About Me

I am Associate Professor and Chair of the History Department at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. I am also the Academic Director of the Clemente Course in the Humanities, in New Bedford MA. Author of "Social Security and the Middle Class Squeeze" (Praeger, 2005) and the forthcoming "Saul Alinsky the Dilemma of Race in the Post-War City" (University of Chicago Press), my teaching and scholarship focuses on American urban history, social policy, and politics. I am presently writing a book on home ownership in modern America, entitled "Castles Made of Sand? Home Ownership and the American Dream." I live in Providence RI, where I have served on the School Board since March 2015. All opinions posted here are my own.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Is freedom really the issue in the Court's health care deliberations?

There is much more at stake in the Court's deliberations about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) than just this one bill. Some of the conservatives on the court would like to eliminate the expansive post-New Deal constitutional interpretation of the Commerce Clause, depriving the American people of the ability to address our common concerns in the way that all modern states do.

Does anyone honestly think that our freedom is more threatened by the ACA, than by the class-based rationing of basic health that will persist and expand in its absence?  What good is a freedom if there is no practical political technology that allows us equal access and the ability to exercise it?

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