Rogues’ Gallery

Here is a list of the bribes that Harry Reid paid with our money to buy votes on this monstrosity. At least lobbyists use their own money. As Mark Steyn writes:

You can’t even dignify this squalid racket as bribery: If I try to buy a cop, I have to use my own money. But, when Harry Reid buys a senator, he uses my money, too. It doesn’t ‘border on immoral’: it drives straight through the frontier post and heads for the dark heartland of immoral.

And when you see things like this, the blood just boils:

Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.)

—Exemption from the non-profit excise tax for Michigan insurers. Michigan and Nebraska were the only two states so exempted.

Is such blatant favoritism to particular states even constitutional? Is there precedent for it? Don’t other states have a right to protest this inequality under the law?

[Update a few minutes later]

Five reasons it still may not pass. Let’s hope.

[Late morning update]

Why the Reid bill is unconstitutional. Even without the payoffs to Michigan and Nebraska.

If anything resembling this planned man-caused disaster passes, I expect to see lots of legal challenges, many of them successful.

[Early evening update]

The ostensible beneficiaries of Senator Nelson’s corruption don’t seem to be very happy about it, especially after he tried to deflect blame onto others:

Gov. Dave Heineman “contacted me and he said this is another unfunded federal mandate and it’s going to stress the state budget, and I agreed with him,” the Nebraska Democrat said. “I said to the leader and others that this is something that has to be fixed. I didn’t participate in the way it was fixed.”

But Heineman expressed anything but gratitude, saying he had nothing to do with the compromise and calling the overhaul bill “bad news for Nebraska and bad news for America.”

“Nebraskans did not ask for a special deal, only a fair deal,” Heineman said in a statement Sunday.

That criticism is only a taste of what Nelson has received since announcing Saturday that he would become the 60th vote needed to advance the landmark legislation.

I wonder if this could influence his vote in the final after reconciliation? Unfortunately, it will be hard to change without looking as craven as he undoubtedly is, unless what comes out of conference is different.

Oh, and here’s a perfect example of the false choice fallacy that I talked about last week:

The Nebraska Democratic Party chairman called Nelson’s decision “courageous” and dismissed Republican criticism of it.

“Whatever he did, they would be critical,” Vic Covalt said. “They have no program and they have nothing to offer us other than more of the same.”

Just as I said:

There is a variation on this fallacy, in fact. It goes: There is a crisis; something must be done! What we propose to do is something. Therefore, it must be done!

This invalid argument is otherwise known as false choice, of course, because the alternative to the particular something being proposed is not nothing (even if one accepts the initial premise that there is a crisis about which something must be done) — it is a variety of other somethings, some of which may be the something that is actually key to solving the problem, even if their own is not necessarily.

We saw this last January when many of the same people promoting AGW hysteria also used it to ram through the failed “stimulus” bill without reading it. It is now being used to justify taking over the sixth of the US economy represented by the health care industry. All the while, these people have been lambasting their political opponents who offer more sensible alternatives as proposing that we do “nothing.”

Liars.

25 thoughts on “Rogues’ Gallery”

  1. “Don’t other states have a right to protest this inequality under the law?”

    What is this “law” thing you speak of? It became quite evident that we no longer live under the rule of law when turbo-tax Timmy took over the IRS with not even a slap on the wrist for his tax evasions. We won’t even go into Rangal and his co-conspirators in what passes for our federal government.

  2. IMO it’s an incomplete list. It does not cover the judgeships, endowed chairs, and foundation presidencies promised to those who lose their seats because of their health-care votes. The level of the court, rank of the university, and size of the foundation presumably were negotiated on an individual basis.

    That maybe such promises couldn’t/wouldn’t be kept probably didn’t occur to the Democrats any more than it occurred to The Permanent Republican Majority a few years ago.

  3. That Epstein piece is devastating. Not only would the limolibs never read it, they’d have no answer for it. All they see is the “free lunch.”

  4. Talk about dog bites man. Were you all born yesterday? Has there been a major piece of U.S. legislation, from the Constitution to the present, that wasn’t passed by catering to legislators’ parochial interests?

  5. Epstein’s article claiming that the bill is unconstitutional takes an unusual approach. As I read it, Epstein argues that:

    1) The bill would make health care a regulated utility, primarily due to the requirements of the insurance exchanges
    2) Regulated utilities have a right to make a profit
    3) Health insurance firms wouldn’t make a profit under the bill

    Point #3 is arguable – why are insurance firm’s stock going up if they won’t make a profit?

    Point #2 I grant, but the history of regulating utilities suggest that there’s a lot of leeway on how much profit is enough and what costs are allowed.

    Point #1 I simply don’t have the legal background to evaluate. What makes something a “public utility?”

  6. Point #1 I simply don’t have the legal background to evaluate.

    Interesting. Point #1, the only one that matters, is the last one posted.

  7. Of course it’s constitutional. It’s even traditional for Congress to buy off this or that state for some national program. Or else why is Mission Control in Houston while the launch facilities are in Florida?

    Congress has every constitutional right to screw the people of this state or that, when enough of the other states gang up on it. We fought a civil war over that very issue, and the side that argued for some limit on how violently Congress could sodomize any one given state — a side that included among its ideological parents both Jefferson and Madison — lost. Pity they took their stand over the proximate issue of slavery, no? Maybe the whole argument was 150 years premature.

    Anyone feel like reviving nullifiication? Wouldn’t it be nice if your state could simply opt out of the hellhole of Obamacare entirely? Neither pay the necessary taxes, nor accept the offered “help”? Then folks like Chris and Jim could move to Massachusetts or New York, embrace the new regime, including GovernmentCare, CO2 regulation, being told when and where you can wipe your ass, et cetera. And the rest of us can move to Tennessee or Texas, and watch the hideous trainwreck unfold.

    Better rethink the idea of unlimited interstate migration, however, before the refugee problem becomes acute.

  8. Having read the article some way through, this is not something on which to pin any hopes. The problem of the insurance companies not making a sufficient profit will certainly be addressed by Congress. Indeed, they may well have already thought of this, and planned it. They pass a bill which is as populist as possible, to steal a little Tea Party thunder, and then when it turns out to not pass Constitutional muster in that it expropriates Big Insurance, they say oops! Sorry citizens, but those mean ol’ Supreme Court justices say we gotta fix this here…hold still, this won’t hurt too much. A little excision from your flesh for their pocketbooks, and we’re all set.

    Congress is inhabited by lawyers and fixers. They understand the people who run Big Insurance, because they’re the same type of person. Congress will certainly take care of them, when the time comes.

    The only real hope for unconstitutionality, the kind that really matters, a true limitation on the power of the majority, would lie in discarding the grotesque notion that Congress has the authority to lay a direct tax on people, which without question this is. But we settled all that with the 16th Amendment and all kinds of Supreme Court cases since then, which have agreed that, more or less, so long as it’s for a Good Cause, Congress can do anything it damn well pleases.

  9. Carl, it’s one thing to provide pork in terms of siting a federal facility within a different state, when there is only one such, and it has to so somewhere. It’s entirely another when the law states that a specific state isn’t subject to it.

    Similarly, it’s one thing to horse trade on a bill because it has a bad provision in it that affects the overall legislation and its effect on the nation, and get the provision changed. It’s another to sell your vote for something that benefits your state, and your state only.

    The former is a principled, and even statesmanlike means of improving legislation. The latter is simply selling your vote, with the bribe of taxpayers’ money, or at to the detriment of the residents of all the non-privileged states. It is venal, and corrupt.

    I wonder if the Democrats have any idea how such tactics look to normal people, with integrity, and a respect for the Constitution?

  10. Oh I agree it’s despicable morally corrupt cynical political logrolling, Rand. I’m just pointing out despicable corrupt political logrolling isn’t actually forbidden by the Consitution (in part because the natural language problem of banning it without simultaneously banning benign and statesmanlike political logrolling remains unsolved, despite 100 generations, since the Roman Republic, of tinkering).

    I wonder if the Democrats have any idea how such tactics look to normal people, with integrity, and a respect for the Constitution?

    To be a modern Democrat is to believe that the intersection of the sets of “normal people,” “people with integrity,” and “people with respect for the Consitution” is the null set, or at least a set of measure zero.

  11. I would also add, Carl, that there is a useful distinction between mission control in Houston and launch in Florida. The latter was a decision driven largely by physical constraints. The former was purely political — functionally, it could have been done anywhere. And doing it in Florida would have made the program much more efficient…

  12. Suppose he did, Chris? Then what? If you lack the legal training to evaluate the original argument, how will you evaluate the proferred case-law evidence?

    You won’t. You’d just be impressed with the legalese, comforted by the knowledge that an “expert” has told you what you think is right.

    C’mon now. Break out of the mental chains. There’s nothing wrong with your own gray matter. You don’t need experts to tell you how to think. Abandon the modern Church to which you unconsciously belong! It’s cynically using your faith no less than the medieval Catholic popes cynically used the faith of their flock.

  13. Leland – so you have the legal training to determine what constitutes a public utility? Perhaps you could cite some case law.

    Gerrib, Robert Epstein’s a legal scholar. You are the moron trying to claim he’s wrong. So my legal expertise isn’t an issue. Since I know Epstein’s credentials, and your IT tech background, the question is why do you think anyone here would take your arguments over Epstein’s?

    And might I remind you, the last time you weighed in on a Constitutional matter, it was in regards to Honduras, and you got that wrong too. So, we already have reason to disregard your knowledge of laws.

  14. Since I know Epstein’s credentials, and your IT tech background, the question is why do you think anyone here would take your arguments over Epstein’s?

    Does he even have IT/Tech background? I thought he worked at a bank. I figured he was an accountant or something.

    Well, this is sort of an argument from authority, which shouldn’t necessarily have any weight, except for the problem that Chris doesn’t actually have any legal arguments or (by his own admission) even know what a utility is. Some people would be kind of…you know…ashamed to flaunt their ignorance here, but not our brave Chris.

  15. Jim Says:
    December 21st, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    “Talk about dog bites man. Were you all born yesterday? Has there been a major piece of U.S. legislation, from the Constitution to the present, that wasn’t passed by catering to legislators’ parochial interests?

    Well then I never want to here another liberal complain about the 3/5th’s compromise then. After all, the northerners were just simply catering to their parochial interests.

  16. I am the IT director at a bank, and unlike some of the armchair experts on everything here, I will admit when I don’t know something. (You will note I don’t argue with Rand on rocket technology, since I don’t have the aerospace background to do so.)

    I actually am not arguing that Epstein is wrong about insurance becoming a “public utility” (which has a legal definition) I am asking (since he didn’t define it) why he thinks insurance would be a public utility. And in rereading the article, I note he uses “virtual public utility.” I wonder if that’s legally significant?

    Where I am saying Epstein is wrong is that the stock market doesn’t appear to agree with him about insurance companies not making money. I am also saying that the history of regulation of public utilities shows that they are not actually guaranteed a profit and that regulators can make very intrusive decisions into how they run their companies.

    Josh – if you really want to defend slavery, please feel free to do so. The 3/5ths deal was requested by southerners who wanted to vote for their slaves.

    Leland – I also have a degree in history and do claim to understand the US Constitution. I’d like to remind you that we have a President who is a constitutional scholar, so he probably understands our constitution too.

  17. I note he uses “virtual public utility.” I wonder if that’s legally significant?

    Whether it’s “legally” significant or not, if it’s being regulated as a utility (which it is) it will have profound impacts on the economics. Yes, regulated utilities make money — in fact they’re practically guaranteed it, but innovation is stifled, and they’re no longer business responding to market forces. The government has just taken a bad problem with the industry (a major disconnect between the producer and consumer of the service) and made it much worse. This is going to be disastrous, if it can’t be stopped in conference.

  18. I also have a degree in history and do claim to understand the US Constitution.

    You should ask for your money back. As Rand has pointed out before, degrees are becoming more meaningless, and you provide an excellent example.

  19. I am asking (since he didn’t define it) why he thinks insurance would be a public utility.

    Form, fit and function would be my guess.

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