Author: Michael A. Ventrella

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Your boss gets to decide your health care?

…At least, that seems to be the ruling of a Federal court in Oklahoma, which held that the owners of Hobby Lobby don’t have to provide health care coverage to their employees if it may include nasty things the employer doesn’t like, such as abortions.

Yes, that’s right. Your employer gets to decide health care decisions for you.

This has been framed as a 1st amendment Freedom of Religion argument, but apparently the court only cares about the employer’s religion and not that of the employee.

Could be worse, I suppose. If he was one of those Jehovah’s Witnesses who thinks that you can pray away disease, then you wouldn’t get any coverage whatsoever according to this opinion.

I guess if a business owner didn’t like, I dunno, kidney stones, then those wouldn’t be covered either. Oh, right, only religious reasons allow an employer to discriminate like this.

Let’s see — I seem to remember a Constitutional amendment that prohibited that sort of thing.gavel

This is an absolutely ridiculous decision. Hobby Lobby is not a religious organization; it’s a for-profit business. A business owner should not have the right to decide health care decisions for his or her employees. This is not comparable to a church, for instance, being forced to disobey its beliefs.

Should I, as a business owner, be allowed to force my beliefs on my employees? What if my religion believes women should wear burkas and never speak? Should I make all my female employees wear burkas?

The Court apparently believes employers have powers to ignore laws they don’t like. “If you work here, you have to live by my beliefs, not yours. Don’t like it? Tough!” I think we should say to business owners, “These are people who work for you, who have the right to make their own decisions about health care. You will give them the option, because this is America where we value individual decisions. Don’t like it? Tough!”

Your religion does not give you the right to disobey the law. There are Jamaican religions that believe in smoking marijuana during their ceremonies — tough, that’s illegal. Animal cruelty in the name of religion is illegal. Refusing to give your child medicine in the name of religion is illegal. Religions shouldn’t be exempt from the law just because they “really really believe” something. That’s not what America is about.

Look, if you start a business in America, we expect certain things from you. You have to pay a minimum wage; you have to have a safe working environment; you have to pay business taxes; you have to pay for worker’s compensation; you have to provide health care. Keep in mind that your employees may decide to use their money or benefits to do things you personally disagree with. Don’t like it? Tough. Don’t open a business.

If you don’t like the fact that we have freedom from religion in America, then maybe you should open a business somewhere else, like Iran. I understand they have no problem with you forcing religion on people who work for you.

Editorial cartoon of the day

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No more sheriff!

Like we didn’t see this coming.

It didn’t take long for many states to once more start up their voting suppression drives. Admittedly, some of the examples in the article above are merely politicians talking about doing it (and maybe nothing will come of it) but still, it seems to me that they’re saying “Yee haw! The sheriff is gone! Now we can do whatever we want again!”

This kind of talk really scares me. We should be doing everything in our power to get people to vote, not prevent them from voting. We’re not talking about needing an ID to cash a check, we’re talking about the most basic right we have in America, upon which all other rights are based.

All of these voter laws start with the premise “People are voting who shouldn’t.”

The proper response is, “Yeah? Prove it.”

Until I see evidence that this is indeed a problem (real evidence, not anecdotal and not just one example some election cycle where 100 million people voted), I fail to see why we need a “solution” that only discourages and prevents actual citizens from voting.

If the “we must have these laws to keep everyone honest” brigade was made up of people other than Republicans who have admitted, on the record, and in recordings, that the purpose of these laws is to keep Democrats from voting, then maybe I’d give it more credence. But to me, it just looks like Jim Crow back again, and this time with the Supreme Court’s blessing.

Editorial cartoon of the day

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The Most Powerful Man in America

Ladies and Gentlemen, ken0-009may I present to you…

The Most Powerful Man in America, Justice Anthony Kennedy!

Kennedy’s presence on the Supreme Court as the one reliable “swing vote” between the liberals and conservatives means that it is he, and he alone, that has often made the difference between hugely important cases. Don’t believe me? His vote was the deciding one on:

  • The Unconstitutionality of DOMA
  • The right of the Boy Scouts to discriminate
  • The right of prisoners in Gitmo to habeas corpus hearings
  • The right of police to take DNA samples
  • The right of corporations to spend unlimited money in political campaigns (Citizens United)

Editorial cartoon of the day

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DOMA Arigato

The defeat of DOMA is an important step, but the battle for justice and equality is never-ending. Thanks to the Court, someone can now get married in a state that doesn’t discriminate, move elsewhere, and still be able to get federal benefits such as joint tax filing and so on.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it later, but for now, I’m celebrating. After all, I have to — according to many religious fanatics, my 30 year heterosexual marriage is in danger of collapse because of this.

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Editorial cartoon of the day

Note: this was first posted last March, long before the decision became public. Like anyone was surprised by Scalia’s opinion.

Editorial cartoon of the day

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The Voting Whites Act

I was thinking all day about what I’d say about this latest Supreme Court decision … but couldn’t say it any better than Justice Ginsburg’s dissent, which was so biting that it caused Justice Alito to roll his eyes (because, you know, women! What do they know about the law, am I right, guys?).

supremes

“Just as buildings in California have a greater need to be earthquake­ proofed, places where there is greater racial polarization in voting have a greater need for prophylactic measures to prevent purposeful race discrimination,” she wrote.

“Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness. The same cannot be said of the Court’s opinion today. The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled. Instead, it relies on increases in voter registration and turnout as if that were the whole story. Without even identifying a standard of review, the Court dismissively brushes off arguments based on ‘data from the record’ … One would expect more from an opinion striking at the heart of the Nation’s signal piece of civil-rights legislation.”

She then listed many many examples of how the law had been used just in recent history to prevent discrimination, thus proving that it is needed.

Basically, the majority did what conservatives call “judicial activism” which they claim to hate (except when they don’t). This was a law that had been held Constitutional previously, and (as Ginsburg points out) was a re-enactment of an already existing law. The majority ignored the many examples Congress gave when it passed the law, and instead imposed its will over the elected officials and decided we didn’t need the law. That’s not what the Court is supposed to do.

What the majority said, when you boil it down, was “We agree there is still discrimination, but we don’t care.”

So now the floodgates are open. If you think Republicans had been trying to keep people from voting in the past, you haven’t seen anything yet.