Newshoggers.com

The evoluation of "conservative"

By Dave Anderson:

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is owned by Richard Mellon-Scaife and is slightly to the right of Attilla the Hun and made most of its op-ed writers wear tri-corner hats for the past three years.  The Trib issued their Republican US Senate primary endorsement today, and their write-up illustrates the evoluation of what it means to be "conservative" in today's political environment:

Marc Scaringi is a Harrisburg attorney. He talks of being "fiscally responsible and constitutionally conservative." But one of his mentors was the fiscally confused and constitutionally befuddled Rick Santorum. Next!

What's the Republican electorate to do? Nominate David Christian.

Mr. Christian is a highly decorated Vietnam veteran of Bucks County who went on to serve his country admirably advocating for veterans' issues in and out of government. This self-described "Ronald Reagan Republican....".

In a field dominated by conservative Republican wannabes....

Santorum according to DW-Nominate was a fairly standard issue conservative Republican in Congress since 1995.  And now he is too liberal for the Trib....

HCR -- Choosing Wisely

By John Ballard

Despite election year politics over Obamacare, a serious national conversation is finally beginning to yield positive results. Win, lose or draw this discussion would never be happening without the two-year long struggle to birth PPACA. Having followed the debate since before it became mainstream, I have come to the conclusion that what happens with Congress, the mandate or anything else will be secondary to the discussion among the providers themselves, fueled by specialized policy wonks who have forgotten more than all the Congressional staffs and Lobbyists ever knew.

And I'm encouraged. Here are two examples. 

►Dr. James Salwitz at Sunrise Rounds says in Healing medicine together...

Millions of lives and billions of dollars were saved this week and America moved a step towards a healthy new future. A new drug or surgery? Another genetic breakthrough? No, an event much more powerful. Nine medical societies (soon to be 17) and 11 consumer groups stood up together and in one voice said, “We are sick and tired and we are not going to take it any more!”

On April 4, 2012, the partners of the Choosing Wisely Campaign released their first collaborative list of unnecessary, expensive and therefore dangerous medical testing. These groups, representing well over 200 thousand physicians, AARP, industry, farmers, unions, business interests, health advocates and even Wikipedia, published a list of tests which are often unneeded and guidelines when they can be avoided. This is a national grass roots campaign without government, insurance or even AMA involvement. In this broad movement that it can be said that the people have spoken…they want costs down and quality medical care up.

Of the 2.8 trillion U.S. dollars spent on health care each year, we waste $600 billion on unnecessary tests, unhelpful treatments, and complications. We are a country that is long past the point where more money buys better health. We spend so much on medical care we are hurting ourselves. Unneeded tests lead to unneeded diagnoses which lead to unneeded treatments which lead to unneeded complications which cause unneeded suffering, all spent with desperately needed dollars. We fear that government and the insurance industry, though harsh rationing, will force a fix on the mess. It seems we have an alternative. The Choosing Wisely group is a board base of consumers and they are helping us make a stand.

In its first publication, the Choosing Wisely Campaign, organized by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation, dispersed five specific recommendations from each of nine specialty societies.

Examples include:

• Sinusitis is usually viral so do not use antibiotics and avoid CT scans
• Bone density X-rays only on women older than 65 or men older than 70 
• Avoid routine EKGs unless the patient has a problem 
• No routine stress tests, regular or nuclear, and reduce radiation exposure 
• Reduce routine or pre-operative chest X-rays 
• Avoid CT scans for routine headaches
• Colonoscopy only every 10 years, if normal 
• Avoid chemotherapy in weak patients with advanced cancer 
• Careful consultation with the patient and family before starting dialysis 
• Reduce PET, CT scans and labs in cancer patients who are likely cured 
• Use ultrasound, not CT scans for children with appendicitis 
• Avoid scans for routine back pain for at least six weeks

More at the link. Go check it out. 
While you're at it, bookmark Choosing Wisely for future reference. I have an idea they are just getting started. 

►Why sudden death is good public policy
And you thought talk of death panes was shocking! Who knew such scary subjects would come bubbling to the top in the short space of a two or three years.
This in-your-face post is a long overdue indictment of ICDs (Internal Cardioverter Defibrillator) as one of the main contributors to the high cost of health care inasmuch as the most expensive part of the health care dollars spent are at the end of life. 

This comment caught my eye.

Doctor: How do you want to die?

Patient: Suddenly, and in my sleep with no pain. You know, drop dead.

Doctor: We can fix that.

I don't expect this idea to get too much traction, but it signals an important part of the health care conversation usually avoided, and which at those rare times it comes up, is so devoid of content that it may as well be a conversation about sports or cooking.

Although we all will die, very few people have the courage to take seriously any discussion of the subject. It, forgive the expression, serious as a heart attack. 

This Newshogger post from a couple years ago links a NY Times article that should be read by anyone who has any personal or family connection with a pacemaker. 

Left Behind - Word Processors

Commentary By Ron Beasley

I'm 66 and still remember pre WYSIWYG word processors. The first one I used was called Manuscript.  To do italics or bold you did an alt something or other and you couldn't see if it worked until you printed it.  The purpose of the word processor was to make a printed document.  At Salon Tom Scossa points out what all of those who do cyber documents knew - word processors suck. 

For most people now, though, publishing means putting things on the Web. Desktop publishing has given way to laptop or smartphone publishing. And Microsoft Word is an atrocious tool for Web writing. Its document-formatting mission means that every piece of text it creates is thickly wrapped in metadata, layer on layer of invisible, unnecessary instructions about how the words should look on paper. I just went into Word and created a file that read, to the naked eye, as follows:

the Word

Then I copy-pasted that text into a website that revealed the hidden code my document was carrying. Here's a snippet:

<!—[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>

And it goes on:

<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
   UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
   UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
   UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>

And on:

<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
   UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
  UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
   UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
   UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>

The whole sprawling thing runs to 16,224 characters. When I dumped it back into Word, it was an eight-page document.

When you copy and paste a Word document into a blog post all of this HTML like code raises hell.  As site administrator of Newshoggers I have cleaned up several blog posts before I was finally sucessful in convincing my fellow bloggers not to do that anymore. I use Open Office but it's not much better than word.  If I'm doing a long post I will use open office but when I'm finished I copy it into a text editor to eliminate formating code and then copy that into my blog editor and do the HTML formating there,

Not unlike newspapers word processors like Word have not kept up with the real world.

George Zimmerman Affidavit

Commentary By Ron Beasley

George Zimmerman faced a judge today for the killing of Trayvon Martin.  He will remain in prison until his next hearing on May 29th. Following that appearance the prosecutors filed an affidavit to present probable clause for second degree murder.  Th affidavit states that Zimmerman profiled Martin and.....

Later while talking about Martin, Zimmerman stated "these ---holes, they always get away" and also said "these ----ing punks."

During this time, Martin was on the phone with a friend and described to her what was happening. The witness advised that Martin was scared because he was being followed through the complex by and unknown male and didn't know why. Martin attempted to run home but was followed by Zimmerman who didn't want the person he falsely assumed was going to commit a crime to get away before the police arrived. Zimmerman got out of his vehicle and followed Martin. When the police dispatcher realized Zimmerman was pursuing Martin, he instructed Zimmerman not to do that and that the responding officer would meet him. Zimmerman disregarded the police dispatcher and continued to follow Martin.

Zimmerman confronted Martin and a struggle ensued. Witnesses heard people arguing and what sounded like a struggle. During this time period witnesses heard numerous calls for help and some of these were recorded in 911 calls to police. Trayvon Martin's mother has reviewed the 911 calls and has identified the voice crying for help as Trayvon Martin's voice.

Zimmerman shot Martin in the chest. When police arrived Zimmerman admitted shooting Martin. Officers recovered a gun from a holster inside Zimmerman's waistband. A fired casing that was recovered at the scene was determined to have been fired from the firearm.

Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Bao performed an autopsy and determined that Martin died from the gunshot wound.

It looks to me like they think they have got him. 

via

HCR -- You Get What You Pay For

By John Ballard

A lot of my on-line time is spent cruising a hundred or more sites via Google Reader, many of which track various angles and opinions about health care reform. As most readers know Americans have the most expensive health care in the world per capita. Something like one out of every five dollars of the economy is tied to health care. So when I came across a post at The Health Care Blog headlined You Get What You Pay For I couldn't help myself. Before I knew what was happening a snarky little spit-wad formed in my keyboard and found its way into the comments thread.

The writer was advancing the idea that cancer outcomes in the US somehow justify the extravagant prices we pay for all the ancillary freight loaded on the health care train. The last paragraph says this:

We can agree that there is fat within every healthcare system, and the U.S. may have more fat than most. But it appears that when it comes to putting a nation’s healthcare system on a diet, one cannot cut out the fat without cutting too close to the bone. And in the case of cancer treatment, European nations appear anorexic.

I wanted to remind the writer about this grim one-liner

Q.  Why do coffins have nails?
A.   To keep out the oncologists.

Instead this is what I left...

When I saw the post title here are a few items that came to mind that we pay for.

§  TV ads — some of the most expensive air time for some of the most costly productions in the ad industry.

§  Mammoth executive bonuses and golden parachutes for both health care administrators and insurance companies

§  Facilities with manicured landscaping, marble floors, lived plants, flat-screen TVs in every room, and concierge food service

§  Elaborate accounting arrangements by which large so-called “not for profit” health care systems, often augmented by equally large, embedded insurance companies (BSBS comes to mind) launder bills mostly for the benefit of very profitable clinics, specialty practices and device manufacturers.

§  ”Free scooters” advertised for Medicare beneficiaries. Sometimes comes with a free recipe book or lighted magnifier “just for making the call!”

§  Catered meals and other treats for hungry office staffs, compliments of your favorite drug or other supplies sales representative.

§  And speaking of sales, don’t forget the sales bonuses for high performers. The only people in America with no limit to how much they might earn are not in medicine or other specialties, but in sales. (Investment bankers are in the running, of course, but they are in fact limited by how much capital and/or credit they have. Enterprising sales people have only transportation, cosmetics and a few other expenses.

§  Don’t let’s leave out some red meat for the tort reform crowd — legal and accounting services, and a grey area often called “defensive medicine.”

With the exception of a dedicated group of community volunteers who provide a few ancillary goods and services, every dime of all that has but two sources:

1.) Medical bills
2.) Government grants for teaching hospitals and research by NIH. (taxes)

What am I missing?
*
*
*
*
*
Yes, of course. I almost forgot — MEDICAL CARE!

 

HCR -- The Magic of Music

By John Ballard

Derrick Crowe posted this and it may make your day.
My life as a care-giver is spent in landscapes such as this.

It's always a magic moment also when one of the residents plays the piano.

Standing On The Edge

By Steve Hynd

I've a post up at The Agonist today wondering if the time has finally come for the West and Iran to either do a deal or go to war. Trita Parsi says it has and I'm inclined to agree.

But if the first order consequences of attacking Iran have been well covered by many, second order and further consequences ar harder by their very nature to predict and have not been well explored in the media. Previous wars in the region have shown that events which interrupted between 4 and 7% of the world's oil supply caused price spikes of between 25 and 70%. Iran accounts for 5% of the world's supply and all the oil flowing through the Hormuz Straits comes to 20% of that supply. At some point, if oil hits a sustained price of over $110 a barrel and before $150 a barrel, the global economy begins to break down. At over $150 a barrel for a long period, we can expect a worldwide economic crash. The current price of oil is around $100 a barrel. The math is easy. here.

I'm torn between coming across as too alarmist and calling the potential oncoming disaster what it is. We don't need Mutually Assured Destruction between Cold war superpowers to cause the downfall of modern civilization any longer. If the world pitches into a massive economic crash right now - with the debt-ridden nations of Southern Europe leading the way - it won't recover in time before global warming and peak cheap oil really begin to bite, causing their own massive economic impact. It may not be an exaggeration to say these talks constitute a threshold.

Conservatives, Racisim and Hypocrisy

Commentary By Ron Beasley

There has been a great deal of blogospheric activity in regards to John Derbyshire's racial screed at the web site Taki's Magazine. Most of it is silly, especially this reaction from Derbyshire's employer The National Review.

Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. I direct anyone who doubts his talents to his delightful first novel, “Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream,” or any one of his “Straggler” columns in the books section of NR. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.

Of course this is pure BS.  The National Review and it's founder William Buckley was opposed to the civil rights act and desegradation from day one. 

During the Civil Rights Era, Buckley made a name for himself as a promoter of white supremacy. National Review, which he founded in 1955, championed violent racist regimes in the American South and South Africa.

A 1957 editorial written by Buckley, “Why the South Must Prevail” (National Review, 8/24/57), cited the “cultural superiority of white over Negro” in explaining why whites were “entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where [they do] not predominate numerically.” Appearing on NPR’s Fresh Air in 1989 (rebroadcast 2/28/08), he stood by the passage. “Well, I think that’s absolutely correct,” Buckley told host Terry Gross when she read it back to him.

A 1960 National Review editorial supported South Africa’s white minority rule (4/23/60): “The whites are entitled, we believe, to preeminence in South Africa.” In a 1961 National Review column about colonialism—which the magazine once called “that brilliantly conceived structure” (William F. Buckley, John Judis)–Buckley explained that “black Africans” left alone “tend to revert to savagery.” The same year, in a speech to the group Young Americans for Freedom, Buckley called citizens of the Congo “semi-savages” (National Review, 9/9/61).

National Review editors condemned the 1963 bombing of a black Birmingham Church that killed four children, but because it “set back the cause of the white people there so dramatically,” the editors wondered “whether in fact the explosion was the act of a provocateur—of a Communist, or of a crazed Negro” (Chicago Reader, 8/26/05).

Just months before the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed, Buckley warned in his syndicated column (2/18/65) that “chaos” and “mobocratic rule” might follow if “the entire Negro population in the South were suddenly given the vote.” In his 1969 column “On Negro Inferiority” (4/8/69), Buckley heralded as “massive” and “apparently authoritative” academic racist Arthur Jensen’s findings that blacks are less intelligent than whites and Asians.

Perhaps that doesn't mean that conservatives are racists but then what does it mean?  In a comment over at an Outside The Beltway thread Micheal Reynolds  nails it.

Second, by definition, conservatives favor power structures that already exist, and since power has been held by whites since this country was founded, conservatives almost automatically oppose anything that changes the status quo.

We are dealing with tribalism which may or may not be racism. It’s always about tribal power and the need to have someone below you. Until the 60s even the poverty stricken whites in the south had the blacks below them. “The other” was suddenly equal and the world was turned upside down. The Republican’s Southern Strategy took advantage of this.

Kierkegaard at Easter

By John Ballard

This morning I came across something I put into a blog post about eight years ago and decided to re-blog it. Since that time my circumstances have changed. I was a solo blogger then, but when I lost control of my blog a few years ago I joined this eclectic group at Newshoggers, a collection as diverse as they come in age, geography and origins of faith and culture, but held together by political bonds almost as durable as faith itself.

Newshoggers at the moment is in a kind of slump because we all seem to have too much on our plate to summon the concentration it takes to put up six or eight well-crafted posts a week. And with Facebook, Twitter and multiple email accounts in everybody's life it's becoming a juggling act to handle the demands of ordinary living.That said, I also recognize an important quality of this group, a diversity of belief systems, that is an enduring example of one of our core values, a shared tolerance of diversity.

One of the disturbing trends of the last decade or so has been an escalation of intolerance. Oddly, some of the most virulent attitudes seem to be showing up in the least likely places  -- institutions of faith, academic institutions (from elementary school on up), the scientific community and political assemblies, both parliamentary and constitutional. Social media may be a factor as we are able to receive encouragement in real time from extended support groups which often consist of people we might not even recognize if they walked into the same room because we don't know the sounds of their voices or how they look in person.

So trusting the tolerance of my fellow Hoggers I copy here, for Easter Day, reflections I wrote several years ago. It should be mentioned that since that time Fr. Neuhaus, whose open-minded, sweet spirit was the heartbeat ot the magazine, has died and it has drifted from it's original progressive moorings to the quagmire of cynical political Conservatism now polluting even that gentle corner of the Catholic Church. (The Catholic Worker movement, ever a thorn in the side of Mother Church, hangs on by a thread, but that is another story.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Readers bored by theology may skip this post and proceed to other reading. I have many friends in the Church - using that word in its universal sense - who are charitable enough to tolerate my understanding of the faith, although they do not agree with either my understanding of scripture or my positions on social issues. Being too tight to pay for a subscription, I read First Things on-line instead. (The current issue is never available, being used as an incentive to attract new subscribers, but past issues are available.)

Last month's commentary on Kierkegaard is long but insightful. First Things, of course, is the mouthpiece of Richard John Neuhaus, representing the forward edge of one school of contemporary Roman Catholic thought. Whatever else might be true of Neuhaus, he does his homework and speaks with clarity and intelligence a language that ordinary people can grasp, if they have the patience and inclination.

In the same way that I watch cable or public TV programs simply because they are not broken up by commercial messages, I take time to read some essays, not because I am in full agreement, but simply because they stay on task and don't seem to be pushing a hidden agenda. For me, any mention of Kierkegaard is noteworthy, as I consider myself a Christian Existentialist. Think Kierkegaard without the rage.

There are Christians who call themselves Kierkegaardians, much as others call themselves Augustinians or Thomists or Barthians. But Kierkegaard provides no school of thought, and most emphatically no "system," that can be a secure resting place for one's Christian identity.

So true. Part of being what Neuhaus calls Kiergegaarian is having to live adrift in the universe, with no institutional place to call home.

Kierkegaard offers only a mode of being, of thinking, of living that has no end other than the end of being "contemporaneous" with Jesus Christ, true man and true God, who has no end. The certifying mark that one has accepted what he offers -- or, more precisely, what Christ offers -- is martyrdom, and Kierkegaard yearned to be a martyr. The word martyr, one recalls, means witness. If Kierkegaard was not to be given the privilege of literally shedding his blood, he would bear witness in other ways. He welcomed the derision of those surrounding him, recognizing in them the same crowd that surrounded the cross of his contemporary, Jesus Christ.

Soren Kierkegaard provoked nearly everyone he encountered, especially churchmen, by his stubborn refusal to allow Christendom to overrun Christianity. His anguished life is by no means a model to copy, but his insights are no less valid. If truth were dependent on exemplary messengers, it might never be known at all.  Neuhaus's essay considers the notion that the message of Kierkegaard is usually considered too insubstantial to survive youthful idealism. Hence the title Kiergegaard for Grownups. He finishes with what I find to be an excellent attribution.

Kierkegaard was eccentric in the precise meaning of that word -- off center, even out of the center. He believed that the center of his time and place, and of any time and place, is where the easy lies are told. He was Hiin Enkelte writing for the singular individual who might understand him. Many have read him to experience the frisson of youthful dissent from establishment ways of thinking and being, and have then set him aside upon assuming what are taken to be the responsibilities of adulthood. That, I believe, is a grave mistake. Kierkegaard is for the young, but he is also for grownups who have attained the wisdom of knowing how fragile and partial is our knowing in the face of the absolute, who are prepared to begin ever anew the lifelong discipline that is training in Christianity.

~~~~~~§§§§§~~~~~~

Reading over the essay these two paragraphs now seem to be important. The churning, boiling extremisms of religion both at home and abroad seem to be increasing. America points to the extremists of Islam and is blind to the swelling tide of Christian extremism that is washing over our own country. Many of my Christian friends beam with pride when they see politicians or others in high places flaunting piety. [This was written when the second George Bush was president...my, how times have changed.]  Sorry, but it makes me want to roll my eyes. [This past Friday President Obama hosted a joint Christian/Jewish Passover Seder at the White House. I'm sure many of those same Christians are now the ones rolling their eyes.]

Christendom is the enemy of Christianity—it is, Kierkegaard says repeatedly, the "blasphemy"—that stands in the way of encountering Christ as our contemporary. Christendom assumes that Christ is far in the past, having laid the foundation for the wonderful thing that has historically resulted, Christendom. Of course we are all good Christians because we are all good Danes. It is a package deal and Christ and Christianity are part of the package. If we are good Danes (or good Americans), if we work hard and abide by the rules, the church, which is an integral part of the social order, will guarantee the delivery to heaven of the package that is our lives. But Christ is not in the distant past, protests Kierkegaard. He confronts us now, and a decision must be made. "In relation to the absolute there is only one tense: the present. For him who is not contemporary with the absolute—for him it has no existence.

This encounter with Christ the contemporary is not to be confused with today’s evangelical Protestant language about conversion as a decisive moment in which one "accepts Jesus Christ as one’s personal Lord and Savior." Kierkegaard did not, of course, know about the nineteenth-century American revivalism from which today’s evangelicalism issues, but he had some acquaintance with the enthusiasms that were in his day associated with "pietism." As he inveighed against Christendom, it seems likely he would also inveigh against Evangelicaldom today. As he would inveigh against Christianity of any sort—whether it calls itself liberal or conservative, orthodox or progressive—that neatly accommodates itself to its cultural context. To decide for Christ our contemporary is always a decision to be a cultural alien, to join Christ on his way of suffering and death as an outsider.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I will not insult the reader by connecting the dots of these reflections with the madness we have all witnessed over the last two or three years, underscored by the surreal images produced by GOP primary contests before someone finally shook the Etch-A-Sketch.

HCR -- SCOTUS: Helvering v. Davis (1937)

By John Ballard

Second re-blogging this morning. But when somebody else says it so well I see no point in parsing. Besides, how in the world does anyone parse someone with these credentials?

Gilbert Cranberg is George H. Gallup Professor of Journalism Emeritus, the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He was associated for 33 years with The Des Moines Register and Tribune where he was editor of the editorial pages of both papers.

Cranberg taught for 18 years at the University of Iowa's journalism school. He co-authored "Libel Law and the Press: Myth and Reality," (The Free Press) whose authors won the 1987 Distinguished Service Award of the Society of Professional Journalists for research in journalism. Another book, "Taking Stock: Journalism and the Publicly Traded Newspaper Company," (Iowa State Press), was published June 2001.

May 24 will mark the 75th anniversary of Helvering, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, et al, vs. Davis, the landmark Supreme Court decision upholding Social Security. It would be fitting, if the high court rules in favor of the Affordable Care Act, that it announce the decision on the date Social Security was affirmed. The health care legislation is a logical, if belated, extension of the safety net initiated by Congress in 1937.

The specific feature of Social Security at issue in Helvering vs. Davis was the payment of Federal Old Age benefits. The noise you hear in the background is the gnashing of teeth and foaming at the mouth over features of the law. Congress actually voted to RAISE taxes on employers and employees to pay people to do NOTHING!!! Nevertheless, the high court ruling upholding the monthly pensions wasn’t even close – 7-2.

The current Supreme Court seems to be at loggerheads over the health-care law though it is a vastly more modest step than what the court approved 75 years ago. After all, then the government wrote checks with no strings attached. Beneficiaries, then as now, could spend the money on booze or any foolish Ponzi scheme. By contrast, not a penny of the money spent under the health care law goes into the pockets of ordinary Americans. They benefit, but only because health-care providers – physicians, nurses, hospitals, nursing homes, etc.—provide them services under the law.

Some of the justices seemed to believe that if they uphold the law they would arm big brother with the power to demand that people buy vegetables. Seventy-five years of experience with old age pensions shows how silly is that suggestion. It shows also that if Congress can vote pensions for people it is no stretch at all to vote to pay for their health care.