Looks like Joe Wilson was right: Obama lied:
Illegals can actually get ACA benefits.
Sure. And the GOP is the party of magical thinking. Of course if some party lies about how via Laffer Magic they can cut taxes and buy everything we need, that’s going to gain traction.
It’s shitty that people still buy that nonsense to the extent that they do.
There is nothing inherently unconstitutional about campaign finance laws. And as for appointing the “right” justices, you might note that the Conservative Wing of the SCOTUS is as far from non-ideological.
And we can change the constitution. It’s just harder. I guess that’s a limit, but the gingers better watch out.
THe Republicans are the only ones even engaging the public in the debate over entitlements. Democrats should also be communicating with the public about the entitlement challenge and their ideas for fixing it.
Campaign finance laws are not inherently unconstitutional, just so long as you don’t get into the actual act of censorship as a means of enforcing them, or try to limit money for the sake of limiting money, even when no corruption is possible, such as self-funded candidates.
Democrats are nearly united now in actually wanting to censor political speech, which would be fine if they recognized that because of our 1st amendment, it can’t be done. Instead, they are going to resort to court packing again, and they want to go a lot further than merely overturning Citizens United. Even the dissenters in that decision affirmed constitutional limits that Democrats want to breach, such as corporate personhood.
Please actually listen to what I’m saying. I understand that you feel viscerally that you need to defend the concept of natural rights.
But you’re falling back on how a religious person argues for the existence of God here.
**Let’s be clear what’s happening here:
**
Lobohan: Natural rights don’t exist apart from what cultures enforce.
Bone: People think that they do exist.
Lobohan: So what? People think lots of things.
Bone: So prove they don’t exist!
Lobohan: My evidence they don’t exist apart from what cultures enforce, is that no one can state how these “natural rights” have any real existence aside from what a culture enforces.
You’re asserting that the burden of proving they don’t exist is on me. I’m asserting that they do absolutely nothing and the universe wouldn’t be at all different if they did or didn’t exist.
I’ve more than supported my side of this. All you have to do is prove to me that your “natural right” to whatever has any real existence aside from what cultures or governments enforce.
I’ve never said that I’m right and everyone who disagrees is wrong. I’m saying that the people who disagree have no evidence at all and are only gratuitously asserting these “natural rights.”
Please prove these things exist aside from what the government enforces.
The “right to health care” to the extent that it exists, stems from the same thing as your right to life and liberty. It’s enforced by the government.
Exactly. Enforcing the claim is what makes a right exist. You can bitch about your right to liberty, but that right isn’t real until something defends it.
Even if I concede your argument, a right is something more than something the government in its benevolence gives you. A right is something you are entitled to, and when the government infringes on it it is at best a necessary evil, at worst an atrocity. In other words, we can’t just repeal the 1st amendment because we believe society would be better off without it. Even if you could prove that free speech is bad for society somehow, we would still have the right to free speech and any government that took it away would be regarded as tyrannical and worthy of forcible overthrow.
Wrong. There’s nothing in the ACA that applies funding for illegal immigrants to get health care.
If some illegal immigrants illegally obtained identification and obtained benefits, that doesn’t mean that Obama lied. Further, your article doesn’t even say that the illegal immigrants utilized the ACA – it just says “And although the Affordable Care Act does not guarantee health insurance to DACA recipients, a significant share of our respondents have reported obtaining health care since receiving their DACA paperwork”. They ‘obtain[ed] health care’ – not ‘obtained health care by utilizing the ACA’.
Did you really think that you wouldn’t be challenged on this? Did you even read your own article? Tsk tsk tsk, adaher. Lazy, lazy posting.
I’m aware that ACA doesn’t allow illegals to get benefits. Illegals can’t get jobs either. The question is whether the administration will actually enforce the law.
But you did make a good find there. The study does not actually show that they received subsidies, which is the illegal part. So yeah, I muffed that one.
The Democrats have extended Medicare’s lifespan. Social security is stable for the next thirty-some years. And after that, it can be stable indefinitely if we cut the payouts to 75%. There is room to work on it, but making Medicare into a voucher system is asinine. You talk about death panels, shifting the elderly to private insurance is a lot closer to that than Obamacare.
Any speech can be censored. You are currently unable to yell fire in a crowded theater. Are you allowed to incite the overthrow of the US govt?
The question is, does allowing unfettered money in politics rise to the level of needing to be dealt with. It’s not that one of us is un-American, it’s that we disagree on how serious the concept is.
On the contrary - I’m challenging your assertion. You said, “Rights come from the state.” and “Rights don’t exist unless the society you’re in says they do.” You made the assertion. The burden of proof is on you. This is independent of the concept of natural rights. Feel free to ignore completely the concept of natural rights if their introduction makes it difficult for you to support your assertion.
If I had said, “Natural rights exist independent of what society says” then it would be appropriate to challenge that assertion. Fortunately I have not made that assertion - you have in the same form with a different meaning. So I ask again, cite that rights don’t exist unless the society you’re in says they do?
You’ve failed to support your assertion and seem to be clinging dogmatically to it for some reason.
I agree that the voucher system is asinine. One thing Republicans need to evolve on is that some things government actually does do better. If only because simplicity is your friend and sometimes partial privatization just introduces more complexity into the mix. It’s one reason I actually prefer single payer to ACA, although that’s just a lesser level of hate. But single payer does have the virtue of being a hell of a lot simpler, and thus less likely to have any of its moving parts fail.
But to get back to the actual point, Republicans have actively sold their proposals to the public. The public didn’t like them. Fine, that’s democracy. The Democrats sold nothing. They just made changes and then denied that benefits would be impacted in any way. That’s not an honest look at the tradeoffs of fiscal policy, that’s promising voters that there’s a free lunch. And the only reason Democrats even discussed the issue with voters at all is because they had to rebut Republican attacks on their program. If the GOP had gone flaccid during that period, Democrats would have made all these changes with no public comment desired.
That’s not totally accurate. Speech can only be limited when the government can prove a compelling interest in limiting it. And the standard of proof is very high. If your speech is very likely to directly get people killed, hell yeah that’s prosecutable. But if it just offends or damages their self-esteem, no dice. With campaign finance, the standard has historically been that the laws must be tailored to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption. Which is why in 1976, limits on self-funded candidates were struck down by a pretty liberal court. Making elections “fair” is not a compelling government interest.
The issue is that it needs to actually be proven that this money is corrupting our politics. Democrats don’t want to have to defend that standard. They just want to be able to pass whatever campaign finance laws they see fit and that’s that.
The government, ultimately, is people. And people decide how they want it to work. It’s people respecting the right to free speech that makes it unthinkable for congress to gut it. At least until gerrymandering, voter suppression tactics and unlimited money set us up into an oligarchical lock that can’t be broken short of revolution.
That’s a big difference in our system though, we don’t believe the majority can infringe on the individual rights of the minority. Even on an issue like campaign finance reform where something like 80-90% of the public agrees with you over me, changing things by amendment will be a bitch. That’s by design.
I don’t think you understand how arguments go.
Lobohan: I assert that vampires don’t exist.
Bone: People believe in vampires!
Lobohan: So?
Bone: Support your assertion!
How exactly do I support the assertion that something doesn’t exist? Can I show you a molecule by molecule scan in realtime of the Earth and nearby solar system?
I can show you that no one has ever demonstrated its existence. All natural rights are bald assertions. Since there is no evidence for their existence, aside from those assertions, they can be dismissed.
The way to counter the assertion that something doesn’t exist, is to provide evidence that it does. So please, go out natural rights hunting and let me know how that turns out.
So, for billions of years of evolution, property rights existed, subject to the Law of the Jungle, until government came along?
Are you making this up as you go along? There are no natural rights without government.
This would be interesting, except this isn’t how this exchange took place. Your characterization of the conversation is false. Let’s see:
Post 3140:
This is your assertion. It wasn’t a negative assertion as your false example attempts to portray.
The discussion is more like:
Lobohan: * Rights come from the state.*
Bone: Cite?
Lobohan: No.
Bone: Please?
Lobohan: Monkeys and Bananas!*
So for the person that is the victim in your scenario, did they have a right to not be victimized (I’m not clear on your “do whatever they want to you” involves, but I imagine for the sake of example it’s violent or unwanted)? Were their rights removed, or violated, or something else?
*I stretched that last part, but only just so.
You’re the one who brought in “natural rights.”
Again, I think the problem here is that you simply don’t understand how arguing goes.
I am saying that rights come from the state. I am also saying (after you brought it up) that natural rights don’t exist.
Rights come from the state, or more simply cultures if you’re living in a tribe and don’t have a state to speak of because that’s how they’re enforced. You can sit on your duff and assert the right to blowjobs by '80s pornstar Chrsty Canyon all you like. But until society enforces that right, it’s just monkeyshines.
I assert that “natural rights” don’t exist, because as far as I know, no one on Earth has demonstrated how a natural right is different from not having a natural right.
Rights are a social construct. They’re something we agree each other has. If your culture doesn’t think you have the right to your property, guess what? Anyone can take it, if they can take it.
Again, go into the jungle and ask a puma about your right to life. You’ll see that he doesn’t feel obligated to respect that right.
Again, you’re just like a creationist demanding that I prove God doesn’t exist. I can’t prove He doesn’t exist, but I can show that no can prove that He does.
I’ve supported my side, the only time rights mean anything at all, is when society says they do.
Let’s see if I can summarize your argument: no u.
If two people are on an island sans government are you saying that one can kill the other with impunity, rape, torture, etc. without violating the other person’s rights, as long as they are strong enough to do so? I think you believe this. I don’t.
Ah, I see your problem, you think *rights *and shit I’d prefer are the same thing.
Of course you shouldn’t kill and torture other people. What does that have to do with rights? Your impulse to not kill others is based on our evolution as a social species. Not some fantastical Right of Life that predated the universe.
Of course it’s shitty to rape, murder and steal. But how is that person’s “natural right” to not be raped, murdered or stolen from, meaningful in the least? No one is enforcing that right, so it means exactly nothing.
Please answer this: In what way is the universe any different on that island if those rights exist or not? If the bigger rapist, murderer guy decides to obey them, great, they live on the island in peace. If not, what do these mystic natural rights do?
What do you base this on?
What do you base this on?
They provide guidance on objective moral behavior. Ultimately I think this is a philisophical question and my objection to your characterization rests on your dogmatic approach to a belief set that has no empirical basis. I accept you think the way you’ve stated, and that it has no greater certainty than what I have espoused. Though our current (U.S) government is founded on principles that are consistent with the concept of natural rights so it’s not like the concept is not mainstream. I would say the belief that rights are only derived from what the state grants is more foreign to the U.S. system of government than the opposite.