7 things @ 11 o’clock (8.9)

Filming for the Left Behind reboot begins today in Baton Rouge. Australian actress Nicky Whelan will play Hattie.

Nicolae won’t appear in this film, which covers the first few hours after the Rapture. But Left Behind fans can look forward to Nicky/Nicky in the sequel.

Martin Klebba is playing “Melvin Weir,” a character who was not in the book series (or at least not named.)

Here is the cast list so far.

You weren’t the only one….

I feel like Sherlock in the BBC version. “No! That’s wrong! … why is that wrong?” The intuitive leap is there, the articulate chain of logic is elusive. Need caffeine.

*grins* Thanks for your measured response; my response to people trying to state an opinion to a stranger (or the general public) on an important issue without reasoning is generally along the lines of “Shut up until you’ve thought it over!”

The part that’s screaming at me is the bad analogy of a kosher deli owner to the “religious freedom” of failing to provide contraception. It’s terrible and wrong. A kosher deli owner is choosing to control what s/he sells in a certain context. Once employees or customers leave the deli, they are free from the employer’s control and free to live their lives as they choose. The employer withholding contraception is having a huge impact on the entire life of … I was about to say his or her, but with a corporation that size, it’s really “their” employees, isn’t it? So instead of a single private owner controlling a single private location, it’s a group of strangers controlling a major aspect of the entire lives of its employees. That’s beyond the purview of the rights of an employer, unless one wishes to elevate right of contract above all other human rights (which is a separate debate, but the historical balance has swung away from the company town level of control implied by withholding contraception).

The part that holds me up is that I know people who genuinely believe that contraception can cause murder. (Yes, they should be educated better, but I want to deal with their arguments on their ground first.) These people would be making analogies of Godwinesque proportions about the religious liberty to stand against a holocaust. I would agree that one should not be forced to be complicit in murder. However, on reflection, I think this goes back to Fred’s oft-repeated point that anyone who truly believes that legal abortion is a holocaust has an obligation to act in far more desperate ways than the anti-abortion (or anti-contraception) sorts take. If they truly believe that there is a genocide taking place, they have an obligation to take Bonhoeffer-style steps to stem the tide. This isn’t a question of quiet court cases; this is a case of destroying a broken system.

So yeah. In the first analogy, the one presented, each individual has a right to determine his or her own actions within his or her own sphere, but not the actions of employees off the clock, including the employees’ private medical histories. (After all, contraceptive drugs are used for so much more than contraception. Does it make sense for an employee to have to justify each medical use of contraception by presenting a doctor’s note saying it’s totally not for contraceptive purposes? Does it make sense for an employer to get that sort of control?) In the second case, the one I’ve heard elsewhere, beyond an individual religious quirk and into a secular evil, corporate “religious rights” are the bloody stupidest and most useless approach to the problem one can imagine.

Next up: Scrooge refuses Cratchit Christmas vacation, in accordance with Scrooge’s religious beliefs. It’s a poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every December the 25th. Or is it virtuously avoiding the sin of sloth? You decide!

Well, yes. And it’s bloody stupid and evil. But given that I have friends who have genuinely bought into the holocaust hype, and given that I like to try to educate people from where they are, I try to imagine the situation from the point of view that every non-implanted fertilized egg is a human life lost and figure out the appropriate stances of all parties involved. I find that arguments that work for choice in that context are faster than trying to argue for a more nuanced understanding of the start of human life. Unfortunately, it can be harder to argue for the merits of choice.

Although on that topic – anyone here have the patience/spoons/tact to help me how to explain to a friend the differences between handing out baby blankets at abortion clinics and discouraging infanticide? Friend was SO EXCITED to find a gentler, less cruel method than the awful signs, and I’m having a hard time explaining to her why that method might still be cruel.

I might suggest that somebody who decided to run the gauntlet to get into an abortion clinic is not there for lightly considered reasons and will not be swayed by the sentimental associations of a baby blanket.

And also, everything Ellie said. If doing something besides writing letters and voting is the issue, here are a couple of ideas for concrete action.

From my reading, a large number of abortions are performed for reasons of economic survival, so–Diapers! Whether dispo dipes or washables, diapers are a huge strain on a poor person’s budget. Food banks either don’t provide them or only have a few at a time. SNAP doesn’t cover them. You can’t usually find them at thrift stores or salvage stores, and if the package was so damaged that it ended up in the trash, the diapers will have absorbed something disgusting by the time you come freeganing along. Attempting to reuse dispo dipes is just asking for diaper rash (which, besides being bad for the baby, costs money to fix) and of course if you have cloth diapers you have to pay to wash them. People who want to stop abortions could start a diaper bank. It wouldn’t do any harm and it might do some good.

Child care would be more complex to set up, but might prevent more abortions. The push to get “lazy” “welfare mothers” “back to work” did not come with a similar push to subsidize child care to a level that wouldn’t eat up a paycheck. Even where subsidized child care is available, there generally isn’t enough; the waiting list in my town, for example, is more than a year long. Parents who can’t get money for food and shelter and take care of a newborn at the same time are, I suspect, more likely to abort. A free day care in a poor neighborhood would be a load off many mothers’ minds. And again, even if it didn’t lower the abortion rate, it would do some good.

I have friends who have genuinely bought into the holocaust hype,[..] it can be harder to argue for the merits of choice.

Well, yes, I should hope so. If terminating the development a fetus were somehow morally equivalent to murdering a human being but I were nevertheless somehow able to argue the merits of doing so as readily as I am in the real world where it is no such thing, I would have to conclude that something had gone horribly horribly wrong with my moral reasoning process.

I don’t know if she can imagine going to a clinic after miscarrying in the middle of a wanted pregnancy, to have the remains removed before they turn septic. Being handed a baby blanket is “less cruel” than having a sign waved in her face about being a murderer…but it’s still cruel.

A kosher deli really isn’t any different, from an ideological perspective, than an ice cream store that decides just to serve ice cream. Nobody makes you sell anything you don’t want to, and kosher delis are selling kosher food not so much for ideological convictions as to satisfy the demands of a demographic – that’s how the kosher deli started , Jewish immigrants needed a place to grab a meal while out and about or working. A vegetarian restaurant is the same way. They don’t demand that YOU PERSONALLY don’t eat meat as a condition of employment, they just don’t serve it.

Thanks for your explanation. I’m putting this up here to avoid getting tangled up with the abortion question. Even the contraception question makes a horrible poster child for the headline question … it’s REALLY hard to argue that universal health care violates anybody’s religious liberty.

So can that kosher (vegan) deli require that employees practice kosher (vegan)? Can a carpet-cleaning company require that employees be the sort of Christian that appreciates the opportunity for a brief Bible study/prayer circle before starting work (assuming this is made clear at the time of the offer of employment? Can an intentional community (like a monastery) support itself selling fruit preserves without going through the NotForProfit rigamarole?

Kosher vegan delis can enforce kosher vegan on premises, not off. So employees are free to eat a bacon cheeseburger on their own time off premises.

I once worked for a small family-owned embroidery company that had a voluntary Christian prayer circle prior to work until it started having non-Christian employees. I was (for reasons of introversion) eternally grateful when that stopped, even though it’s a faith practice in my own faith that I want to be more comfortable with. I would be horrified to find any non-Christian forced or pressured into that sort of situation.

And any intentional community needs to decide its intent. If its intent is to serve Christ, G-d, Allah, the needs of humanity, any or any combination of the above – if its intent is to be wholeheartedly dedicated to any of the above – it needs to not be dedicated to profit. (There are quite a few non-named faith systems and goals which also pair badly with profit-seeking.) And as long as there is a nonprofit system of filing, it’s only fair for reasonably large organizations to file. Remember, the tiny home-based do-gooders aren’t likely to be slapped with a discrimination lawsuit because they haven’t had time to file as a nonprofit but want to keep like-minded employees. It’s only when an organization gets large that it starts to become a choice between profit and like-mindedness. (Although I have no idea whether the nonprofit system is fair or unnecessarily arduous. But that would be a question of whether the filing system needs to be reformed, not whether a religious or charitable should be held accountable for not raking in profits off of perceived faith or charity.)

TL;DR: sort of, heck no, no.

Again, a small business – where people know each other personally – can end up with all the rules they like. Most discrimination laws don’t really kick in till there are 15 or 20 employees: http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/coverage_private.cfm

The problem is that one cannot discriminate when it ceases to be managed on a personal relationship level and starts to be necessarily professionally distant. At that point, you’re not associating with friends – you’re managing employees. And at that point, you need to have a goal.

Note that I don’t think spiritual practice and profit are mutually exclusive. I think Chick-fil-a does a great job valuing the Sabbath. I bet there are many other less-publicized practices which also show the influence of faith in the business world. But these practices don’t amount to hiring rules.

I’ve worked at a nonprofit faith-based school; half of my family is employed in churches. All three relevant organizations started within the last decade or two. So while I don’t know the legal processes, I know people who’ve been through it recently just fine. They can speak to political issues just fine, as long as they don’t favor one party platform or candidate – which means the churches can decry abortion in general, as long as they don’t tell the congregants how they have to vote. It’s NEVER been an issue. The only “government problem” I’ve witnessed was the fire department getting cranky when a Bible study accidentally blocked the road entirely.

Kosher, at least, is a lifestyle which allows contact with PEOPLE who don’t follow it. I’m not aware of anything that would keep kosher from being kept if a person came to work in their deli. I imagine that any varieties of veganism which are so strict that they can’t endure a carnivorous coworker are also probably strict enough to self-select to a small-sized business. I think the pro-life receptionist would be allowed to work for the abortion clinic as long as they don’t spend their time subverting the clinic and disrupting business.

Basically, I’m seeing a lot of very extreme hypotheticals here, but no actual case where religious discrimination (or, if you prefer, top-down limited association) and profit are or should be appropriately mingled.

I think it would depend on the religion.

If for example a major figure in the hypothetical religion in question has demonstrated an aversion in for-profit activities in holy places, like objecting to trading or monylending in a temple, then I think it is fair to assume that profit and the religion in question shouldn’t be combined.

Right of contract. My Dad, The Lawyer likes to point out that in American law, we usually value property over people – generally, one’s only sovereign right is the right to sign away all one’s rights or property in the hope of gain. Or the right to control someone else’s, by contract. It’s very difficult to get across the idea of basic human rights which supercede right of contract.

To all those evangelical Christians who imagine that Hobby Lobby et. al. are “standing up” for them, ask yourself this: What if your boss is one of those radical secular humanists Tim LaHaye and Jerry Falwell warned you about? What if your boss is a Muslim? Or a Mormon? What if your boss is an atheist? Or a wiccan? Or — heaven forfend! — a mainline Protestant?

Although I’m not an Evangelical Christian, I don’t understand this question. Suppose my boss is a Mormon or an atheist. So what?

the only thing I can think of that an atheist-run corporation might do by way of enforcing its atheist beliefs is banning the wearing of religious symbols such as hijab and cross necklaces at work.

I don’t think an employer, atheist or otherwise, can do that.
ADL: Religious Accommodation in the Workplace (PDF)

May an employee wear religious garb or symbols to work?Employers must attempt to accommodate employees who, for religious reasons, must maintain a particular physical appearance or manner of dress in keeping with the tenets of their religion. Again, accommodation is required only if it can be made without undue hardship to the employer. When it comes to religious apparel, typically only safety concerns constitute undue hardship.

Well, yes. But bosses also aren’t supposed to be able to force their religious beliefs on anyone else. Also under the guise of religious freedom.

And yet here we are, having this fight.

In addition to that, Hobby Lobby wants to take the compensation provided to employees (health benefits are a form of compensation for work) and decided that the *corporation* has a say in what the employee does with that compensation.

If Hobby Lobby wanted to take Jane Doe’s money and say “you can’t spend it on contraception” – everyone would say Hobby Lobby was out of line. But since Hobby Lobby wants to take Jane Doe’s health insurance money and say “you can’t spend it on contraception,” people pretend that it’s not the employer limited what the employee can do with their compensation.

I say Hobby Lobby has to compensate its employees in accordance with the law, and if the employee desires to use either their cash or their health insurance for something Hobby Lobby’s owners disapprove of, it’s none of Hobby Lobby’s business.

If you believe that profits are just wages stolen from workers, you can see through the whole bullshit about ‘their money.’

Could a Mormon employer ban coffee, tea, and Coke from the employee lunchroom? Could an Orthodox Jewish employer require all meals eaten in the employee lunchroom to be kosher, effectively requiring those employees who bring in food from home to either keep a kosher kitchen or eat somewhere else?

If they can refuse to cover basic health care for women based on their ‘sincere belief” in crap that is not factually true what in the world makes you think that an employer can’t sincerely demand that employees don’t get sin cooties in the break room, which is in the employers building?

Of course they’re not required to provide certain food in the cafeteria or break room and no one has suggested that they are, so you can put away the italics.

The point, which you seem to be working very hard to miss, is that it doesn’t matter if they are not currently allowed to prohibit consumption of certain foods in the break room. The issue is that if Hobby Lobby is allowed an exemption to the law based on the “sincere religious beliefs of the company” there is no particular reason why another sincerely religious company couldn’t demand a different exemption from the law.

No, it’s really not. If an employer provides food and it does not meet the employee’s needs, then the employee can bring their own food. If an employer provides health insurance and it does not meet the employee’s needs, the employee’s fucked.

How long before every Corporation in America becomes Christian Scientist and refuses to cover any medical procedures at all?

Good examples.

FWIW, I know of a Jewish (private) school where that is exactly the case: even non-Jewish staff and students can only bring Kosher food into the building.

Actually, it can be argued that the employees, as adults, have more freedom than the students do. An adult who does not wish to abide by the Kosher rule can work somewhere else. Kids have basically no legal choice about going to the school where their parents send them.

AFAIK, a religiously based employer has pretty broad latitude in enforcing religious rules on its property. It’s limited in how much control it can have over employee behavior outside of work, but even there the courts have allowed pretty broad control for explicitly religious employers.

I think of it more like a peanut allergy situation: one non-Kosher food item and the entire building needs to be cleaned out and re-blessed. And we are talking a private school which does not get taxpayer funds in any way.

As a matter of fact, I remember going to the break area in the genealogy library in a building adjoining a Mormon temple. They had vending machines that included no caffeine-containing beverages. (As it was their place, I wasn’t going to argue. But I’d probably bring my own tea and a thermos of hot water.)

Which means that free exercise of the employee’s religion trumps all things bar workplace safety–which means, since my religion mandates use of contraceptives when necessary for medical reasons or when sexually active and not actively attempting to conceive, if I were employed by Hobby Lobby, they wouldn’t be able to not cover my contraception.

Right?

Denying me insurance coverage for my medically necessary and/or religiously mandated contraception IS punishing me.

So, you support single payer then?

Why, because it’s omgevilgovernmentintervention? Come on. Look at me, I’m Canadian. Okay?

Do I look like I’m omgrepressed because I can have health insurance even if I’m flat broke?

EDIT: I mean, seriously. What does it functionally matter if there is just one big insurance company for the entire nation, operating on a non-profit basis, or if the entire health insurance apparatus is operated directly by the government?

I do. I think it is bloody awesome! Course, this would be because I got to discuss it with my relatives in Canada…

Whatever.
There are many topics on which I don’t have an opinion.

You are putting words into my mouth.

What I said was that I don’t have an opinion on the Canadian health care/insurance system. Obviously I do have an opinion on the U.S. health care/insurance system.

I don’t advocate the U.S. adopting the Canadian system. But I don’t have an opinion on whether the Canadian system is right for Canada. As an American citizen and resident, that’s not my concern. As far as I’m concerned, Canadians are free to adopt whatever system you feel best serves your people.

I still don’t get exactly what you would prefer.
You do agree that everyone has a right to receive healthcare required the keep them alive and/or healthy, right? As well as the right to not be finally bankrupted by that?

Health insurance and health care represent about the worst kind of information asymmetry aside from the way stock markets* work.

The doctor knows a lot more than you do about human physiology. You may justly feel the doctor isn’t taking you seriously, but you can’t do surgery on yourself or try to prescribe yourself medications.

Etc, etc, etc. To “marketize” all this is to simply entrench the rent-seeking inherent in taking advantage of information asymmetry.

—
* Seriously. Ever notice it’s almost always the ordinary person who manages to get seriously fleeced on the markets? The really big folks who screw up can count on the government bailing them out.

Agreed. That is a rather reprehensible view.

Health care is a service, not a right.

There really is no reason to discuss this with you any further is there? As long as you’re willing to sit on your privilege and tell other people that if they can’t afford health care it’s a matter of great principle that they simply die and that also as a matter of principle their employer must have the power to use health care to yank their chain and bring them to heel then none of the rest of this conversation makes any sense.

“That is about the most mean-spirited partisan statement that I’ve ever
heard made on this floor, and I, for one, don’t appreciate it,” Duncan
said.

Thus speaks the man with the board in his own eye complaining of the speck in his neighbor’s.

I don’t expect people to interpret my position. I expect people who disagree with my position to explain why they think health care is a right.

Aside from the fact that it’s basic human decency?

I’ll pursue all the happiness I want from the liberty of my grave, thank you.

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Also, the UNDHR. :)

You need to support your claim that the current system,… works fine for the majority of people.

No. I said that most employees are satisfied with their current health care plans.

Just 18% of Americans believe that their health care will improve as a result of the ACA, while 33% think it will make their health care worse, and 41% think that it won’t make a difference. That would seem to suggest that more people are satisfied with their current plan than they expect to be under the ACA.

Or that they believe Fox News’ lies about the situation. Asking what they think about a future change is not the same thing as asking if they are satisfied with their current situation. (Hint: millions of Americans are NOT adequately protected medically.)

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/07/23/u-s-health-spending-one-of-these-things-not-like-others/

That graph, man. (O_O)

…Holy shit.

The rights you have are the ones you claim and fight for. You aren’t willing to make health care a right. I am. I’m willing to fight it out in the hopes of winning the same way I’d fight for any other right you disagree with.

Employer based health care sucks for most people I know. Market based solutions do one thing only – find a way to respond to the demands of shareholders and not consumers. I don’t care about the welfare of shareholders since earning money from passive ownership seems unethical to me.

Cars are not vital to life. Health care all too often is. Are you going to say that life is not a right?

How is someone dying of a preventable disease going to exercise their right to life without access to health care?

Or is it just that they’re poor so you don’t give a flying fuck?

Know what, fuck you.

So would you accept that you do not have an inherent right to life if:

1. You have a heart attack and need chest compressions?
2. You are drowning?
3. You have been in a bad car accident and need mmediate attention to internal injuries?

Note that these are all life-threatening conditions for which a relatively simple act could save you, but if not done, are acts of omission under criminal law which force someone else to save you?

EDIT: And that means indirectly, someone else’s money comes into play. If you’re drowning, a lifeguard (presumably paid by the government) has to get you. If you’re otherwise in need of assistance, a firefighter might have first aid skills. And firefighters are government employees.

Well, at least you’re ideologically consistent about the omgforcing people thing.

Way to split those hairs aunursa.

Well, first of all, yes, health care is a right. But leaving that aside, if the goverment mandated that all employers should give their employees cars, an employer who had a religious objection to seat belts would not be allowed to give their employees cars without seat belts.

If an employer is required to provide health care, then they actually have to provide health care. If they want to provide “A thing which is mostly the same as health care, but excludes women’s reproductive health,” there’s no reason they can’t per se provide that, but it does not fulfil their legal obligation to provide health care

And how do you expect people to work when they’re sick? Productivity takes a hit. That’s very effective, you know. Not only that, but if the employee is already sick and you’re forcing them to come in so they can pay to visit the doctor, guess who helps to spread the disease?

Not only that, but as I’ve outlined earlier, not having a universal healthcare system is a matter of national security – i.e., it hurts our security. We’re about one bioterrorist attack away from a whole world of hurt and an obscene amount of causalities.

Really, the position that you’re taking is a danger to civilization as we know, just as much as it would be if you said free speech is not a human right.

What do you propose as a mechanism to provide health care to everyone? Not just all workers–it would be callous and inhumane to deny health care to the unemployed, and we all know you’re anything but–but literally everyone. You must have something in mind. What is it?

Assuming that this is true (which you have not demonstrated and no doubt won’t) it still leaves the unemployed to die. But who cares about them, right?

You… do know that Medicare in the USA is basically a single-payer plan for senior citizens, right?

Yes.

Gee, maybe just extending Medicare to everyone would be a brilliant idea, considering people already pay into the system anyway.

Alternately, the government could allow each worker to keep their own earnings and invest it toward their golden years.

Health care is a service, not a right.

As a statement of current fact in the United States, yes. In the abstract… health care is a physical need. I’m trying to think of a right more basic than access to physical needs, and failing.

Fancy that. Whether you get those in the United States depends upon your employer. And, hey, what do you know, you also have to chose between those three things and healthcare, too.

Also, food does you no good if you have Crohn’s and can’t handle it. Water does you no good if you have cancer. Shelter doesn’t help if you’re dying from a UTI that evolved into sepsis. And all of that can be a result of not having any kind of health insurance, since that gets expensive.

Food. Water. Shelter.

Food, water & shelter mean fuck-all when you’re dying from diabetes simply because the hospitals say you don’t have enough money for treatment.

And spending their savings on the treatment means they won’t have any money left for food, water, and shelter.

And you really expect us to believe that you have never fallen ill, or received an injury, in your entire life?

Not even once?

“I support employer-based plans, which have worked well for the vast majority of residents.”

Tell it to the Marines. Most companies have started deliberately cutting hours so that employees who used to qualify for insurance are now part-time and no longer qualify.

I am not opposed to employer-provided plans; I don’t think they should be required.

The employer-provided health insurance seemed to work well, as the vast majority of employees were satisfied with their plans. Prior to the adoption of the ACA, the question was how to pay for those who were not already covered by the employer-provided plans.

which seemed to work well as the vast majority of employees were satisfied

a) Not to hear them grouse about it
b) Oh, so you’re only for the suffering and death of the unemployed, I see.

You don’t support single-payer. You don’t support employer-provided. What, other than the death and suffering of millions from preventable things, DO you support? And if you don’t in fact support the death and suffering of millions from preventable things, how do you plan to go about ensuring that such death and suffering does not happen?

But given that they ARE required to provide health insurance, they MUST BE required to provide contraception.

And if the court decides anything other than ‘denying certain employees medicine related to their uterus-having status is discriminatory’, the court is WRONG.

I think I’ve made my opinion pretty clear. But Ellie expressed a conclusion on a question that ultimately will be decided by the courts. What the courts will decide is not clear. Therefore I choose not to make a prediction.

I don’t claim to be neutral. It’s quite clear to intelligent readers that I disagree with Ellie’s statement that…

But given that they ARE required to provide health insurance, they MUST BE required to provide contraception.

The fact is that her conclusion is a question that the courts will decide. For me to repeat “No, you’re wrong.” serves less of a purpose than to remind everyone that the judicial branch will make the final decision on the matter.

Articles at the website I linked to above can explain it better than me.

And no, I won’t shut up.

No. If you’re interested, you can read the legal briefs.

So they can provide coverage that only covers magic crystal healing? Wow, if that’s ‘freedom’ give me the opposite.

Employers == oppressors. There’s no way around that. The law needs to mediate on behalf of the exploited party.

Your opinion doesn’t piss me off and it doesn’t make me mad.

The examples others are giving you are a little hyperbolic, but here’s one that’s a direct comparison:

Should an employer who is a strong believer in voluntary human extinction be allowed to refuse to include fertility treatments/procedures and prenatal care in their health care package? If employers with a moral objection to contraception can deny contraceptive coverage, shouldn’t employers with a moral objection to pregnancy be able to deny prenatal coverage?

Should an employer who is a strong believer in voluntary human extinction be allowed to refuse to include fertility treatments/procedures and prenatal care in their health care package?

Yes

If employers with a moral objection to contraception can deny contraceptive coverage, shouldn’t employers with a moral objection to pregnancy be able to deny prenatal coverage?

Should the employer have a right to refuse to offer a plan that includes pre-natal care? Yes. But the employer may not refuse to grant time off to an employee for pregnancy leave or family leave to bond with a newborn, nor punish the employee in any way for taking such leave.

So this doesn’t strike you as discriminatory compensation?

Suppose the employer actively wanted to provide health insurance as part of their compensation package – iow leaving out the mandate – how large would the differential between insurance coverage offered to men and women employees have to be before you would consider it a civil rights issue/a level of discrimination that should be legislated against?

But there are male and female specific health care needs, so they can’t be the same genius.

if a company offered coverage for all of the conditions which only males can get, and none of the conditions which only females can get – and the spice of the appropriate sex are covered just as an employee of that sex would be – would you consider this acceptable?

I would support a company’s right to offer an insurance plan with that type of coverage or any other coverage that applies to all employees.

Yes, it is incredibly sexist. And no, it’s not a feature.

I support the right of consumers and other businesses to vote with their dollars not to patronize a company that does not include a health plan with benefits particular to either males or females. Or not to patronize a company that refuses to include, for example, gender reassignment surgery in its health plan offerings.

In the internet age, the health care benefits for most employers can be easily accessed. And a decision to boycott a particular company for denying plans that include coverage for gender-specific products and services can be easily promoted.

Health care benefits information is not easily available for most employers. Small businesses are the most numerous of all businesses in the U.S., and those that do offer health care benefits are spotty about making that information available to non-employees. Also, large privately-held companies do not usually make that information readily available to non-employees. If you have looked for a job lately and tried to research benefits information for a company you were interested in beforehand, you would know this. Standard practice in many companies nowadays is to avoid disclosure of specific benefits packages before making the job offer.

Also it’s arguably illegal under article 7 of the Civil Rights Act (Source: http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&blobheadername2=Content-Type&blobheadervalue1=inline%3B+filename%3D%22Non-discrimination+Policy.pdf%22&blobheadervalue2=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1251741381222&ssbinary=true ) (Jeez colorado.gov, get it together)

Title VII prohibits discrimination in all terms, conditions, and privileges of employment, including hiring, firing, compensation, benefits, job assignments, promotions, and discipline. Title VII also prohibits practices that seem neutral but have a disproportionate impact on a protected group of people.

Hi Aunursa! I’m poking you for an answer again, but I waited a couple days this time in the interest of not being annoying. I didn’t intend my question at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/08/09/7-things-11-oclock-8-9/#comment-995021054 to be rhetorical – do you also support an employer’s right to discriminate in cash compensation based on the sex of the employee?

If not, please elaborate on why you are then OK with the hypothetical health plan I outlined above.

If you do support an employer’s right to discriminate in cash wages based on the sex of the employee, then I understand your position (though I disagree with it) and have no further questions. My utopian thinking, too, leans towards the libertarian – but I don’t think we’re ready for it yet.

I will explain the problem with this when I get back from taking my biological mother to her prostate exam.

Sorry. When I get bombarded with questions, sometimes I may miss a question. And sometimes I’ll ignore a question when I find my attention kept by what I consider to be more interesting questions. I’ll go take a look at your question now.

I don’t understand your question.

Let’s try this from another angle. Suppose your boss converts to a form of fundamentalist Christianity with a strong emphasis on the need for Christians to avoid being unequally yoked with unbelievers and then decides that the company’s deeply held religious beliefs require that the Jew has to go?

And we’re right back to you being fine with discrimination as long as it’s of a sort that won’t ever touch you. Your difference is protected by law and the women who, unlike their male coworkers, can’t get their basic health needs covered by their employer-based insurance can just like it or lump it.

I don’t know whether your refusal to stretch your imagination even a little bit on this topic is more infuriating or sad.

You do understand that the Constitution trumps federal law? That they are claiming a right to discriminate based on the Constitution? If the Supreme Court finds for them, Title VII won’t mean much.

I thought that the Constitution is federal law.

Nope. It supersedes federal law, which is why a federal law can be declared unconstitutional.

I disagree, as I have articulated in some of the examples above.

You haven’t articulated any facts about it, you’ve asserted your opinion about it. And as has been pointed out repeatedly, your opinion is at best naive. You’ve convinced yourself that if Hobby Lobby prevails no employer is ever going to be allowed to assert a religious right with which you disagree. There is literally no good reason for you to assume that.

How about this–suppose your boss is Jehovah’s Witness and refuses to let your insurance cover blood transfusions?

So you’re all in favor of letting people suffer because their employer won’t cover basic health care.

It would be quite committed if aunursa thought for a single second that such a thing would ever actually happen and would effect him. He doesn’t, so it’s not.

A good start.

What if an employer paid their employees with pre-paid Visa-style cards, but with restrictions on where those cards could be used?

Every employee should be entitled to be paid by check or via direct deposit to the employee’s bank account.

Yes. Strange that it was downvoted.

To be fair, he was asked for his position on the issue, and he said he was against it. The fact that it happens has no bearing on him being against it (except perhaps to make him mad/sad/whatever).

And yet you don’t see how it limits the options of employees for the employer to have a free hand to play games with the kind of health insurance they get.

Do you support an employer’s right to make that decision under the principle of religious freedom, or under the principle that employers shouldn’t have to provide health insurance in general?

The reason I asked is because the courts could rule a couple different ways. They could find that the EEOC is incorrect in classifying prescription plans that lack contraceptive coverage as discriminatory. (My understanding is that you’d agree with the merits of such a decision.) If they did, then the religious exemption would be moot. But if they upheld the EEOC’s decision (whatever you think of it) that plans without contraception coverage are discriminatory, but granted Hobby Lobby the right to discriminate against their employees and their employees’ wives and daughters, I wonder how that would affect employees in same sex marriages. Would employers be able to deny spousal coverage under the same principle?

(I won’t go further and wonder about other anti-discrimination and labor laws; that was discussed enough last week.)

No. I would say that you are entitled not to offer all employees a health insurance option that covers a particular procedure.

You are not entitled to offer a health insurance plan to one employee that you don’t offer to other employees based on the employee’s gender, sexual orientation, personal relationship, or religion.

Would employers be able to deny spousal coverage under the same principle?

I don’t know the law. I don’t know whether it would depend on the particular state of residence (whether the state recognizes same-sex marriages) of an employee, or whether the couple was legally married. So I wouldn’t be in any position to speculate.

EDIT: If the couple is legally married and resides in a state that recognizes same-sex marriage, then the employer should be required to offer the same coverage to a married employee and his same-sex spouse as the employer offers to any married employee with an opposite-sex spouse.

do you think this “should” would be unaffected by a religious exemption on the contraception issue?

Yes. If the employer offers a plan that includes coverage for an employee’s spouse, the employer cannot deny coverage based on the gender of the employer or the gender of the spouse.

No, it’s not exactly that sort of discrimination.

The first offers the same coverages to all employees and their dependents.

The second denies the same coverage offered to some dependents that is offered to other dependents.

Utter semantic twaddle.

To my mind, if an employer possibly has that right, then the employer-based system is inherently broken and health insurance has to be nationalized. At the very least, the government needs to jump in and offer, with a minimum of fuss, the type of coverage that the employer won’t.

But the same people who are supporting Hobby Lobby etc. are the ones who oppose government-supplied health insurance for everyone. They don’t want tax dollars going to any of that either.

But the logical endpoint of that is that none of the benefits of collective action on insurance can go to a type of health care that possibly offends anyone’s religious inclinations. It’s a kind of heckler’s veto in which people are allowed to exert this sort of negative control over others provided their convictions are sufficiently intense.

The assumption that THEY will always be the ones Holding the Whip, never the ones Feeling the Whip.

A boss can forbid employees from drinking alcohol while on the job. A boss can set a reasonable dress code, but must accommodate employees’ religious requirements. A boss may not discriminate against an employee based on sex or physical condition, so the Jewish employer would not be allowed to prohibit a menstruating woman.

I just thought of a nasty one: an employer can claim a religion that rejects modern medicine, and therefore get out of providing health insurance altogether.

That was misdirection. It got all the activists agitating for “public option” instead of “single payer”.

When you start a negotiation in the middle, things are inevitably going to move further away from want you wanted to get, which was the Dems plan all along with healthcare reform. If not, Max Baucus wouldn’t have been arresting single payer advocates at his committee meetings.

The plan was always for this hodgepodge mess that made insurance companies more money, while continuing to allow money to prohibit people from accessing care.

And employees at companies who’s employers are providing them coverage, are ineligible for the exchanges, unless the premiums exceed a certain percentage of income(I think 20%). No matter how shitty the coverage is.

Employers are allowed to pass ALL of the costs onto employees, so they can’t say that, they can only say, “I don’t have enough employees to qualify for the mandate”.

It’s only if the premiums exceed your ?% of income can you go to the exchange.

Indeed. I’ve been of the opinion for a while that if this objection goes through, we’re going to see a huge uptick in Christian Science…

Well, I guess if your boss was a Muslim he might not want you to see a doctor of the opposite sex if you are a woman. I suppose for an Atheist you would have to posit some sort of additional belief system, like maybe she is worried about population growth and won’t pay for insurance past two kids. Mormon? I don’t know that I can come up with any BS for that right off the top of my head. Maybe they wouldn’t allow your insurance to pay for any caffeine related injuries.I guess that point is that there might be other types of belief systems that could impose themselves on your healthcare and that Fundamentalists probably wouldn’t like that. But it is hard to stretch those to specifics.

Well, I guess if your boss was a Muslim he might not want you to see a doctor of the opposite sex if you are a woman.

Yes, if there are health plans that provide male patients with only female doctors, then a Muslim employer may not choose to offer such a plan. I am not aware of any such health plan at present.

If, however, the plan offers both male and female doctors, then the employer should be allowed to choose whether to offer the plan, but has no say regarding an employee’s choice of physicians within the plan.

But I thought only rich people could be victims of theft.

1. I…I have no words. At least the lines between Christ and Antichrist becomes clearer every day.

5. I’m starting to wonder if there’s any wisdom left in letting employers have a say in pensions at all. If there’s any good alternatives, I’d love to know :/

I’d be in favor of strengthening Social Security and discouraging reliance on private sector pensions to keep you afloat in retirement.

#5…S’ok, they are also attempting to defraud bondholders. The reluctance about federal aid I would think reflects skepticism that anybody in Congress actually gives a shit. The headline says “declining” funds, but have any been offered? I don’t think so.

And yet, there will be money for the banks and to pay the unelected Emergency Manager’s salary. So yes, this is a betrayal and saying “Oh well, nothing to be done” when this kind of betrayal happened in the past is exactly why this betrayal is happening now.

The City of Detroit is contributing zero dollars to the new Hockey Arena. That’s 100% coming from the State of Michigan.

Ah, I may have misunderstood the point. I was reacting primarily to the meme that went around the internet a couple weeks ago when the stadium was first voted on that criticized Detroit for going bankrupt (something they didn’t do) and then spending money on a sports stadium (something they didn’t do).

It’s just astonishing how shameless the looting of the public purse has gotten in recent years. When was the last major era of something like this? Probably the 1920s, I guess.

While I think you mean ‘prescribed,’ the truth that fundies proscribe is much truer than that which they prescribe.

Oh sorry, I reworded the comment and lost the part where I was only bringing up because I thought it was funny.

#7: Has anyone actually looked at this? If the mayor of Braddock showed up in my office and said, “You need to change this because it ain’t right,” I wouldn’t argue with him.

He’s a REALLY BIG DUDE.

Please, do not respond to this comment.

Screw you, I do what I want.

Reply!

Reply! Reply! Reply! Reply! pew pew pew pew pew!

Don’t let the screen door hit you on the ass.

Well, there have been some good comments ripping his ideas to shreds. I guess that’s kind of a benefit.

I literally LOLed. Your view of yourself as the Randian super man, too good for the rest of us is just so gloriously unmoored from reality.

And he fails to stick the flounce.

As Clark Kent’s attorney, please cease and desist from any libelous comparisons of Randism to a certain Kryptonian hero. You can say what you want about The Incredibles, however.

I liked the movie too, but I could have done without the Randian treatment of Dash.

I dunno, objectivism seems completely in line to me with the beliefs and intellect of the average ten year old.

(That was Kirala by the way – Disqus borking up again. My teachers generally allowed me to read ahead as long as I didn’t spoil anything for the other kids, and was willing to re-read it when we got around to it.)

Why does Disqus do that? So annoying.

I’m not even registered though!

Well, I accidentally registered once since it (used to?) auto-registers you if you don’t click the checkbox. But when it wore off I went back to commenting anonymously.

Most people underestimate the capacity for empathy in children. Well-adjusted ten year olds can do a lot better than objectivists.

A plotbunny that I never fed had the other kids at Dash’s school curious about why he never showed up at the regional track meets – and then kind of amazed that they outperformed kids from other schools. Because even though Dash wasn’t trying to win, *they* didn’t know that so they were pushing themselves more than they would’ve against a non-super.

Clark needs to read up on his Nietzsche. This case will get thrown out of court :)

Also, my Jesus freak, Fox News-loving mother does something like this. She’ll start (or join) some conversation we’re having, regurgitate some nonsense she saw on Fox or read in the newspaper she thinks is awesome (The Daily Oklahoman) and then if somebody disagrees with her long enough, she’ll say, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

It’s very childish.

5 bucks says EH doesn’t stick the flounce for more than a week.

EH gets a grace period before the flounce-sticking bet starts, though. :)

Sadly, I can’t take that bet because I fear that you’re correct.

(^_^)b I’ll send my $$ in to Planned Parenthood. I donated to them previously, so might as well do it again.

So the terms: From 12h from now until a week hence, EH comes back, I win, if less, you win.

Did you notice that he just upvoted your comment? I suppose he’s trying to be contrary.

I don’t know if your plan is working – EH upvoted this comment too. And mine. And other random comments talking about his flounce. Maybe you win by default, since he can’t seem to keep away…

(redundant)

d(~_~)b

It’s a thumbs up :P

Technically, the letter of what he said…and, it appears, what he actually meant…is that his comments from this day forward will be limited to, “Fuck you all.” Not that he’ll comment any less prolifically necessarily, but that his comments will be even more one-note than previously.

Health care is a service, not a right.

So if you were denied health care on the grounds that you’re unemployed, and you suffered and/or died because of it, that’d be A-OK by you.

*cough* that was Blockhe.. I mean Aunursa.

…EH is leaving? o/ I missed that! When did that happen?

(EDIT: Nevermind, found it! I was working outside most of yesterday, and didn’t have time to read the comment-threads, so this one caught my eye. I’m trying not to be overly relieved because it seems graceless, but the line “Undoubtedly, my presence has improved the quality of ideas here on Slacktivist, though not the quality of tone” just got to me. I’d be miffed, but it’s mostly just hilarious. He’s so offended that we didn’t celebrate his obvious superiority and listen to his obviously superior ideas! Ye gods and little fishes. It’s just precious.)

That sounds scarily like my grandma.

Youknow, of all the things in that post, that single sentence is somehow the most arrogant of them all.
I mean, the idea of “I leave because my posts were downvoted, regardless of their quality” was bad, and I do take a personal affront to calling me “the Munck” rather than themunck, but that one sentence just shines through.
…although the sentiment that him not convincing Fred that the minimum wage is wrong is somehow a fault of Fred’s does come close.

And fuck you all

Sympathy. But you have to admit, that’s a dickish thing to want to do.

Fuck you, jackass. Hope it’s in a ditch and very slow.

Gee, minimum wage is far from a radical idea, but now one guy in a comments section really doesn’t like it. Surely none of us can continue to support it once we’ve heard that some guy has been tirelessly writing blog comments. (And then telling us that he’s been posting a lot of comments lately, of course, which is extra convincing.)

You’re really doing this? You’re just going to spend your allegedly so valuable time looking up links nobody’s going to click on and making the same impotent comment? Daaaaang. I guess it’ll keep you on the top commenter list though!

Fun fact, since I don’t have a real account, it’s not like you’re spamming my inbox or whatever it is you imagine you’re doing. Knock yourself out I guess, but you’d probably be happier getting a real hobby.

I thought you were leaving.

Even Fred has not been convinced by my tireless commenting…

Don’t feel too bad about that. It’s not like Fred or the rest of us have convinced you of anything significant either. And there are way more of us!

Since you’re leaving, let me wish you the gift of humility in your future endeavors. It will help you immeasurably to understand that your purpose in life is not to correct everyone’s first principles. And try not to walk into every situation like a hapless evalgelizer, unaware that your targets are likely already familiar with the worldview you are peddling. People will be much more open to your views if you are open to theirs.

-KR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjjZGyYcH9E

it’s impressive, innit?

EH is an atheist, so he’s not trying to advance the cause of Christ.He’s making the atheists look bad and we don’t like it.

Or just someone who lies a lot. He has stated several times that he’s an atheist, but I suppose that may not be true.

I read every one of those “f██ you all”s in the voice of Droopy Dog. It’s very satisfying.

…not gonna lie, I think if we had all been reading EH’s comments in the voice of Droopy Dog this whole time, we’d all be in better spirits about the whole thing. It improves them a great deal.

The only lies about libertarianism I see on these boards have been authored by your good self.

Even Fred has not been convinced by my tireless commenting against the
minimum wage, posting the same things about it on August 4 of this year
as he did the year before that.

It’s almost like arguments against the minimum wage aren’t convincing.

I missed the time you explained how it was a statistical anomaly that every single time any country has increased its minimum wage it’s not led to an increase in unemployment. That would probably be a good place to start.

I give it an 8, but we’ll have to see if he can stick the flounce.

I haven’t seen it yet but I saw the trailer before Pacific Rim the other day and NATHAN FILLION.

I need to watch the first one first, though. I stopped halfway through and never got back.

I was not impressed by the trailer for Elysium. Wealth privilege writ REALLY FUCKING HUGE and no indication of any attempt to spread the wealth, just to get a bit of the wealth for–was it hero dude’s sick daughter?

At least one person I respect kind of wished Jodie Foster was the whole movie. So I guess the riches aren’t cartoon bad guys either.

Fb vg’f gelvat gb trg n ovg bs gur jrnygu sbe uvzfrys, abg sbe fbzrobql pybfryl pbaarpgrq gb uvzfrys. Still not impressed. I can sympathize, yes, might even do the same in his place if I had the nerve to try, but…that’s only two of the doubtless billions of sob stories that wouldn’t BE sob stories if the immense wealth that went into building and maintaining Upstairs were instead shared with Downstairs.

Neutrino’s got a point, but I still ain’t seeing it in theaters, and probably not at all.

My position is it doesn’t look like he’s fighting the system. And I’ve never heard of John Q.

Then the trailer is misleading. ‘Cause that’s all I’m basing my opinion on, is the trailer.

Note that I edited my reply to you since you got it.

Gur jbefg cneg bs guvf zbivr unf gb or gur fprarf jurer yvggyr ol yvggyr, rirelguvat Wbua bjaf vf fbyq, fgevccrq njnl gb cnl sbe n fhetrel sbe uvf fba. Ur gevrf naq gevrf gb trg n frpbaq wbo gb uryc oevat zbarl va, naq whfg… tbq QNZA.

Nf n sevraq bs zvar fnvq jura gurl jngpurq guvf guvat, “Vg’f fb erny vg uhegf.” Naq zl sevraq vf Nzrevpna.

That was the added stuff.

He’s poor and by virtue of being poor the system says he will not have yvsr-fnivat zrqvpny pner even though it is available. He opts to try to take by force what the system will not give him any other way. How is that not fighting the system?

It’s been a long time since I saw it so it figures I misremembered the details. The basic point stands though. The reason the movie was so painful is that John’s situation is not unique. There are others who are suffering the same fate, but he’s focused on his son, not on them.

So altruism from the get or it doesn’t count? Even if the hero’s success is pretty much bound to change things, even if he doesn’t intend for it to*, simply by virtue of the fact that his success will pop a great big hole in the bubble that keeps the rich comfortable?

*Which as I understand it, he eventually does.

I think that’s just because the trailer doesn’t want to give away the ending. Given the director’s oft and very clearly stated politics I doubt that the system remains in place, as is, at the end of the film.

From what I’ve read the script has weaknesses (as did District 9). Like I said, I’m not sure I’m going to plunk down the cash to see it in the theater. If I do it’ll be on a matinée, which is still only $5 here. I just don’t think not changing the system is likely to be one of the movie’s flaws.

I suspect that my soft spot for Matt Damon will lead me to see it as a matinée, even if the reviews aren’t fabulous. It’s almost certainly worth $5 to me to watch an actor I like and respect blow up the riches’ evil paradise.

He’s openly progressive. He has said flat out that his intention was for the script to make a point about income inequality now, not just as some future possibility.

It seems to be pretty clearly in the “This is what goes wrong when you have wealth inequality” mold, but it looks like that gets buried under an explosionfest.

First, I see Enos has yet to actually shut the door. Probably got his head stuck in the doorway. Better get out the chain saw to cut a bigger doorway. Read his little rant on my way to the end of the comments section and had the first really good moment all day–well, except when we went to the garage and signed the papers authorizing them to fix my car and found it was only costing us the deductible. Also, the car can be fixed, for considerably less than I thought it would cost, and it wasn’t declared totaled.

Second, I am not doing any spoilers–mentioning Nathan Fillion is not a spoiler since the only reason we went to see the film was Nathan Fillion. I enjoyed the film–but then, I actually liked the Star Wars prequels…so take that as a warning. I am apparently far to willing to put up with bad acting and horrible plots. I dunno why. Although, I do like a lot of the B-movie fodder the SciFi channel puts out, so there is that. I did give someone in full on prequel Lucas rant something to think about when I mentioned that all of them dealt (to me at least) an arc that dealt with things like slaves and slavery and just what constitutes freedom and slavery.

Wait, they DIDN’T bring it closer to the books than the first movie? I was so optimistic with Blond Annabeth. What’s the bloody point of filming the rest of the series if they don’t like it?

*sigh* Well, in fairness, I don’t care if they characterize Grover appropriately. (Book-Grover came a hair too close to whiny and useless for my taste. He didn’t get there by any means, but… a little too close.)

I’ll just remind myself of Nathan Fillion, and how much I enjoyed the first movie before reading the books, and that I like cheesy fantasy action to all sorts of questionable levels of quality. And that come this fall, I’ll finally find out the resolution to the cliffhanger in the most recent book. Or cliff[insert-more-appropriate-verb]er, as you please.

I’ve never understood why a progressive should be for massive
immigration. Increasing the supply of labor is very bad for the working
class. It leads to lower wages, worse working conditions, job loss or
some combination thereof.

Citation needed.

All the actual studies I’ve seen say that the Right wing cry of “They’re talking our jobs” is at best an oversimplification and exaggeration and at worse just straight up bullshit.

Workers in the US are being badly harmed by outsourcing to countries with weak regulation and by the loss of union clout, not so much by immigration.

Then the answer is a fiscal and monetary policy that actually promote labor’s worth relative to capital.

Gee, maybe like what y’all had from 1945 to 1981?

The fact that a particular plan, arrived at as a massive compromise with people who don’t actually want an immigration policy that would benefit workers, would raise unemployment and lower wages doesn’t mean that immigration in general would necessarily have that effect.

I actually didn’t say that. I have mixed feelings about the plan. My point was simply that no, I won’t take the CBO’s analysis of the latest reform package as the requested citation.

My reasoning is as follows:

As long as illegal workers are threatened with punishment for letting the law know that they exist, they will take abuse without complaint, because their alternatives are either to take the abuse, or to get deported.

Thus, any remotely shady business has a supply of labor which will not complain to the government if they are abused. They don’t need to pay a minimum wage, they don’t need to avoid sexual harrassment/assault, etc. Why would they ever employ legal workers, who they would have to pay more and treat better?

A human being can not be “illegal”

The term you are looking for is “undocumented immigrants”.

No it’s not. A person is not breaking the law by being alive, no matter where the hell they are.

It’s Othering.

Maybe it’s a little different where you’re from, but I know people who laughingly fantasize about killing undocumented immigrants, because of their “law breaking”.

It is illegal to immigrate without legal documentation. That does not make the undocumented immigrants themselves illegal, any more than outlawing, oh, pot smoking makes pot smokers illegal. They’re doing an illegal thing, which is different from being illegal.

Personally I’m in favor of letting work visas flow like water and instituting a minimum wage for immigrants that’s 150% that of the general population.

Same effect, significantly less trouble enforcing it.

The problem with that is crabs in a bucket. And frankly it WOULD rankle a little bit were I in the shoes of someone working next to a newbie off the boat/airplane.

Better to raise the overall statutory minimum wage and offer comprehensive, free ESL as well as extend automatic recognition of foreign credentials whose awarding institutions meet standards comparable to Western nation accreditation standards.

I don’t believe that you’re progressive. You don’t care about harsh punishments for employers who exploit and abuse their undocumented employees. You only care about punishments for the employers who pay them.

It is all true what you say. However, the problem with giving amnesty to a large group of immigrants is that the word will spread and soon enough a new gropu of illegal immigrants will come and hope to one day get amnesty as well.

Slightly OT, I remember a debate program a few years ago where a politician argued that we shouldn’t open more homeless shelters for foreign homeless people because if we stopped them from freezing to death in the street, more foreign homeless people would come to Denmark.
That, incidentally, is the exact moment I went from the regular left-wing to the radical left wing.*
—
* Well, technically it was the following day when I checked the media and realized no major news source had found her comments worthy of note.

It wasn’t just that she was saying it. I had somewhat expected it from the nationalist party, or at least wouldn’t have been surprised. But she was there as a member of Venstre, the self-proclaimed liberal party and the single largest political party in Danish politics, both then and now, and head of the govenment when she said it. And in her capacity as spokesman for said party, she said in a public debate she was willing to let foreign homeless people freeze to death in danish streets, because if we didn’t, more foreign homeless people would come to Denmark. And nobody working for any newsmedia found that worth mentioning.

I can accept heartless people existing. I cannot accept them being in power.

I should also point out I mean the European sense of the word “liberal”, not the American one.

It’s NOT ILLEGAL IF THERE’S AMNESTY YOU RACIST ASSHOLE!!!!

I would assume that any immigration reform that features amnesty would also include an easier, saner path to citizenship. If the outcome of such a policy is to induce more people to come to the U.S., work, and become full citizens, that’s a good thing. That’s kind of the result we’re going for.

What I think is that people will continue to move to the U.S., legally or illegally, as long as they perceive there is work here for them to do. By and large, immigrants aren’t coming here hoping to sit around unemployed — they could do that at home — and they certainly aren’t here for the sweet, sweet undocumented-alien lifestyle. They put up with the lifestyle because there are jobs here, or at least more jobs here than the place they came from.

Now, these jobs can be performed by 1) legally recognized citizens, with all the rights and protections that come with that status; or 2) an underclass of undocumented immigrants who can be exploited, abused, paid next to nothing, and deported the instant their employer finds their presence less than completely satisfactory.

Overall, I believe 1) is a far better state of affairs from a workers’ point of view. And this is true not only from the POV of undocumented workers, who are paid peanuts, but also from the POV of American workers, who lose wages and bargaining power because they have to compete with a class of undocumented workers who are paid peanuts.

“Massive immigration” is a straw man that makes no sense. It’s like saying that people who opposed Prohibition wanted massive drinking. I can’t speak for any other progressives, but what I really want is better economic opportunities everywhere.

When we’re talking millions I’d say massive is the word to use.

What millions?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/10/everything-you-know-about-immigration-is-wrong/?hpid=z4

Increasing the supply of labor is very bad for the working class.

How does immigration increase the supply of labor?
I mean, I understand that it makes more labor available here, as opposed to somewhere else — while also, naturally, increasing the local demand for the goods that labor supplies — but I don’t see how it increases the supply of labor systemwide.

I’ve heard a somewhat convincing argument that immigration is also bad for the environment, though of course that argument applied only to ‘the environment of the US’, not ‘the environment worldwide’.

“What if your boss is a Muslim? Or a Mormon? What if your boss is an atheist? Or a wiccan? Or — heaven forfend! — a mainline Protestant?

What if he is a Catholic who think that Francis is a hell of an improvement over his Holliness Panzer the first?

Tremble, feeble evangelicals, for Hell is upon ye.

***

“So is Eric Metaxas a xenophobic wingnut? Or does he just enjoy hanging out with xenophobic wingnuts?

Some people love to hang out with people blatantly les intelligent and knowledgeable than themselves: the contrast flatter their ego.