Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by John Cole| 72 Comments
This post is in: Teabagger Stupidity
I just discovered what it is, and it distresses me to no end that our wingnuts are actively trying to make us dumber. Of course no one is going to be mandated to buy broccoli, you wankers. But you know what I am mandated to buy because of the actions of a bunch of midwestern conservative pols? Corn. There is a live, actual corn mandate. Every time I go to the gas station to buy gas, I am forced, against my will, to buy corn products.
So you know where you jackasses can stick that broccoli…
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[…] The Broccoli Mandate: I just discovered what it is, and it distresses me to no end that our wingnuts are actively trying to make us dumber. Of course no one is going to be mandated to buy broccoli, you wankers. But you know what I am mandated to buy because of the actions of a bunch of midwestern conservative pols? Corn. There is a live, actual corn mandate. Every time I go to the gas station to buy gas, I am forced, against my will, to buy corn products. So you know where you jackasses can stick that broccoli…[John Cole] […]
mark
a thousand times THIS
Tonal Crow
Topical repost from open thread:
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On the ACA mandate, I don’t get why Verilli didn’t answer the broccoli question with:
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Is this too forward for a Democratic administration?
wasabi gasp
Broccoli is not a vaginal probe.
havent you noticed, i am the scotus
But you don’t have to go to the gas station. You can just stay in your basement all day. Obamacare is forcing you to buy corny gas whether you want to buy gas or not.
Martin
No you aren’t. You could ride your bike. Buy a diesel powered car. Buy a Leaf. Buy a natgas powered vehicle. You aren’t forced to buy corn.
Now, the refineries are forced to buy corn, however. I’m not sure that’s a distinction with a difference, but you’re correct that government mandates the purchase of all sorts of things either directly or indirectly.
Relative to the cost of buying mandatory health insurance, a lot more of my money is going to buying military equipment, every dollar of which flows to the private sector.
Martin
@wasabi gasp: What a boring sex life you lead.
Hill Dweller
Not that he gives a shit, but Scalia thoroughly embarrassed himself the last three days. Cornhusker Kickback? Really?
Zifnab
That’s totally different, John. And I’m sure you’re curious to know why. Well… STFU, that’s why.
gnomedad
Enhanced.
wasabi gasp
@Martin: Go toss your salad.
redshirt
Yeah but subsidies good, cuz we say so.
Taxes bad.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
I’d be happy if I didn’t have to keep purchasing their miserable ****ing wars.
Bludger
Real Americans like corn.
Liberals like broccoli.
Southern Beale
I actually really love broccoli. So a broccoli mandate works for me.
But really what this boils down to is just a rehash of the conservative lament that they have to pay for shit they don’t want to pay for. Poor peoples’ food stamps. Unemployed peoples’ unemployment. Women’s birth control. Whah whah whah. They are always whining about paying for shit they don’t want to buy, it just always boils down to that.
And as Jon Stewart said, GET IN LINE, ASSHOLES. I had to pay for Derek Dye the Abstinence Clown, which was a real thing, then you can shut the fuck up about your imaginary broccoli mandate.
Hey, some of those wingnuts could stand to eat a little broccoli. Just sayin’.
kindness
Do they have to suit up with two wet suits before placing that broccoli there? Or is that after? I get confused.
MattF
Possibly OT, that JetBlue Airways pilot was just trying to persuade the passengers to pray:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/03/28/us/ap-us-flight-disrupted-captain.html?_r=1&hp
instead of going to Las Vegas. What’s so bad about that?
Spaghetti Lee
@Hill Dweller:
Ha ha! Little do you know, liberal, that Scalia can’t BE embarrassed, because he has no shame!!
EdTheRed
You don’t have to buy broccoli, but you do have to buy food for your family. If you can’t afford to buy food for your kids, the government has – despite Mitt Romney’s lack of concern – programs in place designed to keep you from starving.
If you *can* afford to buy food for your kids, but you *choose* not to? The government can take your kids. Oh, and throw you in prison. Also, too.
Health care isn’t like broccoli, it’s like food. Sure, some foods are better for you than others, and some are more expensive than others, but ultimately, you need food or you die. Likewise, some forms of health care are better than others, some are more expensive than others, but ultimately, if you don’t have any health care, you will die a nasty, premature death, presumably of some shit like tetanus, or blood poisoning from a burst blister, or pneumonia, or a septic incarcerated hernia that you couldn’t afford to have surgically repaired…it’s a long list.
So while it might ultimately be better for society to have everyone eat a balanced diet that includes plenty of fresh, organic vegetables (including, yes, broccoli), if the best we can do is school lunches packed with pink slime and lots of fast food, well, at least people aren’t starving in the streets. Likewise, while it might ultimately be better for society to have everyone covered under a single-payer public health insurance plan, if the best we can do is the Affordable Care Act, well, at least people won’t be dying of abscesses or going bankrupt trying to pay for chemo drugs.
WJS
It feeds the wingnut need to try and say that libruls are making people do stuff they don’t wanna do. Libruls are taking our freedom fries away! Libruls want the terrorists to win!
Um, who wants metal things with cameras shoved into their crotch?
Linda Featheringill
@Southern Beale:
“Hey, some of those wingnuts could stand to eat a little broccoli. Just sayin’.”
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I agree. Aside from the antioxidants and vitamins, they could use the roughage.
maya
When buying any kind of health care aren’t we all forced to agree to ” arbitration” as opposed to our Constitutional option of getting a high priced contingency lawyer and suing a CEO’s sized annual bonus off those mo’fo’s?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I hadn’t thought of the corn mandate, but all this broccoli nonsense has made me wonder: Is Scalai still considered the grand intellect of the conservative judiciary? I heard today he was talking about the Cornhusker kickback and how unpopular the mandate is. It sounds to this non-lawyer like he doesn’t much fucking care anymore, and he’s just trolling.
As to one of our Vestal Virgins of the USSC bringing up the popularity of the legislation.. WTF? Again, non-lawyer here, but I suppose it would be unlawyerly and even shrill to ask him about the popularity of Citizens United, or Bush v Gore, or Brown v Board of Education? I imagine Dred Scott was considered most reasonable by Elihu Broder and Ezekiel Russert.
MikeJ
@Southern Beale:
Actually unemployed people have already paid into unemployment insurance.
Tone In DC
Scalia has been embarrassing himself for quite some time. That’s a big part of why Colbert skewered him so aptly back in 2006, with Bush, Jr. looking on.
J.
It’s been scientifically proven that people who eat broccoli have less sex… with Republicans.
Now watch this video of Peter the Elephant (no relation to the GOP) using the Samsung GALAXY Note. It will make you feel better.
redshirt
I lived for a bit in McLean VA back in the day and several times walked by Scalia’s house with him sitting right in front of the big picture window and even then, way back when, I thought, “What if I….”
But I did nothing. So you can blame me for everything since.
S. cerevisiae
The conservative gloating is so strong right now. I went over to some wingnut sites and they are crowing so loud that if they lose this there will be a huge outcry of bribery or fraud. Which of course is the only way they can possibly lose.
WJS
@EdTheRed:
Well, don’t tell that to the Tea Party’s favorite Congressman:
Who the hell came up with the mandate to force people to pay child support? Libruls! Damn their assault on the freedoms given to us by our forefathers to let deadbeat dads step off the front porch and head west for parts unknown all by their lonesome.
calliope jane
I too looked up what this was and now feel dumber. And frustrated. And sad. Granted, Scalia’s also the one who mentioned 24 as absolute proof–that we need to torture, I think, so his concept of logical reasoning–and reality–is shaky as it is. And do I understand correctly thain the ‘analogy’ was in the opposing brief? it’s just really dumb. It’s a sound bite, which is what they wanted, but it’s dumb.
I did think that Ginsburg had a great comment, tying this back to social security.
Mark S.
I think any constitutional problems with this law would disappear with a public option.
Face
@Hill Dweller: according to TPM, that provision isnt even in the bill. Which leads me to conclude he hasnt even read it. Which would seem to me to damn near unethical to rule on something he hasnt ever reviewed. Of course, since a Dem passed it, he doesnt need to know what it says to know its wrong.
What a joke the USSC has become.
kdaug
@Linda Featheringill: See, I see what y’all are doin’ there. And while I don’t disagree that some ColonBlow(tm) is needed here, I don’t think a broccoli mandate is the way to go.
I prefer kale. Lots and lots of kale.
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m fairly sure Scalia is considered the intellectual-judicial giant of the land. Of course, that land is Lilliput.
Shinobi
I don’t understand why it is somehow better to have the state force you to buy something, instead of the federal government. Isn’t it the state that requires me to have a certain level of car insurance? How is that in any way different to me than the federal government forcing me to have a certain level of car insurance?
Is there an actual legitimate reason for this? Or is it just more people worried about our freedumb?
elmo
If EMTALA is constitutional, the mandate is constitutional. Period.
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EMTALA is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. It is a Federal law (!) which requires (!!) hospitals to treat and stabilize emergency patients, regardless of ability to pay. (!!)
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How that’s substantially different from a Federal law which requires people to obtain medical insurance, or pay a penalty for doing so, has never been clear to me. In both cases, you’re “regulating inactivity.” In both cases, you’re requiring a private citizen to engage in a commercial transaction with another private citizen. Seriously. How is it different for Commerce Clause purposes?
danimal
The same place they used to put the corn cobs???
The Dangerman
Just out of morbid curiosity, if Congress passed and the President signed the “Eat Your Damn Brocolli You Fucking Losers” bill, exactly what part of the Constitution would that violate?
Congress can make you do all sorts of things you may not want to do (drafted into wars or perhaps be drafted into being the lucky person to give Rush Limbaugh his next Brazilian). They can pass the law if it isn’t unconstitutional…__
…so, where is the lack of constitutionality?
Citizen Alan
@redshirt:
Scalia spoke at my law school my last semester. I spoke with him briefly at a reception afterwards and was actually close enough to touch him. Looking back, security seemed minimal. Eight months later, he raped the Constitution to put the Deserting Coward into office. Ever since, I’ve wondered whether I should have done … I dunno, something. Probably something violent.
Mike Lamb
@Shinobi: It’s not a function of better or not, it’s whether the Constitution grants the federal gov’t authority to require that people carry insurance or face a penalty.
And with regards to that matter, I don’t see how it’s particularly different than having to register for selective service.
Bubba Dave
@The Dangerman:
I’d volunteer for that job!
“Oh, Mr. Limbaugh, I was supposed to use melted WAX instead of molten LEAD? I’m terribly sorry about my mistake, sir. Maybe you need to pop a handful of Oxycontin….”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Charlie Pierce is thinking along the same lines as I am on El Nino (which is an unpleasantly wet, warm wind, isn’t it?)
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/#ixzz1qS0QLwgg
Tim C.
Look, it’s pretty simple. Four of the Supremes are now full wingnut operatives. Three of those four (Roberts, Thomas, Alito) were always that. Scalia may have at one time had a shred of an idea that connected to a legal theory, but he clearly abandoned that a long time ago. It’s going to be 5-4 to strike down the whole law, followed by some torturous non-logic that tells us everything the government did prior to Jan 20th 2009 is just ducky and and everything since then is an assault on our basic freedoms.
Oh and at least Ayn Rand didn’t pretend to like and listen to Jesus.
JPL
@elmo: Well if you listened to Scalia, he is questioning EMTALA. Personally, I am to although for different reasons. Forcing folks into emergency rooms is expensive for all of us. That’s why Obamacare is so important so all can have access to better medical care .
maya
My take on Scalia, father of Father Scalia, is that he is just having fun poking his stick in the cage. It’s what release and shoot big game hunters like him do.
David Koch
great interview today with Reagan’s solicitor general on how crazy-radical-out-of-the-mainstream the court has become
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/reagans-solicitor-general-health-care-is-interstate-commerce-is-this-a-regulation-of-it-yes-end-of-story/2011/08/25/gIQAmaQigS_blog.html
LiberalTarian
Closest topic I could find, incredible injustice in progress because someone afflicted the comfortable:
http://www.peacefuluprising.org/breaking-tim-dechristopher-placed-in-isolated-confinement-20120327
elmo
@JPL:
Oh, agreed and agreed. I think EMTALA is a thin and ragged band-aid over a sucking chest wound. But as far as I know, nobody ever has made even a hint of a suggestion that it was unconstitutional.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Is the sky falling yet?
pragmatism
i have met three supreme court justices. unfortunately they are scalia, thomas and kennedy. sometimes i ask the FSM what i have done. anyhoo, i watched scalia berate a terrified server at the lunch we attended. it was frigging awful. it was kind of like that scene in mulholland drive where one of the Castigliane (sp?) brothers spits back out the espresso.
@redshirt: i was laughing this morning at rand paul fighting for the oil subsidies and saying that we should revere the oil “producers”. if they were so fucking good, they wouldn’t need subsidies.
pragmatism
i have met three supreme court justices. unfortunately they are scalia, thomas and kennedy. sometimes i ask the FSM what i have done. anyhoo, i watched scalia berate a terrified server at the lunch we attended. it was frigging awful. it was kind of like that scene in mulholland drive where one of the Castigliane (sp?) brothers spits back out the espresso.
@redshirt: i was laughing this morning at rand paul fighting for the oil subsidies and saying that we should revere the oil “producers”. if they were so fucking good, they wouldn’t need subsidies.
JPL
@elmo: The first time I heard about it was today when Scalia said something about ACA patching over a bad law. I live in Tom Price’s district and I’ve written him and asked if the mandate is not constitutional why is EMTALA. I’m just daring him. Reagan passed the law when there was patient dumping and he wanted to show how compassionate he was. (kidding)
slim's tuna provider
@The Dangerman: actually, they can’t pass a law unless they have explicit authority under the constitution. hence, they cannot draft you to wax a supreme court justice. they can draft you to fight war though, under Section 8:
“The Congress shall have Power…
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;”
Roger Moore
@redshirt:
Only if you did nothing during a Democratic administration. If you had done something about him during a Republican administration, he would have been replaced with a different but no less troublesome sociopath.
Martin
@The Dangerman:
Presumably the unwritten ‘right to privacy’. Laws are only valid if they are enforceable. How would the government know whether you are eating your broccoli or not unless they can monitor not only your purchases (how do they enforce that everyone buys broccoli? What if they grow their own?) but also peer into your home to determine whether or not you consume it.
In the case of health insurance, the government can simply ask the insurers. Problem solved. Further, your lack of insurance will be detected as soon as you hit a doctor or hospital. Broccoli just doesn’t have the same self-regulation mechanism that a product like insurance does.
Expect BOB to arrive shortly to warn us how the government is monitoring how often he flushes and how that could be used to establish a statistical correlation to roughage consumption.
David Koch
@slim’s tuna provider:
so the supreme court will strike down the Air Force since it’s not “explicitly” mentioned in the constitution?
InsaneCaliCat
The broccoli argument is one of those “arguments” that is so dumb it’s almost impossible to counter it without sounding equally moronic yourself. The entire premise of it is absurd. We’re talking about insurance, not eating your vegetables to stay healthy.
Besides, the government, as John said, already mandates people to pay for tons of stuff. Upholding the ACA mandate, will not “change the relationship between the government and the American people” as Justice Kennedy said yesterday. However, striking down the ACA individual mandate could potentially throw the entire U.S. economy into chaos. Suddenly, all mandates could come under scrutiny and possibly be overturned. Then what? Talk about a slippery slope. This is why I’m confident the ACA along with the individual mandate will be upheld by the SC.
Keith G
@Tonal Crow: Your post is ultra spot on.
Lancelot Link
if Congress passed and the President signed the “Eat Your Damn Brocolli You Fucking Losers” bill…..
I demand the Garlic Option!
cckids
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
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Well, in response to Kneedler, he also said this: “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages? And do you really expect the court to do that? Or do you expect us to give this function to our law clerks? Is this not totally unrealistic? That we’re going to go through this enormous bill, item by item, and decide each one?”
.
Quite rich, after all the teabagging cries of “Read the Bill!!!”, and how mind-bendingly LOOOOOOONG it is. Isn’t that part of the job? I read it in my spare time in less than a week, snore-inducing wad that it is. You’re a Supreme Court Justice, asshole. Grow the fuck up.
Keith G
@The Dangerman:
In essence you are asking the wrong question. The proper inquiry would be, “Does the Constitution, previous court ruling, or accepted statute give Congress power to do this?”
The best answer would be, No.
Tonal Crow
@The Dangerman:
There’s a critical distinction between making you buy broccoli and making you eat it. See my first post, above, for the outlines. To slightly expand on why they probably can’t constitutionally make you eat it, see Griswold, Roe, and all those other touchy-feely substantive due process cases about bodily integrity and autonomy that Republicans loathe until they need to cite them.
Keith G
I wish that the Solicitor General would have been able to counter Scalia’s nonsense with an argument explaining that the consumption of even the most rare and expensive vegetable will not bankrupt this government. We can, and do, provide healthful foods to citizens in need without that type of mandate. However, the consumption of adequate medical care pre-ACA was/is indeed causing a economic existential threat to our society and the mandate allows a necessary funding process that will not blowout our economy.
__
Just one of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s lifesaving medical procedures would buy a shit ton of broccoli.
noodler
Well done cole. I never made that connection. one good mark.
Will
In this debate, a requirement to purchase broccolli isn’t analagous to the requirement to purchase health insurance. It’s analagous to purchasing health care. And health care is actually a requirement for living. Broccolli isn’t (it just helps). So if health care is a requirement for living, everyone at some point is either going to seek it out or die, thus taking themselves out of the discussion.
This debate gets dumber and dumber the more the 4 dwarves on the bench have at it, and it is hard to tell sometimes whether they are being willful or really are this stupid.
trnc
Actually, I think one of the earlier comments was right. The “corn mandate” is just part of the budget formed by our representative gov’t, and it’s no different than citizens having to pay for a number of things they may not want to. Fried’s argument is much more convincing: broccoli isn’t a significant part of our economy. Also, there are plenty of broccoli alternatives that achieve roughly the same goal. AND as far as the “if govt can require health insurance, what’s to stop them from requiring broccoli?” Hmmmm, how about … THE SUPREME COURT. They can decide that ACA meets the commerce threshold and that broccoli doesn’t. End of story.
By the way, about the argument that congress can’t regulate inactivity, what happens if men don’t sign up with selective service when they turn 18?
jpe
@elmo: emtala applies to hospitals that get federal funds. The relevant power is the power of the purse, not the commerce clause.
Joseph Nobles
The government forced me to buy an interstate highway system. It can’t force me to drive on it yet! ROUTE 66 FOR THE MFING WIN, LOSAHHHHS!
+2 (lightweight)
newhavenguy
It. Gets. Worse.
(Orig posted under GOT open thread, d’oh!)
Antonin Scalia, Brilliant Legal Mind. Was just comparing him to Brilliant Legal Minds Luca Brasi and Stringer Bell on Facebook when I thought to piss in your punchbowl too.
A brilliant Conservative jurist. Yeah, maybe in a parody of a real great power. Electrolytes!
Suspect most of you have heard of Steve Benen, but damn he’s good. Not a writer on the TNC level (Well, who is?), but between the policy chops and short/sharp political news, the guy is a national treasure.
Cheers,
priscianusjr
@Shinobi:
El Cid
I think that paying taxes is coercion, because if I refuse, they can do stuff to me. It’s unfair.
Lex
Imma file this post as an amicus brief.