Deanna;

Lady, you got guts. But be prepared for the storm of protest about to land on your head. How dare you deny people their day in court? Tort reform doesn’t work and even if it did it would not amount to more than a very small percentage. Yada yada yada. I believe that says it all for all you liberal types.

Lady I for one believe that you have a very good point.

Bull

I know this is not on the topic, it is a continuation of our conversation yesterday. It is a bit long but the subject is not a short subject. This is in response to the portion of your remark about the intentions of our founding fathers. I have been busy and will post the rest as soon as I have it ready which might be a day or two.

Bull

As you mentioned you believed that our founding fathers were wary of government growth as they wrote the constitution. Yet there was much debate about that. Note this might be done in parts because the questions do not lend themselves to short answers. Even with what I write it is abbreviated because of the medium.

For instance Adams and Hamilton were all for large and centralized government. I know neither was in the committee that wrote the constitution. Adams was either minister to Holland or the Court of St. James, without looking it up I suspect St. James. Hamilton though wrote and lobbied for the passage of Constitution, especially in New York.

Supporting your claim there was Jefferson and Madison. Jefferson was Minister to France at the time, so Madison was the only one of the four mentioned that was in the deliberations.

You might have others you wish to concentrate on but these are the ones I will speak of.

To say the least the results from those four are mixed. Adams was a strong supporter of the power of a centralized government. Yet he did not do much for that sentiment. He had many problems such as the XYZ affair and the Quasi-War with France. Yet even in the Quasi War there was the recognition of implied powers to commit naval forces to war without the consent of the government. His main contribution, if one thinks of it as such are the Alien and Sedition acts. Any action against the government could be termed treason. Under the acts “Seditious Libel” was introduced, i.e. anything said to suggest that the government was not operating in the best interest of the country was considered sedition. Think of it as an early version of the Patriot Act.

Hamilton though argued that the government had broad powers under the “general welfare” clause of the constitution. As such that and the power to coin money was justification for the Chartering of the Bank of the United States (Think of it as the first crack at a Federal Reserve).

The real contradiction comes in with Jefferson and Madison. Jefferson argued for states to retain the power and strict reading of the Constitution. Yet he found implied powers to commit naval forces to the Mediterranean without the declaration of war by congress. It is often argued that this is justified under the power of commander and chief. Yet it can be argued that only after war is declared can the commander and chief direct where the forces are to be committed.

Then there is the question about the foreign trade embargo that Jefferson implemented. The government has the power to regulate trade, but is halting trading regulating? He found enough implied power to say yes it did, though he was for strict reading of the Constitution. Though one should also remember that when he first read it he commented that it would last for 20 years, which happened to be the end of his presidency.

Madison wrote much in support on the constitution during the ratification process. Yes he wrote that the “general welfare” clause did not give as much power as many, including I suggest. Yet he wrote this because many disagreed with him on the issue. To be honest I am not sure where he stood on the issue. He might believe what he said. He might have also said what he said because by not doing so the constitution might not have been ratified in several states. It is unclear to me his true feelings.

However, Madison is also a strict reader of the Constitution. He aligns with Jefferson more than Jefferson did in those terms and worked closely with Jefferson. He ran the election campaign for Jefferson in 1800 and served as his Secretary of State. Then succeeding him has President.

Though much of his time was spent at war with Great Britain, he did find time to use implied powers which is strange for a strict reader of the Constitution. He also found the same implied powers to commit naval forces to the Mediterranean without a declaration of war. He also found the implied power to Charter the Second Bank of the United States (the replacement for the original one that expired in 1811).

So when one talks about history shows us something, especially about the founding father and the Constitution, the record is contradictory. Adams who was an advocate of a string central government did the least to expand government powers. Jefferson and Madison who were for strict reading of the Constitution took great strides in finding implied powers.

Today much has changed, to be true. The implied powers for war are needed for a strike from the other side off the world will land in hours instead of months. Many would argue that FEMA is needed because the states cannot respond to natural disaster with enough force. Many will argue that the Fed Reserve is needed to smooth out fluctuations in finance. Many will argue the Air Force is needed for defense, though there is no measure in the constitution for such a branch of the military. There is for an army, a navy, and a militia, but no air force so is it illegal?

Much of what our founding fathers talked about was through the eyes of limited resources. For instance FEMA would not have been on their agenda simply because response time would have been in months and not hours. Washington is well know for warning against foreign entanglements. Many read this as basically let them do their thing and we do our thing. Yet I believe his words came from recognizing that we were weak. In his time we had almost no navy and the army size made the navy look large. There was no good transportation route for goods produced west of the Appalachians that did not run through foreign territory or at least was bordered by it. So his warning was not a suggestion that we just concentrate on ourselves it was a reality that we could not compete with a foreign government. I know we had recently beat the British for independence, but we wore them out. We were like USSR at the start of WW II major cities with no good transportation system between them. The lack of good transport did more to defeat the British than did our armies.

I will stop now for my point is that when you speak of a clear picture of what our founding fathers thought, I do not believe it is as clear as you wish to believe. I will address your other points later I need to finish some stuff around the house.

Deanna,
Many states have implemented tort reform. Has it resulted in lower health insurance premiums anywhere? Do you have any evidence/links/proof of such a thing happening? The CBO disagrees with you, by the way. Unless you consider a half percent reduction in premiums to be significant.

http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=4968&type=0
CBO
Limiting Tort Liability for Medical Malpractice
Thus, even a reduction of 25 percent to 30 percent in malpractice costs would lower health care costs by only about 0.4 percent to 0.5 percent, and the likely effect on health insurance premiums would be comparably small. …

However, some so-called defensive medicine may be motivated less by liability concerns than by the income it generates for physicians or by the positive (albeit small) benefits to patients. On the basis of existing studies and its own research, CBO believes that savings from reducing defensive medicine would be very small.

Bob;

Nice essay…lol. Really you can keep posting on EJ’s letter, I check on it to see new postings and saw yours from earlier today.

Look there for my response.

Protection from frivilous lawsuits is the main reason doctors order unnecessary tests and perform unnecessary procedures. They must protect themselves from Democratic Party/trial lawyers extortion. Of course this means fewer dollars available to treat sick children, but the trial lawyers/Democratic Party don’t care how many children they kill as long as they get their money!

It’s murder by lawsuit!!

Typical right-wing, red herring, road apples. Do some research before you make a fool of yourself to the entire community:

http://www.slate.com/id/2145400/

Bull

I posted the following on EJ’s letter in reply to your posting. I am also posting my reply here because I do not know when EJ’s letter could be archived. I assume they do that.

I also meant to mention. You know that term you do not like in reference to members of the Tea Party, you say it is derogatory. You really should start writing the conservative press. On the weekend talk shows I heard two different conservatives use the term, one used it multiple times. So perhaps the first place to start is among the conservatives before you jump the liberals about using the term.

Bull

I would suggest that you watch out for the use of the term “Republic”. It has been found that anyone can stick Republic in their countries name, that does not make them one.

For instance you mention the Roman Republic. It was really Republic only in a Oligarch cal sense. The Senators while elected were really selected among only the lower class. There were few examples of people rising to be a Senator that did not come from the top class. Those that did had a long and impressive military record.

Weimar, elected Hitler. Yet Weimar was a minimal government, i.e. not very much power was in the hands of the central government at least prior to Hitler. So that is the form that you should be touting.

The French Crowns you mentioned were as you said not very good. However, they also were weak and led weak central governments. This was one of the reasons that led to the French Revolution. They were weak central governments that were unable to address the needs of the people or the needs of the economy. However, a weak central government or at least limited in what they can do is your goal.

The founding fathers perhaps did a good job because they did not have a give all central government but also they did not have the limited government that you seem to believe that they had.

You did not address the fact that two of leading proponents for the limited central government and strict readers of the Constitution were also two that did much in their time to centralize the government. They also were men who advocated strict interpretation of the Constitution also found powers that implied that they exercised. You also did not address that there were founding fathers that advocated a strong central government and saw the wording in the Constitution supporting their thoughts.

Deanna,
You are correct! We need meaningful tort reform to include compensatory and punitive damages. Most folks either don’t know the difference or are playing dumb when they reference a CBO report saying tort reform will not make a difference.

38 States now have ‘meaningful’ tort reform. How is Washington going to change anything?

Bob,
The French crowns referenced had ZERO government. No wonder for their oustings. I think there is a fine line between zero, limited, strong, and too much governemnt. The trick is trying to find the right amount. Using history as a guide, not many countries ever got it right; the US being the closest to getting it right. Republics started out well intentioned but gov’t got to big and said republics ceased to exist. We as Americans must use history as a guide. If we find we are going from a strong gov’t to too much gov’t then we must have the ability to recognize it and reverse course a bit. If we find we have too little gov’t, the same applies. I realize this has nothing to do with the topic of this particular LTE but this is interesting and probably needs discussed in congress as well.