The Mississippi problem from the liberal perspective is that the state government and elites of the state of Mississippi has been willing to keep the state exceedingly poor as long as any surplus accumulates to them and they will do whatever it takes to actively resist any effort to improve the lives of the bottom 97% of the population. The first Mississippi problem was solved by General Grant and Admiral Porter.
Bill Gardner at the Incidental Economist has a depressing take on the constitutional remaking that the King/Halbig case would argue for if the Supremes reverse King.
More importantly, asking whether Roberts will vote to kill the ACA frames the question in the wrong way, because finding for the plaintiffs in King does not kill the ACA. The states that have already established exchanges would keep them and their subsidies. In the states that have not established exchanges, a Court decision for the plaintiffs would throw the responsibility of establishing health care exchanges back on those states. If they want the subsidies for their citizens they still have the option of establishing an exchange. Some may do this, because their citizens will be harmed by the loss of insurance and their health care systems will be stressed by increased numbers of uninsured patients. However, it’s also likely that at least some of those states will not establish exchanges, so that millions may lose their subsidies and their insurance….
The constitutional outcome of a victory for the King plaintiffs would be a radically decentralized federalism. It would mean that increasing access to health care through the ACA would require political validation at the state as well as the federal level. This outcome would be consistent with the constitutional philosophy that Roberts and many other conservatives espouse. For this reason, if no other, I expect Roberts to vote for the King plaintiffs….
But if the King plaintiffs win, what progressives need to understand is that if we want better health care in Mississippi, we need to win political fights in Mississippi.
Or shorter Gardner prediction — Mississippi will always be fucked as its elites are more than happy for most of its citizens to live unstable, chaotic, poor lives. Those elites control the ballot box with the permission of the Roberts Court, they control the levers of power, and they control the basic agenda, so the Mississippi problem for liberal ends is an intractable problem.
Southern Beale
Ha, I read that same post yesterday and posted it on Twitter. I think he’s exactly right. This is something conservatives have known for decades, hence groups like ALEC. We can’t keep ignoring the states and hope we can come up with federal solutions .. we are the Untied States now.
Keith G
As of now, I have not been able to recognize a consensus of how the Court will decide King. It seems like every article (from credible analysts) that I read takes the exact opposite view from the previous. My wellbeing quite actually depends on the plaintiffs losing. It’s going to be a very intense period of time.
Schlemazel
No, no Mississippi cannot be solved. It has resisted every effort to drag it into civilization for over 200 years and has only gotten better and better at it.
The word you are looking for is ‘triage’ the act of sorting the saveable from those who are a lost cause. That shithole and several of its neighbors fall into the latter category & it is long past time we stop wasting our time & money. Make all the federal programs voluntary at the state level. People will “vote with their feet” as the segregationists used to say. shitholes will self-identify and get worse and worse – GOOD, fuck them. Eventually the difference will be so evident it will be undeniable.
beltane
The Mississippi problem can be solved but it can never be solved with liberal solutions. This is as true today as it was in 1865.
Belafon
@Schlemazel:
That would be nice, but places like Mississippi receive a lot of defense money. And it’s too late to have defense spending tied to Medicaid spending, at least for the next couple of years.
JPL
This is the most depressing post, that I read today. What’s their end game? If I wanted to live in Central America, I’d move.
Baud
@Keith G:
I’m sorry you and others (MomSense comes to mind) have to go through this. Trying to predict how courts will rule is usually a fool’s errand.
beltane
@Schlemazel: Exactly. These states are gangrenous limbs that do nothing but pose a threat to the rest of the body. Do we want to prosper and thrive or so we want to stumble on, becoming weaker by the day as a result of blood poisoning spreading from the festering limb?
Civilized people looking to relocate from the “Confederate zones” could be given incentives to do so.
Barbara
You can solve the Mississippi problem by adopting Medicare for all. Eventually that is what will happen. As you state, the problem is that there is an entrenched power structure that thinks its own fate is not intertwined with the rest of its citizens. The ominous message is that you would need things like major hospitals closing, and people dying from car accidents because there is no functioning ER close enough to get to in order for anything to change. This is also why people who wonder why others don’t vote their self-interest misunderstand the problem. They identify their self-interest (consciously or not) in terms of whether they are better off than African Americans. So long as they have that, they will continue to vote with the party that is the most racialized in their favor. However, this dynamic is not nearly as entrenched in other states, e.g., Virginia and North Carolina, as it is Alabama and Mississippi, so that’s where the focus should be for now. IMHO.
beltane
@JPL: Central America at least has a much more interesting culture and history. Mississippi is just run by the dull descendants of the English underclass who think their white skin makes them the shit.
Chris
Federalism will kill this fucking country yet.
Belafon
@Barbara: And the catch-22 is that we won’t be able to pass Medicare for all until states like Mississippi elect leaders that care about their citizens. It’s the only way a bill like that would pass through Congress.
beltane
@Belafon: That’s the thing. The real “Mississippi problem” lies with what Mississippi does to the rest of us, not to what they do to themselves.
Schlemazel
@Belafon:
Yeah, we need to figure out how to start rolling back some of that sweet DoD money that hides a lot of the damage. Highway funds also, they want to live in the antebellum haze let them.
@JPL:
When I am already well depressed these sorts of stories just enrage me. I am much more inclined to agree with @beltane: and the gangrene analogy, cut it off!
Schlemazel
@beltane:
EXACTLY! It may be a real mistake to not actively encourage the Reaganstan movement. Freed from those brain damaged lampreys the rest of the nation might just be able to save itself. NAturally we would have a steady flow of refugees for the first decade or so that would be a drain on our resources but we could deal with that.
jonas
@Chris: Or the converse: federalism will allow the few states run by sane grownups to prosper in the coming Republican apocalypse.
Kropadope
@Schlemazel: Finally, I usually get trashed on here for saying this. Dude, we gotta let them make their own mistakes and let the well-run states build cool shit.
dww44
@beltane: Actually I disagree with your characterization of our poorest state and it so happens I live in one of those poorer nearby states, vis-a-vis the more advanced parts of the country.
I was actually thinking about the state of Mississippi a day or so ago and its distinctive uniqueness. If you’ve never visited the state, particularly the Delta area north of Jackson as well as the Northeastern parts of the state, it’s worth a visit. The poverty is quite visible. On the other had, there’s less crass and ugly commercial strip development. One shouldn’t consign to the dustbin a region so rich in music and literary heritage.
As exasperating as the politics are and the predictable lack of health outcomes for all its resident and indeed those of my state, the democratic party and liberals should NOT give up. Liberal groups need to put boots on the ground for the long term and start reclaiming positions of power at the local and state levels. Voter registration and education is the place to start.
There are no prominent liberal voices in these parts and it bothers me that we are still dependent on an ever more activist and conservative court to do the bidding of the conservative movement. That’s what so depressing about Tuesday’s outcome and the folks at the top of the Democratic hierarchy ought to be replaced now with newer, fresher and more progressive voices.
beltane
@Schlemazel: If the rest of the country is booming, it would pose no hardship to absorb refugees from Loser States. They would be welcome.
Matt McIrvin
@Schlemazel: The refugee problem would turn the remaining US as reactionary as the South.
The North is not non-racist. Those refugees? Most of them would be black. Southern white racists want black people down; Northern white racists want black people to go away. We know what happened in the North the first time there was a Great Migration: sundown towns and redlining and, eventually, Reagan Democrats.
rikyrah
They wanna cling to the Whiteness. They don’t care because ‘ at least they’re not a Nigger’. So, if they stay in the shythouse, it’s ok, because the Niggers will be too, and that’s all that matters.
So, the answer to your question is no – they will not solve the Mississippi problem.
Chris
@Schlemazel:
The thing about any and all “nation of American Right Wing Nutjobs break away from the homeland” scenarios is that it leaves you with an aggressive, hostile, unstable failed state right on the border. Never mind the refugees – give them a few years and they’ll be at war with half of Central America and the Carribbean, if only to distract their own people from the disaster area their own nation is turning into.
Matt McIrvin
Also, Jesus, what a great message to send to loyally Democratic black voters. Those of you in the South are fucked, because we decided going to bat for you was a political mistake in the first place, but, hey, you can come squat in a refugee camp! Maybe we’ll make a colony for you in the Solomon Islands or something.
Belafon
@dww44:
Those areas without power in the 1930s didn’t have to deal with ugly things like lamp posts either.
Schlemazel
@dww44:
We have been doing registration & GOTV for 40 years & things have gotten worse, not better. If people are that upset with the conditions there why is it that not a single liberal leader has stepped up to lead the fight? Many of the exact same people most hurt by the stupidity buy into the stupidity. Our continued efforts to force civilization on them only encourages worse behaviour.
Betty Cracker
Putting the ginormous issue of access to healthcare aside, the ACA at its core is a huge downward transfer of wealth via subsidies. That’s why the power structure will fight it tooth and nail in any venue they can and attack that provision specifically.
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin:
As was pointed out in a salon article the day of the election, Republicans outside the South are just as likely to say blacks are causing their own misfortune as whites in the South.
Uncle Ebeneezer
I’m so annoyed by people who are openly cheering for millions of Americans to lose access to affordable coverage because they say their premiums went up a tad because of the ACA. I have in-laws who are trapped in TX as it was the only place they could afford to retire to. They scrape by on SS and both have significant health issues (one just had a lung transplant.) I think they already get Medicare so the exchanges going kaput wouldn’t kill them. But I can imagine lots of people who aren’t so lucky and for whom the ACA issues are literally life and death. And it breaks my heart to see so many fellow Americans cheering on their misery. I know none of this is new. “Let em die” is a sentiment that Wingers have been espousing forever, but it’s only recently that I have seen it so out in the open without even a hint of shame. It disgusts me. God damn America, indeed.
Sorry just needed to vent.
sojourner44
The barriers to the ballot box in 1964 were formidable. Now, even with the reinforcement supplied by a radically reactionary supreme court, they are easily surmountable. What is required is will and determination. The previous generation had it; what about their children?.
Barbara
@Belafon: It’s not a catch-22, exactly. As in any dilemma where the points of view range from one extreme to another (not accepting that to be extreme is to be wrong, just that there is a wide range) you make progress by starting with those who are closest to you in point of view and are amenable to shifts. In the south, that will be Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. Arizona, Colorado and Montana are your targets in the mountain west. In addition, “Medicare” as a concept is accepted, so you are wrong to think that amending an existing program will be seen just like passing a new one. (And don’t tell me Medicare is just like Medicaid — it’s not at all, not in the hearts and minds of voters in Mississippi.)
Iowa Old Lady
What staggers me about King/Halbig is that we’re not talking about the Medicaid extension here. People buying insurance the exchanges are mostly working middle and lower middle class. IOW, they’re not as invisible as the poor. Politicians (by which I also mean at least 3 of the Supreme Court justices) usually hesitate to screw them so openly.
beltane
@Uncle Ebeneezer: These people make no sense to me. During the 5 year period prior to the ACA, our premiums nearly doubled, our co-pay went from $5 to $25, and our prescription coverage went to shit. Everyone I know was in the same boat. Are there really people out there whose premiums and co-pays were not increasing every year?
I noticed that with our 2015 plan, there is only a $2 increase in premiums and no increase in co-pays. I blame Obama.
Belafon
@Barbara: You’re right, it’s not exactly a catch-22. But I can tell you the first thing Ted Cruz will say when you try to expand Medicare: “The Democrats are trying to destroy Medicare. It can’t handle that many people.” I think expanding Medicare would be a great idea, but once again, it’s the people like those that run Mississippi that will make it hard.
Richard Mayhew
@jonas: I doubt that is the case as my bet is that any ruling for neo-state rights federalism will run one way only against progressive changes while regressive changes won’t have the opt-outs for Blue states. Sorry, I’m in a cynical mood this morning
WereBear
And this is part of the problem: if we create non-thriving states with depressed property values, and then are sanguine about fixed income seniors living there, we continue to perpetuate red states.
And I see it as illusory, too. In the 80’s, with real estate prices rising in the NYC metro area, there was a huge movement for people to see what their bucks would bring down in Florida. A three bedroom ranch with a patio and swimming pool! For the price they were paying for a one bedroom condo on Long Island!
I knew people who ran down there like their ass was on fire… only to discover that wages in Florida were chronically low, that the A/C bills were as high as heating was back home, there were no social services or job protection, and you were landing in a caste system just short of mainland India.
Bobby B.
It’s my understanding that Mississippi racism ended in the 1930s when the KKK gubernatorial candidate got ridden out of town on a rail, or at least that’s how it happened in “O Brother Where Art Thou.”
WereBear
@WereBear: And to pick up my own argument: my retired parents had a lovely apartment in a thriving place, and gave it up “to have land.” They could afford a less nice place on a big lot in a tiny town on the edge of nowhere.
Looking back, I see it as a huge mistake. They couldn’t walk to interesting places like they used to, and frankly, there wasn’t nearly as many interesting places to get to. It was so hard to reach that visits from children and grandchildren became less often.
They wound up isolated and working their behinds off to keep the place up. Not exactly a nice picture of retirement.
It’s a common mistake I saw a lot of as a child in Florida. People would retire down there, and wind up doing crazy things like compare the price of different items all over town, take out the trash when there was one tissue in the basket, and edge the lawn with scissors.
It was because they had no friends and nothing to do and no one knew them or cared about them. They had chosen this hot gilded prison, and now they were stuck there.
Xboxershorts
@Chris
Isn’t it Orwellian that Federalism, as it’s practiced today, is actually ANTI-Federalism?
Also, PA suffers from a similarly shortsighted approach to the ACA as MS does. But our politics here in PA is not quite as overtly corrupted as MS (We’re #5 on the corruption list, yay PA!).
PA, since 2010, has been dominated by Tea Party politics and they bravely refused the PPACA and in doing so bragged loudly and proudly about keeping the feds out of PA healthcare with nary a wisp of the self awareness necessary to understand that by refusing the ACA they actually INVITED the feds into PA Healthcare (the law does empower the feds to build the exchange FOR PA)
But we just elected a more progressive Governor, lets see if he can cut through the derp and get PA on board with the PPACA.
I have my doubts, our legislature is still solidly in the hands of ALEC, AFP and the rest of the American DERP brigades…
dww44
@Schlemazel: In Mississippi? I know in this state to the east, that registration and voter education have to be ongoing. It can not be put into operation 6 or 8 months ahead of an election. With people who are at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder their focus is day-to-day, not long-term. We have to ameliorate that situation with persistent efforts.
There has NEVER been a sustained Democratic grass roots effort in the South in my entire voting life, going back to the 1960’s. The purpling of the South must occur before there are changes which truly benefit those on the bottom, who mostly happen to be not white. First, Democrats must regain access to the levers of power and that is why I’ve become politically active in recent years.
FYI, Michelle Nunn carried my county by 58%. We had a real grassroots effort here, albeit we are a minority-majority county. Look at the map at the link below. Mostly all those counties to the South voted for Perdue. Many are largely rural and there were not enough folks on the ground to get the AA voters out to vote, even though they are either in the majority are close to it in those counties.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Michelle+Nunn+election+results&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb
Plus, it would help if Democrats had a larger megaphone and weren’t afraid to use it. There is no counterbalance to Fox or Limbaugh in these areas.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane: I agree.
A radical approach is needed. One that dethrones the current elite of Mississippi by any means necessary. Gradual reform is not an option with these parasites.
SenyorDave
I couldn’t find it on the internet, but isn’t there an old saying that pretty much says:
You can convince a man to accept living in a refrigerator box as long as he knows his neighbor doesn’t even have a refrigerator box.
I’ve always thought that sounds like the state of politics in Mississippi
Gin & Tonic
@SenyorDave: It’s in the Lexicon here at B-J, credited to commenter Davis X. Machina.
WereBear
@SenyorDave: On top of that, it’s not easy to get out when you’re poor.
What cushion you have might be Mom & Dad’s place when you are between apartments. You might have the job because your cousin knew of the opening. You keep that clunker car running because you can go over to your best friend’s house and use their tools and driveway.
Every day, in hundreds of ways, you only hang on because you are nestled in a mutual help situation. People got out, back in the day, when there were thriving industries up North begging for workers… and they already knew people who had already done it.
cmorenc
@Barbara:
The states where the “Mississippi problem” is solvable are: Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida, because the margin by which right-wing elites can successfully mobilize resentment politics among swaths of the 97% (particularly whites) is far thinner and less consistent than in states like Mississippi, Alabama, or Louisiana. North Carolina is the most tantalizing example, because Obama’s winning the state in 2008 in a high-turnout election proves that success is possible here, and we have sometimes elected progressively-flavored moderates to higher offices here (Jim Hunt-Governor, Kay Hagan + John Edwards (for all his persona flaws) to Senate). We also have a long history of frustrating narrow losses – Jesse Helms defeating Jim Hunt in 1984 (1,156,768 to 1,070,488), and v. Harvey Gantt in 1990 (1089,012 to 981,573) and a week ago, Tillis v. Hagan (1,413,269 to 1,364,758). Georgia may become salvageable within the next decade as demographic changes become more pronounced, but 2014 proves it isn’t there yet.
Chris
@WereBear:
I moved from Washington DC to Miami FL a couple years ago, and I have to agree that I’m fairly underwhelmed. If standards of living mean the quotient of “how much shit costs versus how well it works,” then I’d have to say Florida loses. Many things may indeed cost less in FL, but I’m not convinced that the drop-off in quality isn’t bigger than the drop-off in costs (maybe taxes are lower in Miami, but maybe that’s why DC has better public transporation, too). And then you factor in the lower minimum wage, the higher rate of unemployment, the shittier safety net – made even shittier by the lack of Medicaid expansion, and about to get shittier still if the Supreme Court rules as we’re all dreading it will – and moving from up north seems like a textbook case of “penny wise, pound foolish.”
I may stay in Florida for a little while after the master’s degree, simply because I have a grandmother there who’d probably let me stay at her place rent-free while I get my shit together. In the long run, though, I have no intention of staying there and every intention of going (as I still think of it) home.
For Narnia, and the North!
Barbara
WereBear, many people think of retirement as a blank slate on which to write dreams they wrote off a long time ago. The dream of a big house is an overarching theme of achievement in the U.S. It does not appeal to me but I would be lying if I told you I thought I was average. If people better understood the financial and lifestyle trade offs of making that move perhaps they would think twice.
Barbara
@cmorenc: cmorenc, right, so in my view the priority should be in those states — for purposes of redistricting in 2020 when that rolls around, and winning as many offices as possible. It won’t be overnight but it’s the place to start.
Schlemazel
I live in the world as it is, not the one I wish it were. There will never be a counterbalance as long as they can own all the anger & rage & direct it at the liberals and government.
SenyorDave
@WereBear: On top of that, it’s not easy to get out when you’re poor.
Great point. And its very hard for people who haven’t been there to relate. For the last few years I was treasurer of our Synagogue. There was program operated out of the Synagogue that gave temporary assistance to people in dire need. Most of the time it was grocery gift cards, usually $50 or $75. I saw how much of a difference it made to people because sometimes I would be at the office and saw people getting these cards and they expressed their deep gratitude. This was very eye-opening to see how $50 makes such a difference to someone in need. It has been about 25 years since I was living paycheck to paycheck, but my safety net has always been pretty wide.
I think of these people when I look at the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson, who are $25 billion+ but spend there money trying to change laws so they can keep more money and simultaneously make sure the poor are worse off. Then I look at people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Richard Branson, who give billions to charitable foundations. Always makes me wonder how much is enough for some people.
jibeaux
@Schlemazel: The only counterbalance is anti-psychotic medication. I’m being mostly serious here. That much anger and paranoia is likely to have a chemical basis.
Betty Cracker
@Schlemazel: They (Republicans, or, more to the point, their plutocrat puppet masters) have effectively channeled all the anger and rage toward liberals and Democrats, but they don’t own it.
There are vast wellsprings of anger and rage because we live in a society that is unequal on so many metrics, and a competent party apparatus would tap that to advance their fortunes. Sometimes the Democratic Party seems to get that. Sometimes the donor class makes them forget it.
PIGL
@beltane: case in point: one element of the solution would be a new Supreme Court.
Davis X. Machina
@Iowa Old Lady: We were in a long path towards turning health insurance into a positional good, where, while yours isn’t any good per se, the other guy has nothing, so on relative terms, yours is better.
Yours can get steadily worse, and still be a relative win, if the number of people who have nothing is constantly increasing.
gene108
@dww44:
Voter registration / education has been going on for six years, ever since candidate Obama decided to get a bunch of new first time voters over to his side.
The problem is people, who have not been inclined to vote, get easily discouraged.
In 2010 it was the economy sucks, I am staying home…my vote in 2008 did not make a difference.
In 2012 there were a lot of folks, who were still discouraged as they are working harder to just stay where they are economically and 2014 is probably similar for many folks.
The GOP’s strategy is to make sure voter turn out stays at 35%, so they only need to appeal to 18% of the population to win elected office, in off year elections.
I am getting of the opinion that pinning your electoral hopes on sporadic voters is, at best a one trick winner, and more than likely a losing strategy in most elections.
Villago Delenda Est
@Schlemazel: It’s quite Burkean, in its own way. Seize the anger with the status quo and twist it to serve the status quo.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
I think for many people, they have moved past anger to acceptance or apathy of the status quo and decide not to vote.
Baud
@gene108:
I agree. Politicians don’t represent people. They represent constituencies. A lot of our people are just people and haven’t formed constituencies.
srv
I can see wingnuts saying “Thank God for Mississippi” as a compliment.
gene108
@dww44:
Needing a larger megaphone requires money. Right-wing billionaires have poured millions – over the last 40 years – into creating the right-wing noise machine that keeps pushing stories that influence the MSM and the general public.
I do not see any billionaires being particularly leftist ideologues*, who want to spend millions promoting “socialism”.
I think what gets me is when you have a small microphone, compared to what Republicans have with regards to the media, every group that is inclined to be liberals needs to maximize their use of limited resources that does not happen.
Liberals have such poor message discipline compared to conservatives. This needs to be improved, because building a bigger media platform won’t help, if you are not maximizing its effectiveness.
* Being a billionaire sort of contradicts what true Leftists/socialists stand for, therefore there are probably no liberal billionaires to begin with. Some may worry about climate change or gun control, but otherwise they are indifferent to larger “movement” liberalism.
Sherparick
The heart of the Mississippi problem is that 83% of white Mississipians making the median income or less vote Republican and if they had had their druthers, Chris McDaniel, not Thad Cochran would be their senator. Tribal identity is a very human attribute (none of us escape it – I find my visits to the deep south make me feel more foreign then my trips to Germany) and unfortunately, whites in the deep south get a great deal of their identity out of being not Black, being Churched in an Evangelical Church, and not being a Yankee. After the Civil War and up to the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s that meant being a Southern Democrat. In the years since the Civil Rights Revolution, this now means being a Republican. Rationally, this means insane voting against their own self-interest (see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-white/why-the-hell-is-mississip_b_4055688.html), but we humans are not particularly rational animals and the emotional charge and resentments they feel have been channeled against Blacks, liberals, Democrats, and coastal elites with their cultural liberalism. They are not much different then the protestant German peasants and petit bourgeois of Central and Northern Germany who were strongest base of Nazi support. They put their faith they put in their corrupt leaders and hatred they have for the others. Grant and Sherman broke the old slavocracy in 1864-65, but violence and tenacity built the new Jim Crow and a new elite adapting to post civil war capitalism. A new Jim Crow is being created in the aftermath Civil Rights revolution. I am afraid another generation will pass before this one is overthrown.
Xboxershorts
@gene108:
Interestingly, the original benefactor of the RW noise machine, the one who first financed Karl Rove’s little Arkansas experiment, Richard Mellon Scaife’s grand kids just filed suit against the estate to try and figure out what happened to some $200,000,000.00 that appears to be missing and unaccounted for.
WereBear
@Xboxershorts: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Let the word get around. Maybe the heirs can step in and save themselves… and us. In any rational world, the Koch Brothers are certifiable.
West of the Cascades
There may be a horrible outcome from the King decision in the Supreme Court, but it’s almost certain not to be the “constitutional” outcome that Gardner describes – meaning that, at worst, the Court will say that — as a matter of statutory interpretation — it is holding that Congress established a strange system where every individual state could decide to establish an exchange, and have its citizens receive subsidies, or decide not to, in which case the federal government would run the exchange and not have its citizens receive subsidies.
Because this is not what Congress intended, and it’s extremely unlikely that Congress would ever really create a system like this, the Supreme Court’s decision will have to be limited to the unusual language of the PPACA – it may look like, for this statute, the Court is creating some strange federalism principle, or (more likely) claiming that it’s Congress’s fault that Congress created the strange federalism principle, but that rationale won’t be a broad constitutional precedent that will infect other cases.
What the Court might do is horrible, but it’s horribleness will likely be limited because King does not raise any constitutional issues — just the question whether the IRS’s regulation that provides that subsidies are available to people who get insurance through either the state or federal exchange is correctly interpreting the language in the PPACA as “ambiguous.” Note that, to find for the petitioners (the right-wingers who are trying to undercut the PPACA) the Supreme Court has to hold that the PPACA is unambiguous in its provision that subsidies are only available on an exchange established by a state. That’s a pretty limited holding.
Some states will move quickly to “establish an exchange” – which might be as simple as creating a website and pointing it at Healthcare.gov (“Oregon Health Exchange, Brought To You By Healthcare.gov”) – others will see that subsidies are FREE MONEY! that helps the overall state budget even if it also incidentally helps the poors and the blahs and slowly “establish” exchanges – and possibly, given that this will almost unambiguously be a case of Republicans taking away people’s healthcare, maybe the Republicans (who now have to prove they actually can govern) are shamed into a four-word amendment to the PPACA that says “established by a state or the federal government.”
Although I am not holding my breath about the last scenario.
Asdf
@Sherparick.
Well stated.
Another Holocene Human
@Schlemazel: You’re a fucken idiot, and ironically you happen to be upriver of them, too.
The communities around the old IC railroad line are more developed and more liberal–for Mississippi–than the Delta regions which indicates to me that decent jobs and intercourse both economic and cultural with more sane states like Illinois has a salutory effect on the nation’s most miserable state. Jackson, after all, had elected an old-school 60s radical as mayor (Chokwe Lumumba, who unfortunately passed away before completing his first term).
Internet connection today is doing what the railroad did in the past, connecting young Mississippians to the outside world and its very different mores. Their society is going through a reckoning about GLBT people right now that the North went through 20 years ago, for example.
What keeps Mississippi down is hatred, fear, and ignorance. I don’t think these are intractable issues forever.
Neither did Fannie Lou Hamer.
Starfish
So far, Mississippi has not seen much if any benefits from the ACA. The number of uninsured in Mississippi has increased since the ACA:
Another Holocene Human
@dww44: Radio Free Southeast?
Ironically, Gwen Graham seems to have reached rural voters on the Florida side there. That didn’t just happen this year, of course.
Nunn was 200,000 votes away. Kay Hagan was about 100,000 votes away. These are completely doable.
On corruption, I promise you FL is every bit as corrupt as MS.
Another Holocene Human
@Starfish: burgeoning uninsured rates were part of the status quo ante
and if wages are too low you can’t buy on the exchange
Miss’ssip’ is also the source of the straw-purchased GUNZZZ that are flooding Chicago and being used by criminals in slayings. While Rahmbo is spending money on stadiums for private schools instead of homicide detectives the state of IL can only do so much when you have the lawfree zone to the south providing a seemingly endless supply of death machines.
dww44
@Another Holocene Human: I like that idea. I am hoping that Nunn will run again. However, on GPB radio this afternoon I heard that our other GOP Senator, Johnny Isakson (who lays low) is announcing that he’s gonna run in two years to replace himself. That’s a big jump on any Democratic opposition. While Isakson is no firebreather, he will be 72 when he runs, so there’s a chance we could field someone new and young and fresh. Carter and Nunn were much the better candidates, plus younger
.@gene108: Yep, this needs to be worked on lots. Should be an easy fix, really.