Lum
2961
In Texas the tea parties are pretty much all about the brown people.
He’s actually followed up with a QA here where he said the below, which makes his position much less cut and dry. His basic message is that the only way for this to be repealed is for both Political and Legal action.
[I]f this legislation is popular, they are unlikely to strike it down. But if it is deeply unpopular, and one or both houses of Congress flip parties as a result, then the legislation is much more vulnerable. Assuming the Supreme Court follows the election returns, as “realists” claim.
Orin also helped draft parts of the original PATRIOT act.
As for an opposing view, keeping with your theme of quoting Volokh Conspiracy guys:
Ilya Somin - http://volokh.com/2010/03/22/legal-action-and-political-action-as-a-two-track-strategy-for-repealing-obamacare/
He’s an Associate Professor of Law at George Mason and pretty conservative/libertarian.
Thanks. My wife and I fit (with about an 90% reduction in the income stated) into that first graphic, so reading between the lines, the bill is going to have virtually no effect on me. We are both covered quite nicely by her employee plan, our income and investments are too low to be taxed any extra, and the rest of the benefits don’t really target us. At least assuming she keeps her job and neither of us get too sick–at that point, we’d be very happy to have the new provisions around.
Thanks to the apocalyptic rhetoric by the opponents of the new law, we’re getting stuff like this done by the more worked-up members of their following:
Bart Stupak and Louise Slaughter receive death threats.
Virginia Congressman’s brother’s house is vandalized.
Don’t worry, when and if there is another incident of tea party or right wing violence, we’ll quickly be bombarded with outraged ass-covering, making it clear that this could never, in any way, have been influenced by the apocalyptic rhetoric about the death of our nation, and to think otherwise is liberal bias. Anti-Bunny will spend four months making fun of the first person to start a thread on it.
WarrenM
2966
You stay classy, Tea Party. WTF is wrong with these people?
They’re nobly striking out at the traitors who want to murder America and replace it with a socialist tyranny which is also a communist nazi state. These brave patriots are the only ones with the courage to say ‘this far, and no farther’ and fire the opening shots in what they desperately, achingly hope will be a new civil war. Hopefully before their taxes are used to save the lives of black or brown people.
Welcome to 150 years ago. Well, I guess we had a good run. When he found that genie on the beach in Hawaii, Obama probably shouldn’t have wished “to walk in Lincoln’s footsteps.”
Well, we have Harry Reid’s response to the Republicans’ amendment extravaganza:
- Each amendment will get 2 minutes of debate.
- Each amendment will get 10 minutes of voting.
- There will be no breaks.
- All amendments will be voted on… NOW.
I guess if they’re gonna stop committees before 2pm he’s gonna make sure they work. It’s estimated that it’ll take 9 hours to get through them all.
Last Senator standing wins immunity?
I hadn’t even thought of this aspect of health care reform…attacking wealth inequality.
A big chunk of the money to pay for the bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on households making more than $250,000. On average, the annual tax bill for households making more than $1 million a year will rise by $46,000 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. Another major piece of financing would cut Medicare subsidies for private insurers, ultimately affecting their executives and shareholders.
The benefits, meanwhile, flow mostly to households making less than four times the poverty level — $88,200 for a family of four people. Those without insurance in this group will become eligible to receive subsidies or to join Medicaid. (Many of the poor are already covered by Medicaid.) Insurance costs are also likely to drop for higher-income workers at small companies.
Sounds like it might be a classic win-win!
Wow. Guy’s a badass…but I feel like that shouldn’t have to be a requisite to be a Congressman.
Don’t the Tea Partiers realize that THIS is where democracy breaks down? When you stop talking, and start hitting? I’m still waiting for the ghost of Charles Sumner to start haunting Congress at night.
Why do you think Republicans hate it so much, and why the vast majority of the population in every other country with universal health care would never dream of giving it up? The rich pay for it. And that’s fair.
At the risk of being branded a communist, there’s very little fair about society. Born rich? You’ll probably be even richer when you die. You have every advantage: the trust fund, the education (and in the right schools), the connections (both familial and environmental), and the upbringing where you learn how to make the millions (or at least maintain them). Above all, they have the starting capital to make business ventures and thus hold everyone working for them by the balls. In order to become rich, it’s almost a pre-requisite to start rich. The first million is the toughest - unless you started with it.
The Republican party platform, from an outsider’s perspective, seems to be:
“We will keep the masses poor and ignorant under the guise of religion, economics, or ‘independent pay-your-own-way-through-life American spirit’, all in order to distribute the wealth to the high class as much as possible.” Possibly to increase the country’s competitive advantage, but given the way that Germany curb stomps America in that department I seriously doubt it.
Well, Smurfs are communists afterall…
And the hits keep on coming…images of nooses faxed to Sens. Clyburn and Stupak…
When does the public start to blame the Republicans for this stuff?
When the number of acts exceed zero? Or how about when the number of Democrat congressmen assaulted exceeds the number of people the SEIU beat up at town halls last year?
My guess is that this will ebb and flow like any other political news story without anything occurring.
The starting point of the blame will actually be sooner than it was for the SEIU thuggery because that makes for a better story than point-of-order tales or other parliamentarian minutiae and to the degree they are bipartisan, the media doesn’t care whose garbage they are picking through.
I hope the releasing of voicemails isn’t something that continues when the shoe inevitably is on the other foot. There is more than enough ugly to go around on both sides without putting on display to gawk at.
Does the brick that was thrown through Louise Slaughter’s window count as an act? Or was that the Teabagger version of a firmly-worded email?
nlanza
2978
No, see, it doesn’t count. A dude in the SEIU threw a brick once, you know.
The idiot who cut the gas line at Rep. Perriello’s brother’s house thinking it was Perriello’s also probably does not count for reasons that undoubtedly will be explained to us shortly.
Nah, death threats are only felonies. They don’t count for anything. Blood must be shed before we can take any of these threats seriously. Common sense demands it!
No one said they weren’t serious; the question was when does the public start the blame Republicans, or as I read when does their start to be political fall-out from the threats. Answer: when something actually happens, as opposed to being talked about. Vandalism won’t do it, since property crimes are the public mind victimless, to a certain degree.
Don’t let my attempt to answer the question stop the quest to illuminate fascist terrorism on the Right by faxing pictures to folks. Not to minimize the seriousness of allegations, I just wonder how much this differs by volume and degree from other issues handled by Congress of similar debate and vehemence in the past, if there are any comparable in the modern epoch of American politics. None past by Republican Congresses come to mind, as most of the major issues seem to be either defeated (Social Security, Budget Battle of 1995) or at a time of more consensus (PATRIOT Act). Perhaps Welfare Reform but while I recall the rhetorical extremism of the Left, I don’t recall anything similar in response as today on the Right. How does this compare to the anti-war Left’s treatment of Congressional Republicans during the height on anti-war sentiment?
Would Impeachment count (Henry Hyde should be stoned, etc.) in that fashion, I wonder?
Also with the rise of non-mainstream media sources (talk radio for the Right in the 1990’s; the web for both sides but more for the Left during the 2000’s), how much influence do those increasingly partisan sources have on the degree and level of reaction to legislation such as this?
All interesting questions I wish my day job didn’t interfere with discovering the answers to.
