If the most popular “fix” to the Affordable Care Act has been to delay it, you have to ask the question what is the end game for fixing the Affordable Care Act? Delaying the Affordable Care Act has been a simple and popular “fix” for the Administration. If the delay is successful with its targeted population in 2014 then the politics gets even stronger to continue to delay major provisions of the Affordable Care Act till a more opportune time. That opportune time does not look like it is going to be 2015 or 2016. The longer this delay goes on the more likely the voters will be more confortable that there will never be a opportune time. At some point the “Doc Fix Follies” becomes the political model for health care reform. So why should a politician attempt to “fix” the Affordable Care Act when repeated delays is the simple, popular, and successful political answer?
Politics
Was The Republican Party Snub of John Becker Another Example Of What Is Wrong With Our Political Parties?
Yesterday I found out that the Enquirer is reporting that the Ohio Republican Party failed to endorse John Becker and two other area Republican state representatives. I am a constitutional libertarian with Republican leanings who voted for John in the last election. Based on my voting record I am not a reliable Republican voter so what is the Republican Party saying to me about John and the Ohio Republican Party? I can see that the Ohio Republican Party sounds petty. On the other hand the Ohio legislature has plenty of people who can spend money and relatively few people who have a clue how to balance a the budget. Considering Ohio’s poor performance at controlling spending Ohio probably needs more people like John. He has the skills we need for our future well being. It may be inconvenient for both political parties but it is hard to imagine Ohio taking businesses and jobs from Indiana and Illinois without getting its financial books in order. So why should voters choose Republicans over Democrats to govern the next four years? For most voters the top two issues is the economy and jobs. Instead of a growing Ohio economy and jobs we seem to have settled for a Medicaid expansion. Not exactly an inspiring future for my kid. Maybe the current situation is dire enough that the winning party will get some bipartisan cooperation that gets businesses to expand while both parties promise to fight the good political fight another day. This may sound silly but this type of political bargain has worked in the past. The first step is getting along with people you disagree with. If Republicans want to be the winning party you have to ask if they cannot get along with people like John, what are the chances they will get along with Democrats who are still smarting from some pretty bad decisions over the last six years? Between the failed roll out of the Affordable Care Act, the questionable foreign policy decisions of Benghazi, Syria, and the Ukraine, and the never ending saga of the IRS targeting the Tea Party, you would have to say the Democratic Party has made a very persuasive argument that they are the stupid party. It is accomplishment they are not particularly proud of. After twelve months trying to defend the Affordable Care Act we should expect them to be a little testy. My favorite response by an Administration official has to be this comment about the Benghazi response to CBS News.
We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots," said one Obama administration official who was part of the Benghazi response. "It’s actually closer to us being idiots.
One thing we should have learned at the expense of the Democratic party was that “the my way or the highway approach” leads to bad decision making and impairs your re-election chances. So here is the big question. Has the Republican Party learned anything or are the Republicans doomed to make the same mistakes as the Democratic Party?
Did The President Join The Tea Party This Week?
I am still pondering the President’s plan for the individual mandate. I realize that the executive branch has been given a lot of leeway in implementing the Affordable Care Act but his recent actions concerning the individual mandate are humorous at best. Just last year the Democratic party railed against the Tea Party as legislative arsonists for their efforts to defund Affordable Care Act. Here is a Nancy Pelosi quote from Mediate.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi appeared on State of the Union Sunday morning to discuss the looming budget showdown, and told host Candy Crowley that the House GOP, which just passed a continuing resolution that did not fund ObamaCare, were legislative arsonists intent not on cutting government but crippling it.
Although defunding the Affordable Care Act was not likely even to the Tea Party faithful there was a lot of political agreement by both parties to postpone the individual mandate. Postponing the individual mandate was the political middle ground since it polls badly and it is an election year. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. The Administration had a great opportunity to give a little on the individual mandate in exchange for laying the ground work for bipartisan cooperation in fixing the Affordable Care Act. The greatest political opportunity to rescue the Affordable Care Act was staring the administration in the face and they fumbled it. Now we find that their plan is to postpone the individual mandate by executive order! They chose the solution with all of the problems and none of the benefits. I don’t get it! It is as if the Administration is deliberately setting fire to their signature legislation. Can we discern a difference between the Administration’s handling of the Affordable Care Act problems and the efforts of the Tea Party last Fall? Therefore if we believe Nancy Pelosi’s definition that acting like a legislative arsonist is one of the defining characteristics of the Tea Party then it follows that the President must have joined the Tea Party.
If P.J. O’Rourke Keeps Writing Amicus Briefs, I Will Probably Keep Reading Them!
I am a fan of P.J. O’Rourke. He has written a lot of good lines. Recently he spiced up everyone’s life when he teamed up with the Cato Institute to file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court related to the upcoming case Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. This is obviously some of his handiwork.
Driehaus voted for Obamacare, which the Susan B. Anthony List said was the equivalent of voting for taxpayer- funded abortion. Amici are unsure how true the allegation is given that the healthcare law seems to change daily, but it certainly isn’t as truthy as calling a mandate a tax.
Poking fun at the Chief Justice in an amicus brief has to be a first. I am familiar with Mr. Driehaus. He is a local politician lost his seat in 2010 to long time Congressman, Steve Chabot. He won the seat in 2008 with the help of President Obama and I guess the thrill was gone for the voters in 2010. I was surprised to learn that it was illegal to lie about politicians in Ohio and even more surprised that Mr. Driehaus sued the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List. It makes him look less like a former Congressman and more like a sore loser. This Ohio law forbidding lying is embarrassing. Although I would prefer that people stick to the truth about politicians and issues, I can tell you that it sure has not stopped anyone from lying in Ohio. Everyone has their favorite facts and studies. So we have a law most people ignore that is probably unconstitutional. Maybe the Supreme Court will put the law out of its misery before someone finds a way to abuse it. If they let the law stand the Supreme Court may have a mess that will make the Affordable Care Act look like child’s play to deal with. Sorry Chief Justice Roberts you set the precedent of how to deal with highly political laws. Here is what Ilya Shapiro wrote about the case over at Cato.
Believe it or not, it’s illegal in Ohio to lie about politicians, for politicians to lie about other politicians, or for politicians to lie about themselves. That is, it violates an election law””this isn’t anything related to slander or libel, which has higher standards of proof for public figures””to make “false statements” in campaign-related contexts.
During the 2010 House Elections, a pro-life advocacy group called the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List), published ads in Ohio claiming that then-Rep. Steven Driehaus, who was running for re-election, had voted to fund abortions with federal money (because he had voted for Obamacare). Rather than contesting the truth of these claims in the court of public opinion, Driehaus filed a complaint with the Ohio Election Commission (OEC) under a state law that makes it a crime to “disseminate a false statement concerning a candidate, either knowing the same to be false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false.”
While the complaint was ultimately dropped, the SBA List took Driehaus and the OEC to federal court, seeking to have this law declared unconstitutional and thus enable advocacy groups to have more freedom going forward. The case has now reached the Supreme Court.
Did All Of This Talk About Global Warming Being a Weapon of Mass Destruction Give Putin The Green Light To Invade #Ukraine?
Maybe we finally found something that we can say that global warming caused.
Did Vladimir Putin Just Become The Defense Departments New BFF?
With the pending Defense Department budget cuts you have to wonder whether some Pentagon types are expressing some serious bro love for Putin after the #Ukraine escapade.
WHO SAW THE UKRAINE INVASION COMING, AND WHO DIDN’T
I had to laugh when I read the @blakehounshell tweet that “Sarah Palin totally called this exact Ukraine scenario 6 years ago…”. In 2008 he was blogging for the magazine Foreign Policy magazine when he dismissed Palin’s notion with the following statement.
“As we’ve said before, this is an extremely far-fetched scenario.”
As others have pointed out he was not alone in his view. I did not know why at the time I read this statement but the notion that this was an extremely far-fetched scenario struck me as strange. Today I was reading the post, “Who Saw The Ukraine Invasion Coming, And Who Didn’t”, and it dawned on me that the Russians understand the classical relationship between diplomacy and warfare and the US does not. The ultimate achievement in warfare and diplomacy is to achieve your objective without fighting. Sun Tzu said this a long time ago in The Art of War and later Clauswitz reminded us that “war is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.” If the Russian objective was to re-establish political control of the Ukraine, they have already won. It sure looks like the Russians are the professionals and we are the amateurs in the foreign policy game. Unfortunately this event reminds me of Hitler and the Anschluss of Austria, too.
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
”• Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Is the NAACP Engaged in Illegal Partisan Politics?
Last night I watched a video clip on Fox of Senator Tim Scott responding to remarks made by a NAACP leader, Rev. William Barber. Last year I looked at the NAACP and concluded that Tea Party organizations would likely set up political activity guidelines modeled after the NAACP guidelines. They were best example of a 501(c)(3)/501(c)(4) organization that is engaged in issue politics and political education while successfully meeting the IRS guidelines for political activity. So I was surprised to hear a NAACP leader engaged in petty partisan politics when the True The Vote versus the IRS issue is a hot issue. The last thing the IRS wants to explain again is how their treatment of the True The Vote organization is not different than the way they would treat other 501(c)(4) organizations such as local NAACP affiliates. Rev. Barber did not talk about voter registration or educating people about the issues. He engaged in a personal attack of an elected official. The IRS has frowned upon this behavior in the past. The parent organization of the NAACP has specific instructions to its 501(c)(4) affiliates forbidding partisan politics and Rev. Barber’s actions seem to be unnecessarily risky in an election year. If the IRS is applying the same standards to all 501(c)(4) organizations then they should be talking to the NAACP today. Rev. Barber crossed the line.
The Winter of Our Discontent
A couple of days ago I read a Reddit column that reminded me of my regrets about the second war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was an evil and corrupt man who deserved to be forcibly removed from power. The question was how. Part of me was skeptical that any well intentioned regime change by an outside power would ever work. The US needed to win not only the war but the hearts and minds of the people. Everything had to work perfectly in a place beset with almost intractable political problems. It sounded like a job that was too big and complicated to work. Despite the odds I put my faith that our government could make things right.
Not very long ago we had some well intentioned people in business and government who wanted everyone to have the chance to own their home. Their policies lead to a real estate bubble so big that when it collapsed, it threatened the entire financial system of the United States. Most people felt the financial companies should feel the pain by fixing the problems they created but the problem was so big it threatened the entire financial system. So with reluctant skepticism we embarked down a different path of subsidizing and consolidating the banking system. We combined banks and other financial institutions we would never allowed to happened in normal times. As part of this grand bargain we hoped the money spent on the banks would trickle down to the people who trying to own their home. These were the people whose troubled assets were the focal point of the law. When we fixed this problem the jobs would come back, too. Like most people I put my faith that our government. I wanted this plan to work.
Then there is the Affordable Care Act. It is the centerpiece of the Obama legacy and the greatest accomplishment of progressive politics in the last fifty years. It was supposed to not only expand the health insurance system to more people but it would make health care and insurance more affordable. We were constantly reminded that very few people would be affected by the changes and that if we liked our health insurance and doctors, we could keep them. Once again I felt the pangs of skepticism. Although I wanted this plan to work, it sounded to good to be true.
I look with regret at these three decisions. Even now the general population views them with a mixed sense of success and failure. We do not like to dwell on past failures. In hindsight each decision failed to accomplish its objective so we did something else. With each failure I have become more skeptical that our government can finesse its way through poorly thought out policies. Weapons of mass destruction were not found. Middle class families had their homes and dreams foreclosed on. Affordable health care is still a dream. One of the greatest features of American exceptionalism was our government’s ability to transform bad political policies into workable policies that grew middle class wealth. We took our eyes off of the ball.
Stuck on Stupid Revisited
I was beginning to think I was too harsh on the State Department yesterday when I called their inept foreign policies Stuck on Stupid until I saw this story in the Business Insider. With the political pots boiling over in the Middle East and North Korea, Mr. Kerry says that climate change will be a focal point of his time in office.
The New York Times reports today that Secretary of State John Kerry is planning to make climate change a focal point of his time in office and wants to pursue a global climate change treaty in 2015.