July 26, 2017 6:00 AM
Morning Reads for Wednesday-July 26th, 2017
Ed currently owes me at least 3 postcards for filling in for him. I’m not saying that I’m counting, but I am definitely counting.
So, Happy Hump Day from Cataula, Georgia; Home of the Dead Mulberry.
State
- Having driven through Atlanta twice this past weekend, the news that we are leading the way in auto insurance increases is not hard for me to believe.
- The father of a Georgia tornado victim is seeking to make storm shelters mandatory.
- My eyes are rolling so hard on this one, I think my mother may have been right on the whole “they’ll get stuck” thing…
- AFLAC is celebrating corporate responsibility in their home community.
- A small WW2 replica aircraft landed on Georgia 316 earlier this week.
- Record cargo volumes are occurring in the Savannah Port thanks to larger ships.
- Dekalb County has another case of the West Nile Virus.
- Ok, y’all need to cut back on the graffiti because Norfolk Southern is cracking down…
National
- D.C. law requiring a “good reason” to carry a concealed weapon is ruled unconstitutional.
- Frank Sinatra’s widow, Barbara Sintra, dies at 95.
- After an outcry of support for Microsoft Paint, the company decided to keep the outdated program.
- If you have tickets to one of Justin Bieber’s canceled concerts, here’s how to get your refund. I cannot, however, help you refund your dignity from buying the tickets in the first place.
- Rick Tillerson is taking some time off and his spokesperson won’t say if he is happy or not.
- I’m never eating chips from a can EVER.AGAIN. PERIOD.
- A Better Deal, a New Deal, same diff…right?
- We OBVIOUSLY need to pay our teachers more.
Personal Obsession Privilege
- I’m not crying…YOU’RE CRYING.
About Author
Theresa Garcia Robertson
Wife. Mama. Foodie. Political Junkie. Southern Enthusiast. Taco Lover.
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Home of the Dead Mulberry.
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Or Big Rock, which is quite a range of possibilities.
I have this app on my phone called marinetraffic. When in savannah it is really cool (to me) because you can tell where the ships are coming from, where they’re going, and all sorts of other details. Kinda nerdy I guess. They have a website too:
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-12.0/centery:25.0/zoom:4
Looks like there is a container ship passing Tybee right now heading for Tarragona Spain. I wonder what we are sending to Spain? Claxton fruit cakes?
Well apparently the biggest problem with recruiting industry in Walker County is a blog and Facebook page called the LaFayette Underground. This is according to Northwest GA Economic Developer Jeff Mullis, who also is your Senate Rules Committee Chairman. https://www.dadeplanet.com/single-post/2017/07/21/Sen-Mullis-says-LaFayette-Underground-the-Enemy-of-Economic-Development . Really a blog that most of the time reports news that the local rags fail to investigate or ask the hard questions?
On Trumpcare: “The law, in its majestic equality,forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Anatole France
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GOP application of that idea to healthcare is that people deserve the freedom to not have healthcare or healthcare insurance should they choose not to afford it.
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An Obama’s legacy is that a majority of Americans now think affordable health care is a right.
I don’t know about a ‘right’ but I do know it should be a reality, given how much we have progressed as a species. Even accounting for scale of population, if every other country can do it, why can’t we?
Healthcare:obesity: The U.S. is number one in worldwide rankings.
Eating habits are most difficult to change by education or mandating so what is the public role in bad lifestyles?
Controlling choices in school lunches, snap cards and attending nutrition education meets heavy opposition. Just toss your money in and move on keeps us #1.
I remember reading some research that when doctors actually provide “prescriptions” for nutrition regimens, that works fairly well. Probably some supportive nutritionist services in there as well.
“An Obama’s legacy is that a majority of Americans now think affordable health care is a right.”
Well, Dave, the problem—an inconvenient truth (as Al Gore might say)—is that the Constitution mentions no right to health care (any more than it mentions to a BMW, right to a Harvard education, or a right to a mansion at Sea Island or in Buckhead). So if a majority of Americans feel that way, well, then they need to get a constitutional amendment adopted proclaiming that a right. Of course, that would not be an easy route—2/3 of Congress and 3/4 of the states—and I suspect there would be some problems defining that right. Would it include unlimited coverage for everything under the sun? What about a sticky issue like abortion? The Founding Fathers realized we might have to change the Constitution someday, so they gave us the amendment process.
Auggie, you know as well as I that what Dave’s referring to is expectation, not a “right” as proscribed in the Constitution. It’s the equivalent of saying FDR and social security convinced Americans they have a “right” to old age insurance. Expectations and democratic norms among voters made it a right to which the felt entitled and thus the “Third Rail of Politics,” woe to anyone who tries to mess with it, despite not literally rewriting the Constitution.
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As to the defining of rights through the Amendment process, it’s one reason we have a Common Law constitution and a judicial branch: The Courts have been effectively updating, interpreting, and mitigating old language (the 14th Amendment incorporating the Bill of Rights against state and municipal governments) for a long time to allow the country’s definition of rights to evolve with its democratic polity, from Brown to “One Person One Vote” to Obergefell.
I could see it as just one of many unenumerated rights. Remember, the Constitution does not define rights, it defines and clarifies the most basic of rights. There is no ‘right’ in the Constitution to a myriad of things. Come on, you are smarter than this.
Life. That is one. The right to life for the living and breathing citizens of the US. How does that work when many are denied the treatments available only to those with something more abstract than life, called ‘wealth’?
Comparing basic healthcare to those luxuries makes the point on the use of the quote. (But not so fast on that Sea Island mansion. Maybe the state should subsidize so that citizens can get one when they need one—like what is occurring with toll lanes.)
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“Would it include unlimited coverage for everything under the sun?” Of course not. We’ve reached the point where bio-technology capabilities exceed the resources needed to universally provide them without protocol. It will only become harder to define such protocols as time goes on, so it’s in our interest to start now.
To carry over from yesterdays discussion… If cost of care services is so important and too high, and something every one can agree on why is that not addressed in any of the current bills? If you lower costs for every one now, would that not reduce the cost of insurance across the board? Is that a phase II or a phase III issue? What good is having the cost lowered in a phase that might take YEARS to pass if you take away my chances of having access to insurance now? Talking to my reps have lead NO WHERE. The only local office in the area is Carters. All they care about when you talk to his staff that is seldom there is Planed Parenthood, and the folks that cheat the system that raises my costs. One staffer said she would pray for me. I got a very nice form letter to the 5 letters I wrote him bout lowering my families insurance cost that Obamacare caused to sky rocket and allowing me more choices in picking a plan or a carriers. (if I’m capped out of the market because no one is picking comprehensive coverage to save themselves money, how does that help me – which no one can answer, including the health care trust of Georgia Pol). A call to Isakson’s office in Washington lead to a women talking my info, sounding very concerned. a promise to talk to a senior member of the staff, and then NOT A SINGLE WORD. A return call two weeks later lead to a man who explained to me like I was 6 that the Senator can’t talk to every one, nor can the staff, took my info and NOT A SINGLE WORD back. Do you know when he calls for town halls. At 6:00 M on my home phone while I’m working. I can’t even get through to Perdue’s staff, he has yet to reply to a single letter or email I have sent him in the last 30 months. NOT ONE.
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In the eyes of my elected officials, my problems are in the minority of their voters and their Party. Only 15 % of the US population supports this bill. It not over 50% in this state, but that doesn’t matter to the 3 of them. They are still going to vote to repeal. They are still going to avoid the voters that don’t agree with them.
Norfolk Southern’s crackdown on graffiti “artists” who are trespassing on railroad property should not come as any surprise in light of recent legal events involving another railroad, CSX.
In one case, actions of a movie crew that was trespassing on railroad property that led to a death ultimately resulted in a Savannah jury awarding the “victims” a massive award. The railroad was hit for about $4 Million, even though the railroad had repeatedly told the film crew that they were not authorized to film on the bridge. Likewise, in a recent case filed, a local teenager’s family is suing CSX after their child was run over by a freight train. The family is arguing that the right of way was not fenced to prevent trespassing.
Given that moving trains cannot stop on a dime and given the financial impracticality of fencing off 93,000 miles worth of track, the alternate solution is to crack down on trespassers.
Why did you put the word victims in quotation marks?
A jury, after looking at evidence you could have no way of viewing, found there was a victim, not a “victims”.
You cheapen Sarah’s death with your “quotation marks”, unless you have a grammatical reason for using said punctuation.
An adolescent losing his legs is tragic, but wearing ear buds while walking on railroad tracks is negligent.
While America is being anti trade, China is investing in rail through places not in China…
https://www.axios.com/china-is-making-iran-a-hub-in-its-global-infrastructure-project-2465396847.html
I see you reddit too.
RAND calls bamboozle on this whole transgendered ban thing.
https://www.axios.com/study-transgender-military-members-dont-drive-up-costs-or-cause-disrup-2465764776.html
Once they repeal it then they can move to germany or another socialist country if they want it so bad. If they do pass another universal healthcare law then I think I should be given a raise to make up for my loss of benifits since health insurance is part of my compensation. If you give it to everyone that’s a pay cut to me.
Once repealed, employers don’t need to legally cover folks like me. I think I should be given a raise to make up for my loss of benefits since health insurance is part of my compensation. That’s a pay cut and a additional $10,000 +/- cost to me. Unless I enter the state high risk pool and then you help pay my health insurance with new taxes to you to keep it funded and then we both can lose even more pay together.
Or you could move to the most free market country in the world- Hong Kong. Oh wait, they have government managed health care too.
Healthcare are a right ? No, but charity in a free nation was never intended to be all inclusive.
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” Ben Franklin
“Our constitution was made only for moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams
And the words of George Washington in his farewell address fit in here too.
What we are doing today is subverting our charity and laws to those that would bankrupt the nation with unchecked and unenforced public largess, overseen by a self serving bureaucracy.
A wealthy nation can throw money at the looters for a long, long time, it is easier and a lot of enablers can make some big bucks along the way.
“Come on, you are smarter than this.”
Huh, Rick?
Is the Constitution a restraint on government, or not? Does it have a fixed meaning, or is it a “living, breathing document” that “evolves” with the times? If it “evolves” with the times, well then of course, there is no need to ever amend it—whatever is the whim of an activist judge can say something like, “oh, the founding fathers were dimwitted, did not know better”—of course today, because it is true in most other nations, there must be a right to health care.” Pretty much how we got Roe versus Wade, which still divides the country 44 years later.
As to a right to life, the irony is that a lot of the same Democrats who say people will die without coverage also favor abortion on demand—and taxpayers dollars to pay for that procedure. Oh, the irony.
“Is the Constitution a restraint on government, or not? ”
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It is both those things. In some things it restrains government; in others it was designed to create a more powerful, unified, and effective one than the Articles of Confederation–and most of the amendments since the Bill of Rights have served to empower the federal government even more, at the expense of state and local governments.
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And, as a common law document, it lives perpetually through judicial interpretation, because they were wise enough to create broad ideals rather than detailed proscriptions. One of my favorite college classes was a seminar on Russian Politics with the late Lt. General William Odom, who was Reagan’s NSA Head and had earlier served under Zbig on Carter’s National Security Council. He got out a pocket US Constitution, and then got out the Russian Constitution: 137 articles, 100 pages long, with countless rights and proscriptions on certain policies included. It was rigid, inflexible, and is now frequently ignored without proper judicial enforcement and norms of democratic governance. The American Constitution is flexible and evolving, just as the laws are in the common law tradition, where the constitution, statutes, and courts weave together the tapestry of the rule of law. ‘Activist’ judges, also known as judges, have been filling in the gaps of the Constitution and building on each other’s rulings since Marshall stated “It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department [the judicial branch] to say what the law is.” It is not merely how we got Roe, but how we got Brown and Gray v. Sanders: Decisions crucial towards making Georgia the forward looking state it is today.
I will say that Scalia is fascinating to read on 4th Amendment stuff precisely because it shows the limits of the “The Constitution as it was in 1789” doctrine. He’d write stuff banning hidden tracking devices because he thought the Founders wouldn’t have approved of a colonial era police dude hanging on the bottom of a wagon as it drove all the way on all over town without a warrant. (It would, occasionally, make him side with the liberals on 5-4 Criminal Procedure cases, with Breyer sometimes going the other way.)
The exchanges are already in a death spiral. Just wait until the rate increase for the exchanges go public this Fall. There has been a terrible trend for the past three years. It didn’t start on January 2oth of 2017. Also, a skinny exchanges gets us to a conference committee to continue working on the bill.
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“This has been your nightly reminder that the GOP’s approach to healthcare is about longstanding animosity towards Barack Obama and not, you know, actual healthcare.” Go screw yourself on that one.
Listen, I know you were an intern or staff assistant on the Hill when this thing passed so you feel like you have some skin in the ACA game. But you fail to either 1) comprehend that the exchanges are failing because the ACA was terrible or 2) your complete lack of honesty on the issue.
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I have been working on this issue since 2009. I was working on healthcare reform before Obama was elected. I take issue with your belief that I am only doing this because of the color of Obama’s skin or the fact he had a D next to his name.
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Piss off. I’m done here. I’ve got more important things to do.
“With no individual mandate or employer mandate…” Yes, Andrew hit it on the head, the crux of RobertsCare—fines, mandates, must cover this and that even if you don’t want it. If the insurance coverage is so great for the young, they ought to be signing up in droves, without the prying eyes of the IRS asking me whether or not I have insurance—one thing Trump should dump.
“To any unbiased reader, the U.S. Constitution has a clear meaning. It specifies and limits the powers of the federal government. Yet we are supposed to believe that is has ‘evolved’ into a document that means nearly the opposite: that it allows the federal government to do nearly anything. If you point out to the average liberal that the Constitution does not empower the federal government to impose a compulsory national health care plan, he will say, ‘Oh, but the Constitution is a living document! It has evolved with the times’…The idea of ‘evolving standards’…removes all limits on power. It lets the state define its own authority.”—1993 column by Joseph Sobran.
“The Constitution permitted the federal government to provide a few services—national defense, a court system, legal tender, a postal system—but nothing more…the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution made it clear that the federal government was strictly prohibited from doing anything not specifically authorized by the Constitution….(but) when was the last time your congressman voted against a bill because he judged it to be unconstitutional?” –the late Harry Browne, author of The Great Libertarian Offer (2000).
Which raises the question: is there anything Congress’ can’t do?
I am required to buy federally mandated insurance. I just mailed the check Tuesday to a provider in Montana. I have to pay almost $700 a year to a private insurance company that is federally underwritten. Once cashed, the insurance company sends a letter to the Department of Homeland Security confirming I bought the mandated policy. If they don’t get the letter, I get a letter from FEMA with a list of all the bad things that can happen to me if I don’t get a policy. When I bought my condo, I was not in a flood plan, but they invented this thing call a storm surge zone, so now by a federally mandate, I have to buy flood insurance so if a big one hits the coast, the US tax payers don’t have to pay out my property lost under a IRS claim or a FEMA claim.
Even Georgia has mandated insurance. You don’t carry a certain legal limit on your car, you lose your license for 6 months, court cost, fines…
I’m sure some one will tell me it’s not the same thing and then explain why I am wrong. 😉
Yes, Andrew, Congress is authorized to levy taxes for the general welfare—but Obama at least initially denied the mandate was a tax. “Anger was amplified when, during the congressional debate, the administration denied that the penalties imposed on mandate noncompliers constituted a tax; yet in subsequent legal briefs they prepared to defend the constitutionality of the new law. They argued that the individual mandate was a permissible use of the federal government’s tax powers.” (From Larry Sabato’s “Who Got in the Booth? A Look Back at the 2010 Elections, page 58). Of course, I think of taxes as something imposed for doing something, like you earn income or make a purchase, not for doing nothing. But lets say it is a tax—well, Obama had also promised in his 2008 campaign that his plan would not raise taxes for anyone making less than $250,000. OK, I somehow suspect some of the noncomopliers since then did not make $250,000 or more (and I don’t recall Democrats opposing limiting the mandate to a certain income level).
But it may as well be “water over the dam” now after the crazy week in DC—“hangover day” up there I guess! An even worse process with this bill (or whatever it was) than the 2010 one….
Poor Obama will probably lose his next election with all that baggage.