Friday News Roundup - Domestic
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-06-29/friday-news-roundup-domestic
Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberal members of the Supreme Court to uphold President Obama’s health care overhaul. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and other Republican leaders pledged to fight for repeal of the law. The House voted to make Eric Holder the first sitting U.S.Attorney General to be held in contempt of congress. New York Congressman Charlie Rangel and Utah Senator Orin Hatch survive hard-fought primary battles. Earlier in the week, the Supreme Court struck down several parts of Arizona’s immigration law, but upheld the controversial “show me your papers” provision. Ron Elving of NPR, Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post and John Harwood of CNBC join Diane for analysis of the week's top national news stories.
Guests
Ron Elving
Washington editor for NPR.
Karen Tumulty
national political reporter, The Washington Post.
John Harwood
chief Washington correspondent for CNBC; reporter, The New York Times.
Related Video
John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC, responded to a listener's question about the power of the National Rifle Association to determine who runs for office. Harwood said the bipartisan vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress was a result of the NRA's political influence. Ron Elving, Washington editor for NPR, explained the purpose of the Fast and Furious policy and discussed its implications for U.S lawmaking. Karen Tumulty, national political reporter for The Washington Post, said this was the first time that a sitting attorney general had been cited for contempt of Congress.
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Will Chief Justice Roberts vote finally end the grousing by liberals that Republican nominated SCOTUS candidates are obligated to vote conservative. Five Republican nominated SCOTUS judges voted for Roe V Wade.
BTW: Senator Obama voted against Roberts during the hearings. Now POTUS Obama owes his legacy to the man.
"As a means of listening to what the enemy is saying....."
Teece, I appreciate that you like to be educated on issues, please let's not call them ( by them, I mean those who do not share the same ideology) enemies. My microbio on another forum states, " a lib is your fellow American, not your enemy". It's just the ideology that differs, in essence we are all concerned about our country.
pecroma wrote: "The inability of the ATF agent, the US Attorney, or anyone else for that matter, to prove the mental INTENT of the individual is what allows the transfer of these weapons."
The ATF was watching KNOWN straw purchasers buying firearms on live feed cameras.
Why all the fuss about the mandate to buy Health insurance? For decades, states have required people to buy Liability Insurance for their cars before issuing license plates and registrations. Why doesn't the media make this comparison?
Dawn Castle wrote:
" My microbio on another forum states, " a lib is your fellow American, not your enemy". It's just the ideology that differs, in essence we are all concerned about our country.'
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Really? Super lib and Obama supporter Bill Maher's idea of being concerned about this country is to call its citizens "stupid."
"This is -- by the way, this is one reason why I say -- and people laugh at me, but I would say in 100 years, this country will be Mormon. It's a stupid religion and a stupid country. They were made for each other." Bill Maher, June, 2012
Dawn Castle Wrote:
" It's just the ideology that differs, in essence we are all concerned about our country."
Oh if that were only true....
In reference; earlier in the broadcast Ron Elving was making a comment about how the Democrats might now, re-frame the discussion regarding the ACA to help Americans understand it better.
There are portions of the ACA that have already gone into effect that are wildly popular....but in order to get Americans to wrap their heads around the additional benefits of the ACA, Democrats will need to point out the individual benefits of the act. Rather than the good the act may do as a whole.
In essence...."What's in if for me."
That is not an inclusive.... we are all in this thing together.... approach. That is, an us vs. them approach which is unfortunately where most Americans attitudes lie.
That said, how is it even possible that we are all concerned about our country?
stronmd wrote:
"Why all the fuss about the mandate to buy Health insurance? For decades, states have required people to buy Liability Insurance for their cars before issuing license plates and registrations. Why doesn't the media make this comparison?"
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The lame stream media has made this invalid analogy, several times. Driving a car is a privilege, not a right. When you get a driver's license and buy a car, you are volunteering to use state roads. Also, you do not need proof of insurance to register a vehicle.
Obamacare individual mandate is forcing people to participate in a program that they otherwise would not elect to participate in.
stronmd wrote:
"Why all the fuss about the mandate to buy Health insurance? For decades, states have required people to buy Liability Insurance for their cars before issuing license plates and registrations. Why doesn't the media make this comparison?"
Because it is inapt.
People are not required to by cars (yet). If you choose to buy a car, you are required to license it.
People are now required to buy health insurance or pay a fine. Your only alternatives to paying are to stop breathing or leave the country.
On the first point, people may not be required to buy cars yet, but expect new taxes such that if you do not buy a Chevy Volt, but instead by something else you will pay an additional tax. Expect that, to conserve energy, if you use your lights after 10:00 PM you pay a tax. See how this works?
Marus Tullius wrote:
"Also, you do not need proof of insurance to register a vehicle."
In some states you do. But you are right in that buying and driving a car is a choice. Breathing is not.
"Obamacare individual mandate is forcing people to participate in a program that they otherwise would not elect to participate in."
You don't have to participate, if by participating you mean buying insurance. You can pay the fine ... oops ... I mean "tax" instead.
" Driving a car is a privilege, not a right. "
Under this philosophy being healthy is a privilege, correct?
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/06/health-care-as-privilege-what-gop-w...
"forcing people to participate in a program that they otherwise would not elect to participate in."
Define..... common good. But in this case you might have to separate "common" and "good".
ecgberht,
You mentioned you beleive "liberals are scared" after the SCOTUS decision. I for one am not scared and believe this might be an opportunity to COLLABORATE toward a truly lower cost cover-all healthcare environment. There are many, many points in AHA that must be retained (not repealed or replaced) e.g. no lifetime cap, no annual cap, no pre-existing condition blocking, preventative care emphasis, repayment to citizens when insurers fail to meet proper payout levels, keeping kids on a family plan to age 26, and others. Much more needs to be done to change the traditional approach away from simplistic (aka costly) fee for service and bean counter payouts. Something rational could be done to allow cross state purchasing and risk pooling and market pooling. Something reasonable could be further done on tort reform. Perhaps insist that all services be assessed a tiny "user fee" instead of having some free and some charged - even preventative services should have a small fee to discourage abuse.
And as far as being "scared", NObody should fear - it takes Congress so long to do ANYthing that it would be 2016 before any repeal effort could proceed...... and Hillary will be elected (oh shock).
You mentioned "even though we oppose the President's policies, still show him the respect due the office by using his proper title". I applaud your attitude and also held a similar stance (sometimes along with my breath) during W's administration. (Even just held my nose and snotty remarks when Cheney did his shennanigans.) And I took a lot of heat defending Bush when that bogus reporter tossed a shoe at him. And IF Romney wins I can abide for a while. Heaven knows, as much as Mitt flip flops he might end up administrating like a liberal like he did in Mass. (By the way, people from there say "Mass" as the state nickname......I have lots of former military friends from there.)
Seriously, just cut the crap.
If you are wealthy you have the "privilege" of being healthy. If you are poor you don't.
Don't keep couching it in this "moral responsibility" nonsense. You may be a very "moral" person, but if you don't have the money to pay your medical bills, you are not likely to find medical care. In this particular example, being poor is depicted as being amoral. That is, you didn't take care of yourself and thus you weren't responsible.
HAHAHAHAHA HOHOHOHOHO HAHAHAHAHA HEEHEEHEEHEEE!!!
"Several reporters have recently filed dispatches showing in human terms what sort of conditions we would be perpetuating in the event that five Republican Supreme Court Justices, or a potential Republican-run government next year, partially or completely nullify the Affordable Care Act. A man will watch the tumor in his leg grow to the size of a melon, and his wife will sew special pants to fit the growing bulge, because he has no insurance. A woman will hobble around for four years on an untreated broken ankle she can’t have repaired. People will line up in their cars and spend the night in a parking lot queuing for a rare free health clinic.
Maybe these stories sound like cheap emotional manipulation. "
Maybe these stories sound like cheap emotional manipulation because they ARE CHEAP EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION!!!
As I have often said, liberals are KING of the anecdote. You see, the anecdote plays to the emotions. It ignores reality and facts.
The FACT IS, there are many ways to improve the HC and HI systems in this country that don't involve government control so the idea that dismantling ACA will lead to these scenarios is FALSE. Allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines is one, another is tort reform to reduce the cost of medical care. As I have also said, liberals don't care about everybody getting good health care. They just want everybody to get the SAME care. That's never going to happen Teece. There will always be some better off than others. That's true here and all around the world.
Teece Bowman wrote:
" Driving a car is a privilege, not a right. "
Under this philosophy being healthy is a privilege, correct?"
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You are not guaranteed a driver's license to drive on state road, ergo, it's not a philosophy, it's law. What makes you think having health insurance guarantees health?
You make some good points, LibVet.
"And as far as being "scared", NObody should fear - it takes Congress so long to do ANYthing that it would be 2016 before any repeal effort could proceed"
There will be a repeal vote in the House this month. It is largely for show of course, but it makes the point. 2/3 of the country still does not like the overall plan and the power grab. You are right that they do like some individual parts of the plan. What we should end up with is a plan that both Republicans and Democrats can sign off on. That could have happened two years ago, but instead we got locked conference rooms, "we won the election, we write the bills", and parliamentary tricks to get the bill passed. Now people are starting to see the wisdom of broadening the HI market and taking on the trial lawyers which Democrats were not willing to do.
The real bottom line for the future of ACA is what happens on November 6th not what happened yesterday. I believe (as do others) that this election will determine the direction of the country for the next generation or maybe even two.
Marcus,
A lot of your ASSumptions about what states require for drivers are inaccurate. Some states require proof of insurance and the insurance must meet a minimum set of standards. Other states require the driver to post a hefty bond. Having a driver's license with photo ID is now required in many states in order to exercise one's RIGHT to vote (....as a result of Republican and Libertarian legislative measures).
As Mitt Romney said in 2006, the individual mandate is a conservative principle that makes citizens act responsibly and participate in not only their own health but preventing their costs from being shifted to other citizens. Anybody familiar with the healthcare industry knows that a minimum of $1,000 a year per person is shifted from each uninsured patient to the rest of us.
As some unfortunate homeowners in Alabama learned, you can't get fire insurance AFTER your house burned down and AFTER you failed to pay your local fire prevention TAXes (their fire department refused to come).
P.S. there's no tax for this observation. Consider it a favor from a fellow responsible citizen who pays $1,908 monthly for a family healthcare policy.......one that doesn't even cover me since I am over 65.
ecgberht,
You are right about the usefulness of Cantor's bogus "repeal" vote on July 11; it has as much chance of being enacted as the safety of a 10 year old in Jerry Sandusky's locker room.
You also mentioned that the next election will "determine the direction of the country for the next generation or maybe even two". I presume you REALLY mean the direction will be preseved for the next two YEARS not generations. The Congressional pendulum swings both ways and Occupiers may replace Tea Partiers by then. The roll call will drop AYE and NAY and just have WHAT-EVER.
LibVet wrote:
"Marcus,
A lot of your ASSumptions about what states require for drivers are inaccurate. Some states require proof of insurance and the insurance must meet a minimum set of standards. Other states require the driver to post a hefty bond. Having a driver's license with photo ID is now required in many states in order to exercise one's RIGHT to vote .."
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There are many states that do not require a driver to produce insurance to register a vehicle, yet the police will write a citation to those they pull over for not having "proof of insurance."
How is the constitutional right to vote, if one is an American citizen and of voting age, infringed upon when the voting officials need to see photo proof of identification at the polls? You have to produce the same proof to purchase a firearm at a retail store even though it doesn't say so in the 2nd Amendment
Spencer,
Your quote from the Constitution and your analysis omitted the fact that when the reconciliation process took place, the AHA was actually sent back to the House and the official amendments were made, they were done there through the standard administrative process that all bills go through. Peremptory votes were unable to overturn what the Senate had agreed to.
(You should have stayed up late to watch it all on C-SPAN).
"Maybe these stories sound like cheap emotional manipulation because they ARE CHEAP EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION!!!"
The same kind of CHEAP EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION that you see and hear every single day on the conservative television and radio programs. Scaring people about the dangers of creeping socialism. Neither side is immune to using emotion to make their point. The only difference is that both side calls their version of emotional manipulation FACTS.
And, just because there are some better off than others is not an excuse. Humans are capable of justice, it is what makes us uniquely human.
Harwood really had his partisan hat on today!
Marcus,
Thank God you are too young to know the difficulties of the aged and afflicted in getting to/from government agencies in order to get various things like photo IDs, not to mention some of the complex documentation that less-than-understanding, poorly trained clerks demand at the license branches. (Our local branch clerks do not recognzie valid US passports.)
If you have driven in some states, you would also readily see that many aged folks should never have a driver's license. I personally observed a nice old gentleman nearly failed his vision test (took 3 tries) and could only partly hear what the clerk was asking him.......to which he replied "No, I have no hearing difficulty".
If anyone is turned down in the licensing process, that surely does not obviate his/her voting rights.
I personally own no guns even for sport. I don't need one nor do I deny the right of someone else to obtain one for sport. But I really don't see the need for assault weapons or grenade launchers for "deer hunting" regardless of what license is obtained. The weapons that struck down Gabby Gifford and the folks at the mall had licenses - but that did no good in preventing their misuse - and that is all too often the case.
LibVet wrote:
"You also mentioned that the next election will "determine the direction of the country for the next generation or maybe even two". I presume you REALLY mean the direction will be preseved for the next two YEARS not generations. "
No, I meant two generations. Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that he would "fundamentally transform America". He's working on it. But it is not a good thing. If he is re-elected, we will be too far down the road toward a social democracy to turn back in 2016. Social democracies turn to facism. I am afraid for my kids and my kids' kids, seriously.
LibVet wrote:
Marcus,
"Thank God you are too young to know the difficulties of the aged and afflicted in getting to/from government agencies in order to get various things like photo IDs, not to mention some of the complex documentation that less-than-understanding, poorly trained clerks demand at the license branches. "
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How do these "aged" manage to get to the voting locations? If these folks were compelled to get photo ID when they were much younger, there wouldn't be a problem now. The generation behind these folks will have no excuse not to have photo ID.
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LibVet wrote:
"Our local branch clerks do not recognzie valid US passports."
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But the voting officals would except a passport as a valid ID, yes?
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LibVet wrote:
"I personally own no guns even for sport. I don't need one nor do I deny the right of someone else to obtain one for sport. But I really don't see the need for assault weapons or grenade launchers for "deer hunting" regardless of what license is obtained. The weapons that struck down Gabby Gifford and the folks at the mall had licenses - but that did no good in preventing their misuse - and that is all too often the case.
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Where in the 2nd Amendment does it state you can only own firearms for "sport" and "hunting?" Grenade launchers with live grenade projectiles are illegal even under the 1934 NFA Act which allows for private citizen ownership of automatic weapons provided they pay a $200 tax and have background check.
Firearms are inanimate objects. Why do liberals wish to penalize inanimate objects, yet are squeamish about the use of the death penalty for the guy who shot Giffords and murdered others?
ecgberht wrote:
"No, I meant two generations. Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that he would "fundamentally transform America". He's working on it. But it is not a good thing. If he is re-elected, we will be too far down the road toward a social democracy to turn back in 2016. Social democracies turn to facism. I am afraid for my kids and my kids' kids, seriously."
Depends on your viewpoint I suppose as to which persuasion leads to fascism....
"Perhaps the most serious threat of `galloping conservatism' is that in a time of crisis it could easily be transformed into full-blown fascism. When people are afraid they are susceptible to trading away their civil liberties to protect their `things.' One of the arch apostles of conservative economics, Milton Freidman, has already said that, given the choice between preserving American constitutional freedoms and the economic freedom to make a dollar without interference, he would choose economic freedom hands down... how tragically ironic if conservative Americans bartered away their constitutional liberties to preserve their affluent lifestyles."
Tom Sine
"The same kind of CHEAP EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION that you see and hear every single day on the conservative television and radio programs. Scaring people about the dangers of creeping socialism. Neither side is immune to using emotion to make their point. "
There is a difference between emotional manipulation through anecdote, a favorite of the left, and pointing out to TV and/or radio listeners that the country has been drifting toward socialism for the past nearly 100 years. If you deny that, you don't know American history. Candidate Obama promised to "fundamentally transform America". What do you think he meant by that, TB?
"Humans are capable of justice, it is what makes us uniquely human."
And Americans are uniquely generous and can and would provide economic justice to their fellow American without the force or intervention of Government. Liberals are some of the most generous people on earth - with Other People's Money. Conservatives are generous with THEIR OWN money and studies show it. But EVERYONE becomes less generous when they believe that government will provide for their fellow man. "Why should I worry about it, the government will do for him or her". And once government "does for you", they control you. Which is why Conservatives are so afraid for their personal freedoms.
Study 18th and 19th century America and you will see the difference. As I have often pointed out, this culture started to change with FDR. He is principally at fault.
hainc wrote:
"Harwood really had his partisan hat on today!"
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He works for NBC. That's to be expected. BTW: Does Diane Rehm sport any other type of head gear?
And both sides throw around the fascism moniker with equal abandon....
"The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power...
Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion...
The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism... They claim to be super-patriots, (sound familiar?) but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."
Henry A. Wallace, 1944
"Depends on your viewpoint I suppose as to which persuasion leads to fascism...."
No it doesn't! Read about the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitlerian facism. You can get started here:
"Following World War I, the republic emerged from the German Revolution in November 1918. In 1919, a national assembly convened in Weimar, where a new constitution for the German Reich was written, then adopted on 11 August of that same year. The ensuing period of liberal democracy lapsed in the early 1930s, leading to the ascent of the nascent Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler in 1933. The legal measures taken by the Nazi government in February and March 1933, commonly known as Gleichschaltung ("coordination") meant that the government could legislate contrary to the constitution. The republic nominally continued to exist until 1945, as the constitution was never formally repealed. However, the measures taken by the Nazis in the early part of their rule rendered the constitution irrelevant. [See Obama on Immigration enforcement]. Thus, 1933 is usually seen as the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Hitler's Third Reich."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_republic