The Republican philosophy of laissez-faire is always destined for failure, as we saw with the banking crisis. Non-interference leads to greed and selfishness, which in turn lead to corruption and mismanagement, and ultimately, financial ruin. This sort of old-style corporatism, while evil, is not really self-sustaining. In the end, the people will win out in such a system because the bad guys will simply destroy themselves.

The Democrats obviously recognize the problems with laissez-faire, but rather than reject corporatism - as one might logically expect them to do - their idea is to take it to the next level! They're doing this of course by using government power to attach public interests - like healthcare or education - to corporate interests. In their philosophy, citizens are required to provide for corporations, because citizens are dependent on the services provided by corporations. This is taking the liberal idea of dependency on government and perverting it into dependency on corporations. I find this ideology far more scary than the low brow greed of Republicans. It wreaks of totalitarianism, and no genuine progressive could ever be in favor of it. What's shocking is that many self-described progressives are in favor of it, as we saw with the vote on the healthcare bill.

corporatist. The only difference I see between the two is that some of the Democrats are still attempting to maintain a public pretense that they actually care about the People, while the Republicans long ago decided they no longer needed to expend any more of their energy or resources performing maintenance on such things. So, the GOPers come out at the get-go shamelessly and unapologetically standing against anything that serves the people or serves actual democracy. The Democrats make great theater out of their alleged concerns for causes that support the well-being of people and a free society, but..somehow they always manage to abandon their professed principles when it comes time for a vote. There highest skill seems to be histrionics: lofty themes and promises before the fact, convoluted ratinalizations that make each betrayal sound as if it were for the most virtuous of reason after the fact. The only time they seem to do the right thing is when not doing so would irreversibly pierce their public pretense, such that the lie, their Big Lie, could no longer be maintained. Even then, they do only the minimum most of what should be done.

Of the mere handful of elected Democrats left who actually care about the people, they should change to 3rd parties or eschew party affiliations altogether.

...what in the hell you're talking about? That the European debt crisis is going to come over here?

If you were here, you'd know that we participated in creating a big chunk of debt crisis ourselves with a huge fucking housing bubble that popped. You don't realise this because you haven't overpaid for a house in the US.

BTW, still in Brisbane?

... then, assuming we have no income, the Federal government picks up the payment of the health coverage. That's better than we collapse and we're on our own. As far as I can tell, there's no asset test in the legislation.

The big difference here is that the Dem's plan may prevent going bankrupt on a catastrophic illness while the Republican advocate that very thing.

I still think it's chump change compared to things like the lost interest charges in no interest loans by the Fed to corrupt "too big to fail" banks and so forth.

I think it's a red herring issue, and news of "mass distraction", just like Tiger Woods.

But the powers are separate even though the Right loves to use the "tax and spend" phrase every chance they get.

Congress can tax and not spend (surplus); it can spend not tax (deficit); it can also spend money it gets outside of taxation. For example, we finally sell Alaska to the Belgians (my mind is still hurting from upthread) Congress can take the $29.95 we make from the sale (a big discount, but the Palins were included in the transfer) and spend it on a slightly used gavel cover. Maybe it was only 45 seconds.

Unless you're Murdoch.

You don't want to actually talk, do you Andy K? Your whole schtick is smear smear smear

Has the nation-state of France been dissolved five different times? Is France only about 40 years old as a country?

Actually, yes. Remember, a state is only a political entity. A nation is different from a state in context. As a nation, France is well over 1000 years old. Please, allow me to be a bit pedantic.

Nation: a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own.

State: a politically unified people occupying a definite territory

It is in this manner that you can assert that the Declaration establishes a national identity, but the Constitution establishes statehood. The modern state of France isn't very old at all. Neither is Germany. The nations of France and Germany go back millennium.

If each respective Constitution marks a new American Revolution, would we no longer be the United States of America if we adopted a new Constitution for the United States of America? Or would we be the same country with new laws?

We would be the same nation, but we would be a different state. Let me use modern Germany as an example. Prior to WW1, there wasn't a politically unified state of Germany like we would understand. It was a confederation of German states. After WW1, Germany was bound together as a new political entity and the kaiser no longer existed. A new statehood was born. Then came the Third Reich. It established a new statehood, based on the previous one, but different. A new unified political body was drafted. Then Nazi Germany fell. Germany was carved up into two German states, East and West. They were separate "nations" if you are using nation as a synonym for state (as we often do). Then, not too long ago, Germany reunified and formed the modern state of Germany we recognize today, founded mostly on the West German political state. That was all in the last 100 years. In 100 years, it went through 5 different iterations. Each was a different expression of statehood, but each and every time the national identity of Germans remained.

is Unalienable.
http://www.gemworld.com/USA-Unalienable.htm

So, in the Ninth Amendment, they said that the enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. What might those other rights be? Conservatives love to say that there's no way to tell, and that the Ninth Amendment is meaningless.

This amendment is clearly lawyerly boilerplate. You see it in all contracts -- something to the effect that "notwithstanding what you just read, nothing in this clause should be construed as a renunciation of rights not specifically mentioned but which signatories are otherwise entitled to." It should have been in the original contract (the Constitution) but was omitted, so it was added in the rider (the Bill of Rights) to fix the language and make all the lawyers happy.

Yet, when we revolted, we declared that we held certain truths SELF EVIDENT, and that certain rights were INALIENABLE. When and how were those self evident, inalienable rights alienated between 1776 and 1789? Doesn't the Ninth Amendment clearly, if not literally, refer to the self evident principles of the Declaration?

Nope. They refer to the "rights of man" in the air at the time, which were all the rage in France among the philosophes , and which had been imbibed by the Founders when they read Locke and others, and which informed the Declaration as well as a million other things that the Founders read and wrote. The Declaration, as a specific document, wasn't the basis.

They also made sure that powers not delegated to the new federal government were reserved for the sovereign states. Conservatives love to say that the Tenth Amendment gives states carte blance to do whatever they want. (States' Rights.) But the Declaration makes quite clear what rightful powers governments have: to secure the equal rights of their people.

The rights granted to the Federal government are vague -- the Constitution just gives a list of objectives that justify the Federal government doing just about anything ("regulate interstate commerce" includes anything you can think of, since we all breathe the same air, and everything you do in Tennessee eventually affects my air in Pennsylvania).

The Constitution clearly says it is the supreme law. When Federal law conflicts with state law, Federal law wins. This is all settled; it has been since the Civil War. Arguing for nullification is silliness at this point in U.S. history. It's like arguing for the right of secession -- the Civil War settled that, too. The United States is a marriage among states from which there is no divorce.

Or, if you like, the Federal government is Mommy and Daddy and the states are the kids. The kids have some control over how they decorate their individual bedrooms, but they are living in their parents' house, and what the parents say is the law of the overall home.