A Court Missed

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This time, the DC Circuit Court has erred.  The Trump administration—Health and Human Services—had allowed Arkansas, among other States, to set work requirements on its citizens as prerequisites to eligibility for the State’s Medicaid program. Folks and organizations sued over that, and the case wound up in the DC Circuit Court.  That Court held with the suers and has blocked Arkansas from proceeding with the work requirements.

Writing for the Court, Senior Circuit Judge David Sentelle held, in part, that HHS didn’t address the purpose of Medicaid in a way that suited him:

to provide health care coverage to populations that otherwise could not afford it….

Sentelle wrote further,

The means that Congress selected to achieve the objectives of Medicaid was to provide health care coverage to populations that otherwise could not afford it.
To an extent, Arkansas and the government characterize the Secretary’s approval letter [allowing Arkansas’ work requirements] as also identifying transitioning beneficiaries away from governmental benefits through financial independence or commercial coverage as an objective promoted by Arkansas Works.

Sentelle then wrote that Azar’s approval letter did not discuss this aspect of the matter, either. That, though, is because it’s so blindingly obvious that explicitly writing, in effect, “this, too,” would have been merely redundant.

Of course, HHS did properly account for the principal purpose. Requiring efforts to work or to learn work skills directly accounts for Medicaid’s principal purpose, by helping folks become able to afford health-care coverage and so no longer be part of those “populations that otherwise could not afford it.”

The ruling needs to be appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Supremes need to uphold HHS’ requirement.

The DC Circuit messed up.

 

The Court’s ruling can be read here (maybe. The Circuit’s Web page is having trouble with this. The Case is Charles Gresham v. Alex Azar, II, Docket 19-5094).

This Loss is No Loss

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Recall the fact of the tweet that the NBA’s Houston Rockets General Manager sent in support of the Hong Kong freedom protesters.  Recall further the NBA’s abject cowardice in deeply kowtowing to the People’s Republic of China in response to the latter’s projected upset over the tweet and the NBA’s impudence.  The kowtowing was rationalized from the league on down to individual players that they all had money at risk from the GM’s tweet—as if their personal pocketbooks could compare with the sacrifices of life and limb, in addition to economic loss, of those freedom protesters as they struggled for their basic freedoms.

That cowardice was only emphasized, not mitigated, by NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s refusal to tell his teams they had to limit what they said. That came lately.

Recall further, the hoo-raw over the picayune nature of the NBA’s kowtowing and the cynically fiscally-driven rationalizing in which the NBA engaged in defending its response to the PRC government—and its institutional abandonment of those Hong Kong freedom protesters.

Now some information is coming out regarding the cost of the NBA’s behavior—the cost to those pocketbooks the NBA has been so desperate to protect.

The loss “will be in the hundreds of millions,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on Saturday, the first time he’d used such a number to estimate the cost to the league’s China business. The hit amounted to “probably less than $400 million,” Silver said in response to speculation that the losses could reach $1 billion….

Silver added,

We were taken off the air in China for a period of time, and it caused our many business partners in China to feel it was therefore inappropriate to have ongoing relationships with us.

The NBA is still receiving only greatly reduced coverage in the People’s Republic of China.

This isn’t a cost, or a loss. It’s the beginning (and, sadly, probably the end) of the price the NBA should pay for abandoning our American principles, and with them the good people of Hong Kong, in favor of the good opinion of an American enemy.

Party Influence

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There is growing concern among some, particularly among the elites and party elders, that our political parties are losing too much power and authority over candidate selection.

[The ascents of Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) and President Donald Trump (R)] are the latest sign that the nation’s political parties have lost influence in choosing their own presidential nominees….

Tom Rath, ex-Republican National Committee delegate, worried about this:

We’re organized around individual candidates and individual concerns. No one wants to be bothered with the party.

Joe Trippi, ex-Progressive-Democrat strategist and current CNN pundit, also expressed angst:

The parties are powerless right now and have been for a while. With both parties it’s personality- and candidate-driven, not party-driven.

And this:

Several current and former members of the Democratic National Committee said a party that once elevated Governors Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton to the White House should have found a way to place governors, who have proven electoral records, on the debate stage more often.

Because Party Know Betters should determine voter choices, not the voters. (I’ll elide questions about why a party that once elevated Senators to the White House switched to governors. I’ll also leave aside the Know Betters’ wisdom in choosing Carter.)

And this, from Elaine Kamarck, herself a long-time Democratic National Committee Know Better (as paraphrased by the WSJ):

DNC Chairman Tom Perez should have acted “by decree” to give more visibility to elected leaders such as Mr Bullock or former Governor John Hickenlooper of Colorado…. At the same time…Mr Perez had little choice but to adopt neutral qualifying criteria, because “party leaders are no longer expected to have a role in choosing the nominee.”

Wow. Just—wow. The party that claims to be all about democracy and “what people want” should act from diktat.

We can debate the wisdom of personality-driven. However, it’s clear that in order to be personality-driven, or candidate-driven, the process also has to be voter-driven. The nominees, after all, are ours, not the parties’.

And that’s all to the good. Our Constitution, after all, opens with We the People, not Our Parties.

The noise of freedom is growing louder and democracy is growing stronger for it—especially republican democracy.

Somewhat of an aside:

Self-described democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and President Trump rose in politics by developing strong personal brands, while keeping only tenuous ties to—and frequently criticizing the leaders of—the parties they later sought to lead.

I’m not sure of the inconsistency here. What would we expect them to do—say, “These guys are doing a terrific job. Put me in charge instead.”

The Equal Rights Amendment

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board noted in their Valentine’s Day editorial that the time limit for ratifying the ERA has long passed its expiration date and that Virginia’s lately “ratification” of the Amendment, which might have put the thing over the top for national ratification, came much too late to have effect.

On the whole, I agree with the Editors.

However, on this, I strongly disagree:

The ERA also isn’t necessary today. America in 2020 is a very different place for women than it was when the ERA was written. Laws bar discrimination against women in all walks of life, and women are CEOs, Senators, and the Speaker of the House.

Laws are nearly as easily undone or allowed to go fallow as they are enacted. Our Constitution is much harder to ignore or change–as it must be. Principles that are enacted as statute aren’t, at bottom, principles; they’re merely today’s view of things. On the other hand, principles need to be written into the Constitution if they’re to have lasting effect.

Back to the ERA: it was unnecessary when it was proposed in 1972; that it’s unnecessary today is irrelevant. Article I of the 14th Amendment does the job just fine, especially in the hands of textualist judges and Justices.

Happy Valentine’s Day, a few days after the fact.

Stakeholder Capitalism

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Vivek Ramaswamy, writing in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, offered a brief definition:

“Stakeholder capitalism” is…the fashionable notion that companies should serve not only their shareholders, but also other interests and society at large.

Ramaswamy is right. What the virtue-signaling social justice warriorlettes (of which Ramaswamy is not one) miss, though, is that companies serve “other interests” and society at large by doing well, making money for their owners, and creating jobs for “other interests” and members of society at large—us citizens.

It ripples. Business owners, whether direct owners or shareholder owners, whose businesses prosper have more money with which to start new businesses; or invest in new, or existing businesses; or grow existing businesses; or expand R&D spending; or…pursue their own other interests and their own views of what society at large needs rather than those things the VSSJws demand they pursue.

Employees of those prospering businesses, new employees of those new and expanded businesses, all have more money with which to pursue their own other interests and their own views of what society at large needs, even start their own new businesses or invest in new or existing businesses, rather than doing what the VSSJws demand they pursue.