Update
Everybody has to submit a take on the Supreme Court this week and what they're going to do with the Affordable Care Act. One reason for optimism might take a back road, as follows:
We don't know that the Court does everything the Republican Party wants; what we know is that it does everything Big Business wants, by and large, which is not the same thing (Republicans only really care about the bond market and other such bloodsuckers). There are a lot of businesses that have figured out how to do reasonably well or much better with the new law, such as doctors, biotech firms, drug companies, medical schools and teaching hospitals, and many more. It is not in their interest to see the ACA repealed, and John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy may well have heard about this. They play golf, don't they?
Update Monday evening:
With the Court's ruling on Arizona's immigration law out, I just want to brag a little on how it goes along with the above argument. Business, properly speaking, has nothing against illegal immigration, you know: it's a source of cheap labor and growing markets.
Republicans are against illegal immigration because they are tied to this crowd of nativist yahoos that vote for them—if only millionaires voted Republican, they wouldn't be able to win an election even in Scarsdale, so they have to give on these issues that they don't actually care about at all, like abortion and guns, and they have to at least pretend they care about the dusky hordes invading the homeland to speak their foreign languages right in our faces.
But the Supreme Court doesn't need anybody's votes; they are free to represent the millionaires in a more simple and direct way. So they voided all the anti-business provisions of the Arizona law, leaving nearly intact, however, the provision allowing the police to harass anybody that looks like he might not have a birth certificate, because what's life if a cop can't even harass anybody?
And then when business and Republican interests are in accord, as in the case of the Montana corporate campaign contributions law, the Court's task is easy.
So will the same logic work with the ACA? We'll see.
Update 6/28
I hate to say I told you so. Told you so!
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| Night vision golf. From Incredible Things. |
We don't know that the Court does everything the Republican Party wants; what we know is that it does everything Big Business wants, by and large, which is not the same thing (Republicans only really care about the bond market and other such bloodsuckers). There are a lot of businesses that have figured out how to do reasonably well or much better with the new law, such as doctors, biotech firms, drug companies, medical schools and teaching hospitals, and many more. It is not in their interest to see the ACA repealed, and John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy may well have heard about this. They play golf, don't they?
Update Monday evening:
With the Court's ruling on Arizona's immigration law out, I just want to brag a little on how it goes along with the above argument. Business, properly speaking, has nothing against illegal immigration, you know: it's a source of cheap labor and growing markets.
Republicans are against illegal immigration because they are tied to this crowd of nativist yahoos that vote for them—if only millionaires voted Republican, they wouldn't be able to win an election even in Scarsdale, so they have to give on these issues that they don't actually care about at all, like abortion and guns, and they have to at least pretend they care about the dusky hordes invading the homeland to speak their foreign languages right in our faces.
But the Supreme Court doesn't need anybody's votes; they are free to represent the millionaires in a more simple and direct way. So they voided all the anti-business provisions of the Arizona law, leaving nearly intact, however, the provision allowing the police to harass anybody that looks like he might not have a birth certificate, because what's life if a cop can't even harass anybody?
And then when business and Republican interests are in accord, as in the case of the Montana corporate campaign contributions law, the Court's task is easy.
So will the same logic work with the ACA? We'll see.
Update 6/28
I hate to say I told you so. Told you so!
