I thought these topics and surreal comments were interesting.
CNN Clinton on Hobby Lobby Ruling
MPR Dayton on IL Union Ruling
It seems that Clinton believes government should be able to force people/businesses to pay for what they believe is murder, and Dayton believes that government should be able to force private daycare providers to pay Union fees.
I will never understand these big government folks. I mean if a person wants an IUD or morning after pill, work for a company that finds these acceptable or pay for them yourself. And the idea that government can pressure people to pay Union fees seems oh so wrong to me. The Union should attract members by adding value, just like other businesses and groups do.
Thoughts?
G2A Is Pregnancy a Disease?
G2A Childcare Union Dues
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23 comments:
I thought it was settled law that the government force people to pay for what they believe is murder. Many people hold sincere beliefs that war is a form of murder, yet they are still required to support it in the form of taxes.
--Hiram
Does Hobby Lobby mean that a company can discriminate against employees based on their religious beliefs? If a Muslim group acquires your employer in a merger, can it fire you for being an infidel?
--Hiram
The other question, of course, is whether asserting something is murder is good enough to qualify for an exception. There's no scientific evidence that shows IUDs or emergency contraception have measurable impacts on already fertilized eggs.
War is an expenditure of government revenues. This is forcing people to pay directly with their money. Somewhat different.
Of course, IUD's and the morning after pill impact the viability of fertlized egg. Otherwise no one would use them.
Check your science there, John. The morning after pill has no impact on an already-fertilized egg. One type of IUD may do so, if inserted in the window between fertilization and implantation, although the science is not settled on that point.
Checkout wiki emergency contraception for a pretty good description of their method of operation. You arre correct and incorrect.
Two things: Hillary says this decision "denies women the right to contraception." There is no such right, and certainly no right to force others to pay for it. Second, Hobby Lobby insurance DOES cover contraceptives, just not abortifacients. As usual, the Left is all up in arms about nothing. It's all political with them.
The SCOTUS helpfully explained today, however, that the ruling does allow companies who are opposed to all forms of contraception to be exempt from the requirement, so focusing on the questionable "abortifacient" discussion is besides the point.
So if ACA had not over reached, it may not have made it to SCOTUS...
Now that I am at a computer, I can do this.
Wiki Emergency Contraception
MinnPost Daycare Unions
MinnPost Post Hobby Lobby
MinnPost Problem is Employer Provided Health Insurance
So if ACA had not over reached, it may not have made it to SCOTUS...
Any deal has it's downside. No matter what ACA deal had been done, because the objection was never really to the deal, it was the fact that the deal was done by Obama. And any deal that would have been done would have been the target of a legal attack. There is simply no way to satisfy critics who are paid to be critics, and it's fruitless, and often dangerous even to try.
--Hiram
The larger problem with these rulings is that they are poorly written and arbitrary.
Let's take a look at the Hobby Lobby case, for starters. Alito's decision applies only to "closely-held corporations" (where at least 50% of the company is owned by 5 or fewer individuals). Why? No legal basis for not giving religious rights to other ownership structures is given. If a corporation has some of the same rights as a person, then how do you only give those rights to only some corporations?
Similarly is the claim that the decision only applies to contraception, but not things like blood transfusions or vaccines. Again, no legal basis or test is established that distinguishes contraception as a separate category of medicine. So it's not exactly clear what the path forward is here. Does the Court only take seriously the claims of Christian groups that come before it -- how would the Court look upon a Muslim company that, say, refuses to pay for medications containing gelatin derived from pork? Or does it feel that contraception is a different category of public health interest than these other things? It's not at all clear, which is why the parade of lawsuits envisioned by Ginsberg in the dissent seems likely.
Also interesting, of course, is the conservative justices' response that the answer is that the government can pay for it instead of the employer. Does this put the government on the hook for making up all of these differences? If there's a company that has a sincerely-held belief that women or minorities should be paid less, is it on the government to make up the difference? Doesn't this decision incent companies to find religion?
If you look at the public unions case, Magers v. Quinn, you see the same sloppiness at work. Alito creates a new category of worker, the "partial public employee", out of whole cloth. Such an employment type doesn't exist in Illinois or federal law. A partial public employee, according to Alito, is one who is "only" compensated by the state. Today, such partial public employees only pay partial union dues (the fairshare cost of the collective bargaining done on their behalf), but Alito would exclude them from all union dues, despite the services that are provided on their behalf by the union.
And, of course the compensation issue deemed a side issue in Magers v. Quinn is central to the Hobby Lobby case. Alito notes how Hobby Lobby would be disadvantaged in the labor market if it were to decide not to provide health insurance to its employees, and as such, that isn't a viable option. Convenient logic at convenient times.
The amount of judicial legislation in the Hobby Lobby case is just astounding.
--Hiram
"... the objection was never really to the deal, it was the fact that the deal was done by Obama." - Hiram
You keep saying that, but repeated assertion is not evidence, and there can be none unless you are a clever mind-reader and have peered into the psyche of every single Republican in Congress. You are imputing motivations-- typical of leftists-- without allowing for the possibility [now proven, IMHO] that this was TERRIBLE legislation and by any sane process would have never been seriously entertained, let alone becoming law. It still hasn't, with Obama imperiously changing the most politically damaging parts of it, and the Court reversing others.
Sean, that's a very good analysis, but it stems from two things. I think the Roberts court is trying to tailor very narrow opinions so as to go in the right direction, but still get a 5-4 opinion. The other is that, as others have pointed out, there would not be a need for this if Obamacare had not set itself up as the complete arbiter of the contract between employer and employee, and between the consumer and the health insurance industry. Get rid of Obamacare and all of these lawsuits and their complications are moot.
It's fine to tailor narrow opinions, as long as you've got something to back it up. What it feels like the Court is doing here (as it did with the Voting Rights Act) is to kick open the door a little bit, leave a lot of details vague to invite other lawsuits, then use the future lawsuit to more broadly strike at the law.
That's not "calling balls and strikes", to use the Chief Justice's words.
Proactive contraception may have caused some noise, but no where near the noise of trying to mandate paying for after fertilation contraceptive methods...
Just like trying to get government to fund abortions... That is a big jump and a lot of moderates aren't even ready for that and the ACA authors should have known that.
Sean, I believe that was my point. Rather than risk having the court's liberal wing rule in the WRONG direction, the Roberts court writes a very narrow ruling in the RIGHT direction and, as you say, waits for another bite at the apple. I don't have a problem with that; I'll take half a loaf if that's all I can get.
Now if somebody could please explain to me where the SCOTUS came up with that "Obamacare is a tax" decision, when everybody told us it was NOT a tax? They could have struck down the whole mess and saved all of this nibbling around the edges.
The thing that really shocked me about the court's religion decisions this year was that where religion is concerned, people just don't have the right to speak, they have the right to engage.
Christians believe not only in their religion but that also they have some sort of obligation to persuade others to join it. I don't know of any coherent explanation for this but it is certainly an element of their theology. They feel, for example, some compelling obligation to issue prayers before high school graduations and city council meetings, that I guess the first amendment compels everyone else to listen to.
I find this odd. I feel most certainly that I have a first amendment right to speak, but it never occurred to me before this term of the Supreme Court, that my first amendment right to speak included an obligation on the part of others, to listen to me.
--Hiram
I'm glad Jerry at least acknowledges here that the "conservative" justices here are engaged in a form of advocacy as opposed to calling balls and strikes.
Sean, I said that the ruling was "in the right direction," not that it was "advocacy." The only thing being supported, IMHO, is the notion that the Constitution NOWHERE gives the government the power to tell you what you will buy, or what a private employment contract must contain.
Which of the five members of the majority would have balked at a wider-ranging ruling? I don't think any of them, since as you point out, they'll take another bite of the apple in the next case. If they believe in a broader rebuke of the law, they should do so the first time instead of subjecting the country to years of uncertainty as multiple case wind through the system.
I would need to read the individual opinions to make a better guess, but "swing vote" Kennedy would be a reasonable expectation.
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