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…unless you are Bernie Sanders, which makes him even more amazing than he already was… Out-raising Clinton? Impressive. Not to mention blowing the doors off all feeble Republican efforts.
But I’m riffing on this topic today, so here it goes.
The reason is because a lot of progressive type people as well as far righters rail at their politicians for being what has often been titled “corporate whores”…
Doing whatever corporate donors ask and then getting a few bucks for it…
What most of you don’t realize, is that elected officials really don’t have a choice. Citizens United changed the playing field so that ignoring BIG money kills you off early.
(Which is why we elect progressive type people and become dismayed to find they too gyrate to corporate philosophies faster than we can find their replacements..)
For new comers to this process, we should say, it was not always this way… There was a time when BIG MONEY was just a player like everyone else. If they had good ideas, you listened. If they were a crock, you ignored their pleas…
Citizen’s United changed that playing field by allowing dark money to invade any contest. Prior, one had limits on contributions each which alone would not sway an entire election, plus it had to be publicly disclosed…
Now if someone doesn’t like the “size of your nose”, they can secretly donate unlimited amounts to unseat you… In local races it may not be effective. Bryan Townsend (2012) trounced “Big Bucks” Tony Deluca who had paid a lot for slick pieces to land in every district mailbox every day a month before the election… It sorta pissed people off.
But the threat of big money arising against you, makes you seriously weigh what normally would have been good sense legislation against that potential threat…
For example: do I dare stop this cancer causing power plant in the heart of Newark which will prematurely kill of 15,000 of our citizens over the next 50 years,…. or risk losing the next election due to dark money behind a dark opponent?
That would be a no-brainer right? Those dead could be your children, right? But no, it is not a no-brainer because you won’t be around in 50 years. And if you vote against it, you definitely will have an all out fight to still be employed beginning the next election cycle..
So more than donated money itself, it is the threat of potential money that has killed off all “pro-people” legislation.
Just like: the threat of getting stopped at a sobriety checkpoint…. chance of a 100 per million… makes you not drink too much before driving. Or getting a ticket from the camera pole, makes you not run a red light and instead sit at the corner for 3 minutes with no cars in sight; or eventually losing your license, makes you choose to pay at tolls instead of sneaking through the EZ Pass lane.
All those ridiculous things we do that defy common sense, we do because of existential threats. With Citizen’s United, the threat is real that if we do not side with corporate against WE, THE PEOPLE, we will lose everything we’ve worked for our entire professional lives….
This is why calling anyone, including Hillary, a corporate whore, is pretty lame… They have no choice really… Sadly it is like name calling a 13 year old who was forced to prostitute.. They could be a concert pianist had events gone differently for them… But we, have forced them into this situation… and as would any 13 year old rapidly figure out, you get killed if you don’t play the game, so you had better play it well because no one is coming to save you….
Unless it is YOU… Are YOU going to vote to end Citizen’s United?….. If not, shut your mouth… You are polluting the air with your breath…
Here is a teachers idea of how Common Core should be taught… ie, close reading of a text…
It is broken down into three readings… Reading one, Reading two, and Reading three. To show grownups what this does to the joy of reading, another Nancy Bailey (no relation to George) last year took the classic The Night Before Christmas, and after each paragraph, inserted the criteria required to teach in Common Core.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
STOP!
The First Reading
What is the main idea?
Summarize the passage I just read.
Do you have questions about what I read?
What did you hear?
What is this about?
The Second Reading
What text structures and text features were used?
What is the author’s purpose?
How does the author feel about the subject?
Why did the author use particular words and phrases?
The Third reading
What Inferences can you make?
How does the author support key points?
How does this relate to other texts you’ve read?
How does this relate to your life?
How does the author support key points?
——
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads.
And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.
STOP!
The First Reading
What is the main idea?
Summarize what I just read.
Do you have questions about what I read?
What did you hear?
What is this about?
The Second Reading
What text structures and text features were used?
What is the author’s purpose?
How does the author feel about the subject?
Why did the author use particular words and phrases?
The Third reading
What Inferences can you make?
How does the author support key points?
How does this relate to other texts you’ve read?
How does this relate to your life?
How does the author support key points?
=====
She ruins the entire poem.
Now, besides the irritability of having to stop one’s train of thought every stanza… look at some of the required discussion questions..
What is the main idea?…. Answer… Everyone was asleep… Do we really need to dissect a poem to infinity and beyond to understand that it is about late night when everyone is tired and going to sleep?
Duh. Really how much more can we learn about everyone being asleep, something obviously heard and understood at first reading, by discussing it excessively in class? Does this make children smarter and able to read better at some future point? Or does it teach them to play video games all day at home and not read at all? Obviously it does the latter.
Another question: what text structures and text features are used? Excuse me… what is a ….. text structure… How in hell have I been able to read and write my entire life without knowing what a…. “text structure” is? Oh, of course I can guess… by saying the too obvious…
“Excuse me, teacher, is it the structure of the text?”
“Why very good kavips, you nailed it exactly… The text structure is the structure of the text”….
“Ma’am?”
“Why yes little kavips.”
“So how is this text structured, can we see it? What supports what, like on a bridge? You know how the bottom holds up the top? So where is the structure in this?”
“I’m sorry, little kavips… no one knows… You see English is a living language changing every day, and if there was structure that was too tight, it couldn’t change… ”
“But what IS the structure, can you explain it to me?”
“No. it is unexplainable. It IS after all, Common Core”
====
In the old days we used to diagram sentences. That was visual and real and very helpful in understanding adverbs and participial phrases. We don’t do that any more… All we get is one teacher’s goofy definition of structure she pulls of the top of her head since it is never explained, which is different from all other teacher’s definitions of structure.. So much for “one” curriculum.
—-
Whereas this curriculum may have a place in some specialized field of literary English criticism, perhaps Harvard… the intellectual movement that Common Core’s ELA forces on children, “only focus on the text”, was debunked as a critical movement back in 1949.. The world has moved on…
All but David Coleman, the founder of Common Core.
Dare you. Read the poem all the way through, answer every question. (No adult will, but yet we thrust it on our children because they have no power of complaint) … then, opt out your child so Common Core disappears after this year and your children again can learn that learning about what is cool, is fun.
In the meantime, next year (2016) pay attention to our General Assembly.
Look for a:
Bill to replace the Smarter Balanced Assessment
Bill to replace Common Core curriculum with Delaware’s own standards.
Bill to fund Charter School by line items in state budgets and not allow them to steal money from good public schools and bad.
Bill to minimize Standard test results to only 5% weight on a teachers evaluation, making it a factor of no consequence except in borderline cases.
Bill to raise taxes only on the top 1% of the state’s revenue earners, to be used to fill in budget gaps looming so large they call loudly for drastic cuts, all unnecessary if taxes just get raised on the top one percent…
Even the most callous, ignorant, unconcerned citizen can’t ignore this. One can blame all Congress for it’s inaction. This Congress going on vacation now, has worked the least of any Congress in modern history up to this point. Just 142 public bills have become law in this current Congress (2013-2014) – down from the 906 the 80th “Do-Nothing” Congress passed in 1947-48, and the 333 that were enacted during the Newt Gingrich-led 104th Congress of 1995-96.
When a major crises hits our border, and is all over the air waves for two weeks, and every Republican goes before a TV camera and blames the President for causing the crises, and the President gives Congress his plan to solve it and it passes the Senate and the House REFUSES to vote on it, and instead offers their OWN contorted bill, which gets pulled because there are not enough votes in their OWN party to EVEN pass it…
It is obvious where the problem lies. Those people blaming Obama, who are so dysfunctional, they can’t even get THEIR OWN legislation passed in THEIR OWN controlled chamber….
It shows exactly where the dysfunction lies… No one buys a car that won’t run. No one keeps a refrigerator that won’t work. No one put up with a spouse who doesn’t help contribute to the running of the house… The dysfunction lies solely with this ONE party in this ONE house…
It played exactly the way the shut down the government last October. America, you have to stand up and do something about it… You can only blame yourselves…..
The enemy has been building its forces surreptitiously for some time now… It is moving its forces into position to invade and strike a knockout blow…. Ironically we will be the ones who open the gates of the city, willingly, and let them in…. They are mankind’s oldest enemy. They are resplendent through out all ancient texts. They controlled European civilization for a thousand years….
They took a set-back in the Great Depression. Democracy out-foiled them. It has since taken 80 years for them to grow back… But they are here….. Camped right outside our gates!
It’s the idea that people exist for wealth’s sake… and not, that wealth exists for people…..
Although phrased differently in different languages through out man’s civilization, today it can be encapsulated in today’s term: …. corporations….
Ha, ha. YOU laughed…. didn’t you? 🙂 That means one simple thing… You do not know.
In your defense, you aren’t supposed to know… Which is why it is all being done in secret, behind closed doors, among lobbyists, free trade activists, and legislators often put in office by corporate financing. Financing which under Citizens United is so broad that legislators verily feel threatened to stand up for people anymore…
From a historical perspective, corporations have always been powerful…. John Jacob Astor would have owned the world, but unfortunately chose the Titanic to ride home on. Corporations controlled Caesars during the Late Roman periods. Corporations were a big influence propelling Elizabeth’s England and the Hanseatic League,,,,
But people were cheap back then. Killed at will. Imprisoned their whole lives as slaves. Used for sex. Expendable, I think is the proper word we are looking for….
Such consequences are the price of making more money… And since there were no laws to protect people, money mattered; people didn’t…
Right now, negotiations are being taken across the world by these 59% of the world’s largest entities to insure that no nation-state can go against these corporations… Not to tax them. Not to legislate damages against them. Not even ban them….
What’s up for grabs in the innocuously named “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” (TTIP) which is nothing short of handing over the control and ownership of virtually every governmental sector and public service in both Europe and the U.S. over to privatization….
The treaty seeks to (among many other things):
• “Lock in” the privatisations of services – even in cases where private service delivery has failed – meaning governments can never return water, energy, health, education or other services to public hands.
• Restrict a government’s right to regulate stronger standards in the public’s interest. For example, it will affect environmental regulations, licensing of health facilities and laboratories, waste disposal centres, power plants, school and university accreditation and broadcast licenses.
• Specifically limit the ability of governments to regulate the financial services industry at exactly the time when the global economy is still recovering from a crisis caused by financial deregulation..
This is about enforcing the minimization of people’s rights. These documents will give corporations the higher pecking order…. It gives a signed, stamped piece of paper buried in a filing cabinet hidden somewhere in the state of Delaware, a paper signifying a small fee has been paid, far more power than all of us in unison combined….
This leads to very unstable societies. Instead of having our armed service currently fighting for America’s self-interests, they will be perversely fighting for perhaps Wal*mart’s, or BP’s, or Mirage’s, or Gasprom’s interests…. We might even go back to being drafted since who would volunteer for such a service?
It also leads to necessary governmental services being assessed from those most stricken, and not properly paid by those wealthy who are easily able to pay them… The investors get richer, the people get poorer….
As an intellectual example, let us say that a government is duly elected by the people and then attempts to make changes… As one proper example, an African nation wanting zero oil spills, moves to require a higher corporate investment in environmental safety and a higher rate per barrel on oil drawn from its waters…
Each and every one of those U.S. firms will now be able to launch expensive legal battles, potentially for billions of dollars, in the name of foregone profits.
Suing for lost profits?… Have you ever heard of such a thing? What ever happened to …. risk?
No problem you say. Surely a national court will decide for its people over potential profits…. But … you see, it doesn’t go to national court… It goes to arbitration… The case would not be heard in a court of law, under the scrutiny of a judge and jury, but rather in front of arbitration panels made up of three professional arbitrators — one representing the company, one representing the country and the other chosen by the first two to sit as president of the panel.
No citizen of any affected country can demand leverage or accountability over the proceedings.
The intent of these treaties glossed over as “trade deals” is to make Corporations immune from any government meddling. In their marketing, they stress that this frees up business from being toyed with by totalitarian or corrupt governments… But what their marketing never mentions, is that this sword cuts two ways… It also insulates corporations from actions requested by the people in those nations who are also full-fledged democracies. If these documents are ever signed, we will wake one day, and find our wishes simply no longer matter.
We can see it everywhere today… Put in a power plant in downtown Newark. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Put in a corporate Common Core educational program that is bullshit. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Dump sludge from Delaware City’s refinery into the marsh. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Sell the Wilmington Port to Kinder-Morgan. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Get rid of prevailing wage. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Get rid of unions, especially the teacher’s union. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Make corporations hide their owners. Good for investors, people don’t matter. Build a giant shopping center in Barley Mills. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Tear down historic buildings and barns to make into a trailer park. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Don’t give mobile home owners any rights. Good for investors, people don’t matter. Don’t tax the top 1% to rebuild a broken bridge. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Get rid of Obamacare. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Mainstream special-ed students. Good for investors; people don’t matter….
Everywhere you look… it is there… You can’t escape it… The funny thing is that after WWII, when the GI’s came home, we had a nation that KNEW people really mattered. They saw with their own eyes what happens when the top in governments do what they wish, with impunity. They saw with their own eyes both dead and broken people who no longer mattered… They knew that people who by luck had the benefit to still be living, really do matter a lot…
They made a cannon of laws to protect those people still living… Giving us the right to make the final decisions to decide our own fate… Since the election of 2000 that has slowly and consistently eroded. We are losing control over our lives… to something as silly as money. Of that they print more everyday. Forget that a person is one in a trillion. There can never be, nor will ever be, an exact copy made….
So never, never open the gates to them. Nor accept their Trojan Horses. They are conquerors; we are the bounty. It is the same war that has been waged ever since man first discovered the power of money. Mankind has been this conquest’s loser over most of history… Do not let the advantage we won in 1932 now go to waste… It is so close to slipping through our fingers. We will not get it back in our lifetimes nor our children’s… For they have been and will be, waging their war across centuries; we today are stupidly living our lives in fear of pissing them off….
Piss them off and put them back into their box. Get moving now.
Here is where we need to be: … We, the People, will allow you the opportunity to make money, but it must be done to our benefit and our rules... The End.
A Homework assignment leads to an arrest… “How dare you mother fu<ker question the wisdom of Common Core…?”
Call your legislators now and demand, don’t ask, DEMAND WE GET RID OF COMMON CORE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not tomorrow.
Now.
One of the greatest tragedies the exposure the NSA has given America abroad, is its loss in the dream… We all have a dream losses in our lives. For some it is experienced when as the fathers we idolized growing up, somehow over the course of 4 years in college or the workforce, matriculate from being the source of all wisdom and goodness, into becoming just regular people struggling along like everyone else….
The USA experienced the same disillusionment under the Snowden leaks.
Our nation always propelled high ideals, and usually we were willing to back them up… Iraq could not take over Kuwait, (though we tarnished that ten years later when we tried to “take over Iraq” but now are out.)
The Soviets always tried to paint us as a capitalist nation, an imperial power using economics as opposed to force, but the power of our good people always thwarted that message and annulled it’s impact… We couldn’t be as bad as the Soviets said, because “look at all the good America was doing, and how richly everyone lived over there… Factory workers over here could afford cabin cruisers for heaven’s sakes.
What Snowden showed was that the We, The People are no longer in control of this government’s policy OR actions… Instead we had a government saying one thing, and a shadow government doing the opposite… and all that it did, was not just for its self protection… It was for its corporate protection….
Listening in on German chancellor Merkel’s phone conversations really has no solid reason inside our relationship. We are good friends. However it does have great importance in the worlds of investing or competing with trillions of dollars of European money… What are her plans? How can our investment community turn that into cash? These are extremely useful pieces of information, and investing in the obtaining of such, would be a very wise course of action if takenwith in the limited context strictly inside that frame….
One can trace the chilling of the warmth of the US-Soviet relationship to Snowden’s defection and asylum in Russia, June of last year. These things are done on a quid pro quo basis, and everyone is well aware that Snowden is only in Russia, because it is better for the Russians to keep him safe there, than turn him over to the US authorities….
The true picture of the NSA’s release and further actions they took after that release, does indeed cast truer fears that the American nation is not being controlled by it’s people… That a cabal inside the government is operating freely on its own, using the conduits of information as its unlimited fiscal source and to create situations out of manipulating that medium… The idea that this could exist were rare and ethereal before the initial Snowden releases. But since, the possibility has become real. And the cabal would never have to become known. By creating the context of events, they could control the outcomes… By making dissent invisible, they could corral popular opinion to follow their whims…
All I can say to anyone detracting this as a complete impossibility, that propaganda is incapable of bottling up truth for any length of time, is to remind them that when Stalin died, everyone (still living) in Russia thought he was a god. A wonderful, loving, benevolent and caring man. Don’t believe me? Look it up… Controlling information can do amazing things.
But to the shock of Putin and the Chinese, the Snowden releases showed that the President, and Congress, and our bureaucracy were wimps at the hands of corporate dollars. That a illegal request to infiltrate computers of a Brazil oil company in order to find the high yield offshore oilfields prior to the official bidding, would be fast tracked. That listening on Merkel before a bond deal for Greece, would be done to satiate the whims of the big investors.
That our entire Federal governmental structure is pawned to big money is something our Supreme Court just made even more believable with its bizarre McCutcheon agreement lifting caps on unlimited campaign spending. further benefiting those responsible for all these international illegal actions, and hindering further progress by Americans set against such behavior…
It is really hard to hate the American people… Not even Muslims can do that effectively.. But it is every easy to hate American corporations that have no qualms with devastating a third world nation, then when money is gone, pulling out with no sense of responsibility for the damage done.
What Snowden did, was to expose that was really the truth behind the American dream… So much that when we say America is for democracy, … around the world, the global audience says…. yeah, right…
Taken from within this context of inside knowledge, Putin’s moves in Ukraine now make a great deal of sense as a solely defensive action… What if the entire Ukraine disturbance was indeed pushed forward (in Reichstag fashion) to create a crises punishing the Russians in the East? Put it this way,…. before Snowden, that would have been deemed preposterous…. Now it has to be interpreted within the context of: “wait a minute, these are the people who listened in on Merkel’s cellphone.”….
The real global problem in the world today, is this unlimited wealth against which no one is safe… Would anyone of us turn down a billion dollars for one or two seconds of work? Especially if done in secret and no one , no one could or ever would even know?
Believe it or not, the global solution is to raise their taxes… When any excess money earned is going to be sent to some government somewhere, the incentive to use all this unused money in illegal actions to make more, disappears… Instead of gambling big money on a price’s rise and fall,… hiding it as an expense by investing in real physical capital becomes the prime option to maximize wealth, one which will benefits us all… Raising tax rates marginally to higher heights on very, very, very big money, is a policy change that turns the wealthy from being the bad guys, into the best human beings possible…..
Just took a second to overlook my blogroll… On Delaware Way, all her posts are about fighting corporate. On Delaware Liberal, fighting corporate. On Delaware Politics… fighting corporate. On Kilroy.. . fighting corporate. On Delaware Right… fighting corporate. On Transparent Christina… fighting corporate…. Delaware Libertarian… fighting corporate…
Why is everyone fighting corporate? Isn’t that what our government is supposed to do?
Why doesn’t it?
Citizen’s United…
Funny how some things are so simple when you just look and don’t really think about it?
Courtesy of Delaware Way
Dear Kavips:
In response to your asking, here is why I went to the meeting in Newark High School for the Power Plant. My boss made me. I was pissed off about it because I was suppose to go to my first grader” concert that night, and had to miss it. I got the call at 4:00 from my boss and was told I had to go there ASAP. I said WTF for and he said it was important. I said my daughter is more important, and he said, he could let me go that very day if I didn’t show up for this meeting….
I had to call out of a service call and postpone it till the next day to make the trek up there. and get inside. I saw a lot of other HVAC vans and many that I trained with so it wasn’t all bad I guess.
Sad thing is, I don’t even want the power plant cause I live downwind from it right off Rt. 4, behind the ShopRite…. I think a lot of others were forced like me to go, because we all weren’t too happy to have to be there… But, gotta do what the boss man says….
Signed…
(your buddy)
The argument for Hobby Lobby is thus…
The owners of a corporation should be able to impose their religion upon its policy… That means that the owners or family of a corporation can use their values to determine a corporation’s policy….
Therefore if his case is decided in Hobby Lobby’s favor, the head of the corporations will now be responsible for those actions and results of those actions, so therefore, they can be personally sued for any damages their corporation creates….
This rents the curtain that has separated an individual’s accountability from that of his LLC. corporation… One could always sue Freedom Industries, which as a corporation is now bankrupt so what’s the point; the assets were already transferred to its owner. , But now, if Hobby Lobby opens the door so a person and corporation are the exact same thing, all those damaged by corporations, can now go after the assets of any individual behind that corporation…. Because that discrepancy now works both way….
What do you think?
Today, March 25th, the Supreme Court hears the Hobby Lobby case.
The question before the court is this:
If a law violates one’s religion, does one have to follow it? We have by fortuity and circumstance, brought ourselves so low to now ask of our court, to decide which of the two shall have predominance… Law or Religion.
If law wins, than religions must conform to the law; if religion wins, then to circumvent any law, one simply has to state it is against one’s religion.
There are good reasons for both sides, depending upon which predominates in your mind. If you think religion is above the government, then obviously you will think that as an individual, your government shall not make you do something your religion tells you is wrong…. Basically the law is compelling you to sin.
We’ve seen it before. Burkas: your religions dictates you wear them, and the law says you can’t for safety reasons… Withholding medical care for a child, your religion tells you to put faith into divine intervention, and when that turns out badly, the state sends you away for murder. Vaccinations. your religion tells you no, but the government says yes…..
In all those cases religion lost; here is why.
There were other people affected. Religion is a deep personal internal experience. and the law generally upholds that one has the right to adhere to doctrines if one wishes…. AS LONG AS THEY DO NOT HARM SOMEONE ELSE. The canon of law is very clear, that hurting other people, cannot be excused on the account of ones religions… The Burka ban is to protect from human bombs. The courts have said that if safety in a crowd is an issue for many other people, then the law can be changed to violate the harm-giver’s religion. The potential for harm controls the dynamics of the case.
Likewise the dead child not receiving medical care can be a very moving religious experience, but the child died. He obviously was harmed ant therefore the law trumps religion. The potential for harm controls the dynamics of the case.
Again the same is true over withholding vaccinations. Not being vaccinated creates a possible host-carrier for the disease sometime in the future… It is not just the subject at risk for failing to become vaccinated. Everyone else is susceptible to that carried organism. The potential for harm to many controls the dynamics of the case.
So we turn to birth control. One of which is abortion. Who could possibly be harmed over not insuring contraception? Is it really as cut and dried as Rush Limbaugh speaks, when he says it is all about him paying for Sandra Fluke to have sex? He’s paying and it isn’t even with him? Tant pis.
Prophylactics. Who gets harmed? That one is easy. Every person who picks up HIV for one. For two, gonorrhea and syphilis. For three, someone getting the herpes virus. Harm is endemic. And like vaccinations, harm can be unsuspectingly spread to others. Lack of free contraception could cause multiple spouses irreparable harm through no fault or wrongdoing of their own. Everyone has the right to intercourse, just as everyone has a right to their own Roth-IRA. But not everyone has an Roth-IRA now, do they? Many can’t afford it and so do without. Same with contraception. Therefore not funding free prophylactics causes irreparable harm to innocent people….
Chemicals, birth control pills and RU-486. Who gets harmed if these are unavailable? That one is easy. The future baby (def: humanness does not or will ever start until birth), the mother, the father, the grandparents, the great grandparents, the physician, society in general, future taxpayers… Quite a few harmed souls actually…. Withholding these birth control items is exactly on par with withholding antibiotics to a child dying from blood poisoning. Just as the child is suffering needlessly through no fault on its own, so is the pregnant woman suffering as is her child, though no fault of their own. Normally she would have gotten free contraception. But no, religion stepped in and now that is impossible.
Third is performed abortion. This is an emotional topic, that some equate with murder. The courts have flatly said it is not. Life begins at birth, always has, always will. Therefore performed abortions are perfectly legal, even though some people may not agree. And here the law is clear. They have the right to decide for themselves and not agree if they so choose, but they do not have any right to decide for others. No one does. That is embedded in the foundation of our founding documents…. That is the definition of freedom. One cannot say they for freedom and yet rail against choice. That is a scientific impossibility. Obviously what those well meaning people are trying to express is that they are all for freedom when it applies to them, but certainly not when it applies to others who have a different value system from them. Enforcing the right to free abortions, is like allowing burkas to be worn without restriction, fully knowing that suicide bombers are rampant in the crowds around you… Banning abortions for certain women, is the equivalent to telling the Israeli population, ” oh, sorry; no protection for you; you have to die if someone sets off a bomb, because you see, burkas are so sacred, we aren’t going to violate one of our tiny minority’s religious beliefs. If someone smuggles a bomb in under one, sigh, oh well.
If you are sharp about your wits, you picked up the clue I left you in the paragraph above. Right up there where I said..”they do not have any right to decide for others”….. Probably Conservatives will pick it up faster than contraception supporters. “Wait a minute” they will say, “see, that is exactly what you are doing to us by making us pay for contraception when we don’t want to cough up the money for it. You are deciding for us, what we have to do…”
And that is exactly right…. We are.
If you remember up at the top of this piece of writing where I stated this case was to decide the supremacy of law versus religion? Well that is the caveat. In religious circles we are deciding what one needs to do. We are saying that contraception will be available to everyone through their insurance free of charge…. In the legal realm that is the law. You can choose to follow it or not. If not, then beware of consequences. Why just today, I saw a Toyota that by my guess, chose not to follow the posted speed limit. He didn’t look too happy either…. We make decisions every day on whether to follow a law or not, and we choose to what degree we wish to comply… Some of us, unluckily, will pay a price…. But though angry, we really have no right to bring in religion…. Because it is a non-religious law….
In the religious world, we are however making a person (although admittedly in an extremely indirect and via a convoluted pathway, be associated with something he doesn’t wish… However, that is not a problem of our governmental courts. Religious issues are not in the bailiwick of the Supreme Court. It decides issues of law and order, and is forbidden on deciding on religion. Instead, religious issues need to be decided by a denominational or religious court if their denomination should happen to have them… If not, they should then be decided by that religion’s Inquisition or equivalent…. Then through whatever authority those courts have, they need to exercise their options of enforcing those religious edicts in ways that do not run up against the laws of the land…
A second issue is whether information or facts on file inside a Delaware Courthouse is also a real person. Are Corporations people too, as Romney once said? That is preposterous to even consider, but alas, so it will be one of the hinges on which this outcome depends. The sole point of this case is that a corporation (Hobby Lobby) is so sad, it’s heartbroken that it will have to pay for contraception for its employees, it cries every night and has insomnia. It can’t urinate correctly and has irregular bowel movements. As a result, this corporation is now suffering from malnutrition, and dehydration. Quite possibly, through all the duress and stress, this corporation has also suffered brain damage, causing its malignant depression. It might even have cancer….
If a corporation is not a person, then this case is simply dismissed. Corporations are subservient to human beings and therefore must confirm to the laws of the land in which they may find themselves. But if a corporation IS a person, then we have a battle over which person suffers the most, if free birth control is abandoned…. or…. no longer free…
If a corporation IS deemed to be a person… the next question for discussion, is when does that person-hood begin…. Did it start when it is born,upon the signing of its documents? Or, has it existed as a corporation ever since its idea was first conceived?
kavips 