Broccoli and Bad Faith

From the New York Times, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman chimes in on oral arguments before the Supreme Court about Obama's Affordable Healthcare Act:

Nobody knows what the Supreme Court will decide with regard to the Affordable Care Act. But, after this week’s hearings, it seems quite possible that the court will strike down the “mandate” — the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance — and maybe the whole law. Removing the mandate would make the law much less workable, while striking down the whole thing would mean denying health coverage to 30 million or more Americans.

Given the stakes, one might have expected all the court’s members to be very careful in speaking about both health care realities and legal precedents. In reality, however, the second day of hearings suggested that the justices most hostile to the law don’t understand, or choose not to understand, how insurance works. And the third day was, in a way, even worse, as antireform justices appeared to embrace any argument, no matter how flimsy, that they could use to kill reform.

More here.

Maddow was hitting on exactly this subject last night, and made the obvious point I like to make when the ideologically divided Supreme Court takes on a controversial issue: this is, more or less, the same Court that made the outrageous, unprecedented, and inexplicable decision in late 2000 that installed George W. Bush to the nation's highest office. That is, the decision in Gore v Bush was nakedly partisan, so much so that the conservative justices who authored the case's opinion refused to sign it, and added the WTF statement that it shall not be used as precedent for any future cases. In short, they fucking knew it was bullshit, and added weird conditions and caveats in order to sort of distance themselves from it.

So we know that, in spite of all the legalese, these right-wing lawyers of the SCOTUS are ready willing and able to bullshit themselves into whatever position they want, all the while pretending to be disinterested Solomons dispassionately weighing laws and ideas against each other for the general benefit of the nation. I mean, the lefty Justices probably do it, too, but they appear to be much less willing to rub everybody's nose in it. No, it's the conservatives who fuck us in the ass and then tell us it's right and good.

So, all legal issues aside, the hostile attitudes coming down from the Court's right wing on this show that they're ready to take the ACA down, whether it passes Constitutional muster or not. That is, Gore v Bush destroyed the Supreme Court's credibility, and they need to rehabilitate its image somehow if they want that credibility restored, but that doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon.

On the other hand, striking down Obamacare may very well leave the door open to single payer. Keeping my fingers crossed.

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