The Aftermath

It took about twelve hours for those who are vehemently opposed to health care legislation to start their push to kill it. Before it has even been signed no less.

The vote last night has caused me to consult some sources, and I've found some important spots for where to read all the pertinent legislation, and where things stand.

NYT has a comprehensive page that is tracking the legislation.
They also have a map of the official Roll Call record.
And a page that shows what has been changed in the new bill.

Go here for the text of the original Senate Bill, H.R. 3590.
Go here for H.R. 4870, the Reconciliation Bill.

Whew that's a lot of information.

Once the bill is signed, there are twelve states that are ready to pounce on this thing, and take it to court. The Florida and South Carolina Attorney's Generals offices have filed a suit in U.S. District Court to challenge not only the constitutionality of the legislation, but also to force it to be thrown out of Congress, and thus repealed. Which erases all the work the President did the past few weeks.

Even Michigan is pissed off, because our Attorneys General Mike Cox has joined a similar suit, that would exempt the state of Michigan from this new federal legislation, effectively denying all its citizens the chance to buy healthcare when they need it. Thankfully, he needs 340,000 signatories on a petition to put it on the ballot in November, according to Michigan Radio this afternoon.

The other suit is in reference to the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution. South Carolina's Attorneys General was on MSNBC explaining his reasons. These reasons included, "It's the right thing to do," and, something to the effect of "I don't want government takeover of healthcare."

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

I think the grounds for the suit is that since national health care was never put into the Constitution, it is the right of each state in the union to devise their own. And, since there is no prohibition of States doing so, then it is doubly their right to do it themselves. The plaintiffs argue that this legislation infringes on States' rights, and cannot be implemented.

It seems to me that the point of contention within the actual legislation is the "individual mandate" and its tax penalty, and the supposed requirement of states to spend more on healthcare services.

The mandate doesn't take effect until after 2014, but basically the penalty is a flat rate of 1% of personal income, or, about $95 a year for most people...however it does jump to about $395 per person one year later, and as much as $2,085 per family after 2016. I'm guessing they came up with this mandate to help defray the cost of some of the other policies like Medicare expansion and creating the insurance exchanges. How is this any more outrageous than any existing tax brackets that we Americans currently adhere to?

Second, the requirement that states MUST spend more on healthcare services. It seems the thinking here among the plaintiffs is that most states couldn't possibly afford to increase Medicaid program spendings, with tight budgets and all. Perhaps that is why the government is essentially paying for states to pay for it? The bill simply requires all states, by 2013, to pay primary care doctors the equivalent of what Medicaid already pays them (possibly to eliminate the more expensive forms of Medicare that is an unnecessary cost?)

At this point and time, I don't see how that in particular is an overreach of the federal government's power. I think these states are forgetting that part of the bill institutes policies for allowing STATES to create their own insurance exchanges, so that people without employer-subsidized healthcare can get it. And if that doesn't work, the bill creates TWO separate insurance offerings, overseen by the exact same office that does the Federal employee health care exchange, The Office of Personnel Management. One is even required to be a nonprofit agency, essentially creating the exact same thing federal employees get, but separate, with individually calculated premiums. It's just like Obama has said: if the health insurance that he and members of Congress get is good enough for them, it should be good enough for the rest of America. It's the "public option" but in a much more competition-oriented form, and if the States bitch about creating statewide insurance exchange or joining a regional one, then don't pay for it! Your people have the option of going to this insurance market, you fools!

Christianity & The Founders

*Update: The Texas Board of Education caved, and curriculum will now be dictated by a Christian-centric view.

*EDIT: I realize Protestantism is a denomination of the Christian faith, but for these purposes, when the claim is that America was based around Christian principles, that is a distortion. I contend that the Republican principles from which America was born are in no way directly taken from the Bible.

Far be it from me to criticize religion, organized or otherwise, but, the rate at which modern Christianity seeps into the public domain, as well as our politics, is alarming on an historical level.

How Christian Were The Founders?

Of course Texas is at the heart of the argument...but the larger issue is the conception among evangelical Christians that somehow our founding fathers would fully endorse the pattern of letting religion take over things like public school and science. It is no irony either that the first state to enact statewide curriculum guides in 1998 is the same state aiming to totally alter how their children learn in grades K-12.

I can see it now: thousands of kids taught to believe that The Bill of Rights answers to The New Testament, humans came from God's tears, and liberalism is the work of Satan.

Is that where we want our educational system in America to go? I sure don't. I seem to remember something in The Constitution protecting the state from the influence of religion, and vice versa, in the interest of creating the most free society on the planet. There was one society that tried to govern in the name of God, and England ended up losing its position as the most powerful nation on Earth...because it's most important subjects separated from the crown, and founded a society based on ideas that come from the mind and not God. Even the fucking Arabs came up with mathematics and laws and architecture and philosophy, while maintaining a safe distance from Allah in matters of state.

It seems a fundamental contradiction of ideas when people in the 21st Century are attempting to overpower all other religions in America in the hopes of returning "Gods work" to its true heirs, when in 1776 men of all faiths protected the persecution of Quakers, Baptists, Christians, Protestants, and you-name-its. Thomas Jefferson for one was a staunch defender of the First Amendment, fully resistant to the idea of a president taking involvement with religion.

I personally believe the founders, since their ancestors came from a predominantly Protestant country, are Protestant first and Christian second. There's an academic quoted in that article who says "98 percent of Americans of European descent identified with Protestantism."

I once saw a documentary film called "Constantine's Sword," in which the author of the like-titled book, James Carroll, travels old Christendom seeking an answer as to why the religion he once knew from the clergy has become so different. Perhaps its because people like the Air Force or Gerry Falwell or Pat Robertson act like prophets when all they're really doing is preaching radical Christianity the same way a Muslim cleric preaches radical Islam. I say that because that has happened: the Air Force has had a problem requiring cadets at its school in Colorado Springs to attend religious services, even if they do not belong to the Christian faith. All done in the interest of converting cadets to this altered Christianity

Some think John Winthrop was envisioning a nation that advanced God's work through Christianity. Indeed, the United States of America was to be a "City on a Hill," as a beacon to all free men, but, was it founded on a bedrock of Christian teachings? The First Amendment would indicate that it was not. The Constitution's inherent purpose is to defend against a national denomination, no?

A pretty fascinating debate about some pretty large concepts. If there's one thing that makes me sad, though, it's that conservatives in Texas want Christianity incorporated into teachings of American History, so as to distort all subsequent events since America's founding to reflect a particular view. It's alarming to think what  that leads to.