Tomorrow’s Lie of the Year Today

Remember when the fact-checking industrial complex decided that accurately describing Paul Ryan’s plan to end the Medicare program has it has always existed was a plan to end Medicare was the LIE OF THE YEAR? Well, we essentially have round 2. Cooper has the grim details, but the Mercatus Center put out a widely publicized study that inadvertently showed that Bernie’s Medicare For All program would substantially reduce total health care expenditures. After Bernie pointed out the own goal, Mercatus basically decided to work the fact-checking refs, and get them to call Bernie a liar by 1)claiming that the cuts to reimbursement levels were politically unrealistic, and 2)exaggerating the extent of the cuts. As it happens, I don’t think it’s likely that a Congress in the near future would enact Bernie’s bill in its current form, but this is completely immaterial to the question of whether Bernie was telling the truth. The way the nation’s fact chuckers bend over backwards to defend people who want to cut the welfare state is truly embarrassing.

And, yes, this will totally happen:

A) This is exactly what will happen and B) It will be done in a case that nominally holds up Roe such that politifact will deem it lie of the year when it’s pointed out that Roe has functionally been overturned.

— Basomatic (@Basomatic) August 22, 2018

Here’s how it will play out:

• Texas passes a law requiring any clinic that performs abortions to have at a minimum the same number of personnel and the same facilities as the Mayo Clinic’s Rochester campus. In addition, a woman must wait a minimum of 2 weeks after the first appointment before obtaining an abortion, and during this period the clinic must pay for the woman to go on an all-expenses-paid vacation to the new Trump International Resort in Vladivostok. Finally, before obtaining an abortion a woman must be able to recite John Galt’s entire speech verbatim from memory and assemble an entire Ikea dining room set in less than ten minutes.
• In a 5-4 opinion written by Justice Alito, the Court upholds the law based on the bare assertion of a single Texas legislator that there is no evidence that the law will make abortion significantly less accessible. In addition, the opinion holds that it is theoretically impossible for anyone to ever have standing to challenge a regulation of abortion, either facially or as-applied.
• Justice Roberts issues a concurrence angrily denouncing Justice Ginsburg’s observation in her dissent that Roe has been effectively overruled, and concludes with a paragraph congratulating himself for confirming his belief that Bradwell v. Illinois was wrongly decided. Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Thomas and Justice Kavanaugh, writes a concurrence holding that the 14th Amendment requires any woman who obtains an abortion without the express written consent of the current head of the Republican National Committee be executed using a method that was commonly used in 1791.
• Kirsten Gillibrand tweets that Roe v. Wade has been overruled.
• Glenn Kessler awards Gillibrand four and a half Pinocchios. FactCheck and PolitiFact declare Gillibrand the “liar of the century.” Two Yale law professors write an op-ed defending Alito’s opinion, which was drafted by one of their former students.