Category Archives: Supreme Court

$2 Billion Spent in 2012 Presidential Campaign

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With eight days to go before Election Day 2012, the sums that each party has managed to amass are staggering, fully a billion dollars raised by each side, with a total of over $2 billion for the entirety of the presidential campaign.

2012 campaign fundraising

That’s a lot of purchases at the dollar store

$2 billion is a lot of money, it is the same amount as 7,000 homes in America, four years college tuition for 57,800 students, and a year’s worth of health coverage for 127,000 families. Thanks to the Supreme Courts ruling that anyone can donate unlimited sums to Super PACs, operating independently of candidates, a lot of this money went straight to attack ads, and propagated misinformation from both sides. This is a complete waste of money and energy.

Who benefits from the money spent on campaigning? People who work on campaigns and receive salaries, media outlets, especially TV channels where ad money is spent, and the candidate who wins. In this regard, Romney is a hedge bet for millionaires, donate a few million and Romney will change the tax structure making it possible for millionaires to be taxed less in the future, ideally saving them more money than they donated.

But special interest groups also benefit. They raise a lot of money to use as influence over candidates, to ensure that candidates appeal to them and agree to fight for them on the national stage. The threat of losing that funding the next time around means that politicians can’t stray from their promises.

In the end, it is a spider web made from the stickiest material that ensnares candidates from early in their careers, and is amplified on the national level. In our opinion, Romney is much more indebted to his major donors than Obama, whose donations are spread along a much wider spectrum of interests. Either way, this system is broken, and there must be someway that this money and energy can be used in a productive way.

Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Obamacare

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We were wrong! We were wrong! The title of this website aside, The Wrong Wing had predicted in multiple posts, even as late as this morning, that the Supreme Court would slash down the Affordable Care Act, after all, they had given the middle finger to the American people more than a few times before…

Terrific news from Washington DC today as the United State’s Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act was constitutional and the thorniest issue, that of the individual mandate, was valid as a federal tax. The news is a huge victory for President Obama but much more importantly, it shifts the fundamental focus of medicine in America from that of treatment to that of care.

obamacare victory

Thank you John Roberts

The Affordable Care Act, as we have often said, is not perfect. Parts of it looked impossible constitutionally considering the current judges’ leans. But it is, however, the step that the nation needs to take to dissolve the profit-oriented interests of people and corporations who are supposed to be providing care. Insurance has always been counter-intuitive; why would you sign up for a plan where you pay money just in case you are injured or need treatment for a disease, and when that time comes the person you have been giving money to this whole time tries to fight to save every cent, at the expense of effective treatment?

Now, at least, everyone will be insured, or at least bearing the costs of the nation’s healthcare. Right now, taxpayers and the national debt fund people’s care who aren’t insured and who don’t pay their medical bills. This is a huge reason why healthcare is more expensive. That cost should start to come down as the costs are shifted across the spectrum.

But all of these points pale in comparison to the fact that we as a nation have been able to start a dialogue about the proper forms of healthcare and the ways that we pay for them. Our booming health crisis is only getting larger (pun intended), and there will need to be more seriously drastic steps taken on a federal level to head off a disaster. The Affordable Care Act at least starts to get everyone, especially the troublesome people who rebuffed paying their bills, into health schemes where they should in theory see a doctor every once in a while and who might be able to nip problems before they grow into chronic diseases.

The Wrong Wing has always said that we don’t have a healthcare system, we have a stop-you-from-dying system. Once you are brought back from the brink of death, a hospital rep shows up with forms and asks for your insurance card. Now, everyone will have one, in the hope that the health system will provide just a little more care, and perhaps a few more moments to recover before hounding you about what treatment you can afford.

Supreme Decisions: Obamacare Ruling Expected Today

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The John Roberts’ Supreme Court has made some questionable calls since the W Bush years. The biggest and most blatant injustice towards the citizens of the United States was its ruling on the perversion of free speech in campaigns and unlimited political donations from the rich and corporations. Today, the court looks poised to strike down all or part of the Affordable Care Act. It will only be the beginning of the trouble.

fat americans

If only support for Obamacare was this robust

As we have seen, the Supreme Court gets to evaluate how it feels about certain laws and programs, without ever having to understand or plan out the consequences of what follows a ruling. In the case of the health care act, the Justices will say that citizens cannot be regulated or forced to purchase anything, less they face a fine. The broken health system — which is already the most expensive in the world per capita, piling up debt, depressing our nation’s preventative medicine, and effectively killing our citizens — will go right back to the way it was; a fast track towards a health apocalypse.

Republicans hate Obamacare because it came from Obama. Mitt Romney created an identical legislation when he was governor of Massachusetts, but has separated himself from the initiative that he championed. There is no single reason to oppose Obama’s health care bill, except for the inexplicable idea that the government is forcing people to do something they don’t want. This is ludicrous. There is not a single citizen of this nation that does not eventually need health care.

Republicans themselves are also a giant part of this problem. Ballooning waste lines, skyrocketing diabetes, all-you-can-eat-buffets; Republicans are rapidly pushing the limits of elastic pants, with foreseen consequences that in the near future will mean a huge portion of our population managing multiple chronic diseases and trying not to lose their limbs. Why Republicans, who dominate the fattest states, would not want some system to help to manage their self-inflicted conditions, is startlingly unknown and reflects the same “me, now” mentality that led to their obesity in the first place.

Moreoever, why Republicans think that health insurance companies are the answer should be an important question, but Obamacare eliminates the need for it because it keeps the system of private insurers in place! Even the executives of insurance companies love Obamacare, because it means more customers! So there is no reason that anyone who is happy (ha) with their insurance coverage should have to change.

If the Affordable Care Act is struck down today, there will be retaliation. It will not come from the wounded Democrats, or the great thinking minds of today. It will not come from rationality or reason. It will come from the bankrupting of this country to pay for the poor decisions and laziness that we as a rich nation have come to expect. The cost of health care will continue to skyrocket until we approach the edge of the heliosphere, and even at that point, there is nothing to stop it from continuing to increase.

 

The Challenge: Fundraising For Presidents

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Obama has recently come under heavy fire from Republicans for his focus on attending fundraising events for the 2012 Presidential Election. This is naked hypocrisy. Republicans have spent unlimited energy railing to tear down limitations to campaign funding. The Supreme Court, in what might prove to be its worst ruling ever, fully agrees with the GOP that corporations and people should be able to donate as much as they want in the name of free speech. In essence, Republicans are attacking Obama for what they forced him to do. 

us election 2012 fundraising

We are going to need a lot of pennies...

The cause: the extremely rich feel they are taxed too much. The extremely rich want “business-friendly” Presidents and legislators that fight against regulation, corporate social responsibility, and especially what they somehow construe as “the redistribution of wealth.” The extremely rich used to be limited by transparency laws and individual controls on campaign donations. Not anymore. Now the extremely rich can drop $10 million into a super PAC, just like Sheldon Adelson did this week, and sit back and watch the carnage. Their hope is that a Republican President will lower taxes, saving the donors even more money than they donated in the long run. It is nothing more than an investment.

The predominance of the extremely rich over the Republican party is clear, and very poorly understood. So many of the Republicans are poor people who struggle to eat and pay for their medicine but are devout social conservatives thanks to their religious beliefs. The extremely rich are in effect fighting against these people, since it is the government programs their tax dollars support that provide assistance to those during harder times. It is the only example in politics of two completely different forces, one blatantly attacking the other and beating it into a pulp, that vote together. This is how broken the American Republican party has become.

Money flows into candidates from different areas. The 2008 Election saw Obama amass nearly a billion dollars, much of it from small donors who gave $10. It was so inspiring because it was the people, not interests, that were supporting candidates. It actually looked something like democracy. People were overjoyed.

Yet thanks to the Supreme Court, democracy has been abolished. Now we are at the mercy of forces that are fighting only for themselves, that take no time to wonder how everyone in the country is doing, that aim to change the system permanently in their favor, regardless of the consequences. Lobbying was always ugly, but now it’s hideous. Republicans are lining up extremely rich donors with the promise of: “donate lots of money now, and we will save you lots of money in the future.”

Republican whining about taxing the rich is ludicrous. There is no argument that can be made; it will always be more desirable to be rich and taxed more, than to be poor and not taxed at all. What Republicans forget to remember is that taxes pay for things like police, who stop and catch criminals, and who make it safe for our children to walk to school in the morning, and who make it safe for us to park our Jaguars on the street while we go to talk to our wealth advisor. Taxes also pay for nice roads to drive those Jaguars on. It is important for the rich to live in a nice, clean, safe place. This is what our taxes provide.

But the fight against taxes will never end. The Tea Party misuses history to rebuff tax legislation. Any extra cent that the government says it needs is looked upon as “big government” and will surely be misspent. This is why Obama needs to attend so many fundraisers, he needs to tell the country that he cannot win without each individual’s help. The power of the extremely rich today is just too great for traditional tactics. Let’s hope that the everyday people of the country oblige, before our democratic society is officially sold.

Obamacare and The Supreme Court

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The hearings for and against the affordable care act opened in Washington D.C. At stake is the progress our nation has to address one of the largest issues facing us and our future. Forget about Obama’s legacy, forget about conservative vs. liberal, as a developed and rich country, the United States should, in some way, take care of its people. But for those out there who oppose the act, have no fear, the conservative Supreme Court will strike it down.

funeral for obamacare

Healthier than Obamacare

Ever since W Bush appoint Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court has regularly discarded the human condition and common sense in favor of a word by word literal definition of a document written over 200 years ago. While the Constitution is a revered parchment and has withstood the test of time, it was written to be changed. It was not meant to answer difficult questions such as: what happens when the cost of healthcare gets so high due to private systems, medical malpractice lawsuits, and insurance companies fighting to save every penny they can at the expense of the health of the people they are supposed to be providing care for? What happens when people can’t pay their medical bills, is it fair to tap the taxpayers who actually pay their bills? The point is simple, there is nothing in the Constitution that precludes these dilemmas.

Therefore, today, we find our court divided along ideological lines, with the wrong-wing justices attacking the bill and what it means related to the interstate commerce rulings, and with Justice Antonin “Stone Cold” Scalia going so far as to likening the health care law to forcing people to eat broccoli (something he ironically believes to be a bad thing, when plainly if people ate more broccoli and less chips this might not be so big an issue).

It is obvious here that the right of the court will find a way to act against the wellbeing of the citizens they are supposed to protect, without any regard to the dire consequences. One need only reference the campaign finance laws where the court ruled that companies can spend as much as they would like on whichever candidate they support, even though this is obviously not free speech, since the speech itself costs millions in TV and other advertising, something that normal individuals do not have. Instead of protecting a fair electoral process, i.e. one person one vote, the court ruled inexplicably for the right and business lobby.

Unsurprisingly, the court will rule against the healthcare act in June, negating the fragile process towards a healthier and better protected population, while, as is always the case, providing no alternative. This is unfair, it is unfair because people shoulder the entire costs or caring for everyone anyway, through higher insurance premiums for example, Obamacare is only a way to make sure that everyone is paying their fair share and the people who already pay their insurance and medical bills dont have to fork over an extra cent for their fellow citizens who are less responsible or at an economic disadvantage. That seems only just, yet the Supreme Court has forgotten that they are to represent objective justice for the people, not more partisan bickering.