Thursday, June 28, 2012

Delusional

The current imbroglio over the ACA has once again thrust the radical, reactionary, lawless Supreme Court majority into the spotlight it so loves.

I'm fairly certain that the Court majority will let stand most if not all of the ACA legislation simply because it assures so much money to the Court majority's corporate masters. Whatever gives them what they want is what the Court majority approves, viz the Montana decision.

But if they overturn the whole thing -- which they will do if they are told to do so by their corporate masters -- the idea that the re-election of Obama will somehow lead to the overturning of the Court majority and its replacement with a liberal/progressive majority is delusional.

And yet I'm hearing it more and more stridently as the consequences of the current Court's majority decisions on behalf of their neo-liberal/neo-conservative and lawless ideology sink in.

Those consequences are dire. The delusion, however, is that Obama will somehow intervene and transform the Court. His two appointments to date demonstrate he has no intention of doing so, even if he had the power, which he does not.

The Court's lawless, extreme and thoroughly disreputable majority was essentially enshrined for the next 50 years with the appointments to the Court made by George W. Bush -- with the complicity of the Senate Democrats, let it not be forgotten. They knew what they were doing, Harriet Myers notwithstanding. Those appointments ensured that the Court's chief justice and majority would be "stabilized" as is for decades to come. That the was point, after all.

Democrats went along with it. As has been noticed from more than one observational post, many nominal Democrats are on board with the neo-liberal/neo-conservative agenda and ideology no matter what they say to get elected.

So even if by some miracle (reliance on which is itself delusional) Obama is re-elected, and all the Court's "conservative" majority resigns or dies, he's still not going to appoint, nor will the Senate confirm, a "liberal/progressive" Court majority.

Nothing short of revolution will achieve that in our lifetimes. In other words, it's not going to happen through presidential and congressional elections. It's delusional to think it will.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Court upholds ACA in its entirety. The Rightists will of course experience exploding heads, but it will all be for show. The real deal is of course that their corporate paymasters love-love-love the mandate and all the money that will now be forthcoming.

Still we need comprehensive, affordable, and universal health care coverage, and as importantly, we need universal access to healthcare. The other factor of the ACA that corporatists love-love-love is that while payment is required, access is not.

Brilliant.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT!!!

A counter argument arises: Roberts sided with the "liberals" to uphold the ACA; the "conservatives" all denounced it, including Kennedy.

Then I ask you: if this ruling represents a "liberal" victory, what does it say about the "liberal" minority on the court that staunch corporatist Roberts sided with them?

Why of course: it says that the "liberals" on the Court are just as corporatist as the "conservatives."

In Mussolini's day, this was the definition of Fascism.

5 comments:

  1. Ché,

    Hope all is well. Very strange, this decision.

    I'm guessing Roberts thought he couldn't be totally partisan and wingnut corporatist for so many decisions in a row, so he picked the least offensive one and backed off.

    Prior to this one, he expanded rights for corporations to buy elections, while curtailing union rights and their ability to compete.

    He forced an opt in for unions, when it comes to political speech, but no such opt in for corporations is need. Asymmetric warfare, etc.

    But on the health care law. It's a conservative bill, with a coupla decent parts thrown in. Private health care companies get some pretty sweet things thrown their way, but they probably think they could get even more from the GOP. The mandate guarantees a lot of extra profit without risk. But the Medical Loss ratio is not to their liking, even though it's at a very weak (too low) percentage, 80%. And they don't like the Medicare Advantage change, which apparently moved 500 billion out of the pot o gold for private supplementals, and into Medicare itself.

    (The GOP won a lot of races in 2010 by lying about this, painting it not as a loss for corporations, but as a loss for Medicare consumers.)

    The right wing freak out over this is amazing. There is talk about armed revolution by more than a few wingnuts. Given their supposed love of the founders, they might want to revisit certain of their decisions back in the day. Like, when GW enacted a law that said the government could force citizens to join militias and buy their own specific gear. 1792.

    Interesting, what they consider "tyranny." A nation which has forced its citizens to kill or be killed in battle for most of its history, versus one that requires the uninsured to buy insurance. The right is fine with the former, but thinks the latter will destroy civilization as we know it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think it was an easy decision. Barack Obama went for a very corporate friendly bill. The corporation involved in this wanted this patchwork to tamp down any political talk of alternatives. Roberts was probably a little more savvy then his cohorts (or else he drew the short straw).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, exactly. The ACA has always been a corporate wet dream, in vivid color. Roberts, the consummate corporatist jurist couldn't help himself... BUT what is truly striking, among other things, is all this palaver that somehow by this decision (alone) the Court has re-legitimized itself after its long unfortunate period from Bush v Gore till today. All that is now erased because Roberts sided with the Liberals. Thus, the SCOTUS can rule any way at all and everyone (who matters) will consider it "legitimate." Hunh?

    Bizarre thinking, but there you go.

    I wonder if the rightists ravers who are waxing so wroth over this law and ruling are capable of recognizing just how corporate friendly this law is? After all, it was largely written by insurance company and medical provider lobbyists, based on rightist examples (like RomneyCare) and stink-tank models. This is a Republican insurance scheme.

    Someone said on the radio this evening that the Big Losers are the single payer advocates, because it will probably be a generation or more before that idea, which was never part of the ACA negotiations, is resurrected.

    I don't think it will be quite that long.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I tried and failed to convince conservatives that they should love ACA. Broke it down as best I could to show how much money private insurance will make as a result. They just won't let go of their belief that this is "socialism".

    Real socialism means the public owns and controls the means of production; uses those means to create a surplus; reallocates that surplus for the public good.

    It does not mean that the public subsidizes private profit and ownership of the means of production remains entirely in the hands of private business interests.

    I just don't get America.

    ReplyDelete
  5. There's no logic behind the rightist antagonism toward the ACA. And no, they have no idea what socialism is.

    ACA is not "socialism" -- well, it's closer to Fascism when you get down to it.

    Hope you're doing well. Nice to "see" you again.

    Cheers.

    ReplyDelete