Debating Obamacare

Though I receive scores of invitations to speak, I rarely accept invitations to debate unless my opposite number is really prepared and very committed to the other side of the question. Very few things are as dull as a “debate” that isn’t. Normally I can provide a gathering with a much more accurate assessment of the state of politics and law than a boring “exchange of views” can.

Thursday night should prove to be the exception that proves the rule. I’ll be debating Obamacare with Professor Paul Campos of the University of Colorado Law School. Professor Campos has been writing on politics for years, often for the now defunct Rocky Mountain News, and he’s an able lefty, as well as a fellow grad of the U of M Law School to boot. If you are in the Denver area and want to hear what I expect will be a vigorous argument on the merits of Obamacare, you can order a ticket here

The Pesident’s Speech: A Big Dud

From an ABC analysis of a poll conducted after last Wednesday’s big speech:

More continue to think reform will worsen rather than improve their own care, costs and coverage. There’s still a nearly even split on whether it’ll improve care for most people in general. More think it’ll weaken rather than strengthen Medicare. And nearly two-thirds think it’ll boost the already vast federal deficit
.

Democrats who vote for anything resembling Obamacare are endangering their re-election. Not only are the proposals ruinous of a great American medical system, they are deeply unpopular and the Congress knows this. Seniors especially are right to be very distressed by the prospect of massive cuts to the Medicare budget.

To pass such a scheme in the face of strong national opposition is to announce to the plebes that their opinions don’t matter to the lefty elites running the Democratic Party and the Obama Administration. That sort of arrogance will not fade from memory by next November.

Preparing for a Sweeping Change in Campaign Finance Law

For more than 30 years the United States Supreme Court has struggled to square limits on campaign contributions with the First Amendment’s ringing language that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Congress and state and local governments have participated in this effort, passing scores of statutes and regulations that seek to “balance” interests and ward off the corrupting influence of money in politics.[# More #]

Of course we still have the corrupting influence of money in politics, and we have a giant industry surrounding the management of campaigns and the raising of funds according to the myriad rule sets that exist.

We also have the increasing domination of politics by the super-wealthy, as they can afford to self-finance their campaigns in whole or part while even well-off citizens refuse to submit to the endless task of raising a competitive amount of money via individual donations.

President Obama harnessed the internet in 2007-2008, and destroyed what little semblance of balance was left in the federal system by refusing to honor his pledge to live by the federal campaign spending limits, and his campaign spending swamped that of John McCain’s.

Now, surrounded by the ruin of the reformers’ ambitions and certainly aware of the accelerating trend towards a Congress truly open only to multi-millionaires, the Supreme Court of the United States last week heard arguments on whether or not the federal system ought to be scrapped and the First Amendment’s core value of protecting political speech restored to its rightful place.

The case is Citizens United v. FEC, and a very unusual September argument on its merits was heard last Wednesday. The argument was overshadowed by President Obama’s speech that night and by the general focus on Obamacare, but the potential importance of the case is difficult to overstate.

Here’s the SCOTUS Wiki on the proceedings.

I am going to devote two hours of today’s broadcast to this case and to the arguments advanced and questions posed by the justices at last week’s hearings. Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California Irvine Law School and Dean John Eastman of Chapman University Law School –the “Smart Guys” as they have been known by my audience for a decade– will join me with Erwin assigned the task of representing the government and defending the McCain-Feingold statute and all of its cousins, and John assigned the job of representing Citizens United and beyond that, the interests of free speech and a political system open to all of its citizens and not rigged to benefit the well-heeled.

My view is hardly a surprise to my listeners. Ordinary citizens ought to be able to compete on a level playing field with wealthy citizens by approaching sympathetic donors and enlisting their wealth in an effort to compete against self-funding millionaires, and political messages funded by groups of like-minded activists ought never to be barred from the airwaves.

If, as many suspect, the Court strikes down a large part or even all of the McCain-Feingold statute and perhaps even issues a ruling overturning in whole or part Buckley v. Valeo, expect an armada of challenges to state and local laws and regulations to launch, as well they should. Depending on how the court rules, constitutional law experts could well be busy challenging these statutes for a couple of years, but at the end of the cycle of challenges, the country’s politics will be much better positioned to thrive and survive another two centuries of robust, well-funded political debate.

Candidates, consultants and contributors –both actual and potential– should be planning their responses now as the 2010 cycle will be the first to be impacted by the decision. The Court’s rare September argument suggests that at least some of its members understand the urgency of a timely ruling in the case, so that the political year ahead will unfold fairly for all the candidates, and not just the self-funders. Imagine how many more candidates from both sides of the aisle and from third parties might join the campaign if they were assured of a level playing field with the multimillionaire incumbents or candidates.

Today’s program will be the subject of an open thread over at The Hughniverse.

The 9/12 Slideshow

From the Examiner.com.

The Public Option: Fading Or Reviving?

The Obama Administration can’t seem to decide whether it will fight to the end for the government option/public plan, or let it die a much deserved death.

The New York Times’ Robert Pear has a story this morning with the headline “Public Option Fades From Health Care Debate,” but Administration spokesman Robert Gibbs went on CNN today to say it remains an option.

This inability to speak clearly about so crucial an issue is one of many instances of slipperiness that is fueling the deep public distrust of Obamacare, and the president’s willingness to change his “guarantees” and his numbers (45 million uninsured dropped to 30 million without explanation) two more examples.

A large crowd of Obamacare opponents thronged D.C. yesterday —Michelle Malkin has the pictures that the MSM sites don’t seem to have available which clearly communicate the size of the crowd— and its numbers are a visible manifestation of a nation-wide unease with the president’s promises and plans. So too were the 1.4 million signatures opposing Obamacare that my Salem Radio colleagues and I delivered to the Hill on Wednesday, and so too were the hundreds of white-coated Docs4PatientCare who flew in Thursday to tell their Congressman to stop the assault on American medicine.

None of these manifestations of anti-Obamacare public opinion have been organized by the GOP, though the Republicans stand to benefit greatly in the November 2010 elections if Democrats continue to try and push through this deeply divisive and deceptive radical overhaul of the highly effective system of care Americans prize and depend upon.

The only way to stop Obamacare is to persuade enough Democrats that they will lose their jobs in 14 months if they don’t stop backing Obamacare.

And the best way to send that message is with a contribution to both the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

The Appeasement of Iran

The combination of the State Department’s announcement that the United States will accept Iran’s “terms” for talks and the Ayatollah Khamenei’s hard line speech at Friday prayers in Tehran spells appeasement.

From the Times’ story on the coming “talks”:

The Obama administration said Friday that the United States would accept Iran’s offer to meet, fulfilling President Obama’s pledge to hold unconditional talks despite the Iranian government’s insistence that it would not negotiate over the future of its nuclear program….

In advance of Friday’s announcement, senior administration officials said that their offer to negotiate directly with the Iranians, for what could turn into the first substantive talks since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, was, as a senior official had earlier put it, a “bona fide offer.”

But at the same time, officials said their expectations were extremely low. They also said their willingness to proceed was based in part on a recognition that some form of talks had to take place before the United States could make a case for imposing far stronger sanctions on Iran.

“We’ll be looking to see if they are willing to engage seriously on these issues,” said a State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley. “If we have talks, we will plan to bring up the nuclear issue.”

From the Wall Street Journal’s assessment of Khamenei’s speech:

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his second address to the nation since the turmoil over the June presidential election, set a tough tone for where the country is heading: No compromises with opponents outside or inside Iran.

Mr. Khamenei, delivering a sermon at Tehran’s Friday prayers, said that if opposition leaders continue to question the legitimacy of the political system and create divisions among the public, he would have no choice but to “take out the eye of the storm.” The comments set the stage for the possible arrest of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

Mr. Khamenei reiterated that Iran wouldn’t bend to Western powers when it comes to its nuclear program. To give up rights, “whether nuclear right or otherwise, would result in a nation’s demise,” he said.

It is apparent that the Obama Administration will not act to stop Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Now the only question is whether America will interfere with Israel’s efforts to stop the world’s most fanatical regime from gaining WMD.

9/11

Thanks to the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, coast guard, counterterrorism and public safety professionals who have prevented a second attack for eight years.

The enormous cost of the battles in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world have been made so that there have not had to be more pictures like this one.  We remember the victims of 9/11 today, but we also need to salute the thousands killed and tens of thousands wounded in the war with the Islamists, fanatics who would gladly see a 9/11 every day in their war with the West.

Lileks Lands In The Hughniverse: His First Column Here

Will we have political conspiracy movies in the Obama era? If government is now All Wise and Good, how can we possibly have shadowy cabals at the Highest Level, working to follow and/or kill charismatic young Hollywood leading actors? 

Trust me: they’ll find a way. Let us look back in history for our examples. You may recall “Three Days of the Condor,” a high-water mark of high-70s paranoia. It was hardly unusual; in those days it was safely assumed that all major corporations had assassins on the payroll, for example. (Mercinaries loved to work for GlobalTechCorp, because they let you kill with impunity AND they had a great dental plan.)  If I remember correctly – a Latin phrase that means “too lazy to Google” – Robert Redford had stumbled across plans to invade the Middle East and take their delicious, useful oil. By “plans” I mean contingency plans, the sort of thing you have around just in case. 

Scandal! Of course, the Pentagon war-games everything, and no doubt they have plans for invading the Congo via Australia, or conquering Canada by turning the planet upside down and dumping Brazil on its head, should such technology become available. You want them to have plans, because if you find yourself suddenly needing to invade, oh, Iraq, you need to know how to get there, and whether you might have to cross a river or two on the way. But in the movie, the actual existence of plans was the Deep Dark Secret, the smoking gun, and if I also recall, this gave Redford a chance to deliver the usual adolescent speech about how My God it’s all a game to you guys. Presumably he would have scoffed at plans for the Normandy landing as well. You sit here in your ivory tower, and it doesn’t mean a thing to you, how many people you kill or picturesque villages are shelled! My God! Yes, yes, run along, young fellow. We have Nazis to deal with. 

The movie ends with Redford marching into the New York Times. I’ll show you! I’ll show you all! Cliff Robertson, playing an evil CIA mastermind, asks him: how do you know they’ll publish it? Curtain. A shiver of delicious righteousness passes through the audience – the CIA might even get to the Times. Those bastards. In hindsight it’s hilarious, because we know now the New York Times would publish the details of an Israeli strike on Iraq, including the home phones of the pilots and the the URLs of their Facebook pages. 

Paranoia thrillers have made a return in the last few years, as filmmakers and producers attempt to do their civic duty to combat the Bush Peril. The last few films are finally trickling out of the pipeline, just in time for the era of Hope and/or Change, and it makes you wonder: now that the savior of the nation guides us with his steady hand and impeccable judgment, will there still be movies about the perfidy of “patriots?” 

Well, sure. As long as there are Republicans. A few nights ago I watched “State of Play,”  a movie about a crusading journalist who teams up with a spunky perky blogger to expose the murderous doings of a private security contractor. It’s not named Blackwater, and at least they called it “Point Five” instead of, oh, Darkfluid or Inkyliquid, but we know who it’s supposed to be. A Crusading Congressman is attempting to expose the group when the murders start, and we allllll know who’s responsible; anyone will tell you that when you’re the subject of a congressional investigation, you should start killing witnesses and congressional staff the day before the hearings start. We know Congressperson Affleck is a conservative, because he answers to a House Majority Leader with Newt-hued hair, a flag pin,  and a tendency to berate people for taking the Lord’s name in vain. Say no more! Brand that man with the Scarlet R! The screenwriter may have been anguished about having a GOP congressman investigate Blackwater, but trust me: he finds a nice way to deal with that piece of cognitive dissonance.

The movie resurrects the Watergate-era notion of the principled, dogged reporter thrust in the maelstrom of conspiracy. We know he’s a real reporter, because he drives an old car, has a messy apartment and a messy desk no doubt crawling with silverfish; he’s slovenly and unkempt and doughy, but oh-so-irresistible to willowy blonde women and perky bloggers because A) he’s a man of passion and conviction, and B) he’s played by Russell Crowe, and hence probably looks better when shaved and bathed and put on a diet. Unfortunately, he has trouble getting his story past his editor (Helen Mirren, chewing through the cliched dialogue like a kid eating a cooked carrot quickly to stave off the gag reflex) because the paper’s been bought by RUPERT MURDOCH. Well, it’s not spelled out,  but you know that’s who they mean.  

As long as there are Ruperts, conservatives and private security services bent on repealing the 3rd amendment so you’re forced to put them up in your house, there will be ample opportunity for the political thriller. It’s ironic, really: in the olden times, a movie might spin a gripping tale out of an administration that had an actual Communist in its ranks. But then anti-anti-communism became the default position for the bien pensants, and calling someone a commie was a sign of a paranoid lunatic who sat in darkened rooms and drew acrostics about Precious Bodily Fluids. 

Now we have an administration that contains an Actual Communist, but he gets thrown out because it seems he also is a Truther. There might be a movie in there somewhere, but’s not very dramatic to accuse someone of being everything they’ve admitted to being.  Imagine a dramatic meeting in a darkened parking lot with Deep Throat – he looks around to make sure they’re alone, pulls out an iPhone, and calls up some YouTube clips. 

Deep Throat: Burn the URL as soon as you copy these videos, and empty your cache! 

Investigative Blogger: But the video already has 23,464 hits, and it’s mirrored on 26 other accounts. 

Deep Throat: You mean everyone knows about this YouTube? 

Investigative Blogger: Well, yeah. 

Deep Throat: Huh. Well. I watch the Nightly News and read the Times, and I didn’t know any of this stuff until I googled him. 

Investigative Blogger: Really. Imagine that.  

—- 

James Lileks blogs at http://lileks.com and http://www.startribune.com/blogs/lileks.html

For This We Needed A joint Session of Congress?

Talk about underwhelming.

Most telling was the laughter at the phrase “there remain some details to be worked out,” which the president wasn’t counting on.

“Misinformation,” “bogus claims,” “scare tactics,” “such a charge would be laughable,’ “it is a lie plain and simple” –welcome to the bipartisanship of hope and change.

This speech may be rallying the left, but it isn’t doing anything to advance “bipartisan” solutions. It appears that the president has settled on a jam down, one built on the same lame arguments that have failed to persuade a majority or even a near majority of Americans.

The New York Times’ John Burns

The current London bureau chief of the Times and former head of the baghdad bureau for many years is my guest in hour three tonight.  The podcast will be here later and the  later.

Burns and some of his colleagues are blogging at the war at the new New York Times’ blog “At War.”  While many of you are no doubt as dismayed with Times’ domestic political coverage and  lapses on national security as I am, Burns and many of his colleagues abroad are the best in the business.

Comment on the conversation at the Hughniverse.