Political Irony

© Matt Bors

Why is it that many people who participate in discussions on the internet totally lose it? The same people likely would be much more reasonable if they were talking face-to-face. Some people think it is the lack of feedback, but there certainly is feedback on the internet. Others say that it is just people who need to get attention in an increasingly disconnected world. Or that you need to be shrill in order to be heard. I dunno. I think almost all of us, even the most reasonable, have said something on the internet that was a bit overboard.

I’m just happy that my readers have supported me in creating a little outpost where we can have reasonable discussions. Oh, and speaking of this blog, it recently turned seven years old!

[This is a guest post from Marc S. Berman, who has written numerous articles and opinion pieces on politics, law, and current events.]

America’s political divide now envelops the United States Supreme Court. For example, when the Court decides that the billionaire Koch brothers can buy elections, its ruling is perceived as conservative. Democrats stop smoking weed long enough to get furious. MSNBC’s ratings even crack the top 300 for a day.

But when the Court, say, rules that “required health insurance” is just another name for “tax”, and therefore Obamacare is legal, its decision is viewed as liberal. Republicans smash their martini glasses with five-irons. On the radio, Rush spends an entire show mocking the judiciary. (Interestingly, judge-bashing really sells the virility treatments advertised on Limbaugh’s program. Otherwise, that stuff only moves when Rush lambastes Hillary, which is the conventional way of arousing a dittohead.)

Some of the Supreme Court’s upcoming decisions will be controversial. Now’s a good time to remind ourselves that, in reality, judges are impartial. They decide cases solely based on the law. Their political views play no part in how they rule.

So what has caused Americans’ mistaken belief that Supreme Court decisions are political? It all comes down to vocabulary.

Unlike the decisions of Judge Milian on the People’s Court, high court rulings are written. And they are full of obscure legal verbiage.

Americans don’t understand judicial gobbledygook. Consequently, we don’t read Supreme Court decisions. Instead, we rely on experts to interpret the rulings for us. Because these “experts” have political agendas, they try to convince us that the Court takes sides in political controversies. In the trade, this is known as “freaking the freaking lazy base out so they’ll freaking show up at the freaking polls.”

Americans need to learn the truth about our judiciary. This means that we need to start reading Supreme Court decisions for ourselves. I am providing definitions for all key legal terms below. Know these words, and you’ll be able to understand any ruling:

• Habeas Corpus: Latin for “why has this guy been in Baltimore city jail for 12 years on a parking ticket?”
• Indictment: A formal charge against any Democratic senator who opposes Obama’s policy on Iran and Cuba.
• Stop and Frisk: The security check that all Court spectators endure before being seated.
• Hourly Rate: The amount a Supreme Court lawyer charges for 25 minutes of work.
• Justice (of the Supreme Court): A judge on the Court. To get appointed, a justice must be a paid-up member of the Harvard, Yale, or Columbia Alumni Societies, be friends with a senator, and belong to an ethnic group that voted for the president in the last election.
• Chief Justice: The justice who sits front-row-center for Court photographs.
• Constitution: A Rorschach (ink blot) test the justices use to decide cases. Each justice sees what he or she wants to.
• Law Clerk: An Ivy League law school graduate. Works for a justice. Must be expert in medieval punctuation patterns.
• Opinion: A written discussion of a case. Credited to a justice. Ghost-written by law clerks.
• Majority Opinion: An opinion by the justices who the winning party thinks are smart.
• Minority Opinion: An opinion by the justices who the losing party thinks are smart.
• Concurrence: An opinion by a justice who couldn’t make up their mind.
• Dissent: An opinion by a justice who offended boss Justice Anthony Kennedy.
• Recess: A 10 minute break during a court session. A recess is called when Justice Ginsberg, who just turned 82, wakes up from her siesta. The recess allows her to review the other justices’ notes.
• Reverse: What the Court does to a ruling in favor of a litigant stupid enough to hire an attorney the justices never met at a D.C. cocktail party.
• Affirm: A group of lawyers who share a conference room.
• Solicitor General: The lawyer who represents the federal government before the Court. She defends all laws that the president likes.

Now that you know the lingo, find a Court ruling you hate, and read it. It will be obvious that politics played no part. And the next time you hear some party operative whining that the Court is too political, you’ll know who not to freaking vote for.

“George W. Bush gave a commencement speech at Southern Methodist University this weekend. It was pretty inspirational. He said, ‘As I like to tell the ‘C’ students, you too can be president.’ Even George W. Bush has George W. Bush comedy material in his act.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Lindsey Graham is now the seventh Republican running for president. If you’re keeping score, that’s basically one Republican candidate for every two Republican voters.” – Conan O’Brien

“Jeb Bush said recently that he believes apps on the Apple Watch could help Americans better manage their healthcare than Obamacare. So there you go. If you can’t afford healthcare, just buy yourself an Apple Watch.” – Seth Meyers

“I can’t wait for the Republican debates to start and there’s literally 65 guys on one stage.” – Conan O’Brien

“Mitt Romney, two-time Republican presidential hopeful, boxed former heavyweight champion of the world Evander Holyfield for charity. It was a horrible moment when Romney bit off Holyfield’s other ear. ” – David Letterman

“During a charity boxing match on Friday, Mitt Romney lasted two rounds against Evander Holyfield and raised a million dollars. It was just like Holyfield’s fight with Mike Tyson, except Romney chewed off his other ear talking about his 18 grandchildren.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Holyfield won the fight. It’s not the first time Romney has been knocked out by a black guy.” – David Letterman

“That’s right, Mitt Romney took on Evander Holyfield in a boxing match for charity, and it was a pretty one-sided fight. But it was still not the worst boxing match we’ve seen this month. … This weekend Vladimir Putin played in an exhibition hockey game with some former NHL players and scored eight goals. Even Evander Holyfield and Mitt Romney said, ‘That looks fake.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Vladimir Putin reportedly scored eight goals during a hockey game in Sochi this weekend. And the goalie only had one save: his own life.” – Seth Meyers

“Over the weekend, Vladimir Putin scored eight goals during a hockey game. It happened just after he had the goalie executed.” – Conan O’Brien

“President Obama joined Twitter today with a tweet that began ‘Hello, Twitter!’ His bio says, ‘Dad, husband, and president of the United States.’ He didn’t have to say ‘Dad’. We got that when he tweeted ‘Hello, Twitter!'” – Seth Meyers

“Unusual weather for New York City. Today it was 68 and foggy. No, wait a minute, that’s me. I’m sorry, that’s me.” – David Letterman

“Tonight I will be talking with Tom Hanks. Next week I’ll be at the post office talking with the clerk.” – David Letterman

Forget about “Death Panels” (even though it was PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year). The most pervasive lie about Obamacare is that the ACA costs more than what was estimated.

How pervasive? A recent poll shows that a plurality of Americans (42%) believe that Obamacare has cost “more than expected”. Only 10% think it cost “about what was expected” and half that (5%) think it cost “less than what was expected”. That’s right, only 5% knew the right answer. In fact, the cost of the ACA has dropped five times in five years. Twice in the past year alone, the Congressional Budget Office has revised its estimated spending on the Affordable Care Act downward.

How can that be? After all the ACA provides generous subsidies for individuals purchasing health insurance and expanded Medicaid dramatically. Shouldn’t that cost a lot of money?

There are two reasons why Obamacare is costing far less than expected. First the good news — health care costs are growing at a far lower rate than they were before the ACA passed in 2009.

Second (and not as good news), fewer people are participating in Medicaid expansion than expected. This was mostly caused by the Supreme Court ruling that made it possible for states to opt out of Medicaid expansion. And 22 states did opt out (not surprisingly, all of them controlled by Republicans). This saved the federal government money.

To give you an idea of how much the feds are saving on health care costs, the government is spending less on health care now than it predicted in early 2010, and those predictions did not include any spending for Obamacare! And the reduction in health care costs are also reducing what the government is spending on Medicare. So it is fantastic that the ACA’s massive expansion in the number of people receiving health insurance can also result in a massive saving of money.

The only problem is that almost nobody knows the truth. Must be that damn Liberal media!

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released a working paper that attempts to quantify the total cost of subsidies we pay for fossil fuels. This includes not just direct payments and tax breaks for energy companies, but also the cost of “externalities” like cleaning up after oil spills and health costs directly attributable to the use of fossil fuels (costs that are borne by us all).

The number they came up with is an astonishing annual cost of $5.6 trillion. Which is more than 7% of the Gross World Product. That is a lot of money.

Republicans like to complain about the high costs of switching away from fossil fuels, but they ignore the even higher costs of continuing to use them. And of course there are other benefits to reducing our subsidies to energy companies. According to the research:

Eliminating post-tax subsidies in 2015 could raise government revenue by $2.9 trillion (3.6 percent of global GDP), cut global CO₂ emissions by more than 20 percent, and cut pre-mature air pollution deaths by more than half. After allowing for the higher energy costs faced by consumers, this action would raise global economic welfare by $1.8 trillion (2.2 percent of global GDP).

That’s right, eliminating the use of fossil fuels would save us a bunch of money, and also save 3.2 million lives every year. Indeed, it seems like the only losers would be the politicians who would stop receiving huge campaign contributions from the corporations that benefit from energy subsidies.

Republicans also claim that it doesn’t make sense for the US to take unilateral action until other countries get on board. But the paper specifically states that the local benefits from ending subsidies are high enough that they should be eliminated even in the absence of action in other countries. Again, according to the research:

An important point, therefore, is that most (over three-fourths) of the underpricing of energy is due to domestic distortions – pre-tax subsidies and domestic externalities – rather than to global distortions (climate change). The crucial implication of this is that energy pricing reform is largely in countries’ own domestic interest and therefore is beneficial even in the absence of globally coordinated action.

Ironically, the most subsidized fossil fuel is not oil, it is coal (both because of its high environmental damages and because unlike road fuels, no country imposes meaningful excise taxes on its consumption). Coal subsidies alone account for almost 4% of the Gross World Product (around $3.2 trillion annually).

So the next time conservatives say they are in favor of free markets, we should ask them when we are going to have a real free market for fossil fuels, rather than “the government picking winners and losers” through massive energy subsidies.