{"id":8081,"date":"2012-06-18T11:49:24","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T18:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8081"},"modified":"2012-06-18T11:49:25","modified_gmt":"2012-06-18T18:49:25","slug":"proof-that-alan-grayson-was-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/18\/proof-that-alan-grayson-was-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Proof That Alan Grayson Was Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">On September 29, 2009, Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) addressed Congress and explained the Republican health care plan.&#160; Republicans had their panties in such a bunch over what he had to say, that they threw a gold star hissy fit.&#160; Nevertheless, Grayson\u2019s analysis has been proven correct in a manner beyond question.&#160; First, here\u2019s Alan Grayson.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-usmvYOPfco?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in; font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"18Scalia\" border=\"0\" alt=\"18Scalia\" align=\"left\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/18Scalia.jpg\" width=\"360\" height=\"274\" \/>The Supreme Court&#8217;s highly anticipated ruling on Obama&#8217;s healthcare reforms could come any day now. Whatever the verdict, expect much ado about the hotly debated <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/06\/14\/business\/how-broccoli-became-a-symbol-in-the-health-care-debate.html\" target=\"_blank\">role of broccoli<\/a><font color=\"#0066cc\"><\/font> in healthcare and arcane explanations of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/03\/31\/business\/the-health-care-mandate-and-the-constitution.html\" target=\"_blank\">Commerce Clause<\/a><font color=\"#0066cc\"><\/font> that is at the center of the legal case against the individual mandate. But buried deep in hearings filled with legalese and judicial sparring was a short exchange that illuminates an American ideal that truly hangs in the balance with this decision\u2014the idea that in a civilized society, we do not sit idly by and watch our neighbors die.<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in; font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">The specific back-and-forth in question occurred on the third day of the hearings between Justice Antonin Scalia and Solicitor General Donald Verilli, the Administration official charged with defending the law in court. It went <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2012\/03\/27\/149465820\/transcript-supreme-court-the-health-care-law-and-the-individual-mandate\" target=\"_blank\">like this<\/a><font color=\"#0066cc\"><\/font>.<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.375in; font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><em>GENERAL VERRILLI: No. It&#8217;s because you&#8217;re going \u2014 in the health care market, you&#8217;re going into the market without the ability to pay for what you get, getting the health care service anyway as a result of the social norms that allow \u2014 that \u2014 to which we&#8217;ve obligated ourselves so that people get health care.<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.375in; font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><em>JUSTICE SCALIA: <strong>Well, don&#8217;t obligate yourself to that. Why \u2014 you know<\/strong>?<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.375in; font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><em>GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, I can&#8217;t imagine that that \u2014 that the Commerce Clause would \u2014would forbid Congress from taking into account this deeply embedded social norm.<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.375in; font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\"><em>JUSTICE SCALIA: <strong>You \u2014 you could do it<\/strong>. <\/em><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in; font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">If you are not a frequent watcher of the Court and therefore not fluent in the cadences of judicial banter, this short, seemingly banal interchange in an exhaustive debate may not have even registered. <strong>The \u201cdeeply embedded social norm\u201d that Verilli refers to\u2014in fact seems confused that he has to explain to Justice Scalia\u2014is the norm that dictates that people will step in to aid others who are ailing or in danger of death<\/strong>.<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in; font-family: \"><font style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Scalia&#8217;s statement that \u201cYou could do it [defy these norms]\u201d eerily evoked the appalling moment at the September 2011 Republican Presidential Debate when the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/the_big_idea\/2011\/09\/let_him_die.html\" target=\"_blank\">audience wildly applauded<\/a><font color=\"#0066cc\"><\/font> Wolf Blitzer&#8217;s stunned probing of whether candidate Ron Paul would allow a thirty-year old uninsured man in a health care emergency to die. \u201cYes!\u201d shouted unashamed audience members turning a Presidential debate into something reminiscent of the Roman Colosseum. <strong>When Justice Scalia argued against the social norms that Verilli was presuming sacrosanct, he was essentially saying \u201clet him die!\u201d<\/strong>&#8230; <em>[emphasis added<\/em>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/blog\/168452\/healthcare-and-scalias-broken-moral-compass\" target=\"_blank\">The Nation<\/a>&gt;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">That bags it!&#160; One cannot find a person more representative of Republican social ideology than Antonin Scalia, and Scalia could not have confirmed Grayson more definitively.&#160; I have to wonder how such misanthropic monsters came to sit on the US Supreme Court, but I know the answer.&#160; They are there because Republicans appointed them.&#160; It is mandatory that Republicans get no more opportunities to appoint Supreme Court Justices.&#160; To do that, the White House must stay GOP free.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On September 29, 2009, Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) addressed Congress and explained the Republican health care plan.&#160; Republicans had their panties in such a bunch over what he had to say, that they threw a gold star hissy fit.&#160; Nevertheless, Grayson\u2019s analysis has been proven correct in a manner beyond question.&#160; First, here\u2019s Alan Grayson. <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/18\/proof-that-alan-grayson-was-right\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}