Today's headline in Bloomberg:
Obama Health Law Seen Valid, Scholars Expect Rejection
The article goes on to describe a poll of 21 constitutional law scholars, 19 of whom (that is over 90%) assert that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional under existing precedent. Nevertheless, only 8 of the 21 (38%) expect that the Supreme Court will uphold the Act.
We have gone through the looking glass, have we not? One analogy that occurred to me appears in the heading to this post. Another example of the topsy-turvy world we are living in comes from North Carolina, where the
state legislature is considering a bill that would require that a state commission limit its predictions of future sea level increases to past data, rather than relying on the best predictions that scientists are able to make today. In other words, the exponential increases that most scientists are predicting would be forbidden, while arithmetic increases would be acceptable. The headline might read as follows:
Sea Levels Seen as Rising, Scientists Expect the State to Allow Beachfront Development Anyway
This kind of thinking is not confined to judges' disregard of precedent, or politicians' disdain of science. We could also look at the Congressional response to budgeting and come up with a similar headline. Republicans in Congress have asserted that the deficit is too large, but that they will nevertheless block cuts to the defense budget, they want to cut taxes even further, and they will not specify where sufficient spending cuts will come from.
Once you get used to this method of problem-solving, you can apply it almost anywhere. We have 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country? That must mean we should block all attempts at making any of them legal, and insist on solutions that the experts tell us will not solve the problem. Our highways need repair and construction crews are short of work? The solution must be to stop funding of needed road work. Student loan debt is out of control? Let's double the interest rate on student loans.
But let's not stop there. We can use the reality-denying way of thinking to solve most all of our nation's pressing problems:
Americans are overweight? Supersize it!
Concerned about increasing levels of inequality? Let's raise management pay and cut their taxes!
Our schools are failing their students? Fire more teachers!
Unemployment got you down? We need to send more jobs offshore!
Whatever problem you can name, those who know better than the experts have a solution. You think those solutions would make these problems worse? That must be because you insist on living in the evidence-based community. You need to change your way of thinking.
hopeandchange.net