US Politics: The Chief Executive's Immigration Smackdown

[Kalbear]

Tptwp: how do you respond to this?

Federal immigration law, as currently written, permits the secretary of Homeland Security to issue work permits to any illegal immigrant granted deferred action from deportation.

Or for that matter, that this is pretty much identically worded to the dream act?

[YoungGriff89]

The largest group of voters who were misled by lies were people who already have insurance who were lied to that they would lose their insurance under the new law.

Multiple truth values here on the losing insurance under the new law. One possible outcome of the law was solely in the hands of the insurers themselves, and that was both stop issuing junk plans that they knew didn't meet bare minimum coverage standards and letting the competition (being able to compare prices and what was covered on healthcare.gov) and new customer base (people who needed the government subsidies and people with pre-existing conditions) balance out costs.

Theoretically if we just follow basic rules of economics, millions of new people purchasing insurance plans should have lowered costs or at a minimum kept them about the same, but this is crony-American capitalism 101 here: more people paying MORE money equals even more profit than simply more people paying about the same as fewer people before were paying. When the government forces people to participate in one of those systems the insurers win either way, and you might as well win big.

This is why "profit" is largely considered the key problem that's causing the American Insurance industry to be so ineffective: Because it IS the problem. With our for profit insurance system we tie billions of dollars paid by premiums up in shareholder/ CEO payouts that never even go towards medical care costs. If we simply just paid doctors/ medical institutions directly we'd have a very different system.

How does my response factor into your statement about the Tea Partiers using lack of transparency to lie to their base? Ignorance of voters as to what our system is and how it already functions. Most people think their money is going 100% towards paying medical expenses/ they have no idea what insurance is and this makes convincing the voters government intervention and regulation is always to blame when a company simply just wants to make more money. How do we fix that?

[The Notorious]

The answers make perfect sense to such nonsensical questions.

Who benefitted most from the Benghazi lies from the rightwing?

[Altherion]

Saturday Night Live has a pretty funny explanation of how executive orders work, in the style of the old Schoolhouse Rock videos. Here's the link to the YouTube version.

[Xray the Enforcer]

[mod] Do not use the term "teabagger" and do not use the term "illegals." Both have been deemed off-limits by the mod team. [/mod]

[YoungGriff89]

[mod] Do not use the term "teabagger" and do not use the term "illegals." Both have been deemed off-limits by the mod team. [/mod]

So without sounding like a troll, what should we call Tea Partiers? Is Tea Partier acceptable? Tea Party Patriot? Seriously asking.

[Stubby]

So without sounding like a troll, what should we call Tea Partiers? Is Tea Partier acceptable? Tea Party Patriot? Seriously asking.

Members of the Tea Party.

The "tea party says"...

The Tea Party position is...

etc

Anything but Teabaggers. And for future reference, questions like this should be sent to the mods via PM.

[Ramsay Gimp]

tptwp,

The thing I find fascinating about the "Anti-federalist papers" are the accuracy of their predictions of how the new Federal Government under the Constitution would evolve.

And if you look at the "Anti-Federalists" the were the original "tea party".

Yep. Kind of ironic that the Constitution was itself a federal power grab

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Ramsay,

Yep. Kind of ironic that the Constitution was itself a federal power grab

Not ironic at all. The Constitution was designed to give more power to the National Government as compaired to the very weak National Government that existed under the Articles of Confederation. Now it was a compromise piece of work and many tried to limit the power delegated to the Feds. The Anti-Federalists preseintly warned that the attempts to constrain Federal power were doomed to failure and that the newly constituted Federal Government would breach its limitations, eventually. Hence, they opposed ratification.

[Ramsay Gimp]

Ramsay,

Not ironic at all. The Constitution was designed to give more power to the National Government as compaired to the very weak National Government that existed under the Articles of Confederation. Now it was a compromise piece of work and many tried to limit the power delegated to the Feds. The Anti-Federalists preseintly warned that the attempts to constrain Federal power were doomed to failure and that the newly constituted Federal Government would breach its limitations, eventually. Hence, they opposed ratification.

I meant it's somewhat ironic given that the constitution is now championed as a bulwark against government overreach. "Obama's war is unconstitutional," "the PATRIOT Act is unconstitutional," etc.

But I've seen many people argue that the increasing concentration of power in the federal gov't and the executive branch (and away from the states and legislature) is an intentional feature of the constitution, not an accidental bug, and I may be coming around to that view. We're living in Hamilton's empire, and the anti-federalists are all saying "we told you so."

[Shryke]

I meant it's somewhat ironic given that the constitution is now championed as a bulwark against government overreach. "Obama's war is unconstitutional," "the PATRIOT Act is unconstitutional," etc.

But I've seen many people argue that the increasing concentration of power in the federal gov't and the executive branch (and away from the states and legislature) is an intentional feature of the constitution, not an accidental bug, and I may be coming around to that view. We're living in Hamilton's empire, and the anti-federalists are all saying "we told you so."

Except none of the current "anti-federalists" are interested in what the actual anti-federalists were.

The real truth of all these silly arguments is that america likes it's federal government. They just also like anti-federalist rhetoric.

This is a long-standing american bit of silliness.

[Wise Fool]

That transcript was pretty funny. It comes down to semantics. Is car insurance a tax? Conservatives call actual taxes "wealth redistribution".

A lot of insurance is basically just gambling. The house bets you won't die in a fire, you bet that you just might, and you win if you die!

[MerenthaClone]

Scot, I'm slightly confused how you are failing to get that words have both denotation and connotation, both of which can vary based on context. Like, "septic" means very different things to a plumber and a physician. Likewise "theory" to a scientist vs a layman. Or, more specifically in law, assault can mean hugely different things based on jurisdiction. So to argue that somehow, "tax" can't have a very different meaning in a legal sense compared to a layman's definition is bizarre, and that using a legal definition in a layman's context could be equally disingenuous.

You're also somehow wanting a standard of "not lying." Is equivocating between two definitions of words lying? Is using a contexr you are unfamiliar with lying? What are your grounds? Hell, remember that describing the aca results in hugely favorable responses. Describing single payer systems likewise. And yet, label them and their popularity plummets. Is it lying to label them and encourage voters to vote based off of conditioned responses instead of a look at the rough outline of the bill?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Merentha,

Knowing that you are going to have to define the "penalties" as "taxes" to survive Constitutional scrutiny and refusing to call those penalties "taxes" in the run up to the vote on the ACA is a fundamental misrepresentaion (or lie) in my opinion. The Congressional Democrats and the Obama Administration knew they couldn't pass the ACA with new "taxes" included so they refused to concede that the penalties were "taxes". Yet the second the penalties were challenged on a Constitutional basis they called them "taxes" without blinking an eye.

That was a deliberate attempt to mislead. Perhaps the American people should have known better or perhaps we should stop electing people so willing to speak out of both sides of their mouths because I'm well aware that Republicans pull this kind of semantic bullshit too.

[Shryke]

Merentha,

Knowing that you are going to have to define the "penalties" as "taxes" to survive Constitutional scrutiny and refusing to call those penalties "taxes" in the run up to the vote on the ACA is a fundamental misrepresentaion (or lie) in my opinion. The Congressional Democrats and the Obama Administration knew they couldn't pass the ACA with new "taxes" included so they refused to concede that the penalties were "taxes". Yet the second the penalties were challenged on a Constitutional basis they called them "taxes" without blinking an eye.

That was a deliberate attempt to mislead. Perhaps the American people should have known better or perhaps we should stop electing people so willing to speak out of both sides of their mouths because I'm well aware that Republicans pull this kind of semantic bullshit too.

But it's not.

Because what the SCOTUS thinks is a "tax" and what the public thinks of as a "tax" are not the same.

This is easy to prove as well. Just look at their reaction to the ACA decision.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Shryke,

No. Because everyone and their Uncle was claiming the "penalties" were taxes (see the Stephanopolos interview up thread he worked in the Clintion White House for God's sake and was hardly a "hostile" interviewer) and the Administration adamantly refused to admit they were taxes. That's semantics bullshit and misrepresention. Why else could they not call the "penalties" "taxes" until they had to. It is dishonest.

Further, If FLOW and I, hardly noted Constitutinal scholars, conceded in early debates on the mandate penalties that "taxes" would survive Constitutional scrutiny where "penalities" for failure to purchase health insurance would not. The Obama Justice Department filled with very smart people had to know the tact they were going to have to take when the ACA was challenged on the basis that the "Penalties" exceded the power of Congress to regulate commerce.

[Shryke]

Shryke,

No. Because everyone and their Uncle was claiming the "penalties" were taxes (see the Stephanopolos interview up thread he worked in the Clintion White House for God's sake and was hardly a "hostile" interviewer) and the Administration adamantly refused to admit they were taxes. That's semantics bullshit and misrepresention. Why else could they not call the "penalties" "taxes" until they had to. It is dishonest.

But they aren't taxes, they are penalties. Legally that may be semantics, but semantics matter in language. That's why we have two different words for these things in the first place. Calling them penalties is neither bullshit nor misrepresentation. That's what they are. You don't do something, you pay a fee.

The semantic bullshit is going on in the SCOTUS because the law IS nothing but semantic bullshit. Legalese is all about bending the english language over a barrel to achieve some level of unambiguous communication. It's got nothing to do with how words are used outside legal frameworks and as a lawyer you should bloody well know this shit.

People were claiming the penalties were taxes to try and stir up opposition to the ACA. The same way they were going on about Death Panels. Both of which are just ways of twisting the shadings of meaning in the english language to try and make something look more negative then it is.

But when it hit the SCOTUS, they switched to legalese to argue there case cause that's the language in which arguments to the SCOTUS are made.

PS - Stephanopolos is a goddamn moron and certainly qualifies as hostile when it comes to non-DC-insider stuff

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Shryke,

See my edit. They knew, had to know, they would have to change their tune before the Court. That knowledge is why refusing to call the "penalties" "taxes" is dishonest in my opinion.

Let me put it a different way, if someone had specificially asked President Obama, a noted Constitutional scholar (hell he taught con law), if the Justice Department would argue that the "penalties" actually were "taxes" when the mandate was challenged and he said "no" would that have been a lie?

The President knew or should have know what the Justice Department had to argue to survive Consitutional scrutiny. The semantics crap they all played in the lead up was dishonest and I'm really tired of it. Call a damn spade a spade, please.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Further, If FLOW and I, hardly noted Constitutinal scholars, conceded in early debates on the mandate penalties that "taxes" would survive Constitutional scrutiny where "penalities" for failure to purchase health insurance would not. The Obama Justice Department filled with very smart people had to know the tact they were going to have to take when the ACA was challenged on the basis that the "Penalties" exceded the power of Congress to regulate commerce.

My understanding was that they were very confident it was Constitutional under the Commerce clause and argued it that way- and I'm certain that before the Supreme Court's decision every piece I read defending the Constitutionality of the ACA focused on the Commerce clause. It was considered strange at the time that the Court ended up deciding the issue on the basis of Congress' power to tax, in my memory.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

OAR,

No. The Justice Dept. also argued the penalties were "taxes". They knew they had to. Even accepting Wickard as proper the requirement to buy health insurance or face legal sanction was a significant step beyond the holding in Wickard where the Plaintiff was denied a government loan after asking for the loan, because he had grown wheat in excess of quotas set by the Government even if for only home use.