Obama's Willingness to Continue Bush Approach to Religious Charities Aims to Woo Evangelicals but Vexes Liberals
This story tells a great deal about politics, both contemporary and in general.
President Barack Obama's willingness to keep Bush-era policies on government-backed religious charities has angered many liberals but is helping to woo traditionally Republican evangelical leaders who can influence key blocs of voters. The approach, according to conservative leaders and liberal critics alike, is part of a broader strategy by Mr. Obama and fellow Democrats to regain credibility with centrist and conservative voters who tend to be more religious and have supported the GOP in recent polls and elections.
Cold calculations tell: the President needs support from more than the left wing of the Democratic Party to keep power.
Mr. Obama has left in place a contentious Bush policy permitting charities that receive federal aid to hire employees based on their religious beliefs—a policy that civil-liberties groups consider unconstitutional and that candidate Obama had criticized.
Candidates say many things to get elected, but, once in power, recalibrate. It is always done. Liberals insist on ideological orthodoxy, as if simply being rigidly liberal is going to accomplish a great deal politically. It would not. Obama is not as liberal as liberals thought he would be, as they thought they saw him being. He woos liberals, yes, but he is not as liberal as conservatives and right wing nuts charge him with being. And, anyway, what is so bad about faith-based programs? Liberals have their own litmus test; why shouldn't others have their own? Liberals are far too sanctimonious.
Showing posts with label Liberals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liberals. Show all posts
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Signs of Polarization
December 22, 2009 - Sidebar
In Supreme Court Clerks’ Careers, Signs of Polarization
By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON
A Supreme Court clerkship really brightens the legal résumé, and former clerks have their pick of the best jobs at law firms, in the academy and in government.
The career choices they make also say something important about the state of the Supreme Court. A new study has found that former clerks have started to take jobs that reflect the ideologies of the justices for whom they worked.
“It’s cause for concern mainly because it’s a further piece of evidence of the polarization of the court,” said William E. Nelson, a law professor at New York University and one of the authors of the study.
I am no longer so sure that the claims and beliefs that our times are more polarized than others is true or accurate.
Until about 1990, the study shows, there was no particular correlation between a justice’s ideological leanings and what his or her clerks did with their lives.
Clerks from conservative chambers are now less likely to teach. If they do, they are more likely to join the faculties of conservative and religious law schools. Republican administrations are now much more likely to hire clerks from conservative chambers, and Democratic administrations from liberal ones. Even law firm hiring splits along ideological lines.
Does that say anything about academia being a liberal bastion?
Earlier studies have shown the rise of ideological hiring of clerks by the justices. In recent years, the more conservative justices have overwhelmingly hired clerks who had worked for appeals court judges appointed by Republicans. The more liberal justices did the opposite, but a little less consistently.
The new study, published last month in The Vanderbilt Law Review and summarized in the autumn issue of The Green Bag, collected data from 1882 through 2006, which means it did not consider information about clerks for the most recent additions to the court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Sonia Sotomayor.
Before the 1990s, the study found, all sorts of former clerks served in the government under all sorts of administrations. That seemed to change in the Clinton years. The Clinton administration hired 96 former clerks, but only 16 percent of them came from the chambers of the four most conservative justices — Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy.
Of the 89 former clerks hired by the administration of George W. Bush, on the other hand, 68 percent came from those four chambers.
“The only other justice who provided five or more clerks for President Bush was the fifth justice who cast a vote in his favor in Bush v. Gore,” the study said, referring to former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, whose chambers provided eight additional clerks.
From about 1940 to 1990, the study found, about a third of all clerks became law professors. There was variation among the chambers, but it was not correlated to the justices’ ideological leanings.
The rise of the organized conservative legal movement, including notably the Federalist Society, seems to have changed that, perhaps as a result of the sense among conservatives that law school faculties are overwhelmingly liberal.
“Certain kids coming out of the conservative movement were not feeling comfortable with traditional law schools,” said Harvey Rishikof, another author of the study and a law professor at the National War College. (I. Scott Messinger and Michael Jo also worked on the study.)
Or perhaps colleges, law schools, were not seen as the appropriate forum to fight the conservative battle.
Only 19 percent of clerks from the four most conservative justices in recent decades joined the legal academy and only 7 percent went to one of the top 10 law schools in the annual survey published by U.S. News & World Report. A significant minority joined the faculties of religious or conservative law schools.
Clerks for the other five justices followed the historical pattern, with 34 percent joining the legal academy, about half of them at the elite schools. The study also showed polarized hiring at the law firms with significant Supreme Court practices.
Kirkland & Ellis, for instance, hired 22 former clerks from 1990 to 2006, all from the four most conservative chambers, according to the study. (A Kirkland spokesman added that the firm also hired two former clerks to Justice Byron R. White.) The firm is home to Kenneth W. Starr, the former Whitewater prosecutor who was solicitor general in the administration of the first President George Bush.
And President Clinton shadow. No surprise here.
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, on the other hand, hired 35 clerks from the five more liberal justices and only 5 from the other four. Seth P. Waxman, a solicitor general in the Clinton administration, leads the firm’s Supreme Court practice.
The emergence of “politically oriented practice groups,” the study said, reinforces the idea that the court is “a superlegislature responding to ideological arguments rather than a legal institution responding to concerns grounded in the rule of law.”
Is that more partisan, or more realistic?
In his 2006 book on Supreme Court clerks, “Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk,” Todd C. Peppers wrote that “no other internship program in the history of the United States has produced as impressive and diverse a collection of individuals as the U.S. Supreme Court law clerk corps.”
Professor Peppers, who teaches public affairs at Roanoke College, said he was fascinated by the new study’s findings. But he added that the recent trends were in a way unsurprising. “Do justices select like-minded clerks?” he asked. “Of course.”
Exactly.
“And do these clerks go into private practice, government work and the legal academy and use their legal skills to promote ideological views that are compatible with their justices? Of course.”
That may be obvious, but it is not easy to reconcile with the view that that law and politics are, or at least ought to be, different realms.
Dream
In Supreme Court Clerks’ Careers, Signs of Polarization
By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON
A Supreme Court clerkship really brightens the legal résumé, and former clerks have their pick of the best jobs at law firms, in the academy and in government.
The career choices they make also say something important about the state of the Supreme Court. A new study has found that former clerks have started to take jobs that reflect the ideologies of the justices for whom they worked.
“It’s cause for concern mainly because it’s a further piece of evidence of the polarization of the court,” said William E. Nelson, a law professor at New York University and one of the authors of the study.
I am no longer so sure that the claims and beliefs that our times are more polarized than others is true or accurate.
Until about 1990, the study shows, there was no particular correlation between a justice’s ideological leanings and what his or her clerks did with their lives.
Clerks from conservative chambers are now less likely to teach. If they do, they are more likely to join the faculties of conservative and religious law schools. Republican administrations are now much more likely to hire clerks from conservative chambers, and Democratic administrations from liberal ones. Even law firm hiring splits along ideological lines.
Does that say anything about academia being a liberal bastion?
Earlier studies have shown the rise of ideological hiring of clerks by the justices. In recent years, the more conservative justices have overwhelmingly hired clerks who had worked for appeals court judges appointed by Republicans. The more liberal justices did the opposite, but a little less consistently.
The new study, published last month in The Vanderbilt Law Review and summarized in the autumn issue of The Green Bag, collected data from 1882 through 2006, which means it did not consider information about clerks for the most recent additions to the court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Sonia Sotomayor.
Before the 1990s, the study found, all sorts of former clerks served in the government under all sorts of administrations. That seemed to change in the Clinton years. The Clinton administration hired 96 former clerks, but only 16 percent of them came from the chambers of the four most conservative justices — Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy.
Of the 89 former clerks hired by the administration of George W. Bush, on the other hand, 68 percent came from those four chambers.
“The only other justice who provided five or more clerks for President Bush was the fifth justice who cast a vote in his favor in Bush v. Gore,” the study said, referring to former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, whose chambers provided eight additional clerks.
From about 1940 to 1990, the study found, about a third of all clerks became law professors. There was variation among the chambers, but it was not correlated to the justices’ ideological leanings.
The rise of the organized conservative legal movement, including notably the Federalist Society, seems to have changed that, perhaps as a result of the sense among conservatives that law school faculties are overwhelmingly liberal.
“Certain kids coming out of the conservative movement were not feeling comfortable with traditional law schools,” said Harvey Rishikof, another author of the study and a law professor at the National War College. (I. Scott Messinger and Michael Jo also worked on the study.)
Or perhaps colleges, law schools, were not seen as the appropriate forum to fight the conservative battle.
Only 19 percent of clerks from the four most conservative justices in recent decades joined the legal academy and only 7 percent went to one of the top 10 law schools in the annual survey published by U.S. News & World Report. A significant minority joined the faculties of religious or conservative law schools.
Clerks for the other five justices followed the historical pattern, with 34 percent joining the legal academy, about half of them at the elite schools. The study also showed polarized hiring at the law firms with significant Supreme Court practices.
Kirkland & Ellis, for instance, hired 22 former clerks from 1990 to 2006, all from the four most conservative chambers, according to the study. (A Kirkland spokesman added that the firm also hired two former clerks to Justice Byron R. White.) The firm is home to Kenneth W. Starr, the former Whitewater prosecutor who was solicitor general in the administration of the first President George Bush.
And President Clinton shadow. No surprise here.
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, on the other hand, hired 35 clerks from the five more liberal justices and only 5 from the other four. Seth P. Waxman, a solicitor general in the Clinton administration, leads the firm’s Supreme Court practice.
The emergence of “politically oriented practice groups,” the study said, reinforces the idea that the court is “a superlegislature responding to ideological arguments rather than a legal institution responding to concerns grounded in the rule of law.”
Is that more partisan, or more realistic?
In his 2006 book on Supreme Court clerks, “Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk,” Todd C. Peppers wrote that “no other internship program in the history of the United States has produced as impressive and diverse a collection of individuals as the U.S. Supreme Court law clerk corps.”
Professor Peppers, who teaches public affairs at Roanoke College, said he was fascinated by the new study’s findings. But he added that the recent trends were in a way unsurprising. “Do justices select like-minded clerks?” he asked. “Of course.”
Exactly.
“And do these clerks go into private practice, government work and the legal academy and use their legal skills to promote ideological views that are compatible with their justices? Of course.”
That may be obvious, but it is not easy to reconcile with the view that that law and politics are, or at least ought to be, different realms.
Dream
Monday, September 14, 2009
Because They Believe
In his new book, Norman Podhoretz has some fine exasperated fun with the wildness of interpretation on the Jewish left, and of course spares the Jewish right any culpability for the same sin. So it is worth recalling that a few years ago he published a book about the prophets in which they emerged as the neoconservatives of ancient Israel. Their castigations of the sacrifice of children prompted a reflection on the “pagan practice” of the entry of women into the work force.Another fine conservative tenet, this paganism.
Norman Podhoretz loves his people and loves his country, and I salute him for it, since I love the same people and the same country. But this is a dreary book. Its author has a completely axiomatic mind that is quite content to maintain itself in a permanent condition of apocalyptic excitation. His perspective is so settled, so confirmed, that it is a wonder he is not too bored to write. The veracity of everything he believes is so overwhelmingly obvious to him that he no longer troubles to argue for it. Instead there is only bewilderment that others do not see it, too. “Why Are Jews Liberals?” is a document of his bewilderment; and there is a Henry Higgins-like poignancy to his discovery that his brethren are not more like himself. But the refusal of others to assent to his beliefs is portrayed by Podhoretz not as a principled disagreement that is worthy of respect, but as a human failing. Jews are liberals, he concludes, as a consequence of “willful blindness and denial.” He has a philosophy. They have a psychology.
Such was what I saw in Podhoretz's article in the Wall Street Journal last week, either an excerpt from, or a distillation of, his primary argument: liberal Jews aren't really Jewish; their liberalism is their religion.
Podhoretz, Norman. (2009). Why are Jews liberals? New York: Doubleday.There was a time, though it was not a long time, when there was a basis in reality for the Jewish hope in a liberalizing society and a secularizing culture. What else should the Jews of modernity have done — chanted the Psalms and waited for Reagan? It is curious that Podhoretz neglects to discuss Zionism in his account of the emergence of Jewish liberalism, since it was born of the same repudiation of inherited circumstances and the same recovery of historical agency, and it proceeded to create a Jewish society in the Middle East that was designed to fulfill the progressive ideals of Europe. Podhoretz grasps the European tragedy, but without a tragic sense. All that matters to him is who was wrong.
So it seems, and Podhoretz leaves, and clearly has, no doubt that it is liberals who are wrong.
When they lost their hopes for equality and decency in Europe and Russia, many of the Jews who kindled to the mobility of history responded with mobility of their own — some of them to the land of Israel, most of them to America.
And in America Jews found deliverance from European anti-Semitism and progroms, and found a better life. And so they became Democrats.
“The reason Jews had been attracted to the Democratic Party in the first place,” Podhoretz writes, “was that it represented the closest American counterpart to the forces on the left that had favored Jewish emancipation in Europe.” What baffles him, what pains him, is that their attraction to the Democratic Party has never waned. This steadfast allegiance to the Democratic Party, Podhoretz insists, now flies in the face of Jewish interests.
It is more in the name of Jewish interests than of Jewish ideas that Podhoretz makes his complaint about the Jewish rejection of the Republicans. But nowhere in his book does he explain precisely how the interests of Jews are served by the Republican positions on government, health care, tax policy, gun control, abortion, gay rights, the environment, and so on. Affirmative action is a genuinely excruciating question, and the ideal of color-blindness has been treated too harshly and too sloppily in recent decades; but surely this is a matter about which good people may disagree. It is, in any event, a matter about which liberals differ not only with conservatives, but also among themselves. Like conservatives, like Jews, liberals squabble. I share Podhoretz’s concern that the American Jewish attitude toward Christian conservatives too often looks like contempt, but not his view, which seems to me preposterous, that the American public square has been stripped of religious expressions. I run into Jesus all the time. And I pity the religion that requires politics and politicians for its validation.
Not contempt, really, but a distaste for the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Often it seems as the evangelicals are using Jews as an entry way into Jerusalem and as a cover for their dislike, or more, of Arabs.
The Jewish interest that makes Podhoretz most desperate for a Jewish defection to the Republicans is Israel. While the abandonment of Israel by an American government seems to me unimaginable, and not only for reasons of politics, Podhoretz is not mistaken when he declares that the enthusiasm for Israel among conservatives is real and new and deep. He is also correct that what sympathy there is for the Palestinians in American politics is to be found largely among Democrats. The problem is that he cannot suppose that sympathy for the Palestinians may coexist with sympathy, and even love, for Israel.
He is an exclusivist: if you do not support Israel the way I do, then you oppose it. I can not agree with either on the conservative support for Israel.
If you think that the survival of Israel requires the establishment of Palestine, because the absorption of millions of Palestinians into Israel, in an annexation or an occupation, will destroy the Jewish character or the democratic character of the state, then Podhoretz’s scorn for the peace process will not suffice as an account of Israel’s situation. If you think that the establishment of Palestine threatens the survival of Israel, because the Palestinians desire only the abolition of the Jewish state and will never be satisfied with a territorial compromise, then Podhoretz’s suspicion of any American president who does not merely comply with the demands of the Israeli government will strike you as the apotheosis of fidelity.
Democratic character?
What counts is your analysis of the problem — of security and morality, of Israelis and Palestinians. Podhoretz does not provide an analysis; he assumes one, doctrinally. He is justified in his view that the left, or a lot of it, now regards Israel coldly. Indeed, it is in many quarters cruelly engaged in the revival of the “one-state solution,” which for demographic reasons is nothing other than Greater Palestine. But the intellectual confrontation with these poisons has frequently been the work of liberals. After all, you cannot denounce a one-state solution unless you believe in a two-state solution.
Really?
What explains the stubborn affinity of American Jews for liberalism and the Democratic Party? Not “Jewish values,” he instructs. I concur: There are many values in Judaism and not all of them are Democratic, or even democratic. Podhoretz also considers the influence, “even unto the fourth generation,” of Menshevik Jews who fled to America, and the gradual attenuation of Marxism into social democracy and of social democracy into liberalism; but even he cannot persuade himself that the blame for Barack Obama’s success among American Jews belongs to Martov.
Yet, who defines what is Jewish? Just the rabbis and the sages?
In this vein of anti-intellectual spite, Podhoretz invents “the Torah of liberalism”: if it were not absurd, then they would not believe it. And if he does not believe it, then it is absurd. As if from the pulpit, he scolds that “where the Torah of contemporary liberalism conflicts with the Torah of Judaism, it is the Torah of liberalism that prevails and the Torah of Judaism that must give way.”
Oy vay.
So American Jewish liberals are not only bad Americans, they are also bad Jews. And their stubbornness is owed to their stubbornness. They are stiff-necked. The explanatory power of this notion is obviously very limited. It is, in fact, another kind of sputtering. The alternative, of course, would be to consider the possibility that liberalism is not just an undifferentiated darkness, and that there may be some substance to what some liberals believe about some principles and some policies. But those would be heretical thoughts, which are unlikely in a heresy hunter. He knows exactly what “the Torah of Judaism” is, and what it is not. For the Torah of contemporary conservatism never conflicts with the Torah of Judaism, and conservatism is never thoughtlessly or dogmatically held.
He's right, and he knows it; he also knows liberals are wrong. Ole Norm is quite the sage, he thinks of himself.
We are proven by the other, not by the same. The question of whether liberalism or conservatism does more for the helpless and the downtrodden, for the ones who are not like us, will be endlessly debated, and it is not a Jewish debate; but if the answer is liberalism, then the political history of American Jewry is neither a mystery nor a scandal.
Liberals: rethink tenets
I find Matt Miller's viewpoint and writing style refreshing. Both of these articles offer some ideas that are not bandied about, and are, thus, valuable. Orthodoxy needs to be subordinated to pragmatism.
Why Liberals Should Drop The Public Option - by Matt Miller
A dangerous sentiment on the left threatens to derail what could be the biggest progressive achievement in half a century. It's the view that any health-care reform that doesn't include a public option isn't "real" reform, and thus isn't worth doing. This mantra has become an article of faith among many Democrats who haven't necessarily thought through the matter but who take their cues from leaders advancing this argument. Unless liberals rethink this premise, and fast, Democrats will squander their best chance in a generation to end the scandal of the uninsured, bring health security to every American family and begin the long-term process of getting national health costs under control.
Take their cues is another way of saying repeat the same platitudes, make the same arguments, and not have original thoughts. It is just so easy to repeat what has already been said.
The first fallacy of the "public option or nothing" mantra is the notion that we'll never cover everyone without a Medicare-style program for Americans under 65. The experiences of Switzerland and the Netherlands prove that this isn't the case. Both have pioneered market-based universal health care. Both cover all their citizens using private insurers, and they do so for much less cost - 10 percent of gross domestic product for the Dutch and 12 percent for Switzerland, compared with 17 percent in the United States, where nearly 50 million people are still uninsured.
The public option has become the test, of both liberals and conservatives, the crux of the argument that often overtakes the real issue: health care reform. Conservatives use it to scream socialism and big government, and liberal try to refute the argument with logic.
Those countries also boast better health outcomes than we do, even when compared to states with similar demographics, such as Connecticut and Massachusetts. Sick people in both countries are pursued as customers by private insurers (rather than shunned, as they are in the United States) because health plans are paid more for sick enrollees via a government-designed system of "risk adjustment." The Swiss and Dutch achievements are important because conservative critics often act as though fully socialized systems, such as those in Britain and Canada, are the inevitable result of any drive for universal coverage. In fact, as these two countries show, it is possible to cover everyone without a "big government takeover."
Conservative critics will find fault with the President's proposed program, no matter what, but it is better to take away some of their ammunition by avoiding "a government takover." It might also make the system work more efficiently. The government is no model of efficiency.
US insurance companies have agreed to drop pre-existing conditions and to pursue the currently uninsured as potential customers. I've heard Aetna's CEO say so.
A related fallacy is that the public option is the most important issue to debate. It's not. The central progressive breakthrough in any reform should be to make it possible for every American to access group health coverage outside the employment setting - access that does not currently exist but which the proposed insurance exchanges would enable. What's critical, therefore, is the structure of these exchanges and the rules about who would be eligible to use them. Such questions have received disturbingly little attention but need to be front and center. For example, some legislation proposes barring people who enjoy employer-based coverage from seeking insurance from the new exchanges; this ban should be scrapped in favor of the choice proposal offered by Sen. Ron Wyden, under which employees could use the cash their companies spend on their benefits to buy coverage they prefer at the exchange.
The insistence on pushing the public option threatens to derail the effort of reforming the health care system sufficiently to cover everyone, and make it work somewhat better.
I respect those in my party who seek the single-payer system into which the public option might eventually evolve. But I don't agree that it's the best answer for the United States. Though single payer has merits, especially in administrative efficiency, it would also likely freeze in place our fragmented, uncoordinated system of fee-for-service care. It would encourage providers to goose volume (to boost their incomes) rather than improve quality and would offer greater rewards for providers of acute care when we need a fresh focus on chronic disease management. Single payer also asks government to do things I don't think it is competent to do, such as setting prices across a large swath of the health sector in ways that seem certain to create damaging rigidities or resource misallocations (as happens in Medicare). Finally, if government is the sole payer, provider payments will become even more politicized than they are today. On the eve of beneficial innovations in drug therapies, devices and cost-effective ways to deliver better care, it is ill-advised to make the government's hand too rigid. Private health plans have many flaws, to be sure, but if sensibly regulated they're likely to respond more nimbly to disperse medical innovations.
Why is a single-payer system what the left wants? I do not want government running health insurance to the exclusion of all other players. I want everyone to be covered, and I want some cost reductions and efficiencies introduced into the system. Don't make the government's hand too rigid; allow for flexibility.
Liberals should make peace with the notion that a regulated market of competing private health plans can be the vehicle for getting everyone covered. Yes, it means that unlike some other advanced countries, we'll have billions of "health" dollars siphoned off by middlemen and marketers. But if liberals think of it as a jobs program, they'll learn to love it. If everyone's covered and insurer "cherry-picking" is dead, health insurance will come to look more like a regulated utility.
And, although Con Edison and its cohorts are no great models of benevolence, they are well regulated and don't deny anyone electricity because of a pre-existing condition of darkness.
Those on the left still seeking incentive should consider: In 2006, Sen. Ted Kennedy urged Massachusetts Democrats to support Mitt Romney's plan for universal coverage via a competing system of regulated private insurers, paired with an individual mandate and subsidies for low earners. Kennedy knew this would become a model for a bipartisan fix for the country. Now, a Kennedy-approved model is within reach. Liberals, far from resisting it as a setback, should celebrate it as a triumph.
Indeed.
Matt Miller, a former Clinton White House aide, is a management consultant and the author of "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas." In recent years he has advised and given paid speeches to doctor groups, hospitals, pharmaceutical firms and insurance companies, as well as to low-income advocacy groups promoting universal coverage.
from The Financial Times
Lessons For Obama From Ted Kennedy's Noble Flops
by Matt Miller
Edward Kennedy fought to expand health coverage for 40 years, yet millions more Americans lack insurance today than when he started, and bankruptcy due to medical bills has become a uniquely American shame.
The senator for Massachusetts, who died last month, fought perenially to raise the minimum wage, but that wage is lower today as a percentage of average hourly earnings in the US than in 1970. Kennedy also fought to improve schools in impoverished neighbourhoods. Yet today, among advanced nations, 17 boast higher student achievement than in the US alongside test scores less correlated with a child's socio-economic status.
For all Kennedy's efforts, in other words, the fabled "land of opportunity" now offers its citizens a smaller chance of moving up from their economic status at birth than do France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Canada and Germany.
These observations are not meant to be churlish or in bad taste; Senator Kennedy has rightly been hailed as a passionate voice for the voiceless and a master of the legislative process. But any assessment of his legacy is incomplete if it fails to ask why American liberalism's modern icon proved so ineffective in persuading his country to share his vision.
This is not a matter of abstract interest. President Barack Obama stands little chance of succeeding in the coming healthcare endgame without understanding why, for all his passion, Kennedy could not make the sale. No man can reverse the tides of history, perhaps, but it was not inevitable that American politics would lurch so far to the right over the course of Kennedy's career. The US economy more than doubled in real terms between 1970 and 2008. Why wasn't America inclined to devote a portion of this bounty to mend the problems Kennedy identified, instead of allowing many of them to worsen?
There is no single answer. But one reason was the sense among voters that liberals tended to worry more about the poor than about the struggling middle class. This same sentiment now threatens Mr Obama's health reform.
"We have to do better at making this issue a moral imperative," Tom Daschle, former Senate majority leader (and Obama confidante) told the New York Times Magazine last month. "This in many respects is the civil rights battle of the early part of this century." But middle-class voters do not see healthcare as a "civil rights issue" - a cause in which they should enlist to bring justice to others. With soaring premiums and shrinking and precarious coverage, the 85 per cent of Americans who have health insurance see reform as a matter of economic security for their families.
Unfortunately, the American left has for years defined the issue predominantly as a matter of ending the scandal of the uninsured. They have misled the public with the incoherent claim that expanding coverage to 50m uninsured Americans would be a way to save money.
The Democratic argument has failed to emphasise how health reform can deepen the economic security (anmd improve the health status) of the middle class. Yes, one part of that argument is to ensure that no American in the 21st century goes without coverage. But the liberal instinct - to focus first on the neediest in ways that lead squeezed middle-income voters to conclude liberals want to take their hard-earned money and spend it on someone else - helps explain why Kennedy-style politics never prevailed.
Democrats need to frame their goals as inclusive measures to promote security and opportunity in a global economy - improving the life chances of society's most luckless but also bolstering the security and prospects of America's vast middle class. This is also the only way to persuade average Americans to pay for such policies, which eventually they must.
The White House is scrambling to repair its argument on healthcare to win over the middle class. But similar cases and policies must be framed if Democrats are to build on Kennedy's noble failures and make real headway on schools, wages and more.
This demands a new way of thinking. It took an act of imagination for a son of wealth and privilege such as Edward M. ?Kennedy to devote his life to helping those who had little. It will take another act of imagination for liberals to fulfill Kennedy's dreams by aligning them more closely with middle-class imperatives in a global age.
Why Liberals Should Drop The Public Option - by Matt Miller
A dangerous sentiment on the left threatens to derail what could be the biggest progressive achievement in half a century. It's the view that any health-care reform that doesn't include a public option isn't "real" reform, and thus isn't worth doing. This mantra has become an article of faith among many Democrats who haven't necessarily thought through the matter but who take their cues from leaders advancing this argument. Unless liberals rethink this premise, and fast, Democrats will squander their best chance in a generation to end the scandal of the uninsured, bring health security to every American family and begin the long-term process of getting national health costs under control.
Take their cues is another way of saying repeat the same platitudes, make the same arguments, and not have original thoughts. It is just so easy to repeat what has already been said.
The first fallacy of the "public option or nothing" mantra is the notion that we'll never cover everyone without a Medicare-style program for Americans under 65. The experiences of Switzerland and the Netherlands prove that this isn't the case. Both have pioneered market-based universal health care. Both cover all their citizens using private insurers, and they do so for much less cost - 10 percent of gross domestic product for the Dutch and 12 percent for Switzerland, compared with 17 percent in the United States, where nearly 50 million people are still uninsured.
The public option has become the test, of both liberals and conservatives, the crux of the argument that often overtakes the real issue: health care reform. Conservatives use it to scream socialism and big government, and liberal try to refute the argument with logic.
Those countries also boast better health outcomes than we do, even when compared to states with similar demographics, such as Connecticut and Massachusetts. Sick people in both countries are pursued as customers by private insurers (rather than shunned, as they are in the United States) because health plans are paid more for sick enrollees via a government-designed system of "risk adjustment." The Swiss and Dutch achievements are important because conservative critics often act as though fully socialized systems, such as those in Britain and Canada, are the inevitable result of any drive for universal coverage. In fact, as these two countries show, it is possible to cover everyone without a "big government takeover."
Conservative critics will find fault with the President's proposed program, no matter what, but it is better to take away some of their ammunition by avoiding "a government takover." It might also make the system work more efficiently. The government is no model of efficiency.
US insurance companies have agreed to drop pre-existing conditions and to pursue the currently uninsured as potential customers. I've heard Aetna's CEO say so.
A related fallacy is that the public option is the most important issue to debate. It's not. The central progressive breakthrough in any reform should be to make it possible for every American to access group health coverage outside the employment setting - access that does not currently exist but which the proposed insurance exchanges would enable. What's critical, therefore, is the structure of these exchanges and the rules about who would be eligible to use them. Such questions have received disturbingly little attention but need to be front and center. For example, some legislation proposes barring people who enjoy employer-based coverage from seeking insurance from the new exchanges; this ban should be scrapped in favor of the choice proposal offered by Sen. Ron Wyden, under which employees could use the cash their companies spend on their benefits to buy coverage they prefer at the exchange.
The insistence on pushing the public option threatens to derail the effort of reforming the health care system sufficiently to cover everyone, and make it work somewhat better.
I respect those in my party who seek the single-payer system into which the public option might eventually evolve. But I don't agree that it's the best answer for the United States. Though single payer has merits, especially in administrative efficiency, it would also likely freeze in place our fragmented, uncoordinated system of fee-for-service care. It would encourage providers to goose volume (to boost their incomes) rather than improve quality and would offer greater rewards for providers of acute care when we need a fresh focus on chronic disease management. Single payer also asks government to do things I don't think it is competent to do, such as setting prices across a large swath of the health sector in ways that seem certain to create damaging rigidities or resource misallocations (as happens in Medicare). Finally, if government is the sole payer, provider payments will become even more politicized than they are today. On the eve of beneficial innovations in drug therapies, devices and cost-effective ways to deliver better care, it is ill-advised to make the government's hand too rigid. Private health plans have many flaws, to be sure, but if sensibly regulated they're likely to respond more nimbly to disperse medical innovations.
Why is a single-payer system what the left wants? I do not want government running health insurance to the exclusion of all other players. I want everyone to be covered, and I want some cost reductions and efficiencies introduced into the system. Don't make the government's hand too rigid; allow for flexibility.
Liberals should make peace with the notion that a regulated market of competing private health plans can be the vehicle for getting everyone covered. Yes, it means that unlike some other advanced countries, we'll have billions of "health" dollars siphoned off by middlemen and marketers. But if liberals think of it as a jobs program, they'll learn to love it. If everyone's covered and insurer "cherry-picking" is dead, health insurance will come to look more like a regulated utility.
And, although Con Edison and its cohorts are no great models of benevolence, they are well regulated and don't deny anyone electricity because of a pre-existing condition of darkness.
Those on the left still seeking incentive should consider: In 2006, Sen. Ted Kennedy urged Massachusetts Democrats to support Mitt Romney's plan for universal coverage via a competing system of regulated private insurers, paired with an individual mandate and subsidies for low earners. Kennedy knew this would become a model for a bipartisan fix for the country. Now, a Kennedy-approved model is within reach. Liberals, far from resisting it as a setback, should celebrate it as a triumph.
Indeed.
Matt Miller, a former Clinton White House aide, is a management consultant and the author of "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas." In recent years he has advised and given paid speeches to doctor groups, hospitals, pharmaceutical firms and insurance companies, as well as to low-income advocacy groups promoting universal coverage.
from The Financial Times
Lessons For Obama From Ted Kennedy's Noble Flops
by Matt Miller
Edward Kennedy fought to expand health coverage for 40 years, yet millions more Americans lack insurance today than when he started, and bankruptcy due to medical bills has become a uniquely American shame.
The senator for Massachusetts, who died last month, fought perenially to raise the minimum wage, but that wage is lower today as a percentage of average hourly earnings in the US than in 1970. Kennedy also fought to improve schools in impoverished neighbourhoods. Yet today, among advanced nations, 17 boast higher student achievement than in the US alongside test scores less correlated with a child's socio-economic status.
For all Kennedy's efforts, in other words, the fabled "land of opportunity" now offers its citizens a smaller chance of moving up from their economic status at birth than do France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Canada and Germany.
These observations are not meant to be churlish or in bad taste; Senator Kennedy has rightly been hailed as a passionate voice for the voiceless and a master of the legislative process. But any assessment of his legacy is incomplete if it fails to ask why American liberalism's modern icon proved so ineffective in persuading his country to share his vision.
This is not a matter of abstract interest. President Barack Obama stands little chance of succeeding in the coming healthcare endgame without understanding why, for all his passion, Kennedy could not make the sale. No man can reverse the tides of history, perhaps, but it was not inevitable that American politics would lurch so far to the right over the course of Kennedy's career. The US economy more than doubled in real terms between 1970 and 2008. Why wasn't America inclined to devote a portion of this bounty to mend the problems Kennedy identified, instead of allowing many of them to worsen?
There is no single answer. But one reason was the sense among voters that liberals tended to worry more about the poor than about the struggling middle class. This same sentiment now threatens Mr Obama's health reform.
"We have to do better at making this issue a moral imperative," Tom Daschle, former Senate majority leader (and Obama confidante) told the New York Times Magazine last month. "This in many respects is the civil rights battle of the early part of this century." But middle-class voters do not see healthcare as a "civil rights issue" - a cause in which they should enlist to bring justice to others. With soaring premiums and shrinking and precarious coverage, the 85 per cent of Americans who have health insurance see reform as a matter of economic security for their families.
Unfortunately, the American left has for years defined the issue predominantly as a matter of ending the scandal of the uninsured. They have misled the public with the incoherent claim that expanding coverage to 50m uninsured Americans would be a way to save money.
The Democratic argument has failed to emphasise how health reform can deepen the economic security (anmd improve the health status) of the middle class. Yes, one part of that argument is to ensure that no American in the 21st century goes without coverage. But the liberal instinct - to focus first on the neediest in ways that lead squeezed middle-income voters to conclude liberals want to take their hard-earned money and spend it on someone else - helps explain why Kennedy-style politics never prevailed.
Democrats need to frame their goals as inclusive measures to promote security and opportunity in a global economy - improving the life chances of society's most luckless but also bolstering the security and prospects of America's vast middle class. This is also the only way to persuade average Americans to pay for such policies, which eventually they must.
The White House is scrambling to repair its argument on healthcare to win over the middle class. But similar cases and policies must be framed if Democrats are to build on Kennedy's noble failures and make real headway on schools, wages and more.
This demands a new way of thinking. It took an act of imagination for a son of wealth and privilege such as Edward M. ?Kennedy to devote his life to helping those who had little. It will take another act of imagination for liberals to fulfill Kennedy's dreams by aligning them more closely with middle-class imperatives in a global age.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Wither health reform
September 13, 2009 - News Analysis - by Robert Pear
Public Option Fades From Debate Over Health Care
WASHINGTON — It was just one line in a campaign manifesto, and it hardly seemed the most significant or contentious. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he would “establish a new public insurance program” alongside private health care plans.
That proposal took on a life of its own, but it now appears to be dying, a victim of an ineffectual White House strategy, the president’s failure to argue passionately for the “public option” and all-out opposition by the insurance industry and much of the health care industry.
Six months ago the President was cruising, the Democrats fully in power. Press coverage was constant and favorable. Then came the business of governing, and the Administration seems to have stumbled badly.
In the campaign, Mr. Obama said the public plan would compete with private insurers on the price and quality of care, thus benefiting consumers. What Mr. Obama did not foresee is that, to some people on the right and the left, it would become the most important issue in the debate over health care, touching off a battle over the role of government in one of the nation’s biggest, fastest-growing industries.
Once in office Mr. Obama and his advisers have sent conflicting signals about how critical a government-run health plan would be. He prefers a public plan but is open to other ideas. Dancing around the issue for eight months, Mr. Obama has seemed, at various times, pragmatic, flexible or indecisive.
It is difficult to tell whether he is being flexible or indecisive.
“I just want to figure out what works,” Mr. Obama said in March at a White House forum. If he could drive down health costs and expand coverage “entirely through the market,” he said, “I’d be happy to do it that way.” And “if there was a way of doing it that involved more government regulation and involvement, I’m happy to do it that way, as well,” he added.
Flexible.
Champions of the public plan said it could save money by using Medicare rates and fee schedules to pay hospitals and doctors. In a book last year, one of Mr. Obama’s top advisers, former Senator Tom Daschle, said consumers should have the option of enrolling in “a government-run insurance program modeled after Medicare, a proven and popular program.”
Losing Daschle apparently has hurt; yet that he did not foresee the problems he faced seems asinine.
That is exactly what worries health care providers, who say Medicare pays them less than market rates paid by private insurers. And they have pressed their concerns on Capitol Hill with a small army of lobbyists. Conservatives have another concern. They see the public option as a step toward a single-payer system in which the government would pay most of the nation’s health care bill and could supplant private insurers.
European style socialism. Canadian style?
“A public plan is essentially a stalking horse for a single-payer plan,” said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire. “It is more than the camel’s nose under the tent. It is the camel’s neck, and probably front legs, under the tent. There is no way the private sector will be able to compete.”
In trying to answer this charge, Democrats feel torn. Mr. Obama and many Democrats deny that they want to drive private insurers from the market. But others embrace the ultimate goal of “Medicare for all.”
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which supports Mr. Obama and the public option, has long supported a single-payer system. In a memorandum to union leaders last year, Gerald W. McEntee, president of the 1.6-million-member federation, said a public plan would “create a competitive check on the private market and build both public support and the infrastructure for a single-payer system.”
Then in April, Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, said insurers were right to fear that a public plan could “put the private insurance industry out of business.” That might happen because of “the superiority of the public health care option,” said Ms. Schakowsky, one of 86 co-sponsors of a bill to establish a single-payer system.
Superiority? Government? Please. Government involvement is often not a panacea, but additional bureaucracy.
Such comments provided new ammunition to Republicans already worried about the costly commitments undertaken by the federal government to stave off an economic collapse.
Staving off economic collapse cost too much? What would have been the alternative?
Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, voiced this sense of bailout fatigue in June when he said, “We have the takeover of the auto companies and banks and A.I.G. and student loans — and now health care.”
Banks have not been taken over, though surely bailed out.
In battering the proposal for a public option, Republicans have made effective use of estimates by the Lewin Group, a consulting concern, which said that more than 100 million people might sign up for the government-run insurance plan. By contrast, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 11 million to 12 million people might enroll.
Citing the numbers that suit them is a time-honored practice of not just politicians. As for this Lewin Group, there is this nugget on one of their webpages: “[The Lewin Group] has a comprehensive knowledge about…issues and key players and experts in the field.” FEDERAL AGENCY
Federal agency? Which one? And what is the full quote?
Mr. Obama cited the lower estimate in a speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, to buttress his assertion that fears of a public plan were overblown. “We believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would sign up,” Mr. Obama said. But a leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, predicted that over time “more and more people will select the public option.” If only 5 percent of people will enroll, she asked, “Why are the private insurance companies so worried?”
See Senator Judd's comments about horses and camels.
The different estimates by Lewin and the Congressional Budget Office are based on different assumptions about who would be permitted to enroll in the public plan — workers in all companies or just those in smaller businesses.
Many people who cite studies by the Lewin Group do not know it is a unit of Ingenix, a wholly owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth, one of the nation’s largest insurers. John F. Sheils, a vice president of the Lewin Group, said the parent company had no influence over its research.
Right. That's credible.
Momentum for the public option has waned, in part, because senators have been focusing on an alternative: nonprofit member-owned insurance cooperatives. Apart from the question of whether co-ops would be workable or effective, they provide a politically convenient middle ground for centrists. With no immediate prospect of getting the votes for a public option in the Senate, some liberals have said they too are willing to consider the idea — if it enables them to pass a bill, and if the co-ops are strong enough to put competitive pressure on insurance companies.
Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, who floated the idea in early June, said co-ops would accomplish “much of what those who want a public option are calling for — something to compete with private for-profit insurance companies.” At the same time, Mr. Conrad said, co-ops address Republican concerns because they are not controlled by the government.
Liberal Democrats are not giving up. Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said the president and Senate Democratic leaders had not made a serious effort to round up votes for a public option. If they did, he said, it could pass.
Could it be done?
While the White House has struggled to define its position, insurance companies have never wavered. Starting two weeks after the 2008 election, they have said they would accept greater federal regulation of their market practices if Congress also required everyone to have health insurance.
These may have been tactical concessions, to abate public wrath, but they were well received in Congress. While making these offers, the industry conserved its resources for the bigger battle over a public option.
The industry had its strategy ready, something all companies agreed to; such a business practice would be an illegal collusion.
Public Option Fades From Debate Over Health Care
WASHINGTON — It was just one line in a campaign manifesto, and it hardly seemed the most significant or contentious. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he would “establish a new public insurance program” alongside private health care plans.
That proposal took on a life of its own, but it now appears to be dying, a victim of an ineffectual White House strategy, the president’s failure to argue passionately for the “public option” and all-out opposition by the insurance industry and much of the health care industry.
Six months ago the President was cruising, the Democrats fully in power. Press coverage was constant and favorable. Then came the business of governing, and the Administration seems to have stumbled badly.
In the campaign, Mr. Obama said the public plan would compete with private insurers on the price and quality of care, thus benefiting consumers. What Mr. Obama did not foresee is that, to some people on the right and the left, it would become the most important issue in the debate over health care, touching off a battle over the role of government in one of the nation’s biggest, fastest-growing industries.
Once in office Mr. Obama and his advisers have sent conflicting signals about how critical a government-run health plan would be. He prefers a public plan but is open to other ideas. Dancing around the issue for eight months, Mr. Obama has seemed, at various times, pragmatic, flexible or indecisive.
It is difficult to tell whether he is being flexible or indecisive.
“I just want to figure out what works,” Mr. Obama said in March at a White House forum. If he could drive down health costs and expand coverage “entirely through the market,” he said, “I’d be happy to do it that way.” And “if there was a way of doing it that involved more government regulation and involvement, I’m happy to do it that way, as well,” he added.
Flexible.
Champions of the public plan said it could save money by using Medicare rates and fee schedules to pay hospitals and doctors. In a book last year, one of Mr. Obama’s top advisers, former Senator Tom Daschle, said consumers should have the option of enrolling in “a government-run insurance program modeled after Medicare, a proven and popular program.”
Losing Daschle apparently has hurt; yet that he did not foresee the problems he faced seems asinine.
That is exactly what worries health care providers, who say Medicare pays them less than market rates paid by private insurers. And they have pressed their concerns on Capitol Hill with a small army of lobbyists. Conservatives have another concern. They see the public option as a step toward a single-payer system in which the government would pay most of the nation’s health care bill and could supplant private insurers.
European style socialism. Canadian style?
“A public plan is essentially a stalking horse for a single-payer plan,” said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire. “It is more than the camel’s nose under the tent. It is the camel’s neck, and probably front legs, under the tent. There is no way the private sector will be able to compete.”
In trying to answer this charge, Democrats feel torn. Mr. Obama and many Democrats deny that they want to drive private insurers from the market. But others embrace the ultimate goal of “Medicare for all.”
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which supports Mr. Obama and the public option, has long supported a single-payer system. In a memorandum to union leaders last year, Gerald W. McEntee, president of the 1.6-million-member federation, said a public plan would “create a competitive check on the private market and build both public support and the infrastructure for a single-payer system.”
Then in April, Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, said insurers were right to fear that a public plan could “put the private insurance industry out of business.” That might happen because of “the superiority of the public health care option,” said Ms. Schakowsky, one of 86 co-sponsors of a bill to establish a single-payer system.
Superiority? Government? Please. Government involvement is often not a panacea, but additional bureaucracy.
Such comments provided new ammunition to Republicans already worried about the costly commitments undertaken by the federal government to stave off an economic collapse.
Staving off economic collapse cost too much? What would have been the alternative?
Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, voiced this sense of bailout fatigue in June when he said, “We have the takeover of the auto companies and banks and A.I.G. and student loans — and now health care.”
Banks have not been taken over, though surely bailed out.
In battering the proposal for a public option, Republicans have made effective use of estimates by the Lewin Group, a consulting concern, which said that more than 100 million people might sign up for the government-run insurance plan. By contrast, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 11 million to 12 million people might enroll.
Citing the numbers that suit them is a time-honored practice of not just politicians. As for this Lewin Group, there is this nugget on one of their webpages: “[The Lewin Group] has a comprehensive knowledge about…issues and key players and experts in the field.” FEDERAL AGENCY
Federal agency? Which one? And what is the full quote?
Mr. Obama cited the lower estimate in a speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, to buttress his assertion that fears of a public plan were overblown. “We believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would sign up,” Mr. Obama said. But a leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, predicted that over time “more and more people will select the public option.” If only 5 percent of people will enroll, she asked, “Why are the private insurance companies so worried?”
See Senator Judd's comments about horses and camels.
The different estimates by Lewin and the Congressional Budget Office are based on different assumptions about who would be permitted to enroll in the public plan — workers in all companies or just those in smaller businesses.
Many people who cite studies by the Lewin Group do not know it is a unit of Ingenix, a wholly owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth, one of the nation’s largest insurers. John F. Sheils, a vice president of the Lewin Group, said the parent company had no influence over its research.
Right. That's credible.
Momentum for the public option has waned, in part, because senators have been focusing on an alternative: nonprofit member-owned insurance cooperatives. Apart from the question of whether co-ops would be workable or effective, they provide a politically convenient middle ground for centrists. With no immediate prospect of getting the votes for a public option in the Senate, some liberals have said they too are willing to consider the idea — if it enables them to pass a bill, and if the co-ops are strong enough to put competitive pressure on insurance companies.
Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, who floated the idea in early June, said co-ops would accomplish “much of what those who want a public option are calling for — something to compete with private for-profit insurance companies.” At the same time, Mr. Conrad said, co-ops address Republican concerns because they are not controlled by the government.
Liberal Democrats are not giving up. Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said the president and Senate Democratic leaders had not made a serious effort to round up votes for a public option. If they did, he said, it could pass.
Could it be done?
While the White House has struggled to define its position, insurance companies have never wavered. Starting two weeks after the 2008 election, they have said they would accept greater federal regulation of their market practices if Congress also required everyone to have health insurance.
These may have been tactical concessions, to abate public wrath, but they were well received in Congress. While making these offers, the industry conserved its resources for the bigger battle over a public option.
The industry had its strategy ready, something all companies agreed to; such a business practice would be an illegal collusion.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Why Are Jews Liberals?
One of the most extraordinary features of Barack Obama's victory over John McCain was his capture of 78% of the Jewish vote. To be sure, there was nothing extraordinary about the number itself. Since 1928, the average Jewish vote for the Democrat in presidential elections has been an amazing 75%—far higher than that of any other ethno-religious group.
Yet there were reasons to think that it would be different in 2008. The main one was Israel. Despite some slippage in concern for Israel among American Jews, most of them were still telling pollsters that their votes would be strongly influenced by the positions of the two candidates on the Jewish state. This being the case, Mr. McCain's long history of sympathy with Israel should have given him a distinct advantage over Mr. Obama, whose own history consisted of associating with outright enemies of the Jewish state like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the historian Rashid Khalidi.
Guilt by association isn't terribly convincing. More a smear than anything else, its dogmatism is insulting, really.
All the other ethno-religious groups that, like the Jews, formed part of the coalition forged by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s have followed the rule that increasing prosperity generally leads to an increasing identification with the Republican Party. But not the Jews. As the late Jewish scholar Milton Himmelfarb said in the 1950s: "Jews earn like Episcopalians"—then the most prosperous minority group in America—"and vote like Puerto Ricans," who were then the poorest.
Increasing prosperity leads to conservatism: it is true, but also not true: not all liberals are poor.
Most American Jews sincerely believe that their liberalism, together with their commitment to the Democratic Party as its main political vehicle, stems from the teachings of Judaism and reflects the heritage of "Jewish values." But if this theory were valid, the Orthodox would be the most liberal sector of the Jewish community. After all, it is they who are most familiar with the Jewish religious tradition and who shape their lives around its commandments.
The theory he propounds isn't an academic construct but personal beliefs: not so much Jewish values as grounded in the Torah, but middle-class values.
Yet the Orthodox enclaves are the only Jewish neighborhoods where Republican candidates get any votes to speak of. Even more telling is that on every single cultural issue, the Orthodox oppose the politically correct liberal positions taken by most other American Jews precisely because these positions conflict with Jewish law. To cite just a few examples: Jewish law permits abortion only to protect the life of the mother; it forbids sex between men; and it prohibits suicide (except when the only alternatives are forced conversion or incest).
Not being much of a Jewish scholar, I can only wonder why Masada isn't condemned by the Orthodox who are otherwise so politically incorrect, and by this conservative who clearly prides himself in being politically incorrect.
The upshot is that in virtually every instance of a clash between Jewish law and contemporary liberalism, it is the liberal creed that prevails for most American Jews. Which is to say that for them, liberalism has become more than a political outlook. It has for all practical purposes superseded Judaism and become a religion in its own right. And to the dogmas and commandments of this religion they give the kind of steadfast devotion their forefathers gave to the religion of the Hebrew Bible. For many, moving to the right is invested with much the same horror their forefathers felt about conversion to Christianity.
My Lord (pardon the pun), this man is amazing.
All this applies most fully to Jews who are Jewish only in an ethnic sense. Indeed, many such secular Jews, when asked how they would define "a good Jew," reply that it is equivalent to being a good liberal.
Who defines what it is to be Jewish? And what does this man mean by "ethnic"? Culturally? Certainly not based on national origin, the way Italians or Chinese are ethnic.
As a Jew who moved from left to right more than four decades ago, I have been hoping for many years that my fellow Jews would come to see that in contrast to what was the case in the past, our true friends are now located not among liberals, but among conservatives.
Our true friends?
Of course in speaking of the difference between left and right, or between liberals and conservatives, I have in mind a divide wider than the conflict between Democrats and Republicans and deeper than electoral politics. The great issue between the two political communities is how they feel about the nature of American society. With all exceptions duly noted, I think it fair to say that what liberals mainly see when they look at this country is injustice and oppression of every kind—economic, social and political. By sharp contrast, conservatives see a nation shaped by a complex of traditions, principles and institutions that has afforded more freedom and, even factoring in periodic economic downturns, more prosperity to more of its citizens than in any society in human history. It follows that what liberals believe needs to be changed or discarded—and apologized for to other nations—is precisely what conservatives are dedicated to preserving, reinvigorating and proudly defending against attack.
This is the rub: liberals only want to apologize for how bad the country is, only see the bad, while conservatives see the good, want to preserve it, and extol the great country the US is, the best ever. These are stereotypes, and are inaccurate.
Never mind what people think: not all liberals are critics, and not all conservatives are patriots. Considering the historical record is quite imortant; I'll select civil rights as a starting point.
Despite the Civil War being won by the Union, with its declared intent to end slavery and make citizens of freed Negroes, racial discrimination prevailed for decades, both in social custom and in the law. Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the constitutionality of segregation, further embedding racism into the social fabric.
Negroes petitioned for their rights, but society wasn't interested in granting them. Keeping things as they were, resisting change, was the conservative position. Yet Negroes were not interested in remaining second-class citizens, and over time their demands grew stronger: bus boycott, marches, sit-ins were tactics used to insist on their equality before the law. Some whites sympathized with their plight, considered that it was morally wrong for society to be segregated, morally wrong for black people to be discriminated against, and joined the protests. Those were liberals. Yes, they saw something wrong with society, and considered change important. Racism was unjust. Blacks were oppressed. And liberals worked for change. In doing so, liberals wanted their black brethren to be treated equally, and considered that by changing society the United States would become a better country.
Conservatives opposed change. They saw society as being undermined by the agitation of Negroes and of those liberals who foolishly joined them. They wanted the status quo to prevail. They saw communists in the civil rights movement, and charged that reds were agitating, were riling up Negroes, all to carry out their wicked scheme of destroying American society.
One example, but a telling one. And, not the only example of conservatives opposing change. Women's rights, beginning with the right for to vote, were also opposed by conservatives. It is not that conservatives want to preserve the greatness of American society, to protect it against the dangerous designs of liberals. In opposing change, conservatives oppose
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Can't he do everything?
Obama under pressure: There will always be a fly in the ointment for Obama
by Susan Nielsen, The Oregonian Sunday June 21, 2009, 12:03 am
You can hear a faint buzz of dismay any time President Obama falls to behave precisely like a liberal superhero.
Leave it to a fatly buzzing fly to embody the peskiest part of President Obama's job: No matter what the president does, the media will overplay it and someone will find fault with it.
I agree with this columnist, entirely. I've been feeling much the same way recently: now that the president has been in office for five months, liberals are complaining that he isn't doing what they expect of him, the way they expect him to do it. How quickly some forget how it was to have a righ-wing republican in office instead of middle-to-left moderate-liberal, the latter much more likely to do things that will please liberals than the former ever was or would be.
This leaves self-described independents, who now make up the majority of the electorate, with the tough job of assessing Obama fairly as politics heat up and expectations for an economic recovery intensify.
by Susan Nielsen, The Oregonian Sunday June 21, 2009, 12:03 am
You can hear a faint buzz of dismay any time President Obama falls to behave precisely like a liberal superhero. Leave it to a fatly buzzing fly to embody the peskiest part of President Obama's job: No matter what the president does, the media will overplay it and someone will find fault with it.
I agree with this columnist, entirely. I've been feeling much the same way recently: now that the president has been in office for five months, liberals are complaining that he isn't doing what they expect of him, the way they expect him to do it. How quickly some forget how it was to have a righ-wing republican in office instead of middle-to-left moderate-liberal, the latter much more likely to do things that will please liberals than the former ever was or would be.
This leaves self-described independents, who now make up the majority of the electorate, with the tough job of assessing Obama fairly as politics heat up and expectations for an economic recovery intensify.
First, a quick recap of Flygate. The cable news network CNBC interrupted its more serious coverage last week to air a long clip of Obama killing a bothersome fly with a single dispassionate slap. Along the bottom of the screen crawled this headline: "BREAKING NEWS: PRES. OBAMA SWATS FLY DURING CNBC INTERVIEW AT WHITE HOUSE."
Is there any doubt that media outlets concentrate on the trivial?
The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals swiftly reproached the president. While conceding Obama's impeccable record on animal rights, the activists said he should set a better example and vowed to send him a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher.
Oy.
Picture the laughs heard 'round the world if Obama strapped a bug catcher to his belt, next to his Blackberry. Now imagine the snorts of derision if the president -- the same man trying to be tough on North Korea -- couldn't manage a show of force against a fly.
The fly incident is only the silliest example of backbiting. Civil rights groups glower that Obama isn't in lockstep with them on Guantanamo detainees. Gay-rights groups fume that Obama did not include health benefits last week when he extended, by executive order, partnership benefits to gay federal workers.
They want their way, and only their way.
Never mind that Obama's trying to untangle a mess at Guantanamo without making new ones. Never mind that he supports extending these health benefits; he simply believes the change should happen through Congress rather than by executive fiat.
Which is the correct way to do it, contrary to what the previous administration was wont to do.
So Obama gives 90 percent and gets chided for falling short of 110. That's politics.
Dummies. They should consider the alternative.
Meanwhile, critics on the right pin the entire federal deficit on Obama, capitalizing on voters' growing concerns about government debt. The critics buzz around, complaining about turtle tunnels in Florida and other pork projects in the stimulus bill. They grouse that Obama has been too busy nationalizing the auto industry to do much to create or save jobs.
Double dummies. All the right wing is doing is pointing to what isn't happening, gnawing at the margins, and trying to create issues, knowing how to play to the media (the same outfits that covered Flygate).
Again, it's fair to call up the truth squad.
Just think how desperate Oregon and Washington would be without the federal stimulus money, which Obama got through Congress within a few weeks of taking office. Picture unemployment and poverty rising yet higher if countless additional teachers and other state workers had lost their jobs.
As bad as things are now, they're a picnic compared to life without the extra stimulus money, aka deficit spending. This money is keeping us from spiraling into a second Great Depression.
Speaking of deficits, The New York Times recently analyzed the $2trillion swing from the Clinton-era surpluses to today's deficits, using budget numbers and official projections from 2001 through 2012. The recession itself accounts for more than one-third of the shift. Policies from the Bush era, including tax cuts, new Medicare drug coverage, the Iraq war and the bank bailout, account for more than half of the shift.
The stimulus bill accounts for just 7 percent.
Even if it were more, it is what is needed to be done.
Obama's agenda on health care, climate change and education? Just 3 percent. (That's assuming Congress finds ways to pay for most new programs, always a big "if" no matter who's in charge.)
Obama's approval ratings remain high. The guy doesn't need defending. The public still trusts him enough to be patient, even as the job outlook stays bleak.
Still, our patience will wear thin eventually. As the debts of the past come due, we'll be tempted to blame Obama for the entire cost rather than admit complicity over the years.
Then we'll start needling Obama to fix the deficit without cutting any programs, raising taxes or touching entitlement spending. Meanwhile, we'll expect the president to solve North Korea, Iran and Afghanistan in his spare time.
Whatever the task, the eye of the camera will never go away.
Neither will the irritable buzz of the nearest and smallest fly.
-- Associate Editor Susan Nielsen, The Oregonian; susannielsen@news.oregonian.com
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Judicial 'Activism' Isn't the Issue
The writer works for a "libertarian public interest law firm." He contends that both liberals and conservatives are prejudiced in favor of the government to begin with, so that the judicial battles waged are over arcana.
The practical result is that judges of both persuasions almost never enforce any constitutional limit on the power of government to regulate property and the economy. Given that the vast majority of law concerns these two areas, the real crisis in constitutional law is not judicial "activism" but judicial passivism.
It all began in the late 1930s, when the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for New Deal economic regulation. In essence, conservatives have adopted the big-government agenda of that era. The liberal-conservative consensus explains why nomination fights focus on a few "culture war" issues such as gay marriage or guns. Liberals and conservatives squabble over these esoteric questions because there is such harmonious accord on everything else.
Whether blaming the 1930s Court is valid is debatable; the Court declared invalid at least some of FDR's programs. Yet the point that nomination fights over the last couple of decades have focused on "cultural" issues is valid.
His article meanders off on a discussion of libertarian objections to governmental power unchecked even by the Court.
Special interests love licensing because it restricts competition and thus drives up the prices they can charge. None of this would be possible if judges simply struck down licensing laws as an insult to the constitutional right to earn an honest living secured by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment and the "privileges or immunities" clause of the 14th Amendment.
Judges should be neither active nor passive, neither aggressive nor deferential. In a word, they should be engaged -- engaged in protecting constitutional rights to property and economic liberty, because these areas of the law have the most impact on our daily lives.
The practical result is that judges of both persuasions almost never enforce any constitutional limit on the power of government to regulate property and the economy. Given that the vast majority of law concerns these two areas, the real crisis in constitutional law is not judicial "activism" but judicial passivism.
It all began in the late 1930s, when the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for New Deal economic regulation. In essence, conservatives have adopted the big-government agenda of that era. The liberal-conservative consensus explains why nomination fights focus on a few "culture war" issues such as gay marriage or guns. Liberals and conservatives squabble over these esoteric questions because there is such harmonious accord on everything else.
Whether blaming the 1930s Court is valid is debatable; the Court declared invalid at least some of FDR's programs. Yet the point that nomination fights over the last couple of decades have focused on "cultural" issues is valid.
His article meanders off on a discussion of libertarian objections to governmental power unchecked even by the Court.
Special interests love licensing because it restricts competition and thus drives up the prices they can charge. None of this would be possible if judges simply struck down licensing laws as an insult to the constitutional right to earn an honest living secured by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment and the "privileges or immunities" clause of the 14th Amendment.
Judges should be neither active nor passive, neither aggressive nor deferential. In a word, they should be engaged -- engaged in protecting constitutional rights to property and economic liberty, because these areas of the law have the most impact on our daily lives.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Sotomayor’s Tongue and Temperament
This issue is part of the spaghetti-on-the-fridge approach: throw out as many as you can, and see what sticks. A red herring: any diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue.
To supporters, Judge Sotomayor’s vigorous questioning of the Bush administration’s position in the case of the Canadian, Maher Arar, showcases some of her strengths. She is known as a formidably intelligent judge with a prodigious memory who meticulously prepares for oral arguments and is not shy about grilling the lawyers who appear before her to ensure that she fully understands their arguments.
Sounds good.
But to detractors, Judge Sotomayor’s sharp-tongued and occasionally combative manner — some lawyers have described her as “difficult” and “nasty” — raises questions about her judicial temperament and willingness to listen. Her demeanor on the bench is an issue that conservatives opposed to her nomination see as a potential vulnerability — and one that Mr. Obama carefully considered before selecting her.
A man would be called assertive, and praised.
Judge Sotomayor’s colleagues on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit say her tough and direct questioning reflects engagement and, sometimes, an effort to persuade her colleagues. Those qualities, coupled with a gregarious personality, they said, make her a powerful force behind the scenes, where she has used her mastery of the cases to change minds, improve opinions and forge consensus.
Being nasty is a minus? Who compalined? Lawyers whose feeligns were hurt? C'mon.
Those skills, some observers say, could make her an able politician on the Supreme Court and allow her to serve as an intellectual counterweight to Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative who is known for his acerbic questioning.
Ah, yes, acerbic. Is Scalia criticized for his temperament? No, conservatives sing his praises.
“In some ways she could match, well, the other New Yorker on the court, Justice Scalia,” said Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University. “He expects people to give back as good as he gives, and I expect that when Justice Sotomayor is on the court, his wish will be fulfilled.”
There you go.
“They call it a hot bench when a judge asks a lawyer a lot of questions — well, she isn’t afraid of running a hot bench,” said H. Raymond Fasano, a Republican immigration lawyer who has appeared before her 24 times, mostly in asylum cases, and is a fan. “When a judge asks a lot of questions, that means she’s read the record, she knows the issues and she has concerns that she wants resolved. And that’s the judge’s job.”
Who expects the judge to be a pushover? Judges are supposed to guard the integrity of the law and to run a fair courtroom, not to pander and meander.
Judge Guido Calabresi, a former dean of Yale Law School who taught Ms. Sotomayor there and now sits with her on the Second Circuit, said complaints that she had been unduly caustic had no basis. For a time, Judge Calabresi said, he kept track of the questions posed by Judge Sotomayor and other members of the 12-member court. “Her behavior was identical,” he said.
“Some lawyers just don’t like to be questioned by a woman,” Judge Calabresi added. “It was sexist, plain and simple.”
He said Judge Sotomayor’s forceful and lucid arguments had persuaded him to reconsider his position in a number of instances. “And I’m a tough act,” he said.
Other colleagues said Judge Sotomayor frequently sent unusually detailed, closely reasoned and helpful memorandums critiquing their draft opinions. “She will offer substantive suggestions,” said Judge Jon O. Newman, “but she will not be tenacious in making sure the language comes out exactly her way.”
Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard law professor who served as an adviser in the process that led to Judge Sotomayor’s selection for the Supreme Court, said the White House had found concerns about her temperament unfounded, concluding instead that her background and her concern with the consequences of court rulings would be a “healthy antidote” to more formalist legal theories advocated by the Supreme Court’s conservative wing.
And the right wing does not like that.
To supporters, Judge Sotomayor’s vigorous questioning of the Bush administration’s position in the case of the Canadian, Maher Arar, showcases some of her strengths. She is known as a formidably intelligent judge with a prodigious memory who meticulously prepares for oral arguments and is not shy about grilling the lawyers who appear before her to ensure that she fully understands their arguments.
Sounds good.
But to detractors, Judge Sotomayor’s sharp-tongued and occasionally combative manner — some lawyers have described her as “difficult” and “nasty” — raises questions about her judicial temperament and willingness to listen. Her demeanor on the bench is an issue that conservatives opposed to her nomination see as a potential vulnerability — and one that Mr. Obama carefully considered before selecting her.
A man would be called assertive, and praised.
Judge Sotomayor’s colleagues on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit say her tough and direct questioning reflects engagement and, sometimes, an effort to persuade her colleagues. Those qualities, coupled with a gregarious personality, they said, make her a powerful force behind the scenes, where she has used her mastery of the cases to change minds, improve opinions and forge consensus.
Being nasty is a minus? Who compalined? Lawyers whose feeligns were hurt? C'mon.
Those skills, some observers say, could make her an able politician on the Supreme Court and allow her to serve as an intellectual counterweight to Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative who is known for his acerbic questioning.
Ah, yes, acerbic. Is Scalia criticized for his temperament? No, conservatives sing his praises.
“In some ways she could match, well, the other New Yorker on the court, Justice Scalia,” said Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University. “He expects people to give back as good as he gives, and I expect that when Justice Sotomayor is on the court, his wish will be fulfilled.”
There you go.
“They call it a hot bench when a judge asks a lawyer a lot of questions — well, she isn’t afraid of running a hot bench,” said H. Raymond Fasano, a Republican immigration lawyer who has appeared before her 24 times, mostly in asylum cases, and is a fan. “When a judge asks a lot of questions, that means she’s read the record, she knows the issues and she has concerns that she wants resolved. And that’s the judge’s job.”
Who expects the judge to be a pushover? Judges are supposed to guard the integrity of the law and to run a fair courtroom, not to pander and meander.
Judge Guido Calabresi, a former dean of Yale Law School who taught Ms. Sotomayor there and now sits with her on the Second Circuit, said complaints that she had been unduly caustic had no basis. For a time, Judge Calabresi said, he kept track of the questions posed by Judge Sotomayor and other members of the 12-member court. “Her behavior was identical,” he said.
“Some lawyers just don’t like to be questioned by a woman,” Judge Calabresi added. “It was sexist, plain and simple.”
He said Judge Sotomayor’s forceful and lucid arguments had persuaded him to reconsider his position in a number of instances. “And I’m a tough act,” he said.
Other colleagues said Judge Sotomayor frequently sent unusually detailed, closely reasoned and helpful memorandums critiquing their draft opinions. “She will offer substantive suggestions,” said Judge Jon O. Newman, “but she will not be tenacious in making sure the language comes out exactly her way.”
Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard law professor who served as an adviser in the process that led to Judge Sotomayor’s selection for the Supreme Court, said the White House had found concerns about her temperament unfounded, concluding instead that her background and her concern with the consequences of court rulings would be a “healthy antidote” to more formalist legal theories advocated by the Supreme Court’s conservative wing.
And the right wing does not like that.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Question; does Gender Matter?
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives for President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 24.
Following Supreme Court Justice David Souter's retirement announcement earlier this month, court watchers were immediately unified on one point: his successor would likely be female.Why the emphasis on gender? After all, there are no Asians, Hispanics or Muslims, male or female, on the court. But the lack of women is widely perceived as the gap that most needs to be addressed.
On the Supreme Court, the first female justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, was the lone woman for 12 years before President Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993. And when Justice O'Connor retired from the court in 2006, the court again became a one-woman institution, as Samuel Alito took Justice O'Connor's seat. But those pushing for a female nominee say the need on the court isn't only a matter of perception.
Some contend that the court, and the country, benefits from people with varying experiences and viewpoints.
I wholeheartedly agree. A nominee not a judge, not a lawyer, would be great. Not going to happen, but it is a dream worth having.
Justice Ginsburg has made that point herself. In an interview with USA Today last week, she discussed the attitude of her colleagues during recent arguments in Safford Unified School District No. 1 v. Redding, in which school officials looking for pain medicine strip-searched a 13-year-old girl. She said the male justices didn't understand what a sensitive age that is for young females. "They have never been a 13-year-old girl."
Precisely.
Some experts, particularly conservatives, say such statements demonstrate the danger in making gender, or race, the main criteria for picking a nominee. It risks that justices will come to see themselves as needing to represent the views of a particular group, rather than acting as an umpire who remains neutral about who wins and loses, as Chief Justice John Roberts has described the role.
Gender or race should not be criteria, say conservatives, but they do insist on ideology being a criterion. Insist. And then justices such as Roberts make conservatism the view that needs be applied. For Roberts to insist he is neutral is nonsense, at best, and disingenuous.
"When you make appointments based on particular ascriptive criteria, the justice sooner or later could say, 'Oh, OK, I better reflect the desires of the constituency to which I belong," says Stephen Presser, a legal historian at Northwestern University. "You have to be very careful of having the court be a representative body and thinking about it in political terms, because that weakens the rule of law."
No. It is not that a justice says, "Oh, I'd better think as a man," or as a woman, but that it is part of the thought process. Justice Ginsburg doesn't need to remind herself she's a woman, just as, presumably, Justice Roberts doesn't have to remind himself he is a man.
And the court is political: note Gore v. Bush, as an example.
Jay T. Jorgensen, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP who previously clerked for Justice Alito and former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, says he saw first-hand how life experience can inform the justices' discussion. In 2000, the court heard a case called Public Land Council v. Babbitt, which centered on grazing rights. Justice O'Connor, who had been raised on a ranch, was able to elevate the discourse due to her knowledge of the industry. Yet, Mr. Jorgensen makes the point that her life experience didn't predetermine her vote. The court ruled 9-0 against the ranchers.
And Jorgensen clerked for conservatives.
Review some of the names being talked about as possibilities for the next Supreme Court justice.
Following Supreme Court Justice David Souter's retirement announcement earlier this month, court watchers were immediately unified on one point: his successor would likely be female.Why the emphasis on gender? After all, there are no Asians, Hispanics or Muslims, male or female, on the court. But the lack of women is widely perceived as the gap that most needs to be addressed.
On the Supreme Court, the first female justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, was the lone woman for 12 years before President Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993. And when Justice O'Connor retired from the court in 2006, the court again became a one-woman institution, as Samuel Alito took Justice O'Connor's seat. But those pushing for a female nominee say the need on the court isn't only a matter of perception.
Some contend that the court, and the country, benefits from people with varying experiences and viewpoints.
I wholeheartedly agree. A nominee not a judge, not a lawyer, would be great. Not going to happen, but it is a dream worth having.
Justice Ginsburg has made that point herself. In an interview with USA Today last week, she discussed the attitude of her colleagues during recent arguments in Safford Unified School District No. 1 v. Redding, in which school officials looking for pain medicine strip-searched a 13-year-old girl. She said the male justices didn't understand what a sensitive age that is for young females. "They have never been a 13-year-old girl."
Precisely.
Some experts, particularly conservatives, say such statements demonstrate the danger in making gender, or race, the main criteria for picking a nominee. It risks that justices will come to see themselves as needing to represent the views of a particular group, rather than acting as an umpire who remains neutral about who wins and loses, as Chief Justice John Roberts has described the role.
Gender or race should not be criteria, say conservatives, but they do insist on ideology being a criterion. Insist. And then justices such as Roberts make conservatism the view that needs be applied. For Roberts to insist he is neutral is nonsense, at best, and disingenuous.
"When you make appointments based on particular ascriptive criteria, the justice sooner or later could say, 'Oh, OK, I better reflect the desires of the constituency to which I belong," says Stephen Presser, a legal historian at Northwestern University. "You have to be very careful of having the court be a representative body and thinking about it in political terms, because that weakens the rule of law."
No. It is not that a justice says, "Oh, I'd better think as a man," or as a woman, but that it is part of the thought process. Justice Ginsburg doesn't need to remind herself she's a woman, just as, presumably, Justice Roberts doesn't have to remind himself he is a man.
And the court is political: note Gore v. Bush, as an example.
Jay T. Jorgensen, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP who previously clerked for Justice Alito and former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, says he saw first-hand how life experience can inform the justices' discussion. In 2000, the court heard a case called Public Land Council v. Babbitt, which centered on grazing rights. Justice O'Connor, who had been raised on a ranch, was able to elevate the discourse due to her knowledge of the industry. Yet, Mr. Jorgensen makes the point that her life experience didn't predetermine her vote. The court ruled 9-0 against the ranchers.
And Jorgensen clerked for conservatives.
Review some of the names being talked about as possibilities for the next Supreme Court justice.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Which way?
On page A19 of today's Times, two headlines:
Bloggers Create PAC to Recruit Liberal Candidates (In paper, the headline read Bloggers seek candidates to push Democrats to Left)
At Meeting of Conservatives, a Call for Principle Before Party
So the two extremes are pushing out, while President Obama stands left of center.
Bloggers Create PAC to Recruit Liberal Candidates (In paper, the headline read Bloggers seek candidates to push Democrats to Left)
At Meeting of Conservatives, a Call for Principle Before Party
So the two extremes are pushing out, while President Obama stands left of center.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
A paean to Liberalism
Bob Herbert consistently writes excellent columns. This is a good example.
Ignorance must really be bliss. How else, over so many years, could the G.O.P. get away with ridiculing all things liberal? Troglodytes on the right are no respecters of reality. They say the most absurd things and hardly anyone calls them on it. Evolution? Don’t you believe it. Global warming? A figment of the liberal imagination.
O'Brien, Sean Colmes, Coulter and Limbaugh scream and insist it is all liberal imaginings, and that makes them unpatriotic sentiments.
Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.
And liberals cower.
Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals -- from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers -- the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.
Indeed.
Civil rights? Women’s rights? Liberals went to the mat for them time and again against ugly, vicious and sometimes murderous opposition. They should be forever proud. The liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were contained in the original Social Security Act. Most conservatives despised the very idea of this assistance to struggling Americans. Republicans hated Social Security, but most were afraid to give full throat to their opposition in public at the height of the Depression.
Some have never stopped hating FDR.
When Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law in the presence of Harry Truman in 1965, he said: “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine.” Reagan, on the other hand, according to Johnson biographer Robert Dallek, “predicted that Medicare would compel Americans to spend their ‘sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.’ ”
That last quote is the one Palin, the last of the conservatives who venerate Reagamn and lie to the people, used, but entirely out of context. Of course.
Ignorance must really be bliss. How else, over so many years, could the G.O.P. get away with ridiculing all things liberal? Troglodytes on the right are no respecters of reality. They say the most absurd things and hardly anyone calls them on it. Evolution? Don’t you believe it. Global warming? A figment of the liberal imagination.
O'Brien, Sean Colmes, Coulter and Limbaugh scream and insist it is all liberal imaginings, and that makes them unpatriotic sentiments.
Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.
And liberals cower.
Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals -- from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers -- the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.
Indeed.
Civil rights? Women’s rights? Liberals went to the mat for them time and again against ugly, vicious and sometimes murderous opposition. They should be forever proud. The liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were contained in the original Social Security Act. Most conservatives despised the very idea of this assistance to struggling Americans. Republicans hated Social Security, but most were afraid to give full throat to their opposition in public at the height of the Depression.
Some have never stopped hating FDR.
When Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law in the presence of Harry Truman in 1965, he said: “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine.” Reagan, on the other hand, according to Johnson biographer Robert Dallek, “predicted that Medicare would compel Americans to spend their ‘sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.’ ”
That last quote is the one Palin, the last of the conservatives who venerate Reagamn and lie to the people, used, but entirely out of context. Of course.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Ex-Prosecutor’s Book Accuses Bush of Murder
From Mnson to JFK to W; quite a litany.
As a Los Angeles county prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi batted a thousand in murder cases: 21 trials, 21 convictions, including the Charles Manson case in 1971.
I remember reading his book about Manson, Helter Skelter; scared the crop out of me in places.
His latest book, a polemic with the provocative title “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,” has risen to best-seller status with nary a peep from the usual outlets that help sell books: cable television and book reviews in major daily newspapers.
Why?
“They are not responding at all,” he said. “I think it all goes back to fear. If the liberal media would put me on national television, I think they’d fear that they would be savaged by the right wing. The left wing fears the right, but the right does not fear the left.”
One explanation, and it makes sense. But, wait: lefties afraid?
A spokeswoman for Comedy Central said the staff of “The Daily Show” was on vacation and unavailable for comment. A representative for MSNBC said: “We get many pitches to interview authors and very few end up on our programs.”
Everyone's on vacation at the same time?
As a Los Angeles county prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi batted a thousand in murder cases: 21 trials, 21 convictions, including the Charles Manson case in 1971.
I remember reading his book about Manson, Helter Skelter; scared the crop out of me in places.
His latest book, a polemic with the provocative title “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,” has risen to best-seller status with nary a peep from the usual outlets that help sell books: cable television and book reviews in major daily newspapers.
Why?
“They are not responding at all,” he said. “I think it all goes back to fear. If the liberal media would put me on national television, I think they’d fear that they would be savaged by the right wing. The left wing fears the right, but the right does not fear the left.”
One explanation, and it makes sense. But, wait: lefties afraid?
A spokeswoman for Comedy Central said the staff of “The Daily Show” was on vacation and unavailable for comment. A representative for MSNBC said: “We get many pitches to interview authors and very few end up on our programs.”
Everyone's on vacation at the same time?
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