Now Scum-Sucking Right-Winger Scalia Will Have To 'Get Over It'

By Manifesto Joe

Oh, I'm not buying drinks for the house just yet. This was Round 2. There will be many more rounds to go. But the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court to uphold almost all of "Obamacare" was significant.

Problem is, on Monday the Supreme Court also came down with a nasty 5-4 decision for the Citizens United grotesquerie for a second time, which means that even the lukewarm compromise that was "Obamacare" is still in danger. (See my previous blog post.) That decision pretty much ensured that American politics will be awash with corrupting money for at least another generation, so there's not really much to celebrate.

But I love to see right-wingers being upset. Especially Antonin "Get Over It" Scalia.

Another big problem is, we've still got an abysmally stupid population here in the Free World's Leading Country. It's really worse than it is in a lot of other places, and that's saying plenty. Last night I was working, but happened to catch a snippet of some talking head on CNN. This woman said something like, "We're not living in some socialist country, like Russia." (And nobody corrected her.)

Wow. For one thing, I'm not sure if this person has ever heard, but the Soviet Union broke up over 20 years ago. Russia now seems to be ruled by a coalition of oligarchs, robber barons and gangsters. (Like, wow, that all sounds very familiar!)

For another thing, even if the Soviets were still around, the comparison is moronic. As I understand the way this is going to work, the private insurance companies can look forward to about 30 million more "customers" (the word I'm thinking of actually starts with an "s"), and with taxpayer subsidies to boot. Sounds a hell of a lot more like corporate welfare than socialism.

I can't blame Obama too much for that, because he seemed to be resigned to just putting over what he believed that he could. And, given how this measure has been getting by on the skin of its teeth, he was probably right.

What's really needed is single-payer -- a system that will get most of the profit motive out of medicine. People are evil enough that nothing will purge the system of that entirely, but a public option that anybody could take would attract millions (including me), and would eventually put private, for-profit insurers out of business.

Mainstream News Media fail pretty often at informing a fundamentally stupid public about some of this. Much hay is made of Medicare fraud, but there isn't much publicity about the fact that Medicare's administrative expenses are generally lower than those found among private insurers. Here's a link to PolitiFact -- let me warn that I don't set much of a factual store by them, but even they concede a "half" truth here.

I had high hopes for single-payer just a couple of years ago, because the health care system in the U.S. is going to get worse, not better, and "Obamacare" is just patchwork. It doesn't really address the fundamental problem of medicine for profit.

But, I'll repeat, the Supreme Court stood by Citizens United on Monday for a second time, striking down Montana's century-old campaign finance law. Until that shitty decision is revisited, big money will win most of the political battles in the U.S., and that includes almost anything to do with health care. What's "left" of the left will be doing well to preserve most of Obamacare for the next 20 years.

Now, after this ruling, it probably won't require a constitutional amendment to make single-payer a reality here. But it WILL require a quantum leap in the general civic intelligence of Americans.

I won't be holding my breath.

But meanwhile, I'm enjoying the fact that Scalia is probably having a bad night. May he have many, many more.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.