GOP Primary Megathread!

[alfred russel]

But health insurance hasn't been about insurance for a very long time. It is in fact a pre-paid plan. Sort of.

I would not have any problem with contraception (non-mediclaly necessary contraception) being covered or not covered in general. I can see good arguments either way.

I cannot see any good argument of the form "My group has religious objections to some medical procedure, so we should be allowed to not provide particular medical procedures to those we employ, even if they are not in our religious group at all." That is just sheer idiocy.

I more or less agree, but I've been signing up for a high deductible plan for the past few years--which is more like an insurance plan and cheaper (in part because of that, and in part because we get a healthier population signing up).

[Eddie Teach]

From what I understand, covering birth control is more expensive,

Are they still letting the drug companies milk R&D costs from the pill or something?

[The Minsky Moment]

But it reminds me of Francis Fukuyama's recent argument that the problem with American governance (and it's a specifically American problem) is that you developed democracy before bureaucracy.  I'm far from sold but it's interesting and I think there's an element of truth to it:

Conversely, I would argue that the quality of governance in the US tends to be low precisely because of a continuing tradition of Jacksonian populism. Americans with their democratic roots generally do not trust elite bureaucrats to the extent that the French, Germans, British, or Japanese have in years past. This distrust leads to micromanagement by Congress through proliferating rules and complex, self-contradictory legislative mandates which make poor quality governance a self-fulfilling prophecy. The US is thus caught in a low-level equilibrium trap, in which a hobbled bureaucracy validates everyone's view that the government can't do anything competently. The origins of this, as Martin Shefter pointed out many years ago, is due to the fact that democracy preceded bureaucratic consolidation in contrast to European democracies that arose out of aristocratic regimes.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/fukuyama/2012/01/31/what-is-governance/

I like Francis F a lot but don't agree with this assessment.  I don't think America has a bureaucratic governance problem, it has a policy problem.  The federal bureaucracy works pretty well overall - staffing and leadership are competent, there is little corruption, and for the most part decisions are made technocratically.  And contrary to what FF suggests, Congress doesn't tend to micromanage that much - it tends to set out broad priorities and mandates and leave the rule-making to the agencies.  The bigger problem is poor policy or policymaking without any overall strategic view.  So, for example, the Social Security administration works pretty well -  the problem is not an incompetent bureaucracy that mismanages pensions, but that as a matter of policy, Congress has committed the federal government to make payments likely to prove unsustainble in the future.

[derspiess]

Women aren't people.

Correct.  They are devices built by our Lord Jesus Christ for our entertainment.

[DGuller]

From what I understand, covering birth control is more expensive,

Are they still letting the drug companies milk R&D costs from the pill or something?

It's not like one pill means one less pregnancy.  I imagine there is also a lot of substitution involved, where those covered for contraception get a far more expensive one, whereas those not covered just make do with condoms.  Therefore, you're not really preventing any pregnancies at all in such cases.

[Ed Anger]

Women aren't people.

Correct.  They are devices built by our Lord Jesus Christ for our entertainment.

[Gups]

Women aren't people.

Correct.  They are devices built by our Lord Jesus Christ for our entertainment.

As usual he did a shit job. Stupid 33 year old virgins.

[Razgovory]

Blame not the hammer for your fuck ups in carpentry.

[Jacob]

Blame not the hammer for your fuck ups in carpentry.

Yeah, don't be unfair to the hammer.

[The Minsky Moment]

Then what you want is an effective prior restraint?  To force people to get declaratory relief to show a movie?  Because that's what the CU Court feared, and is basically what CU was attempting--and it's both administratively unwelcome and constitutionally improper to force speakers, under threat of enforcement action and even criminal sanctions, to seek governmental approval prior to dissemination. 

That's back to the parade of horribles.  In the 8 years BCRA existed, thousands of movies were made and distributed without anyone needing to get DJs, and without anyone even thinking this was a problem, even for movies with very strong political themes.  Nor was there any risk of prior restraint - effective or otherwise - and the consequence of a violation was the risk of getting drawn into FEC admin proceedings and maybe having to pay a fine (since criminal sanctions can be avoided with a conciliation agreement).

From CU: "Here, Citizens United decided to litigate its case to the end. Today, Citizens United finally learns, two years after the fact, whether it could have spoken during the 2008 Presidential primary—long after the opportunity to persuade primary voters has passed."

That's an argument about whether they should have been able to get more expedited relief, not whether they are correct on the merits.  On this theory, no regulation of electioneering activity - including fraud - would be permissible.

OK, I agree.  So what should they have done?

1.  They could have ruled for the FEC.  They could have ruled that given the unrebutted Congressional findings concerning the dangers of corruption and the ability of covered corps to make expenditures through PACs, that the compelling state interest in clean elections overcame whatever speech interests adhere to corporate communications expressly advocating election or defeat of specific candidates.    (The Court of course dodged the PACs "time place and manner" limitation by taking the strong position on corporate personhood and making formalistic distinctions between the corporate entity and their PAC)

2.  They could have ruled to the extent that otherwise covered communications contain material, legitimate communicative purposes aside from the express advocacy of election outcomes (or where such advocacy was not the principal purpose) that the prohibition creates more serious First Amendment problems.  That would justify an as applied challenge or narrowing construction by not a facial strikedown.

Instead, with no facial challenge presented to it, and with the Government therefore afforded no opportunity to argue the merits or demerits of one, the Court reached out, and in blithe disregard of the extensive factual findings of Congress and the District Court, reversed two decades of unquestioned precedent and summarily tossed the most acclaimed bipartisan law passed this century.

Belloti:  "If the speakers here were not corporations, no one would suggest that the State could silence their proposed speech. It is the type of speech indispensable to decisionmaking in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation, rather than an individual. The inherent worth of the speech in terms of its capacity for informing the public does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual."

Functionally, what is the difference?  I'm not sure I see the rewriting that you are; in fact, I see many echoes of Belloti in Kennedy's opinion.

The difference is that Bellotti is talking about speech not the speaker.  Belloti's point is that the identity of the speaker doesn't matter - thus the mere fact that a corporation is the speaker doesn't make the speech unprotected.  The context is that Belloti begins with the assumed premise that if the question proceeds from the inherent right of corporations as artificial persons, that the corporation would and must lose, because it has not such inherent rights.  Belloti deals with that by saying - this isn't about the rights of corporations to speak, it is about the power (or lack thereof) of Congress to regulate speech, no matter who or what utters it.

But Belotti doesn't get Kennedy where he needs to go because it only recognizes "source neturality" with respect to the "worth" of the speech and its informative value.  There are other considerations that go into First Amendment analysis - including the quality of the state interest in regulation and the availability and usefulness of alternative avenues of expression.  With respect to both of these, the corporate identity of a speaker may clearly be relevant.  Kennedy elides all this by rewriting Bellotti to be a case about the a corporation's right to speak, which is exactly the question the Bellotti court says it ins't addressing.

[Ideologue]

I always got annoyed at feminazis crying how insurance companies pay for Viagra but not their whore pills.  Viagra treats a medical condition.  Not being able to keep your legs closed is not a medical condition.

Stay classy GOP.

[fhdz]

Yeah, it's great to see "punish the slut" is alive and well. It's so cozy and medieval!

NB: I also naturally infer from derspiess' post that DERSPIESS HAS ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION.

[Ideologue]

Joan, just to let you know, I'm not ignoring you.

Since I have to keep it kinda brief, I'll just point this out--you keep saying the facial challenge was not before them, but I believe it was.  (I grant this is something of a because-they-say-so argument, but CU did raise it below, iirc they abandoned it during appeal, but my understanding is that this was enough for it to be properly raised even if done by the USSC itself.  You can argue the propriety of a court doing so in this specific instance, but in general I like courts to not be strictly beholden to the claims, or the forms of the claims, before them.)

[Eddie Teach]

Derspiess's troll: SUCCESSFUL 

[DGuller]

Derspiess's troll: SUCCESSFUL 

It's very easy for notorious Republicans to troll.  How can you ever be sure that something very stupid they're saying is a troll?