Be publicly stated that he would prefer a single payer system, but didn’t think it was politically possible. And he concluded that a nearly universal system with a mandate was better than no system at all. So yes, it’s ok to do that, because that’s what compromise means.
The Republicans never did anything of the sort. They tried to pull the rug out from under any and every compromise solution proposed by the president.
That is my point. Why did it have no support with Obama as president. Did nt.Republicans back away because it would give some kind of political points to Obama, or did they back away because they never really supported it in the first place – that they proposed it so they could justify supporting it rather than the single payer system the Dems had on the table?
I’m a conservative Republican and I don’t dispute this at all, nor would I chalk it up as any kind of dishonesty. You have to play the game as it is presented.
You will always settled for the next worst thing if you are looking at the possibility of the worst thing. It would be similar to having a choice between living on the street or in a trailer and you choose the trailer. Then years later when you are in a better financial position, you have a choice between a house or a trailer. You choose a house, but someone calls you a hypocrite because years earlier you chose a trailer and why aren’t you being consistent now?
The GOP never wanted the individual mandate, for example, but it was better than the Clinton plan that looked to pass. You could say that Barney Frank, et al who wanted single payer did the same thing: They voted for a GOP plan (individual mandate) instead of voting their conscience and demanding single payer. That’s politics. You draw the battle lines where you can win and abandon the losing positions.
39% of Democrat house member voted for the Iraq war and 62% of Democrat Senators voted for the war. Yet, Barry O ran against the war. Is this massive hypocrisy or a reaction to changing facts. The Iraq war looked like a better idea in 2003 than it did in 2008.
The individual mandate was supposed to bring down the cost of health insurance by ending the practice of uninsured people getting health care at emergency rooms and not paying for it. The individual mandate was tried in Massachusetts and health insurance is more expensive than ever there and emergency room visits are not down. Seeing this may have caused some people to change their minds.
Cap and trade was supposed to be an efficient way to cap carbon pollution while raising money. It was tried in europe and failed miserably. This has caused many to stop supporting it.
When ideas are shown to not work, those ideas should be abandoned. Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Obama himself was against the war from the beginning, though.
I would like to see a Republican politician on record citing Massachusetts as the reason for no longer supporting an individual mandate. Additionally, several Republicans supported the Wyden-Bennett Bill, which included an individual mandate.
I would like to see a Republican politician on record citing Europe as the reason for no longer supporting cap-and-trade.
I’d say no. A lot of legislation they originally put into being has been mishandled over time. This is true about any legislation and not just those laws brought forth by Republicans. Consider the early civil rights laws and what they lead to today. Now it’s legal to discriminate against one demographic as long as it supports another that is deemed in need. My own city has been forced by the DOJ to lower standards for fire and police jobs. The whole point of civil service tests is to avoid this kind of nonsense and put everybody on the same level.
The EPA was established by Nixon to clean up the environment yet today it looks at what animals breath out as an environmental danger to the point it’s about to cost us a lot of money.
Romney created a State based insurance program and Democrats today are trying to force it nationally.
Lawyers on this site can better explain how laws such as the Commerce Act have been co-opted into entirely different directions.
Don’t know about the GOP but the conservative (and GOP-tied) Heritage Foundation originally created the idea and began advocating for it among GOP politicians in 1989, a few years before Clinton was even a twinkle in any presidential election voter’s eye…
Saying “I accept this reluctantly on pragmatic political grounds” is different from saying “I believe this is the ideal position.”
The view you are arguing against is the view that Obama accepted the mandate explicitly on pragmatic political grounds, while Republicans have instead claimed that the mandate is, in itself, a bad idea even though they previously said that it, in itself, is a good idea.
The former is not “flip flopping” in any meaningful sense. The latter is.
It’s supposed to make health care more cost effective. That’s not the same as bringing down total moneys spent on health care. (If exactly the same people were getting exactly the same services now as had been before, then medical expenditures would go down. But with universal health care comes, no surprise, increased actual acts of health care. Hence even as the cost effectiveness increases, the total expenditures may rise. I don’t see that as problematic.)
And every bit of research (both from liberal and conservative groups) indicates that cost effectiveness of health care in Massachusettes has improved dramatically.
DAYTON – The Dayton Police Department is lowering its testing standards for recruits.
It’s a move required by the U.S. Department of Justice after it says not enough African-Americans passed the exam.
Dayton is in desperate need of officers to replace dozens of retirees. The hiring process was postponed for months because the D.O.J. rejected the original scores provided by the Dayton Civil Service Board, which administers the test.
Under the previous requirements, candidates had to get a 66% on part one of the exam and a 72% on part two.
The D.O.J. approved new scoring policy only requires potential police officers to get a 58% and a 63%. That’s the equivalent of an ‘F’ and a ‘D’.
The story you linked to is the only source I can find.
Frankly, I don’t believe the story is accurate. If it is literally true, it’s describing a massively boneheaded misunderstanding and misapplication of the relevant laws.
Notice how the story assumes a 58% is “equivalent to an F”. That’s a strong claim. I can write you an exam right now where getting 58% of the answers correct would show you should earn a grade of A on the topic covered. That the news story blithely includes such assumptions in its reporting gives me further reasons to be skeptical.
What I suspect happened is this: DoJ said there’s something wrong with the exam, and said “give us an exam that doesn’t discriminate.” City could have come up with a good exam that doesn’t discriminate. Instead, they foolishly designed a bad exam that doesn’t discriminate. DoJ, meanwhile, could care less whether it’s a good exam or a bad exam, and instead simply looked to see whether it discriminates or not. They saw that it didn’t, and so “approved” of the exam. Then the incident was misreported by the city to the media, and by the media to everyone else.
“(1) if an employer’s policy has disparate racial consequences, and (2) if the employer cannot give a reasonable justification for such a policy on grounds of “business necessity,” then the employer’s policy violates Title VII.”
In other words, disparate impact can be justified on grounds of business necessity. If the Dayton Police were being prosecuted for disparate impact, this means they couldn’t (or didn’t) show that the test was good for the business of being a police department. In which case hell yes they better change the test.
But, foolishly, they chose to change the test to make it worse for the business of being a police department (while not discriminating) instead of making it better for the business of being a police department (while not discriminating.)
Fylock, this has been an ongoing event in my city. What I cited was the second round of it. It’s the second time they’ve ordered the standards lowered. I’m not going to debate with you that it happened. The law, as it stands today effectively demands that standards be set aside under the premise that it if the numbers don’t line up it discriminates and not that the test themselves discriminate.
That is exactly, as in EXACTLY what the DOJ required of the city. There was no attempt to show how the tests discriminated based on any criteria of race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation.
Can you show me the relevant document? Wherein it is demanded that the city lower standards?
The DoJ doesn’t have to show how the test discriminates–only that it does.
Then the police department has the option of showing that, even though the test discriminates, the test must remain as it is in order for the police department to be able to run itself well as a police department.
If they can’t do that, then the police department is indeed discriminating for no justifiable reason, and should change its testing process.
One way to change its testing process is to lower standards. That’s a horrible way to do it. But if doing it ends discrimination, then there’s no longer a basis for prosecution so that’s all the DoJ can have to say about it.
Can you show me the relevant DOJ document showing parts of the test were discriminatory? You’re asking for a level of proof you haven’t bothered to supply.
This has been going on for years. The city used outside sources to create a neutral test. This test was rejected by the DOJ for no other reason than it didn’t produce enough black candidates. There was no attempt to prove any part of the test or the subsequent tests were discriminatory. Since the court does not entertain arguments over the material in the test it becomes pointless to continually invest money creating a new test.
Finally, to understand that this is in fact the case, the court did not reject the latest test but simply accepted a lowering of the standard for the test. So logically, if the test is discriminating, they are allowing it as long as the standards are lowered.
But even that didn’t work. The city just did away with the civil service test and went tooral tests. So we’re now down to quota hiring with no discernible skills test beyond a group of people voting on X number of black candidates.
You can see this in DOJ documents that they set a quota:
The City shall make no more than five (5) priority appointments to police officer positions and no more than nine (9) priority hire appointments to the firefighter positions. Once those required appointments are made, or once the Priority Hire List is exhausted because all persons on the list have either been hired, have withdrawn, or have been disqualified, the City will have no further obligation to appoint individuals from the applicable Priority Hire List.
Isn’t a “quota” usually understood to set a minimum, not an upper limit? This appears to be more like an explanation of a standard, as in. “do this much, and you’re cool”.
Apparently you don’t even understand what my claim is. Let me state it again:
My claim is that the Department of Justice did not order Dayton to lower its standards.
I do not argue for the claim that the test was discriminatory (though I’d bet money that it was if I had any). I do argue for the claim that the Department of Justice required Dayton to create a non-discriminatory test, but did not require Dayton to lower standards on the test.
There is no need to prove that particular parts or that subsequent tests were discriminatory. All that’s needed is to show that the test itself is discriminatory. That’s presumed if it has a disparate impact. And once a disparate impact has been shown to hold (as I assume it was since no one challenged the claim), the police department can still argue that the test needs to be as it is due to “business necessity.” But apparently the police department couldn’t or wouldn’t argue along those lines. Hence, they were required to change the test.
And I claim they were not required to lower the standards. They were only required to change it (or replace it) so that the new version or new test did not have the disparate impact of the old one.
According to the story you linked to, it’s the DoJ which accepted the new test. Presumably, unless you can show otherwise, they accepted the new test because it did not have the problem they’d found in the old test–namely, the disparate impact.
Which may be an incredibly foolish way to do it. But you don’t have the DoJ to blame, you have the city to blame, for choosing to fulfill title IX by designing, on it’s own, without being forced to, a piss-poor method for determining who would be a good police officer.
If they had a good method, (i.e. if the test design could be justified by reference to the necessities involved in running the business of a police department) then the test would be legal even if it was discriminatory. That’s the law.
I’m sorry, I’m not seeing that language, either in section 54 or on page 54, so I’m not able to evaluate its applicability here.
You will note, though, that the order you linked to says the City is to come up with a new test which will be judged by the DoJ and the court based on the question of whether it has a disparate impact or not. That is exactly what I said probably happened–they judged the new test based just on whether it has a disparate impact. Dayton could have given them a good test for police officers which had no disparate impact. Instead Dayton chose to give them a poor test for police officers which had no disparate impact. Since the DoJ and the court were only concerned with whether it had a disparate impact or not, they signed off on it. The responsibility for the poor quality of the test lies with the city, not with the DoJ or the federal court.