A Day in the Life of a Tea-Partier

The Teabagger gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised. All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now The Teabagger gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. The Teabagger's bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. The Teabagger takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

The Teabagger dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree- hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

The Teabagger begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards The Teabagger's employer pays these standards because The Teabagger's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If The Teabagger is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn't think he should loose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It's noon time, The Teabagger needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. The Teabagger's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect The Teabagger's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression. The Teabagger has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that The Teabagger and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

The Teabagger is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dad's; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republicans would still be sitting in the dark) He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so The Teabagger wouldn't have to.

After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home. He turns on a radio talk show, the host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good (He doesn't tell The Teabagger that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit The Teabagger enjoys throughout his day). The Teabagger agrees, "We don't need those big government liberals ruining our lives.

Tea Party's Phillips and his extremism

Tea Party Nation's Judson Phillips Wants To See Methodist Church DisbandedThe Huffington Post | Nick Wing

First Posted: 12-20-10 05:17 PM |

Updated: 12-20-10 11:08 PM

Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, one of the country's most prominent tea party organizations, really seems to despise the Methodist Church, or as he would call it, "the first Church of Karl Marx."

In a recent blog post (subscription required) the founder of Tea Party Nation recounts his recent experience visiting the United Methodist Building in Washington D.C., where he saw a promotional banner for the DREAM Act, a failed piece of legislation that would have provided a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children.

Such a stance could only mean one thing, Phillips concluded.

"The Methodist church is pro-illegal immigration," he said. "They have been in the bag for socialist health care, going as far as sending out emails to their membership 'debunking' the myths of Obamacare. Say, where are the liberal complaints on the separation of church and state?"

Phillips was once a member of the so-called "religious arm of socialism," but abandoned its ranks when he found his views diverged from the party line. Among the positions that he now detests:

They want amnesty, they want "economic justice", they opposed "global climate change" (earth to the Methodists, man isn't doing it), fighting global poverty (here is another hint, most poverty is caused by a lack of freedom and lack of a free enterprise system). Not shockingly, the Methodists side with the Islamists against Israel, and of course oppose America in Iraq.

A blogger at "Unsettled Christianity" has unsurprisingly taken issue with Phillips's attack:

I've noticed one thing about all of this - he is lacking in his Scriptural foundation. Where is his scriptural support for those things which he says that the UMC is wrong for? Instead, he uses words which he doesn't understand, like Socialism, Marxism and Communism.

It's not the first time Phillips has offended people with his ham-handed religious criticism. In October, Phillips drew fire first for claiming that Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison should be removed from office in part because he was a Muslim, and then for admitting that he had a "real problem with Islam." Phillips also recently galled the sensibilities of even the most amateur fans of social justice or common sense when he suggested that it would make "a lot of sense" to return to a system where only property owners have the right to vote.

Fox News Viewers Uninformed

Voters Say Election Full of Misleading and False Information

December 9, 2010

Poll Also Finds Voters Were Misinformed on Key Issues

TEXT

Full report(PDF)
Questionnaire with Findings, Methodology (PDF)

Following the first election since the Supreme Court has struck down limits on election-related advertising, a new poll finds that 9 in 10 voters said that in the 2010 election they encountered information they believed was misleading or false, with 56% saying this occurred frequently. Fifty-four percent said that it had been more frequent than usual, while just three percent said it was less frequent than usual, according to the poll conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, based at the University of Maryland, and Knowledge Networks.

(Image Credit)

Equally significant, the poll found strong evidence that voters were substantially misinformed on many of the key issues of the campaign. Such misinformation was correlated with how people voted and their exposure to various news sources.

Voters' misinformation included beliefs at odds with the conclusions of government agencies, generally regarded as non-partisan, consisting of professional economists and scientists.

• Though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded that the stimulus legislation has saved or created 2.0-5.2 million jobs, only 8% of voters thought most economists who had studied it concluded that the stimulus legislation had created or saved several million jobs. Most (68%) believed that economists estimate that it only created or saved a few jobs and 20% even believed that it resulted in job losses.
• Though the CBO concluded that the health reform law would reduce the budget deficit, 53% of voters thought most economists have concluded that health reform will increase the deficit.
• Though the Department of Commerce says that the US economy began to recover from recession in the third quarter of 2009 and has continued to grow since then, only 44% of voters thought the economy is starting to recover, while 55% thought the economy is still getting worse.
• Though the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that climate change is occurring, 45% of voters thought most scientists think climate change is not occurring (12%) or that scientists are evenly divided (33%).

Other key points of misinformation among voters were:

• 40% of voters believed incorrectly that the TARP legislation was initiated under Barack Obama, rather than George Bush
• 31% believed it was proven true that the US Chamber of Commerce spent large amounts of money it had raised from foreign sources to support Republican candidates
• 54% believed that there were no tax cuts in the stimulus legislation
• 86% assumed their taxes had gone up (38%) or stayed the same (48%), while only 10% were aware that their taxes had gone down since 2009
• 53% thought that the bailout of GM and Chrysler occurred only under Obama, though it was initiated under Bush

Clay Ramsay, of WorldPublicOpinion.org commented, "While we do not have data to make a clear comparison to the past, this high level of misinformation and the fact that voters perceived a higher than usual level of false and misleading information, suggests that the increased flow of money into political advertising may have contributed to a higher level of misinformation."

The poll also found significant differences depending how people voted. Those who voted Republican were more likely than those who voted Democratic to believe that: most economists have concluded that the health care law will increase the deficit (voted Republican 73%, voted Democratic 31%); the American economy is still getting worse (72% to 36%); the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (67% to 42%); most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (62% to 26%); and it is not clear that Obama was born within the United States (64% to 18%)

On the other hand those who voted Democratic were more likely to incorrectly believe that: it was proven to be true that the US Chamber of Commerce was spending large amounts of foreign money to support Republican candidates (voted Democratic 57%, voted Republican 9%); Obama has not increased the level of troops in Afghanistan (51% to 39%); and Democratic legislators did not mostly vote in favor of TARP (56% to 14%).

In most cases those who had greater levels of exposure to news sources had lower levels of misinformation. There were, however, a number of cases where greater exposure to a particular news source increased misinformation on some issues.

Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely), most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points), the economy is getting worse (26 points), most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points), the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points), their own income taxes have gone up (14 points), the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points), when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points) and that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points). The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it--though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican.

There were cases with some other news sources as well. Daily consumers of MSNBC and public broadcasting (NPR and PBS) were higher (34 points and 25 points respectively) in believing that it was proven that the US Chamber of Commerce was spending money raised from foreign sources to support Republican candidates. Daily watchers of network TV news broadcasts were 12 points higher in believing that TARP was signed into law by President Obama, and 11 points higher in believing that most Republicans oppose TARP.

The poll of 848 Americans was fielded from November 6 to 15, 2010. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percent. It was conducted using the web-enabled KnowledgePanel^®, a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. Initially, participants are chosen scientifically by a random selection of telephone numbers and residential addresses. Persons in selected households are then invited by telephone or by mail to participate in the web-enabled KnowledgePanel^®. For those who agree to participate, but do not already have Internet access, Knowledge Networks provides a laptop and ISP connection. More technical information is available athttp://www.knowledgenetworks.com/ganp/reviewer-info.html.

WorldPublicOpinion.org is a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland and funded by the Calvert Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Republicans Deny 9/11 Workers; Fox hides blam

Published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)

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Fox News Won't Admit That Republicans Voted Against 9/11 Rescue Workers

Leslie Savan | December 13, 2010

On Fox & Friends this morning, Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson Jr. launched [1] into a passionate attack on “Congress” and “the US Senate” for killing health benefits for 9/11 rescue workers. “Last week, Congress told them they could drop dead,” Johnson said, to the mournful chords of September Song. “Shame, embarrassment, outrage, anger—all the proper reactions to the conduct of our senators who…have turned their back on American heroes.” Worse, they’ve been betrayed by the same “politicians who couldn’t take enough pictures with them.” Right on, Peter.

But in his three-and-a-half-minute rant, Johnson didn’t once mention who in Congress could be such heartless hypocrites. The 57-to-42 vote [2] was three short needed to break a filibuster, as every Republican voted against even bringing the bill to a vote [3], and every Democrat but one voted in favor (Harry Reid had to switch his vote for arcane procedural reasons). “People like me on TV are sometimes practiced at outrage,” Johnson said (in a rare bit that described Fox’s basic technique), “but the injustice of this makes words hard to come by.”

Especially the word “Republican.” For anyone working at the Roger Ailes–led media arm of the GOP and Tea Party, speaking that word in such a negative context would be like shouting “Voldemort” in the halls of the Ministry of Magic. Better to let viewers assume that both parties are equally guilty—or even that Republicans, whom Fox has so thoroughly associated with American heroes, are innocent. And for that, the proper reaction to Fox News’s conduct is shame, embarrassment, outrage, anger.

You can watch the performance here [1].

Like this blog post? Read all Nation blogs on the Nation's free iPhone App, NationNow. [4]
[4]

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Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/blog/157076/fox-news-wont-admit-republicans-voted-against-911-rescue-workers

Links:
[1] http://video.foxnews.com/v/4456675/911-health-bill-turned-down/
[2] http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/2/269
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/nyregion/10health.html
[4] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nationnow/id399704758?mt=8

Florida's Vouchers and Fraud

Rick Scott's School Plan for Scoundrels

The Florida governor-elect's proposal to overhaul the state education system is a fraudster's dream.

By Stephanie Mencimer | Wed Dec. 15, 2010 3:00 AM PST

LINK

Conservatives have been plotting for years to blow up the public school system. Now, Florida's incoming governor Rick Scott is poised to light the fuse.

During his campaign, Scott pledged to overhaul the state's schools while simultaneously reducing school property taxes by $1.4 billion. How to accomplish both? Privatization, of course. His plan, which promotes online schooling along with other educational options, may actually pave the way for the elimination of such pesky budget busters as buses, cafeterias, teachers, and, well, school facilities themselves.

Scott's transition office did not respond to inquiries from Mother Jones, but according to various news reports, Scott is cooking up an education proposal [1]that would expand an existing voucher program designed for low-income and disabled kids, opening it to all students. The result would be that instead of public school funds filtering through the unionized public bureaucracy, it would go with the students, who could use the money to enroll in the school of their choice—public, private, charter, or virtual. If parents are wealthy enough to pay for their child's education with their own funds, they can use the voucher money for laptops or school supplies, or even sock it away in a college fund. The proposed voucher amount, about $5500, is only 85 percent of the annual cost of educating a child in Florida.

Far-right conservatives have been pushing vouchers for years as a way to dismantle public schools and fund parochial schools. But Scott's proposal may be the first to propose using vouchers as a way of also cutting taxes. The plan is modeled on one proposed by the conservative Goldwater Institute [2] in Arizona, which last year posited that the state could save a significant amount of money if it gave parents a spiff to opt out of the public school system. It's been supported by the Foundation for Florida's Future [3]—a think tank founded by Scott's predecessor, former Gov. Jeb Bush, and run by Bush's former education policy advisor, who is now on Scott's transition team.

Scott's plan is radical because it's designed to get around a constitutional problem the state encountered a few years back when, during Bush's tenure, it attempted to create vouchers to send public school students to private schools. But Scott apparently believes that his proposal will slip through, in part because the money could be used for other public schools. There are many flaws in Scott's proposal. But here's a biggie: It’s likely to be a fraud magnet.

As soon as the state starts handing families $5500 a year, it's virtually assured that enterprising thieves will devise various schemes to help them part with those funds, including by starting "independent" for-profit virtual schools, charter schools, and other predatory "educational" institutions. While the idea of privatizing the education system may seem like a big money saver, and no one really loves school bureaucracies, putting that much taxpayer money out there without adequate oversight (i.e. bureaucracy) is a formula for disaster.

It's not just a hypothetical harm, as charter schools in many states have demonstrated. Charter schools get paid by the number of kids they enroll, and they are free from much of the bureaucracy Republicans like to bash so much. All that money mixed with all that freedom hasn't produced much in the way of an education boost: Charter schools perform no better and often much worse than traditional ones. But they have produced a bumper crop of fraudsters.

In recent years, the US Department of Education's Office of the Inspector General has been raising red flags about charter school fraud and embezzlement, a problem that is increasing. In March, the OIG wrote [4]that it had opened more than 40 charter school criminal investigations that resulted in the convictions of 15 charter school officials, with 24 cases still pending. Most of the cases involved charter school operators and employees who falsely increased enrollment figures and used the extra money to bankroll lavish lifestyles. They often engaged in testing and grade-fixing antics to ensure the money kept rolling in. At the time the report was released, prosecutors had recovered more than $4 million stolen by charter school employees and operators since 2005.

Scott, the former CEO of a health care company, should have a unique understanding of what sorts of predators lurk in the private sector searching out new ways to profit at the public trough. The company he used to run, Columbia/HCA, was quite adept at ripping off government programs. In 2003, the company pleaded guilty to 14 "corporate" felony charges and ended up repaying the government almost $2 billion for Medicare and Medicaid fraud. At the time, it was the largest health care fraud case in American history.

Scott, who claimed he was unaware of the massive fraud taking place at the company, oversaw an era when the company routinely overbilled the federal health plans, inflated patient diagnoses to increase reimbursements, gave kickbacks to doctors for referring patients to company facilities, filed false data about hospital space use, and engaged in other sleazy practices—practices that in some cases aren't all that different from those of dubious school operators.

Even so, Scott appears ready to liberate public school parents to take their money anywhere they like, especially to online schools—a new cause célèbre for Jeb Bush, who recently launched an advocacy project called Digital Learning Now! to lobby against barriers to online public schools.

One of the hallmarks of Scott's education reform plan is the idea that many kids don't need to go to school at all; they can learn everything they need to in virtual classrooms. Online schools offer many cost-saving advantages, but unfortunately many of them are so bad that even the military won't take people who graduate from them. Online schools also seem even more vulnerable to fraud than regular old charter schools.

In June, Bush spoke at a graduation ceremony [5] at Electronic Classroom for Tomorrow, Ohio's largest online school, which enrolls nearly 10,000 kids but only graduates 35 percent of them. ECOT didn't get off to a stellar start, [6] demonstrating some of the pitfalls of such schools. In its early years, the management company running the school overcharged the state $1.7 million in teaching hours it couldn't document, as well as $500,000 in computer equipment that disappeared with students who never came back.

Scott's education "reform" plan seems be less about actually making Florida's schools better and more about paying private companies to run bad ones. On his transition team [7] are a couple of CEOs of for-profit charter school companies with questionable track records, including the head of Imagine Schools, which runs underperforming charter schools [8] in Ohio, Arizona, and Florida. Five of the 11 schools the company runs in Ohio are on an academic emergency list and another three are on an academic watch list. The Imagine School in Florida is on probation for its second consecutive "F" rating and at risk of being closed by the state. Charter schools figure prominently into Scott's reform plans.

These are the sorts of schools that would likely be on the receiving end of Scott's universal voucher program. It might help him cut property taxes for the state's rich seniors and wintering hedge fund managers, but it's hard to see how the plan does much to improve "accountability" as he's claimed—or more importantly, improve the fortunes of Florida's school children.

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Source URL: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/12/rick-scott-florida-education-jeb-bush

Links:
[1] http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2010-12-14/scott-shaking-halls-academia-plan
[2] http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article/3170
[3] http://www.foundationforfloridasfuture.org/Pages/About_Us.aspx
[4] http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/invtreports/x42k0002.pdf
[5] http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/06/12/copy/jeb-bush-to-address-e-school-grads.html?sid=101
[6] http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2002/05/52207
[7] http://quinnell.us/sspb/?p=9386
[8] http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/08/imagine-schools-pr-spin-hides-ohio.html

Insurance Mandate is Massachusetts Tested and Approved

Why We Need the Individual Mandate

Without a Mandate, Health Reform Would Cover Fewer with Higher Premiums

SOURCE: AP/Seth Wenig

A sign questioning patients about their medical insurance is posted in the emergency room of Jamaica Hospital in New York.

By Jonathan Gruber | April 8, 2010

Download this memo (pdf)

Download to mobile devices and e-readers with Scribd

TEXT

Conservatives began discussing repealing controversial elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA, within moments of President Barack Obama signing the historic health care reform bill. One of those elements is the individual mandate. The new reform imposes a penalty on individuals who remain uninsured even though they can afford health insurance—if coverage costs less than 8 percent of their income. The penalty is a fixed dollar amount (rising from $95 to $695 from 2014 to 2016) or a percentage of income (rising from 1 percent of income to 2.5 percent of income from 2014 to 2016), whichever is larger.

This new requirement to purchase insurance is clearly a major innovation in U.S. public policy. But it is also a central pillar of health reform. Without the individual mandate, the entire structure of reform would fail. Removing the mandate would:

• Reduce the legislation’s insurance coverage gains by more than two-thirds, so that reform would cover fewer than one-fifth of the uninsured
• Cause the reduction in employer-sponsored insurance to quadruple
• Raise individual premiums in the exchange by 40 percent

Why is the mandate so important?

Uninsured individuals impose major costs on the rest of society. These individuals do use medical care, and the latest estimates put the costs of uncompensated care at over $50 billion a year in unpaid medical bills. These costs get passed on, raising private insurance premiums for those who are insured.

In addition, when those with better health opt out of risk pools, prices rise for those in poorer health, which leads to an “adverse selection” spiral that raises insurance prices for all. This is particularly important since one of the primary goals of health reform is to fix the enormous problems that arise in our insurance markets because of price discrimination based on health. Shared risk can lead to higher prices for healthy individuals who purchase insurance, and without a mandate those individuals might choose not to participate. This results in even higher prices for the ill, undercutting the very goal of reform.

This is not an idle conjecture. Five states have tried undertaking nongroup insurance market reforms such as those contemplated in the PPACA without an individual mandate. Those five states are now among the most expensive states in which to buy nongroup insurance.

Can the mandate work?

A common criticism of the mandate is that it is either administratively infeasible or will lead to public revolt. Fortunately, we can draw on Massachusetts’ experience to address this concern. Massachusetts introduced an individual mandate in 2007, requiring all residents to purchase insurance so long as insurance was deemed “affordable.” Individuals for whom insurance is too expensive relative to income are exempt from the mandate, much like the federal legislation, which does not require individuals to spend more than 8 percent of their income on health insurance. The penalty for not complying in 2007 was very low ($219 per person), and in 2008 it rose to $912 per person.

Massachusetts’ mandate has been a success by any metric:

• Ninety-eight percent of tax filers complied with the mandate in its first year by either attaching proof of insurance, claiming an affordability exemption, or paying the penalty.
The uninsurance rate in the state fell by two-thirds within a year of the mandate.
• The average cost of a nongroup insurance policy, which nationally rose by 14 percent from 2006 to 2009, fell by 40 percent in Massachusetts over that same time period.
• The program remains highly popular, with public support at about 70 percent in recent polls.

Massachusetts’ experience shows that a mandate can indeed work to serve the goals of fundamental reform.

What would happen if we repealed the mandate?

Some critics have suggested repealing the mandate embedded in the PPACA, while retaining most of its more “popular” provisions. But such a policy would be disastrous for both the cost of insurance and the number of people covered.

I have developed the Gruber microsimulation model to estimate how health reforms would affect insurance markets; this is a very similar model to the one the Congressional Budget Office used to score the PPACA, and my model derives very similar to CBO. I can use this model to consider what would happen if Congress removed the mandate while keeping all other aspects of the law intact. I find that:

• Total insurance coverage would rise by fewer than 10 million persons rather than the 32 million persons estimated by CBO. The number of uninsured would be reduced by less than 20 percent rather than by about two-thirds.
• Employer-sponsored insurance, which is projected to erode by about 5 million persons under reform, would instead erode by over 20 million persons.
• The fully implemented cost of the legislation in 2019 would fall by only about 20 percent—we would spend 80 percent as much to cover fewer than one-third as many people.
• Those who do not obtain coverage would be the healthiest individuals, causing enormous adverse selection in insurance markets. The average individual premium in the exchange would rise by about 40 percent without the mandate.

A post-reform world without a mandate would result in only a small minority of the uninsured gaining coverage, costs in the new exchanges that are 40 percent higher, and government spending that is only about 20 percent lower. This is a terrible tradeoff that illustrates the enormous value of the mandate as a pillar of reform.

HCR backed by precedent

Nor is this fear just idle conjecture. Seven states enacted a pre-existing-conditions law without also passing an insurance coverage requirement, and all seven states saw their health insurance premiums spiral out of control. In some of these states, the individual insurance market collapsed, leaving many people without any insurance options whatsoever.
Indeed, Judge Hudson's decision striking down just one small part of the Affordable Care Act -- the requirement that nearly all Americans either carry insurance or pay slightly more income taxes -- places him on a collision course with the views of one of the Supreme Court's most conservative members: Justice Antonin Scalia.

Opinion: Health Care Ruling -- Good News for Reform Backers

Ian MillhiserContributor, AOL News

TEXT

(Dec. 13) -- Supporters of the Affordable Care Act should take a great deal of comfort from Judge Henry Hudson's decision today.

Yes, Judge Hudson did strike down one provision of the landmark health care law, but his opinion is so poorly reasoned, so bereft of legal analysis and so inconsistent with precedent that it has no chance of convincing the Supreme Court to strike down this law. If this is the best that opponents of health reform have to offer, than the act's supporters have nothing to fear.

The Constitution doesn't just give Congress sweeping authority to regulate the national economy, it also empowers Congress to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution" its authority to enact economic regulation. As Justice Scalia explains, this means that "where Congress has the authority to enact a regulation of interstate commerce, it possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective."

The act eliminates one of the insurance industry's most abhorrent practices -- denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions -- but this ban cannot function if patients are free to enter and exit the insurance market at will. If patients can wait until they get sick to buy insurance, they will drain all the money out of an insurance plan that they have not previously paid into, leaving nothing left for the rest of the plan's consumers.
There is a way out of this trap, however. Massachusetts enacted a minimum coverage provision in 2006 to go along with its pre-existing-conditions provision, and the results were both striking and immediate. Massachusetts' premiums rapidly dropped by 40 percent.

In other words, because the only way to make the pre-existing-conditions law effective is to also require participation in the insurance market, that requirement easily passes Scalia's test.

Yet, somewhat astoundingly, Judge Hudson did not once reference Scalia's clear rule. Nor did he even mention one of many other Supreme Court cases establishing that Congress "possesses every power needed" to make its laws effective. Instead, Hudson simply waves this rule away with a single cryptic statement that the Affordable Care Act doesn't fit within "the letter and spirit of the Constitution."

Maybe Hudson missed the day in law school when every lawyer is taught that a lower-court judge cannot ignore the Supreme Court's command. At the very least, a judge has a duty to actually explain his legal reasoning and to cite cases supporting his decision. Judge Hudson, however, provides no explanation for why he's apparently not bound by precedent governing a key constitutional provision.

In the end, there is a simple explanation for why he couldn't provide such an explanation: The law clearly does not support his position. Fifteen judges have now heard cases challenging the Affordable Care Act, and 14 of those cases have been dismissed -- many of them on the grounds that a federal court shouldn't even be hearing these challenges in the first place. Judge Hudson is an extreme outlier, and his disregard for precedent is unlikely to win too many supporters on higher courts.

One thing, however, is very clear from his opinion. Opponents of health reform have finally shown their cards -- and revealed themselves to have an exceptionally weak hand. If Henry Hudson's folly represents the best case against health reform, then the Affordable Care Act will be just fine