The League

quote for a friday afternoon

by Erik Kain · August 21, 2009

Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

Sam M says:

August 21, 2009 at 3:08 pm

Good call on his part. And well said.

At the same time, it is worth considering that “whats in the bill” is not always the most important thing. Even progressives like Matt Yglesias admit that the most aggressive climate-change bills under consideration will do little or nothing to halt global warming. Instead, they say whats most important about these bills is to look at the long-term impact and consequences. One of these, they say, is that strong action taken by the US will encourage stronger international participation in a cooperative program that WILL work.

Of course, the bill says nothing like that. It says all this great stuff about what the bill will achieve. Even though everyone knows it really won’t accomplish much at all.

So in that case, for some reason, it makes sense to do some serious exegesis and read something into the intentions of the bill and what that will eventually lead to. But in the case of health care, anyone who contemplates anything that isn’t directly in the bill is a liar and a goon.

Again, I thin the death panel thing is a farce. But I am not sure that anyone is a purist when it comes to sticking to the letter of constroversial legislation as its written.Report
- greginak in reply to Sam M says:
  
  August 21, 2009 at 3:36 pm
  
  I’m not sure about progressives or Y saying the most aggressive climate change bills won’t affect global warming. Do you have link? I think there is a genuine feeling that to get any sort of climate change bill it will be so watered down just to pass that it wont’ do much good like the current bill. That is very different.
  
  The thing about the long term is that we have to vote on that and we can stop or change stuff down the road. If in 2010 the congress is looking at the kill your gramma bill that can be defeated. The slippery slope argument, aside from the general strawman quality of that argument, somehow suggests that we will have no control over what happens with health care if we get a bill this year. nonsense.Report