A Conservative’s Arguments on Voter Fraud Dissected

I have several relatives who don’t really understand the entire story behind Voter ID laws.  Periodically, they post something like this:

And since I’m an avid reader who tends to keep better informed than about 98% of the population, I always feel compelled to set the record straight.

The Education of Jackie Sims

Apparently Jackie Sims of Knoxville, Tennessee, has never read porn.

At least, that's my conclusion, based on her claim that the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is pornographic, as reported in The Huffington Post.

I actually own this book, by Rebecca Skloot.  And I've read a bit of porn in my day.  And I would never equate the two.

It's the story of a poor black woman who went in to try to get treated for cervical cancer.  Instead, without her knowledge or consent, samples her tumor were taken.  The cell samples thrived in petri dish, while Ms. Lacks died a horrible death.

The cells are still alive to this day.  Ms. Lacks died in 1951.

History Fun: Separation of Church And State

There are those that argue that same-sex marriage is forbidden by the Bible, and others who will point out that since the United States is a secular nation, it doesn't matter what the Bible says.  And still others maintain that we founded as a Christian nation.

The fact is that our Constitution, the guiding document and supreme law of the United States forbids government - all government - from adopting a state religion in any way, shape, or form.

Let's isolate the part about religion:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

The first part, "shall make no law respecting an establishment of.."  This is something that most Americans do not understand, because we've been separate from England for so long. And let's be honest, history is one of the most tortured and abused subjects in our educational system.  Unless you're an enthusiast, you only know what was briefly covered in your public schooling, which means you really don't know much history at all.

Sorry, but it's true.  History is the class you slept through, and you only liked it when you got to make dioramas of log cabins or teepees.

Kim Davis is no Hero.

There is a loud and misinformed minority that believe that Kim Davis, the Rowan County Clerk who refused to issued wedding licenses to same sex couples even after receiving a court order that she is in fact required by law to do so, was thrown in jail because of her Christian beliefs.

That is not true. In fact, the person who put Kim Davis in jail is Kim Davis. She's in jail because she refused to obey the court order.  Did she have to obey the court order?  Yes, she did.  Why?

Because Kim Davis promised to do exactly that.

Her religious faith has not been at issue at any time in this entire series of events - at least, not as far as the law is concerned.

Kim Davis took this oath of office:

"I, (Kim Davis), do swear that I will well and truly discharge the duties of the office of (Rowan) County Circuit Court clerk, according to the best of my skill and judgment, making the due entries and records of all orders, judgments, decrees, opinions and proceedings of the court, and carefully filing and preserving in my office all books and papers which come to my possession by virtue of my office; and that I will not knowingly or willingly commit any malfeasance of office, and will faithfully execute the duties of my office without favor, affection or partiality, so help me God."
-- The Courier-Journal, September 6, 2015

Let's break this down, with some emphasis on key points.

"...making the due entries and records of all orders, judgments, decrees, opinions and proceedings of the court, and carefully filing and preserving in my office all books and papers which come to my possession by virtue of my office"

 Note that it says ALL , not SELECT.  She promises that she will stamp and record everything that her office is responsible for, period, no exceptions.

The court order she received clearly falls into the category of "all judgements, decrees, opinions, and proceeds of the court."

Furthermore:

"...I will not knowingly or willingly commit any malfeasance of office, and will faithfully execute the duties of my office without favor, affection or partiality, so help me God." 

So she swore to process everything, no exceptions, and she promised complete impartiality, that is, that she wouldn't allow her personal beliefs or convictions  By stating that she would not issue the wedding licenses because it violated her religious convictions, she clearly violated the part of her oath where she promised to do her job "without favor, affection or partiality." 

There is no question that Kim Davis willfully broke the law.

She's trying to wiggle out of it by claiming that she understood the oath to mean "...in upholding the federal and state constitutions and laws, she would not act in contradiction to the moral law of God."

She is basing this spurious claim because the oath ended with the words "So Help Me, God"

So what does that phrase actually mean?

"used to make a ​promise in a very ​formal and ​serious way"--Cambridge Dictionary Online

"The essence of the phrase is to emphasize that one means what one is saying or has said. It therefore implies greater care than usual in the act of the performance of one's duty" -- Wikipedia

Basically, it means that you are calling for God to help you keep your oath.  In this case, it means that Kim Davis called on God to make sure that she would "faithfully execute the duties of my office without favor, affection or partiality."

Kim Davis: Sinner, not Martyr

Kim Davis claims that she is keen on following the dictates of her faith; but in fact, she pays it only select lip service.  And this is apparent to us because she broke her oath of office.

Homosexuality is forbidden by the book of Leviticus.  Leviticus also mentions oaths:

^"Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord."--Leviticus 19:12

Let's review the facts:

1. Kim Davis took an oath of office when she assumed the position of County Clerk
2. In that oath, she promised to make all records presented to her in accordance with law.
3. In that oath, she also promised to do so impartially, without inserting her own opinions into the mix.
4. She called on her higher power to ensure that she did not break her oath of office.

I can only come to these conclusions:

1. She broke her oath of office by refusing to issue the licenses.
2. She broke the law by refusing to obey the lawful order of the court.
3. She committed a sin by breaking the oath she swore to God that she would uphold.

And yet there are STILL those who think that Kim Davis is justified in breaking her oath in order to enforce her personal religious beliefs over the law in direct violation of the Constitution.

To those people, I would task them with reading Mark 12:17

Then Jesus answered them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Ultimately, it is Ms. Davis' right to believe in anything she chooses.  But it is not her right to impose her own beliefs in place of the law while holding the office of County Clerk.  Not only is that a violation of the Constitution, it's a breach of the promise she made to not do exactly that.

Kim Davis does not have to stay in jail, however.  She can walk out the instant she agrees to abide by the oath she swore to uphold the law as Count Clerk of the Courts.  Or she can walk out the moment she steps down from that office because she can no longer honor her oath of office.

As ever, her eternal salvation is up to A Higher Power.  But we'll note that in Leviticus, most violations are solved with lots of rocks.

There Is No Third Choice This Election

Not since Ed Edwards ran against David Dukes for governor of Louisiana has a population been offered such a poor choice of candidates.  In 1992, it was a convicted felon former governor vs. a militant racist.  Now it's Republican vs. Republican.

  

And it's sad the best candidate that the Florida Democratic Party could come up with to unseat corrupt Republican governor Rick Scott is the spineless flip-flopping weasel former Republican governor Charlie Crist.

  

Yes, Crist is a political will o' the wind, lacking any real conviction beyond getting elected.  But he really was a far more progressive Republican, who really did, for the most part, stand for the common man in most decisions.  He did work to lower home insurance rates – and succeeded.  He did lower property taxes, no mean feat. And he did spend more on education per capita than Rick Scott ever did.  

  

And he did it all without violating Florida’s ‘Sunshine Law.’ which mandates that everything that state employees and elected officials do on the job are not only on the public record, but must be made readily accessible to public view.

  

Contrast that with Rick Scott, who ordered his staff to communicate only by private email accounts, in a thinly veiled attempt to circumvent Florida law.  Rick Scott’s first actions in office were to kill a federally funded rail project that would not have used any Florida tax dollars and would have created up to 10,000 jobs a year during construction and would have created nearly a thousand permanent jobs, and gutting the education budget by 1.3 billion dollars which decimated school systems across the state.

 

And now Scott has the gall to describe himself as “the Education governor,” based on the fact that he put some (but not all) of that money back a year later, AFTER programs were cancelled and teachers left the state for better paying jobs (or for jobs, period).

 

This year’s gubernatorial race is Republican versus Republican, and not very savory Republicans at that.  It’s totally corrupt versus morally bankrupt.
  

Many voters on the fence are considering voting for a third party candidate, Adrian Wyllie of the Libertarian Party,  in order to display their disgust for the choices.   They intend to send a message that they are not going to support totally unacceptable choices anymore.  At the very least, they feel that voting for a candidate that doesn’t make them want to vomit will help them sleep at night.

But the sad truth is that they will not be sending any messages.  Their third-party candidate won’t win.  Sorry, Wyllie.  Too many people are far too sensible to support the inadequacies of the Libertarian Party platform, which really boils down to “Government is the problem, so elect US to run the government so we can PROVE that!” 

 

If you think Scott is bad, wait until the Libertarians have reduced everything to a smoking ruin.  Hate the “Lexus lanes” on our highways?  Libertarians want to privatize ALL the roads, so you’d have to pay a toll to leave your driveway.  But the good news is that you’d be allowed to run your chemical waste dump in your backyard.  You’ll need the money to pay for your kid’s education, because Libertarians don’t want to pay for THAT, either.  Of course, they describe it as "individual liberty."

  

Most reasonable people would agree that your rights end where mine begin, and vice-versa.  But Libertarians are NOT reasonable people.  You don't want an oil refinery next to a school?  Too bad - if you feel that you can prove they've harmed you, you can sue them.  They are the party of throw the baby out with the bath-water.

 

The sad fact of the matter is that in this country, we do not have any adequate mechanism to vote against anything.  We can only vote for something else, and usually that something else is equally repugnant.

And the folks running the political campaigns are just fine with that. It's status quo.

 

Look, it’s a coin toss over who will win the race this November.  Almost all Republicans are going to vote for Scott, because that’s what they do these days.  Democrats are choking on having a Republican candidate, but many, and probably most, will vote the party ticket grudgingly.

 

The next biggest block – and in some places, the biggest voting block period – is the No-Party-Affiliation voters.  They aren’t Republicans, they aren’t Democrats, they aren’t Libertarians or Independents (which is a political party), they aren’t even necessarily liberal or conservative.  These are the voters who are going to decide the next governor.

And they’re going to get it wrong.
 
They will believe that they are going to send that message by voting for “someone else.”  The problem is that the “vote for someone else” really allows one of the two dominant party candidates to have more votes that the other.

Any vote that is not for Charlie Crist is effectively a vote for Rick Scott because Wyllie will not have enough votes to win.  At the very best, he'll come in at a distant third, and at worst he sucks enough support from Crist to pull him down to second place.

And we get four more year of Governor Sleazebag.

In an ideal world, we would have the ability to vote against a candidate.  We could vote “none of the above.” 

And with a binding none of the above vote, if that NOTA entry wins, both candidates are off the poll, and in 90 days there would be a new vote, where the candidates will have to offer different candidates if they intend to be on the ballot.  

  

I would expect that the first election would be a bloodbath, as most races would have to be re-created in under a month.  Both dinosaur parties would try to run the same old scum, and waste hundreds of millions of dollars to lose the election to an ideal.

 

No, we’ll probably never have a binding “none of the above” option. 

So let’s open up the primaries to all voters.
 
I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but hear me out.

When George Washington warned us against the vagaries of political parties, he correctly predicted that each party would draw farther apart from its opposition.  At first, the parties would be fairly close together on most issues, but over time each would retreat from the central position that is the actual ideal.

Closed primary races contribute to that.  Just look at the recent GOP candidates: when voters rejected Republican candidates, the party response was, “Well, I guess they voted for the Democrat because our guy wasn’t conservative enough.”  Yes, it’s ludicrous, but the Democrats do the same thing, inching farther to the left.

 

That’s because left to their own devices, political parties do not pick the candidate most likely to win an election, they choose the candidate that most strongly reflects their ideals.  Which sounds fine, until you wind up with a ticket of clueless bozos to choose from.

If we opened the primaries to everyone, it means that we, the people - ALL the people – would get to choose the candidates.  And understand, we’d still be choosing Republican candidates during the Republican primary, and a Democratic candidate for the Democratic primary, and so on.  But come election day, we’d be choosing between candidates that ALL of us feel exemplify the best their party has to offer.

  

And the cost? Guess what - we are ALREADY paying for the primaries that most of us don't get to go to!  Opening the primaries allows us to get full value for our tax dollars.

 

And wouldn’t that be a better choice than simply trying to not vote for a scumbag?

But in the meantime, if you can't stand Rick Scott, you need to vote for Charlie Crist. Seriously.

Wieland VS God, et al

The Huffington Post reports that Missouri State Representative Paul Wieland and his wife are suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate.

  

His lawyer’s argument is  predictably lame:

Making birth control more accessible to the Wielands' daughters -- ages 13, 18 and 19 -- would be "exactly the same" as forcing Mormon parents to "provide a stocked unlocked liquor cabinet in their house whenever they're away for their minor and adult daughters to use," argued Belz, who is special counsel with the public interest law firm the Thomas More Society.

No, Mr. Weltz, it would not.  No one is requiring that you have contraception in your home. 

And let’s do a reality check: the Mormon parents probably live in a town with bars and liquor stores. And those bars and liquor stores will sell booze to anyone with ID showing they are of legal age to consume it.  On the other hand, the ACA only mandates that insurance plans completely cover the costs; their daughters would still need to get a prescription – which in the case of the Wieland’s 13 year old daughter would require parental consent.  The Wieland’s older daughters are of age, and can do as they like.  They are adults, Mr. and Mrs. Wieland.  

  

So it appears that the risk of Mormon kids binge-drinking is actually greater than that of Mr. Wieland's daughters protecting themselves from unwanted pregnancies.

But the Wielands feel that their faith is threatened:

"The government is holding a gun to our head and saying this: 'Either you give up your conscience or you give us your money.'"

Of course, the Wielands are not actually paying for the contraceptive coverage: the mandate is that the insurance companies pay for it.  Just like Ford or Honda pays for that spare tire in your trunk.  You don't have to use that spare tire.  But it's there for those who do.  Same with birth control: you don't have to use it, but it's there if you want it.

 

So much for the money argument.

   

But the Wieland’s argument is still completely without merit, if their religion is the foundation of it. 

  

Consider the Garden of Eden.

If you are a Christian, you should remember the Garden of Eden: God warned Adam and Eve not to eat the forbidden fruit - the only rule he made for them. Everything in the Garden was theirs, except for that one tree and its fruit. But God didn't remove the tree. It was there in the middle of the garden. It wasn't hidden. It wasn't guarded by a dragon. It wasn't inside a walled fortress. No, it was readily accessible, and the only thing keeping Adam or Eve from eating it was willpower. It was a test.

God's plan includes temptation. If you can't resist temptation, you don't get into Heaven. And if there is no temptation, you can't resist it. And if you can't resist it? You don't get into Heaven.

 

Of course, if you’re a Christian, and particularly if you are a Catholic,

you know that even if you commit a sin, you can still get into Heaven

by confessing the sin and performing an act of absolution, or penance.

Representative Wieland is working against the will of God by attempting to remove temptation. If his daughters do not have the opportunity to choose good over evil, they cannot be considered to be good because they have not been tested.

 
Nowhere in the Bible does it call on us to REMOVE sin. There is not one place in Scriptures that commands that. There is no commandment to destroy temptation, only to avoid giving in to it.

If he is the "good Catholic" he professes to be, Wieland should be more concerned with how he's raising his daughters and less with all the things in the world he believes defy his faith.  Those things exist as part of God’s plan.  

If you believe in that sort of thing.

A Conservative’s Premium Argument Dissected.

An ongoing series addressing the arguments of my conservative relatives.  They’ve drunk of the Tea Party Kool-aid.  I despair for them, but I will at least examine the arguments they make to support their views, which is more than they do for me.

For reference, here is the link to the  actual text of the ACA:
 

The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act
  

From now on, any counter-arguments made about the law must contain references to the law.  No excuses, I’ve given you the link to the act.  I’m digging through it, you can – and should – too.

Of course, in some cases, the actual act doesn’t come into play.  In this case, you must cite a study that contradicts the studies cited here.  I can be wrong, but only facts will sway me, not links to opinion pieces by conservative pundits.

In this installment, we will analyze an article in Forbes that claims they have a study that shows that the ACA will increase insurance premiums as much as 99% for men.  So who authored this study?  The Manhattan Institute, a Libertarian think tank.  Among its patrons are the infamous Koch brothers.

Based on a Manhattan Institute analysis of the HHS numbers, Obamacare will increase underlying insurance rates for younger men by an average of 97 to 99 percent, and for younger women by an average of 55 to 62 percent. Worst off is North Carolina, which will see individual-market rates triple for women, and quadruple for men.

So there’s the claim.  But the article goes on:

“Premiums nationwide will also be around 16 percent lower than originally expected,” HHS cheerfully announces in its press release. But that’s a ruse. HHS compared what the Congressional Budget Office projected rates might look like—in 2016—to its own findings. Neither of those numbers tells you the stat that really matters: how much rates will go up next year, under Obamacare, relative to this year, prior to the law taking effect.

The claim here is that although HHS is saying that premiums are going to be lower than projected, that’s only in comparison to their previous statements on premiums.  In other words, the premiums are only lower than projected ACA premium costs, and not 16% lower than pre-ACA health plans.

Here is something to note, right off the bat:

Earlier this month, I and two colleagues from the Manhattan Institute… published an interactive map that detailed Obamacare’s impact on individually-purchased health insurance premiums in 13 states plus D.C. As the accompanying article described, Obamacare increased premiums in those states by an average of 24 percent.

But those states were largely blue states that had set up their own, state-based insurance exchanges.

I just want to hold on to this: in states that did NOT fully utilize the ACA, premiums are expected to increase an average of 24%.  Remember this.  It implies that this excessive premium inflation only occurs in states that are not fully implementing the ACA.  To me, that indicates that the ACA is having a positive effect, even if it’s less than hoped for.

 

But here’s the more important omission, and the flaw that basically runs a stake through the heart of this study:

So, we conducted two comparisons between pre-ACA data and post-ACA data, as reported by HHS. The first comparison is between the cheapest plan available to 27-year-olds pre- and post-Obamacare. The second is between the cheapeast plan available to the average exchange participant, and to the typical 40-year-old pre-Obamacare.

On the face of it, it looks, fine, right?  Even when you visit the Institute website, we find that indeed, they omitted a key piece of data:

Our pre-ACA dataset consists of the five least expensive plans (by monthly premium) for the most populous zip code in every county. To cover a significant age range we collected rates for 27, 40, and 64-year old male and female non-smokers. We adjusted these rates to take into account those who are denied health insurance coverage as well as those who receive a surcharge. Using the "denial rate" and "surcharge rate" from the federal government's repository, we assumed that those who are surcharged pay 75 percent more and those who are denied, find insurance elsewhere at three times the original rate. We used this to develop a weighted average of the five least expensive insurance plans for every zip code we identified. To develop a state-wide average, we took the state-wide average for every age-gender combination.

Here’s the fatal flaw of this study: while the study does compare the lowest priced available pre-ACA insurance plan against the costs of the lowest-priced post-ACA plan, the study doesn’t actually compare the coverage or benefits of the plans.  Nowhere does the study indicate that the plans being compared offered a similar scope of coverage and benefits.
 

The Kaiser Institute makes this point:

…plans offered in the exchanges –along with coverage sold to individual and small businesses outside the exchanges–must meet several new regulatory requirements. For example,insurers must cover a minimum set of services called essential health benefits…

The Manhattan Institute study didn’t compare premiums on similar plans, they simply compared the lowest priced plans without regard to the difference in coverage.  If the pre-ACA plans do not offer the same scope of coverage, no valid comparison actually exists.

It’s like comparing the costs of raisins against apples.   A single apple costs many times what a single raisin does.     But when you factor in the fact that we eat raisins by the handful, your perception of costs must shift.  A serving of raisins costs the same as a serving of apple.

 

Comparing health insurance plans by premium costs alone without regard for the benefits covered will not yield valid results.

 

McClatchy News Services took a look at several studies on the effects of premiums by the ACA:

“Our analysis found no widespread trend toward sharply higher prices in the individual market,” said a statement by Christine Eibner, a senior economist at RAND, a non-profit research organization based in Santa Monica, Calif.

 “We know what the cost of employer-based insurance is, and these rates are what you’d expect to see for similar benefits,” said Gary Claxton, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “These rates don’t look to be so high that we should have the sort of widespread sticker shock.”

In a study of 12 states, Avalere found that minimum premiums for a 40-year-old non-smoker averaged $261 for a Silver plan. Maryland had the lowest-cost Silver plan at $197 per month, while Vermont’s lowest-priced Silver plan cost the most at $383.

But McClatchy did include the Manhattan Institute study in their research:

New research by the conservative Manhattan Institute appears to be an outlier. Its report found nine states will see premiums increase, on average, under Obamacare next year, while five others will see average rate declines.

In other words, the Mahattan Institute’s study varies widely from the results of all the other studies.

 

The New Republic believes that all the studies may be accurate.  But it starts by making the point that the premium costs only apply to individual plans, not the group health plans that most of us are part of.

Remember, everything you are about to read is about the “non-group” market only—i.e., it describes changes for people who buy coverage on their own, directly from insurance carriers or through brokers. That’s a relatively small number of people. The vast majority of Americans get insurance through large employers, Medicare, or Medicaid. That's not going to change anytime soon, so none of the following really applies to them

The article then makes the point I just made:

1. Thanks to Obamacare regulations on insurers, the “sticker price” of coverage will go up. Non-group coverage today is usually pretty cheap. One reason is that it frequently has big gaps in coverage—no benefits for maternity or prescription drugs, for example, or deductibles that reach into five figures…

Under the law, all plans will include a basic, essential set of benefits—and must be sufficiently generous to cover at least 60 percent of the typical person’s medical bills. (That’s the standard for "bronze" plans. "Silver," "gold," and "platinum" insurance options would cover a greater share of expenses.) Insurers must also sell coverage to anybody who wants it, regardless of medical condition, without raising prices or withholding benefits. These and other requirements make insurance more comprehensive and more widely available, which is what reformers promised to do. But the regulations also make it more expensive.

And this is a fair observation, and it is borne out by the studies.  Yes, premiums for individuals is going to go up, but so is what they are getting.  And  the article goes on to point out something else we should keep in mind:

Under the law, subsidies are generally available to anybody with income that is less than four times the poverty line—which is about $46,000 a year for an individual and $94,000 a year for a family of four. Most Americans make less than that. The amount will vary by income, with poorer people getting more assistance. But among those families receiving assistance, the subsidies will be worth an average of $2,600 per year, according to another recent Kaiser Family Foundation study. That's a lot of money. And remember the subsidies act as discounts: If you are eligible for a subsidy, you don’t have to wait until you file your tax return to get your money back. Instead, the government will calculate your subsidy when you apply for insurance,

Conservatives note that subsidies aren’t free: They cost money, which the law generates through a combination of taxes (mostly on wealthy people) and reduced spending (mostly through Medicare paying less for goods and services).

This means that where the Manhattan Institute study may be correct in some instances about how much higher premiums will be, the study did not account for income or the attendant tax credits for individuals in the lower income brackets.

And The New Republic reaches the same conclusion I do:

…the lack of good data on what people pay today makes it almost impossible to be certain how premiums will change, and they're not even sure the comparison is valid. If you're paying more for a more comprehensive and stable insurance policy, does that qualify as "rate shock"? But, when pressed by reporters like me, they say the majority of people will probably end up paying less than they do now, as long as you account for subsidies, Medicaid, and the ability of young adults to enroll in special catastrophic plans or stay on their parents' policies.

But even cheap insurance can seem expensive when you're struggling just to pay other bills. How you react to the new prices will depend a lot on how much you value protection from financial shock and access to medical care—and whether you care about paying a modest penalty for having no insurance.

The bottom line is that three out of four surveys indicate that individual health insurance costs will be lower on average than they were prior to the ACA, when you factor in all the coverage benefits in addition to the mere dollar figure of the monthly premium.