(July 1, 2014 at 12:29 am)Esquilax Wrote: If Hobby Lobby as a corporation has strongly held christian beliefs, when can we expect it to start donating all the profits to helping the poor?

Never. They believe in American Jesus, not the Nazarene.

(June 30, 2014 at 9:04 pm)blackout94 Wrote: Right wing in the US is not the same as right wing in the rest of the world. Where I live democrats are considered conservatives

They're largely considered conservative here, too. Unfortunately, our system is rigged so as to only accept two parties, so liberals hold their noses and vote Democrat as the alternative is unthinkable.

For the last 25 years, the situation has gotten progressively worse as both parties have shifted to the right. The GOP, trying to fire up its base, runs further and further to the right wing each year and the Democrats chase after them, trying to capture "the center". The theory is that liberals have no where else to go and so are a captive voting block and being "Republican-Lite" is a way to gain support among moderate or "swing" voters. President Clinton perfected this strategy and made it work for him.

The problem is that as the parties shift further right, what becomes "the center"and what becomes "radical" moves accordingly. W Bush, once considered conservative, now appears moderate and Ronald Reagan would be left wing.

What's funny is that members of the GOP seem to have no memory of anything that happened more than a year ago and act as if they're completely unaware of this shift. They really do think Obama is a "socialist" even though he's not even a liberal, by the measure of what liberals in America want. On Obamacare, for example, liberals wanted Medicare-for-all while Obamacare is like the GOP's proposed system in the 90s.

Fed up with this rightward shift in 2010, many disgusted liberals stayed home to punish the Democrats. It didn't work. So we're kind of damned if we do and damned if we don't. If we stay home or vote 3rd party on election night, Republicans win and Democrats conclude they were "too liberal" and they shift to the right. If we hold our noses and vote Democrat, they continue to think they can take us for granted and throw us under the bus once they win the elections and shift to the right.

If anything is going to save us, its that the GOP is tilting so far to the right that they're on the verge of complete meltdown. Much of their party has already moved into Crazytown where they're completely divorced from reality. The result of this insanity was our flirtation in 2013 with intentional default on our financial obligations and the near destruction of the world economy. Hopefully, the GOP will be producing candidates that are completely unelectable except in to looniest of districts. When the GOP implodes, perhaps the Democrats can split into a liberal and conservative party to restore the balance once again.

Have you ever noticed that no matter what group gets legislation through, the rest of humanity just go our own merry way?

Religious nutjobs have nothing.

(July 1, 2014 at 8:20 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: Have you ever noticed that no matter what group gets legislation through, the rest of humanity just go our own merry way?

Religious nutjobs have nothing.

But they have God on their side! Oh..wait nevermind..you were right.

(July 1, 2014 at 8:20 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: Have you ever noticed that no matter what group gets legislation through, the rest of humanity just go our own merry way?

Religious nutjobs have nothing.

Aside from the ladies who now have a cross-shaped hole in their health care coverage.

Not here in Oz mate

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And even so. The service will still be accessed. In some shape or form. The best outcome is that it is safe, legal and hopefully infrequent. But then we have sharia slaw, and those animals will fuck anything

(June 30, 2014 at 10:16 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: Oh I dunno - I bet a Venn diagram of those who are interested in interfering with others family planning choices, and those who would pitch a bitch about single payer would be revealing.

And more to the point, those who would limit family planning by law, and those who claim to adhere to the Jeffersonian dictum of "that government is best which governs least."

(July 1, 2014 at 8:27 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: Not here in Oz mate

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And even so. The service will still be accessed. In some shape or form. The best outcome is that it is safe, legal and hopefully infrequent. But then we have sharia slaw, and those animals will fuck anything

Which reminds me... Just WHERE are the animal activists? Some bumfuck Muslim fucks a goat, sheep, camel whatever and that animal HAS to die because it is now impure?

WTF?

The sticky part of this ruling is the term "closely held".
Cargill for instance is closely held and employs 130,000 employees.
Becktell, Dell computer and many many others meet the definition of closely held.
All of those corporations must adhere to things like fair hiring practices and a whole host of employment laws.
But in this case the handful of majority stockholders (a max of 4 I believe in order to be termed closely held) may overrule the 130,000 employees. It looks like another special case for religion. Employees are perfectly capable of NOT practicing contraception if their religious views prohibits it irregardless of whether the coverage is offered or not. This is an objection to employees who don't hold those views being free to chose otherwise.
In effect it is a small group shoving their beliefs on all of their employees.
What is to happen when one of them refuses to hire gays because of their Christian religion?
What happens when Scientologist corporations (yes there are some) refuse to pay for psychiatric care?
Or when fundamentalists refuse to pay for blood transfusions?
The supreme court went out of it's way to say that this decision does not apply to "other religious objections" but the problem with that is that a "good" ruling should result in consistency. As soon as you start making special cases then the spirit of the law goes out the window.
It's another mess and a testament to the influence of big religion on our political process. The most conservative of the supreme court justices have consistently demonstrated that they are beholden to the most conservative wing of American politics which has in turn demonstrated that it is beholden to the "religious right".
The supreme court has become a joke. The last bastion of American jurisprudence has been bought off.

(July 1, 2014 at 8:09 am)Jaysyn Wrote:

(June 30, 2014 at 9:07 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I don't mind the idea that the owners of closely held corporations have 1st Amendment rights. I do mind the idea that for profit companies or business owners can get away without paying for legally mandated employee benefits just because they object to them on religious grounds.

"Closely-held" companies amount to around 90% of employers in the US.

It's a bullshit metric. The only real solution to this is for workers to quit / strike en masse, we get our shit together with single payer health care, or we amend the Constitution ala the ongoing response to the Citizen's United ruling.

That's a dead link you have there. I'm seeing figures are 90% of corporations, but only 50% of employees work for them. Slate That doesn't surprise me much. Most business are small businesses. And yes the case could potentially affect a lot of people.

I don't like ruling, because I don't like the Restorations Act and I think business owners should not be exempt from paying some employee benefits or some taxes out of religious conscience.

That said, why should businessmen check their constitutional rights at the door just because they incorporate?

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There is a silver lining (or perhaps bandaide to stanch the flow of benefit blood):

Quote:But Justice Alito's decision went to lengths to limit the scope of the decision. “This decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to hold that all insurance-coverage mandates, e.g. for vaccinations or blood transfusions, must necessarily fall if they conflict with an employer’s religious beliefs."

Which is clear warning that not everything an employer can't refuse to pay for everything his objects to on religious grounds.

What Hobby Lobby did get out of was IUD's and the morning after type contraceptive. In other words the ones Evangelicals and others think are really abortions because they think a fertilized egg is a baby. It's a pro-life victory, not an anti-contraceptive victory. They still have to provide insurance for other types of contraceptives.