy to imagine that a person's position of advantage is itself an obstacle to their understanding of what's best for the disadvantaged, either out of ignorance of the actual state of the disadvantaged or because of various cognitive biases. We've had this argument before, right? The thinking here seems to prove way too much. This has come up before in historical arguments about civil rights (construed broadly). Like, it was pretty common for slavery to be defended on the grounds that it was actually better even for the black slaves. The black slaves had a different opinion, and they were right even though they were in general more ignorant of economics and all that. That doesn't seem to me to be a coincidence - despite being less educated the slaves were in a very good position to judge the impact of slavery on slaves. One could say something similar about women's suffrage or the civil rights movement.
Sure, maybe compulsory voting has downsides. Maybe the median voter becomes more of an "intolerant [towards gay people], economically innumerate, hawkish bigot". But it's hard to imagine that this doesn't also come with favoring more spending on the poor and more opposition to mass incarceration, among other things, just because compulsory voting is adding in a lot more poor people and black people.
Coriolanus
Banned
You're baffled by a politician hyping up all the stuff he did instead of going around admitting failure and saying that his time in power was not enough to pull people out of the ocean of shit they're in?
Too see what happens when democrats downplay what little they achieve, all you gotta do is look at 2014.
Jack Remington
Banned
Metaphoreus, if that's your serious opinion, or if you don't see the major problem with Cannon's argument, I would suggest that you reconsider whether or not you are qualified to speak at such length on the subject
A death spiral in any state would result in a loss of jobs, an increase in uncompensated hospital care, and an increase in the state's financial burden in providing medical care to its citizens. To say nothing of the damage the state would suffer in a loss of competitiveness with other states if it had no functioning insurance market.
The fact that you seriously do not consider the loss of the state's health insurance market to be a big f****** deal indicates that you really need to do a lot more reading on the subject of health care economics instead of making this a purely theoretical and rhetorical exercise. This has been my problem with you the whole time, btw. You treat this like some grammar puzzle with no understanding of any of the context around these words.
The complete destruction of a state's health insurance market would be an absolute disaster. The fact that New York and a few other states were economically illiterate enough to set up community rating without a mandate and subsidies, and in so doing destroyed their own insurance markets, does not mean that this would not be a gun to the head most of the other 37 states that would be affected by the ruling you want in King.
A death spiral in any state would result in a loss of jobs, an increase in uncompensated hospital care, and an increase in the state's financial burden in providing medical care to its citizens. To say nothing of the damage the state would suffer in a loss of competitiveness with other states if it had no functioning insurance market.
The fact that you seriously do not consider the loss of the state's health insurance market to be a big f****** deal indicates that you really need to do a lot more reading on the subject of health care economics instead of making this a purely theoretical and rhetorical exercise. This has been my problem with you the whole time, btw. You treat this like some grammar puzzle with no understanding of any of the context around these words.
The complete destruction of a state's health insurance market would be an absolute disaster. The fact that New York and a few other states were economically illiterate enough to set up community rating without a mandate and subsidies, and in so doing destroyed their own insurance markets, does not mean that this would not be a gun to the head most of the other 37 states that would be affected by the ruling you want in King.
I guess it makes sense that Ted Cruz would be announcing his candidacy at a school where I can receive the coveted minor in Creation Studies.
An idiot making annoucements to a school of idiots. Fitting.
I honestly can't think of a more appropriate place for him to announce.
Dems were in trouble in 2010, ACA or not. If it never passed they would have still lost the House; they likely would have held a few more seats here and there but nothing to prevent the GOP from winning back the majority.
It's the talking point from the Democratic House majority that I appreciated most in their final days: It's not how long you have your majority, it's what you do with it. It's so true. If you know the far-right nutcases are coming out of the woodwork you stand up for what you believe in. What has the GOP been able to accomplish? Nothing, because they're filled with a bunch of idiots with the tea party and a bunch of billionaires preventing them from legislating sensibly.
It's the talking point from the Democratic House majority that I appreciated most in their final days: It's not how long you have your majority, it's what you do with it. It's so true. If you know the far-right nutcases are coming out of the woodwork you stand up for what you believe in. What has the GOP been able to accomplish? Nothing, because they're filled with a bunch of idiots with the tea party and a bunch of billionaires preventing them from legislating sensibly.
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
I don't think your point is contrary to Somin's. As he writes:
Ilya Somin said:
So, he isn't merely arguing that compulsory voting is not likely to result in more Democrats being elected (as he does when he says that "political science research suggests that the partisan preferences of American nonvoters differ very little from those of people who vote in the status quo"); he also argues that the sort of ideological realignment that would accompany mandatory voting would not be entirely one-sided. He writes in an earlier post:
Ilya Somin said:
Ultimately, I don't think Somin's point is to discourage compulsory voting because the outcomes will be the opposite of what is imagined; it is to encourage thinking critically about the move before making it (though, obviously, he's opposed to the idea for a number of reasons). It seems clear that more voters wouldn't automatically mean more Democrats elected, and, what's more, even to the extent that more Democrats would be elected under a compulsory voting regime, it's not at all clear that those Democrats would favor the sorts of policies that today's voting Democrats are hoping for.
I think you're overlooking that Brennan is not building an affirmative case here. Instead, he's attempting to negate a claim that forcing the disadvantaged to vote would result in policies that better their predicament. So this isn't like making the affirmative case that slavery was better for blacks because they got free meals and lodging.
As an aside, it seems to me that Brennan addressed your very complaint about voters from advantaged demographics:
Jason Brennan said:
If you and I are to the point of airing grievances over how the other has participated in this discussion, here are mine: From the very first moment when you deigned to enlighten us with your opinion on the subject, you've done little more than belittle and demonize (like, literally demonize) me and anyone else who would have the audacity of believing differently from you about the case. Rather than addressing arguments, you've insisted on commenting almost exclusively on the mental and character flaws that you are certain must exist within your opponents. (Well, I guess there was that one time when you almost made a substantive argument.)
This most recent series of posts is no different. You misunderstood (giving you the benefit of the doubt) Cannon's argument, and offered a rebuttal to the argument you thought he made (but didn't). Since I pointed that out, you've now shifted to attacking my qualifications to even participate in this discussion. You continue to offer little beyond vitriol, contempt, and hatred for anyone who disagrees with your opinion, confirming the wisdom of my earlier decision to ignore your posts on this subject. And so I shall resume my former posture.
But, before doing so, I offer the following response to the remainder of your post: if Cannon is right that burdens imposed on residents of a state (as opposed to the state governments themselves) can never rise to the level of unconstitutional coercion, then it doesn't matter how negatively the lack of credits would affect the insurance markets. You keep arguing that the practical effects of a pro-King outcome would be "serious," "a big f****** deal," and an "absolute disaster," but those are not the relevant legal questions, which is what Cannon is (and the Supreme Court would be, if they take up the coercion theory) addressing. This is what you (and certain others) have failed to understand: the Court is not called upon to opine on a policy question, but a legal question.
Crazy god fearing wackos gonna crazy.
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/22/8270411/california-lgbt-executions
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/22/8270411/california-lgbt-executions
Avon Barksdale
Member
TOASTY!!!
Jack Remington
Banned
Cannon isn't right, lets just put that to rest right now. The harm of losing subsidies falls on citizens, but the loss of unsubsidized plans when insurance cannot be bought for any price in a state, and the further loss of jobs and state GDP when insurers close up shop and leave, must be considered a burden on the state.
So there Cannon is 0/1. The rest of his article is essentially: this wouldn't be so bad because New York and some other states had similar policies (and their individual insurance markets were virtually dead as a result), so it can't be considered coercive. I'm sure Oregon would disagree. Quite vehemently, in fact. I'd love to see you and Cannon debate them on this subject.
So there Cannon is 0/1. The rest of his article is essentially: this wouldn't be so bad because New York and some other states had similar policies (and their individual insurance markets were virtually dead as a result), so it can't be considered coercive. I'm sure Oregon would disagree. Quite vehemently, in fact. I'd love to see you and Cannon debate them on this subject.
Sounds like this guy would dig the institution of Sharia Law in the US. He should look for allies in the Muslim fundamentalist community.
He probably has a few homosexuals in his closet.
Or buried in his crawl space.
Coriolanus
Banned
Assuming it's the same guy, he's indeed in favor of a muslim-catholic alliance.
but that's mostly because he hates jews.
I'll go ahead and assume that it's the same guy.
idk guys, we cant live with future presidencies needing control of congress for their party to get anything done. Unless, one argues it is an isolated obama case. I do wonder however if it was President Clinton in 2009, would the right have been so invested in making her fail.
I wonder if in 2017, we go back to a normalcy. Obama got more done in 2 years than hes gotten in the rest of his presidency. Such a waste for such a promising candidate/presidency. Obama was naive, though nothing of his fault.
I wonder if in 2017, we go back to a normalcy. Obama got more done in 2 years than hes gotten in the rest of his presidency. Such a waste for such a promising candidate/presidency. Obama was naive, though nothing of his fault.
Coriolanus
Banned
To state the obvious, getting shit done is only part of his job.
The other part is preventing the other side from pushing their agenda.
Which he performed, and continues to perform, quite well.
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
Actually, I wonder if we could. If deadlock becomes the status quo in the federal government, I wonder how much that could be offset by a shift in power back to state governments?
EDIT: Who am I kidding? It will be offset by a shift in power to executive agencies.
Coriolanus
Banned
To state the obvious, that'd only result in a shift in power towards the judiciary.
Which the edit will also cause.
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
I don't think so, because it wouldn't be accomplished through the federal judiciary restricting federal power. Or did you mean something else?
Coriolanus
Banned
Your initial logic appeared to be
Congress does nothing => state legislators pick up slack cuz fuckit, subsidiary powers
Which i assumed was a valid logical step since people in state legislatures are usually overstepping imbeciles (anecdotal evidence). Which would often trigger judicial review, thus, power shift towards the judiciary.
Then you added Executive power, which would result in
Congress does nothing => Executive goes "yo son, i got dis"
Which would also result in someone suing someone over something cuz overreach, which again means the Judiciary would get more play.
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
Yeah, but in most fields, the states already have authority to legislate, so it's hard to imagine that more power would shift to the judiciary as a result of shifting to the states.
Coriolanus
Banned
Then why would you suggest a shift to the executive?
Metaphoreus
This is semantics, and nothing more
I'm certainly not in favor of it, but I think that's exactly what would happen.
That's kind of what is happening, right?
Over the course of his presidency, Obama's gotten a lot more willing to just do stuff by executive order, and we've seen agencies feeling a need to make new policy in a way that they probably wouldn't if we had a well-functioning Congress. On immigration, Obama's now trying to do some of what basically all of Congress says they'd like to do, except without Congress. The FCC did net neutrality by itself, and there was even some movement in Congress to specifically not do anything until the FCC made a decision. The EPA started regulating greenhouse gases in 2011, and almost certainly this had to do with Congress' failure to act on climate change (though the Supreme Court restricted what it could do here pretty recently). We could talk about foreign policy and Congress' bizarre inability to really even debate an authorization for military force, but presidential power in this area is perhaps more firmly established.
It's really striking just how little we expect from Congress anymore. I mean, just look at all the King v Burwell stuff (if this starts an argument about what the law says people will get banned). Whatever the merits of the case, on some level Scalia's totally right that this really shouldn't be a big deal because, if what the law actually says is terrible, Congress can fix it in about five minutes. But of course no one thinks Congress can get its act together for that long, so there's all this concern that the Supreme Court is deciding whether a bunch of people get tax credits or not.
So the other branches pick up the slack. The executive interprets its authority as broadly as possible, and this is really hard to check because actually nobody wants to check it when the alternative is relying on a useless Congress, so the Court is often going to end up agreeing that this is how we've got to do things now.
NYCmetsfan
Banned
Sounds a bit like the end of the Roman Republic...
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