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gainesvilletimes.com
Monday, November 19, 2018
Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com
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The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Why Whitaker is not qualified for the job
BY ANDREW COAN
Los Angeles Times
Matthew Whitaker, the new acting attor
ney general, is President Trump’s Harriet
Miers. Remember her?
Miers was White House counsel under
President George W. Bush. When Bush
nominated her to replace Sandra Day
O’Connor on the Supreme Court in 2006, he
faced a storm of criticism from prominent
legal conservatives deriding her intellectual
mediocrity and lack of experience. Some of
this criticism was elitist and mean-spirited,
but its essential truth was undeniable.
The parallels to Trump and Whitaker
are strong, and the outcome should be the
same. Trump should withdraw his interim
appointment of Whitaker, just as Bush was
compelled to withdraw his nomination of
Miers. Legal conservatives should make
him do it.
Much of the commentary about Whita
ker’s appointment has focused on Trump’s
apparent interest in curtailing special coun
sel Robert S. Mueller III and Whitaker’s
public expressions of support for that goal.
Others have questioned the constitutional
ity of appointing Whitaker, who has been
serving as Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions chief of
staff, without a Senate confirmation hear
ing. These are grave concerns, but they are
not the only ones that Whitaker’s new role
raises.
The position of acting attorney general
carries enormous responsibility. Yet Whita
ker is manifestly unqualified for reasons
that even conservatives — in fact, espe
cially conservatives — should recognize.
They are the same reasons that prominent
conservatives offered for opposing Miers.
Like Miers, Whitaker seems to have
been chosen almost entirely based on his
personal rapport with the president. Miers
described Bush as “the best governor ever”
and the “most brilliant man she had ever
met.” Prior to her service as White House
counsel, she had been Bush’s personal law
yer, and no one other than Bush seems to
have considered her as potential Supreme
Court material.
Roughly the same goes for Whitaker, who
first won Trump’s favor with strongly par
tisan television appearances on CNN. Con
trary to Trump’s claim that he barely knows
Whitaker, the two men have met at the
White House over a dozen times. Accord
ing to media reports, they have an “easy
chemistry.” Vox has reported that Whitaker
secretly advised Trump about how to pres
sure the Justice Department into investigat
ing the president’s political enemies.
Like Miers, Whitaker lacks the high-level
legal and political experience that have his
torically been prerequisites for the job he is
being asked to do. Before serving as White
House counsel, Miers was the president of
the State Bar of Texas and head of a mid
size law firm. Whitaker is a former federal
prosecutor; he worked for Sessions for just
over a year.
These are respectable, even impressive,
credentials. Both Miers and Whitaker are
said by colleagues to be decent, upstanding
people and competent lawyers. Neither of
them, however, could claim to be among
the top 100 most qualified persons for the
jobs they were tapped to perform.
Finally, like Miers, Whitaker has demon
strated a conspicuously weak command of
the constitutional issues that will be central
in his new job. This is the most important
point by far, and it alone should be decisive.
When Miers made the rounds as a
Supreme Court nominee, then-Sen. Tom
Coburn (R-Okla.) told her, “You flunked.”
One leading conservative commentator
summed it up this way: Miers was “ill-pre
pared and uninformed on the law. “
When an interviewer asked Whitaker
about the worst Supreme Court decisions
in U.S. history, he first named Marbury vs.
Madison, the canonical source of the court’s
power to declare acts of Congress unconsti
tutional. This is a decision that conservative
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh recently lauded
as “one of the four greatest moments” in
American constitutional history.
Whitaker’s answer got worse from there.
After Marbury, he next pointed to “New
Deal cases that were expansive of the fed
eral government. Those would be bad. Then
all the way up to the Affordable Care Act
and the individual mandate.”
Whitaker’s disapproval of Marbury and
the Supreme Court’s decisions upholding
the New Deal place him well outside the
mainstream of American constitutional
thought. These positions are also contradic
tory. On the one hand, he criticizes Marbury
for making the Supreme Court “the final
arbiter of constitutional issues.” On the
other, he criticizes modern decisions for not
exercising this supposedly dangerous power
more aggressively.
This is like saying that the two best
Supreme Court cases are Brown vs. Board
of Education, which struck down school
segregation, and Plessy vs. Ferguson, which
infamously upheld whites-only railroad
cars. It simply makes no sense, except as an
impromptu riff from a man who has never
thought about these questions seriously.
Conservative columnist Charles Krau
thammer pilloried Miers’ nomination as
“a joke.” The issue, he wrote at the time,
“is not the venue of Miers’s constitutional
scholarship, experience and engagement.
The issue is their nonexistence.”
Other leading conservatives, especially
those associated with the Federalist Soci
ety, were similarly caustic in 2006. They
demanded a nominee with sterling creden
tials akin to those of Chief Justice John G.
Roberts Jr., who had been confirmed the
year before. More recently, legal conserva
tives have justifiably prided themselves on
the unimpeachable resumes of nominees
such as Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M.
Gorsuch.
An attorney general is not a Supreme
Court justice. But Americans are entitled
to expect the president to fill such jobs with
people of high stature, chosen for their
outstanding professional qualifications and
experience rather than personal loyalty.
Legal conservatives — and the rest of us
— should demand no less, especially in tur
bulent times.
Andrew Coan is a professor of law at
the University of Arizona and author of
the forthcoming book “Prosecuting the
President: How Special Prosecutors Hold
Presidents Accountable and Protect the Rule
of Law.’’
UALLOT
m
PAPER
TRAIL
SEAT OF
POWER
SWIRL OF
SUSPICION
FLORIDA ELECTION CYCLE
WALT HANDELSMAN I Tribune News Service
Health care is better in free market
America needs single
payer health care, say pro
gressives. That’s a system
where government pays
doctors and hospitals, and
no sick person has to worry
about having enough money
to pay for care. After all,
they say, “Health care is a
“right!”
“Who pays for it?” asks
Chris Pope, “And that’s
really not a rights question. ”
Pope studies health care systems for
the Manhattan Institute. In my newest
video, Pope explains that although many
Americans think that Canada and most
of Europe have single-payer systems,
that’s not really true.
“In Germany, employers provide most
of the health care... just as they do in
the United States,” he says. France and
Switzerland also offer multiple options,
public and private, and most people buy
private health insurance. Some of the
Swiss government subsidies are similar
to those of Obamacare.
But Canada, England, Norway, Cuba
and a few other countries do have genu
ine single-payer. I’m constantly told that
it works well — people get good care and
never have to worry about a bill. They
spend less on health care and live longer.
Pope says that claim is naive.
They do live longer in many of those
countries, but it’s not because they get
superior health care; it’s because fewer
of them are fat; fewer crash cars; and
they shoot each other less often.
“Take out (obesity), car accidents
and gun violence, the difference in life
expectancy disappears entirely,” Pope
says.
Also, government-run systems save
money by freeloading off American
innovation. American drug
companies, funded by Ameri
can customers, fund most
of the world’s research and
development of pharmaceu
ticals. New drugs and devices
are expensive, so oftentimes
in Britain, says Pope, “when
ever a new drug comes on the
market that can save lives, the
government just doesn’t have
the funds to pay for it.”
Patients, accustomed to accepting
whatever government hands out, don’t
even know about advances available
elsewhere.
Single-payer systems also save money
by rationing care. Hence the long waiting
times for treatments declared “nones
sential” in Canada, Britain and, for that
matter, at American veterans hospitals.
The VA’s problems are similar to what’s
happened in Britain’s National Health
Service.
“In England,” says Pope, “rarely a
week goes by without a crisis or another
in the health care system being part of
the news. This year, there was a crisis in
emergency room care — people left in
hallways for hours and hours.”
Critics of U.S. health care say wait
ing in line is better than getting no care,
which is what happens to Americans who
cannot afford to pay.
But is that true? Pope points out that
America already has “over a trillion dol
lars a year in public spending, really, to
provide health care to people who don’t
afford it.” Also, American emergency
rooms treat anyone who comes in.
By contrast, single-payer means tax
payers’ funds are spent on everyone
— even people who can afford to pay
for their own care. That means there’s
less left for the truly needy. The affluent
often escape government’s waiting lines
and treatment limits by buying private
health insurance. In Britain, millions of
people purchase private insurance, says
Pope. At least they still have that option.
In America, Sen. Bernie Sanders says
gleefully that he wants to put private
insurance companies “out of business.”
Hearing that, Pope replied, “makes
you wonder whether this is more about
spite than it is about improving people’s
health.”
All of this doesn’t mean the system in
the U.S. should stay as it is.
Government already does too much
here. People say America has free-
market health care, but we don’t, and we
haven’t since World War II. Government
and government-subsidized insurance
companies currently spend most of
America’s health dollars. If politicians
here really want to improve things, they
should try letting the market function.
Let hospitals compete. Right now,
state laws won’t even allow new private
hospitals unless a regional board —
often made up of people affiliated with
already-existing hospitals — declares a
“need” for a new one and it is registered
with the American Hospital Association.
Let insurance companies compete for
your business. American tax laws push
workers to employer-funded coverage.
Equalize the tax law and more individu
als would pick the coverage best suited
for them.
Pope says, “If we move towards a
health care system where individuals
were more responsible for shopping
around... people would choose a better
system.”
John Stossel is author of “No They Can’t!
Why Government Fails — But Individuals
Succeed.”
A JL
JOHN STOSSEL
www.johnstossel.com
LETTERS
Voters must accept
responsibility for
updating information
I was interested to see the many provisional
ballots the Abrams people were counting.
Many of my 80 years were spent helping with
elections in Hall County, under the instruction of
Anne Phillips. There are rules and regulations
concerning a citizen’s ability to vote; elections
supervisors do not make the rules. Lawmakers
do that.
The main requirement is in the hands of the
individual citizen. Any time you change your
name, or address you must let the U.S. Postal Ser
vice know if you want to get your mail.
Likewise, if you want to vote in any election
where you live, you have to register with the local
elections office. This is your responsibility, not
anyone else’s.
Also, if you fail to go to the polls and vote, year
after year, you can be purged from the list. Your
inactivity indicates you no longer reside in the
area, or you may be deceased.
It is up to you to keep your registration current.
The elections office will send you a card with
your name, address and voting precinct on it. This
card is a legal document and is important!
It should be kept in your wallet, like your driv
er’s license or other important cards.
When you go to vote, you can simply refer to
the card for the proper precinct and to see your
name as listed.
I usually check to see if I used my middle initial
or my maiden name initial. It really is no big deal
to absolutely match your registered name.
As adults, old enough to vote, it is time we
accept our own responsibility and not blame
someone else for our shortcomings.
Evelyn Swann
Flowery Branch
Abrams did herself no
favors with fiery speech
I listened to Stacey Abrams’ nonconcession
speech and wondered exactly how she lost the
election by “voter suppression.”
What does she view as voter suppression —
long lines at the poles, machines that didn’t func
tion, ballots being rejected because they did not
comply with the election laws we have in place?
Did she ever consider that the voters rejected
her because of her platform?
Each county in the state has an elections offi
cial who is charged with providing the voter with
a fair and legal election as prescribed by law.
Some counties do a better job than others, but
to my knowledge no county was found to have
been guilty of denying legally registered voters
their right to cast a ballot.
To me, her very angry tone in her speech
elicited thoughts of “sore loser.” She did not con
gratulate Brian Kemp for his victory but blamed
him for every problem, real or perceived, in the
election.
It appears to me that her announcement of fil
ing a federal lawsuit against the state of Georgia
is more an expression of — I lost and it can’t be
my fault so I will sue someone. In the end, razor
close as the election was, the voters rejected her
as their choice for governor for probably a vari
ety of reasons. In her final acceptance of defeat,
she left me thinking she is a very angry politician
who blames only her opponent.
She did not endear me with her actions after
the election, and I feel it will not help her if she
decides to seek another statewide position.
Judy Chasey
Buford
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Shannon Casas
