COVID-19 & Healthcare

SCOTUS appears ready to grant corporations rights superior to the liberty rights of individuals

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There have been some excellent editorial opinions on the Hobby Lobby case argued in the U.S. Supreme Court today.

The New York Times: Crying Wolf on Religious Liberty – The Supreme Court should reject the claim of religious infringement in the health care law’s contraception mandate.

The Washington Post: A ‘compelling’ interest – The government has reason to protect contraceptive coverage.

The Los Angeles Times: Hobby Lobby case: Defenders of religious freedom should be careful what they pray for – The Supreme Court should reject the argument of some for-profit firms that they be allowed to opt out of Obamacare’s mandate on contraception coverage.

corplogoflag-copyBut the five conservative activist Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, who live in the epistemic closure of the conservative media entertainment complex feedback loop, appear to be unmoved.

We are on the verge of a conservative activist court introducing a radical revolutionary change in American law: that fictional legal entities such as corporations, partnerships and associations enjoy superior “religious liberty” rights in the commercial sphere, and can impose the fictional entity’s religious beliefs  on its employees of other religious faiths, or no religious belief. The logical extension of this radical doctrine is that fictional legal entities may also discriminate against members of  the public in the commercial sphere based upon the entity’s religious beliefs.

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“Moderate” Scott Smith on Obamacare

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Cross-posted from DemocraticDiva.com Mayor Scott Smith of Mesa, who is running for Governor, has a petition out asking people to oppose Obamacare, in which he’s very proud of this quote of his. “I think it’s a bad idea that’s been implemented even worse,” said Scott Smith, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Ariz., who’s seeking the … Read more

The ‘Kochtopus’: an anti-government hostile takeover of America

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The New York Times this week had a big piece on the “Kochtopus” anti-government hostile takeover of America, Koch Group, Spending Freely, Hones Attack on Government:

Americans for Prosperity — the group backed by David H. and Charles G. Koch that has been pouring millions of dollars into competitive Senate races to the rising alarm of Democrats — was also among the politically active groups on the ground in this month’s special House election on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

But its agenda had little to do with the fate of David Jolly, the Republican candidate who won that race. The group’s ground troops — including those who knocked on doors, ran phone banks and reached out through social media to gauge ways to motivate voters — were part of a much greater project, with a prize much larger than a congressional seat.

Americans for Prosperity turned the Florida contest into its personal electoral laboratory to fine-tune get-out-the-vote tools and messaging for future elections as it pursues its overarching goal of convincing Americans that big government is bad government. . .

. . . and serfdom under a Corporatocracy of the Plutocracy is good. Mind your masters, serfs.

[T]he group has emerged as a dominant force in the 2014 midterm elections, spending up to 10 times as much as any major outside Democratic group so far.

Leaders of the effort say it has great appeal to the businessmen and businesswomen who finance the operation and who believe that excess regulation and taxation are harming their enterprises and threatening the future of the country. The Kochs, with billions in holdings in energy, transportation and manufacturing, have a significant interest in seeing that future government regulation is limited.

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Action Alert: delay House action on the budget for further negotiation

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I have heard from Democratic state legislators that they and the “Medicaid expansion” Republicans are afraid they are going to have the budget “shoved down their throats” on Monday, and they are requesting that you contact the GOP leadership in the House and your state representatives to delay this vote for a few days to allow more time for negotiation of the House budget.

Currently, the House Appropriations Committee will hold a public hearing on the nine (9) bill budget package at 9:30 a.m. on Monday. The public can speak for or against the bills at this hearing (time is limited). The budget bills package is then scheduled to go before the full House for a Committee of the Whole (COW) vote and Third Read vote beginning at 1:30 p.m. Hence the “shoved down their throats” fear.

The Democrats and the “Medicaid expansion” Republicans want more time to negotiate additional funds for child care support in CPS, restoration of more public school funds, restoration of Highway User Funds (HURF) to local governments, etc.

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What happened to not wanting to subsidize people’s sex lives?

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After spending most of the morning being deluged with tweets by an angry anti-choice man letting me know that birth control is wrong and unnatural (as he typed his words into a computer in a climate controlled room), I see that the Supreme Court has ruled that school vouchers, that is public tax dollars for tuition, are legal in Arizona (and presumably everywhere else) even if they are for religious schools.

On paper, the lawsuit dealt only with a small-scale version of vouchers, one enacted in 2011 for students with special needs.

But the decision effectively ratifies the decision of lawmakers to expand eligibility to any student enrolled in a school rated D or F.

Potentially more significant, it removes any legal hurdle from a legislative effort this year to remove virtually all limits on who can get a voucher. A bill to do just that is awaiting a House vote.

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