america

It’s Time for Federal Judicial Term Limits

This entry was posted in america constitution politics and tagged america constitution scotus supreme court term limits on by (updated 4396 days ago)

Yes, you read the headline correctly.  I’m calling for an end to lifetime appointments for federal judges.

Contrary to what most people on the extremes of the political spectrum (both right and left) will tell you, there is nothing wrong with evolving your opinions. In fact any sane and reasonably intelligent person needs to listen and learn throughout their life and occasionally adjust their views on various subjects.

I’d like to think that I fall into that sane and reasonably intelligent category. Certainly President Barack Obama does and much as he would be loath to acknowledge it, so would Mitt Romney. Both of these men have evolved their views over the course of their careers, more for political expediency than actual heartfelt beliefs, but at least their positions have moved.

Recently I’ve heard the idea of term limits for federal judges raised and I’m now inclined to agree.  In principle, I agree with the way that the judiciary was set up in the constitution. By appointing judges for life, it was supposed to remove partisanship and political considerations from their rulings.

However, in order for that concept to truly work, we have to appoint the superior jurists to begin with based on their qualifications and not their political ideology. The problem is that it’s exceedingly difficult to be an impartial judge that keeps their own political beliefs out of their rulings. As we’ve seen in recent decades, that becomes even more difficult with age.

We all know old people and most of will one day achieve that status. The fact is that as we get older we get more and more set in our habits and beliefs. It’s neither right nor wrong, it’s just the way we are.  However, the world is changing around us, and faster than ever today. That means that anyone that is going make decisions about the law, needs to adapt as well.

As hard as it is to select good judges, the problem is made even more difficult by politicians that are taking an increasingly hard political line.  Presidents have always taken politics into account when appointing judges, especially to the supreme court, but it does seem to have taken a turn for the worse in the last few decades and Republicans (and to a lesser degree Democrats) in the senate have truly politicized the process.

It’s time for us to acknowledge that despite the aims of the constitution, politics is a big part of the judicial branch and that we need to do something about that. Lifetime terms for federal judges have not had the desired effect of de-politicizing the judiciary as both Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito demonstrated in their boisterous opinions from the bench this week.

Since we are clearly incapable of selecting truly impartial justices, and they only seem to get worse over time, I suggest we limit the terms of federal judges to 12 years.

I’m generally not in favor of arbitrary term limits for elected officials since this often leads to inexperienced legislators that can’t seem to do anything but bicker. I’d prefer to have voters cast out their representatives. On the other hand, I don’t think that direct elections of judges are a good thing either.

I think the president should continue to select federal judges with the senate confirming these choices. However, after 12 years, the judges must step down from the federal bench and never return. Like the Senate’s 6-year terms that are staggered so that only one-third is up for re-election every two years, judicial terms should be staggered.  In general no president should be allowed to appoint more than two supreme court justices in a single term. In the event that a judge dies, falls ill or resigns before their term is up, if more than two years remain in the term, the president can appoint a replacement to serve the remainder of that term.  If less than two years are left, the appointee can finish the existing term and a complete twelve year term.

Details would have to be worked out, but I think the time for lifetime federal judges is behind us and we need to evolve our views on this topic.

Curing the Heartbreak of Insufficient Lashes?

This entry was posted in america business on by (updated 4396 days ago)

Latisse

Never heard or it? I certainly hadn’t until watching a marathon of the original Bob Newhart Show on the Hallmark Channel.

Latisse is a prime example of why America spends more on health care than any other country in the world while not having any improved outcomes to show for it.  We aren’t healthier, we don’t live longer and we’re generally not any happier than people in other developed countries.

So what is Latisse? It’s a prescription drug to treat thin or insufficient lashes. Yes eye-lashes, those little hairs that emerge from the edge of your eye-lids.  There are countless diseases that kill or disable hundreds of millions of people every year but I’ve never heard of anyone dying from thin eye-lashes.

So what? you might say, insurance companies probably don’t pay for it (mine doesn’t) so it’s not costing me anything. Despite patients paying for it out of pocket it still costs all of us.

We have limited financial and intellectual resources and developing new drugs typically costs well over $1 billion and occupies thousands of scientists. Even if we give Allergan, the company that makes Latisse, the benefit of the doubt and assume that Latisse was discovered by accident while looking for something actually useful, it still requires at least hundreds of millions of dollars and the time of FDA officials to run clinical trials before approvals. Those are resources that would be far better utilized elsewhere.

So why do we have drugs like Latisse on the market even though they don’t serve any useful purpose in improving human health? I think it’s because we allow companies to patent this stuff and then turn around and market directly to consumers on mass media. The entire fashion and cosmetics industry thrives on making women feel bad about the way they look. Drugs like this drive women to doctors to ask for these drugs, wasting the time of medical professionals and driving up costs for everyone.

As with most other modern drugs, the ads for Latisse outline a litany of potential side effects, any or all of which can lead to additional medical expenses. We have more than 50 million Americans without health insurance and yet we are squandering resources ridiculous drugs like Latisse.

One first step might be to require pharmaceutical companies to shoulder all of the costs of proving the safety of drugs like Latisse and Viagra that do nothing to improve health.

If we actually want to make any real progress on making health care more affordable while improving outcomes, we need to make changes to the drug patent system, get rid of direct to consumer advertising, refocus on health rather than cosmetic medicine.

 

It's long past time for the American police state that has accelerated in the… 5

This entry was posted in america politics and tagged Google+ on by (updated 4396 days ago)

It's long past time for the American police state that has accelerated in the wake of 9/11 to be disbanded. You cannot protect freedom by burying it beneath the boot heels of the state.

Reshared post from +Peter Smalley

[Politics]

Meanwhile, in Syria…

Errr, Egypt…

I mean, Libya – no wait, Iraq…

This is our America: a police state, where civil protest is treason, to be put down with brutality and superior firepower.

Wake up and smell the anger, Sweet Land of Liberty. And hurry.

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Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.

The same old gang of idiots 1

This entry was posted in america politics on by (updated 4396 days ago)

Remember the definition of insanity that we’ve all heard? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

Are you concerned about the rising price of gas? Unless you’re a 1 percenter (in which case you probably aren’t reading this anyway) you most likely are. The remaining crop of Republican candidates for president are all laying the blame at the hands of the current president Barack Obama. However, if you look at historical prices for gas over the last two decades, you’ll notice that they were relatively stable through the 90s before a steady upward climb in the past decade.

Data from Energy Information Agency, EIA.gov

The steady rise corresponds with the Bush administration’s drive to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. While correlation is never proof of causality, in this case there is more. The collapse of gas prices in late 2008 coincided directly with the overall collapse that resulted from the economic policies of the preceding years.

Of course all of that started with the steady drumbeat for war from the GOP neo-cons including Dick Cheney, Lindsay Graham, Paul Wolfowitz and so many others. The current spike in prices is happening at the same time that many of these same re-treads are back on the Sunday morning talk shows trying to make the case for an attack on Iran. This morning on Up with Chris Hayes, the host played a montage of the words from the cast of characters that took us into Iraq and the words they are spouting today. Check out the following clip, especially from about 2 minutes in.

Americans have notoriously short memories but this is a case when we need to remember what happened in 2001-2003 and make sure that we don’t let these morons take us into another needless war. If you want your gas prices to go down, tell every politician and pundit that’s arguing for an attack on Iran to stop and equally importantly lets make sure the Israelis don’t attack Iran either.

If you thought Iraq was a mess, Iran will be far worse if we go to war. President Obama is not to blame for the current spike in prices, it’s right-wing war mongers and the financial speculators that are trying to profit from the possibility of restricted supplies.

#politics #war #iran

 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Protecting the powerful at the expense of the masses

This entry was posted in america ministry of truth politics technology and tagged an informed public gags politics power the powerful transparency unions on by (updated 4396 days ago)

Over the past decade in particular but for some time before that there has been an increasing movement to protect the powerful in our society at the expense of the common people. This movement has accelerated dramatically in the past year at least in part because of the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that essentially freed corporate interests to spend as much as they want on political campaigns while individuals remain shackled by campaign finance laws.

We can see the initial effects in places like Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan where newly elected republican governors and legislatures have moved rapidly to bring in legislation to strip public sector employees of collective bargaining rights and here in Michigan to dissolve local governments and school boards and replace them with private sector “emergency financial managers.”

However, the problem goes well beyond that into many other sectors of society. For example a company called Medical Justice that aims to protect doctors from frivolous malpractice suits sells them contracts that they can use with their patients. Doctors using these contracts force patients to sign them before providing treatment. These contracts are meant to provide a shield for the doctors from public reviews of their work. According to these “anti-defamation” contracts patients can either be prohibited from posting online reviews of their doctors or the doctors are given the right to edit or delete online postings from patients.

While bogus reviews from disgruntled employees or others with a grudge are always a potential problem, no such contract will do anything to stop it. Anyone can set up a blog or go on Facebook, Twitter or some other site and make negative comments. Doctors are ill-served by paying for such contracts and any patient presented with one should refuse to sign and go find another doctor.  If a doctor is truly providing bad service the public should know about it and the doctor should either improve or go out of business.  DoctoredReviews.com has an excellent response to this whole subject.

Another prime example of the powerful trying to gag the ordinary is pointed out by Seth Godin. In Iowa the legislature is moving forward with a law that would make it illegal to record activities at industrial farming operations without the owners consent. The reality is that many of these operations treat animals very poorly in the pursuit of higher profit margins. While there is nothing wrong in general with profit, the food produced by these farms is often of lower quality (taste and nutritional value) and more susceptible to contamination from pathogens like e-coli.

When public health is at risk, the idea of government banning anyone from showing what goes on these facilities is extremely troubling but unfortunately entirely consistent with politicians that have been funded by the wealthy and powerful.

Godin goes on to explain that public transparency is almost invariably better for business than gagging the public. Republicans like to go on and on about protecting free markets, but they really only care about one side of the equation.  A truly free market requires that both buyers and sellers be informed about the true value of a product and be aware the total supply and demand. Without this knowledge, one side can easily manipulate the other to their own benefit and that is never a good thing for the long-term health of a market or a society.

Regardless of whether the market is for medical services, chicken or labor, both sides of the supply demand equation must be educated and free to take their products/services or money elsewhere.

The irony of Republican opposition to intervention in Libya 1

This entry was posted in america middle east politics war and tagged hypocrisy libya newt gingrich republicans on by (updated 4396 days ago)

With republican heavyweights like Newt Gingrich and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen showing absolutely no reluctance to reverse course on policy in Libya as soon as President Obama actually began to enforce a no-fly zone, it’s worth looking at their opinions from another perspective.

Back in 2001, when former President George W Bush decided to invade Iraq, the decision was made on the pretense that Iraq was amassing weapons of mass destruction and providing material support to Al Qaeda. As many of us at the time said, neither assertion was true, and time has proven us correct. Nonetheless, Bush and his cronies sent American soldiers into Iraq and now nearly a decade later, tens of thousands of them are still there despite the fact that Iraq has never attacked America.

Now the question is what to do about Libya. We largely stood by and watched while the people of Tunisia and Egypt overthrew their entrenched leaders and we are doing the same now in Syria and Yemen.

Many republicans are now staunchly opposed to action in Libya even though they were all for it just a few weeks ago. What nobody seems to be mentioning is the fact that unlike Iraq, Muammar Ghadaffi actually has had his agents attack American interests including Pan Am flight 103 and a German disco frequented by American soldiers. Despite the fact that Ghadaffi actually has a history of attacking Americans (something that Saddam Hussien never actually did) Gingrich and Ros-Lehtinen are opposing action in Libya.

That’s not to say that U.S. forces should be involved, because the results of this are certainly unclear. My point is simply that the Republican leadership are just a bunch of political hacks and hypocrites who stand for nothing more than to oppose a Democratic president in order to further their own ambitions.

Obama is a spineless fool and tax cuts for the rich won’t create jobs 1

This entry was posted in america politics on by (updated 4396 days ago)

The Republican argument that giving tax cuts to the richest Americans will get them to create new jobs is clearly bogus. The tax cuts were enacted in 2001 and ramped over the past decade.  They are currently at their peak so those Americans should be creating jobs at a prodigious pace right now.

Taking a look at the current unemployment rate, it’s clear that those jobs have not been created. So why should we believe speaker-to-be Boner that things will be any different by extending the cuts?

It’s simple, they won’t be any different.

Unless democratic senators stand up and support Bernie Sanders and his promise to filibuster this deal, things will not get any better as a result of this extension. Obama should be absolutely ashamed of himself and rather than whining about “sanctimonious and pure” people that oppose this deal, he should grow a pair and realize that republicans never have and never will compromise with him. He is the only one compromising here and has clearly demonstrated that he has no credibility left.

Insurance IS about collectivism, not individuals

This entry was posted in america politics on by (updated 4396 days ago)

Frank Luntz is a Republican pollster, but more importantly he uses the words that he tests to manipulate the American people. Were it not for Luntz’s words we likely would not have had a Republican controlled congress from the mid-90s and the last eight years of the Cheney-bush administration. Using words to manipulate people is of course nothing new, especially in politics and it happens across the political spectrum.

The problem is that Luntz is particularly effective at find words that hit at irrational fears of Americans and twisting them around into often outright lies. A prime example is on this week’s edition of On the Media at just over 7 minutes in.

Luntz is interviewed on the subject of health care reform and the messages he is crafting for Republicans. Luntz is having the anti-reform side (yes that is an example of using words to manipulate, because the Republicans would love to reform the health industry, but not in anyway that will be beneficial to MOST Americans) de-emphasize the phrases free-markets and competition. He replies to a question about this with

“Well it’s not a matter of changing their principles, because what they support stil maintains an individual focused system rather than a collective system.”

The fundamental problem with this statement is that it runs counter to the entire premise of insurance. Insurance at its core is about collectivism. Insurers collect premiums from customers and pool risk over a large number of customers. The concept is that people pay in such as for homeowners insurance into a pool of money. Ultimately most people will never have their house burned down, robbed or destroyed in an earthquake, while others will.  Some will collect more in claims than they pay in while others will get nothing.  Because you can’t predict everything that will happen in the future, this mechanism allows large numbers of people mitigate financial risk down the road.

The problem with Luntz’s emphasis on individual focus is that it eliminates the whole point of an insurance system. While in many cases individualism is a good thing, health care probably isn’t one of them. When you get really sick or seriously injured the costs can so easily become totally overwhelming. While the wealthy can often afford to take care of themselves, the vast majority of us cannot in an extreme situation like this. Many of us will never need this kind of expensive care, but if we do a collective insurance system can literally be a lifesaver.

This is not about communism as Luntz would like to imply, this is about helping people when they need it most.

Next up the falacy of rationing

American Homes

This entry was posted in america politics on by (updated 4396 days ago)


Over the course of this year I’ve had the opportunity to do quite a bit of travelling and I’ve been to many parts of this land that I’ve never been to before.  Typically when we do our media drives, two writers will share a car and take turns driving.  From the passenger seat I’ve had the opportunity to take many photos of the roadside views. Some of these drives have been in more affluent areas like Malibu, while others have been in the forgotten parts of America.  The ironic thing about listening to Sarah Palin talk about the “true pro-America” parts of the country over the past week is that when you look at many of these places, they are the ones who have been left behind.

It has always struck me as odd that the Republican party has long espoused policies that are most beneficial to the wealthiest people and biggest companies in America and yet the people who have the least seem to be among the strongest supporters of the party.  In places like North and South Carolina, Virginia and Texas, I’ve seen some of the most profound examples of poverty in America and yet they continue to support politicians who seem hell-bent on keeping them in place.