I suppose so. In her position, though, it's a requirement to be diplomatic, so at least as James as presented it, it doesn't appear that she was fulfilling that part of her job requirements.
But if they truly believe birth control is wrong, they simply won't request it, and hence not have to pay for it anyway, QED.
The problem, of course, is that the statistics show that the vast majority of Catholics do use birth control -- beliefs be damned! -- and making the church pay for it would likely increase the number of Catholics who do so as well as make it that much more obvious as to the disconnect between church leaders' teachings and the parishioners' actions.
If, in actuality, > -- and I don't
Usually you hear more about those who believe in faith healing getting tossed into the slammer when their kid dies, but occasionally the state gets their first and takes the kid from them. Here's one case:
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-- that kid's parents were forced to pay for the kid's healthcare, even though their religious beliefs are 100% against such care in the first place.
So you admit that you believe appearances are more important than actions. Classical lefty.
Good grief. Think instead of drool! Those paying the bills are the ones who believe they have a right to their religion. The First Amendment rather agrees with them. Their employees aren't necessarily of the same religion and often are not.
Absolutely irrelevant.
Don't be silly. It's about the First Amendment and the government's attack on the Church. Note that other religions have joined the Catholic Church in this battle, though they have no similar restrictions.
Now, show me a case when the patient is of the age of majority. IOW, you're ginning up another strawman. You really love to do that.
I believe the actions she took were fully authorized by those above her, e.g., Obama. But even when you're implementing a policy that has the full support of your management, if it's going to be unpopular with some groups you still need to be diplomatic about it.
That's not saying appearances are more important than actions, just that appearances *are* important too.
Sure, we're back to the usual case of there being lots of things my taxes or your taxes pay for that we don't personally support... but as part of the community, we have to suck it up and write out that check (while also fully lobbying for what we believe really is The Right Way, of course :-) ).
Since Obama backed down he clearly thought they had a pretty strong case as well.
90% irrelevant, but not entirely: Understanding that peoples' true motivations are not always entirely what they claim can definitely make it easier to come to common ground with them. It's just another sign of how irrational humans are... sometimes it's better to not formally acknowledge the white elephant in the room, even though we're working on a, say, a farm subsidy bill and it just so happens we're going to have a huge surplus of peanuts that we're going to let the farmers do whatever they choose to with.
But I digress. :-)
Some of it absolutely is (and for certain individuals, sure, 100% it is), but in general there's more to it than just the First Amendment.
Ah, so it's OK if the government forces people to pay for medical devices/procedures for minors against their parents wishes... but not OK For the government to force employers to similarly pay against the employer's wish? That seems like a pretty arbitrary distinction...
It's a huge can of worms, eventually boiling down to how you define "efficiency" and the core role of government in the first place. If you choose the right definitions, you might as well claim that the government is often the *most* efficient.
So your position is that you should smile when you subvert the Constitution?
Apparently you *do* believe they're more important. That's your supporting position.
No, you're on one of your strawmen jags again. This is about telling how they have to spend *their* money. It has *nothing* to do with the Church forbidding their employees from going to a free, tax-payer, supported clinic. The fact is that there are alternatives, so it is AGAINST US LAW (as well as the Constitution) to force a religious entity to do *anything* when there is any reasonable alternative, which there clearly is.
You've been watching MSNBC again. HE DID NOT BACK DOWN.
Zero percent. The First Amendment has nothing to do with majority rule.
Word salad. Irrelevant.
Sure, there's the second. ;-)
In this case, no there isn't. It is *ALL* about the First Amendment and keeping government's tentacles out of religion. You do know the framers wanted government out of religion, not the other way around.
Because the minor child cannot make the decision for himself, the state has an interest in the welfare of the child. Refusing medical attention for another is the same as murder, in that light. Now, show me where the government forces medical attention on a major.
Though it is rather hypothetical, i can see that you are trying to = support your case. I was interested in seeing if you could do a decent job of = it though. Maybe another try?
Generally yes they have and their conclusions are evidence based.
Social science has actually significantly advanced the techniques of logical inference and double-blind studies of human behaviour. Much more is now known about the tendency of humans towards herd behaviour and for example what the city calls "irrational exuberance" leading to boom and bust. There has been a major international boom/bust about every 80 years for the past three centuries. We have learned nothing from the conventional wisdom of leaving the bankers to get on with it.
There are some essential truths but they are not necessarily the ones you think they are. There are also many more shades of grey than your simple minded us or them analysis allows for.
But not if you take it to the extremes that the US right wing does.
It does not serve any of them well to allow their future customers to starve to death. That hard line method was famously tried during the Irish potato famines when Ireland was still *exporting* food to the UK because the locals could not afford to pay for it. Most famines are like that - there *is* food, but the starving poor cannot afford it and the merchants are motivated by greed to let them die on the streets.
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Will do as an introduction to hard line unbridled capitalism and British "free trade". It is definitely not our finest hour.
Modern economics is predicated on the assumption of a perfect market with all players in possession of perfect information and acting as selfish individuals through greed to maximise their own income.
In practice we have a rigged market with some on the inside track able to know in advance what price sensitive stock announcements are to be made and act accordingly. They seldom get caught red handed.
Donate enough money to a political party and you can have dinner with the Prime Minister and alter government policy - sound familiar?
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Their chief fund raiser was secretly filmed saying this very recently.
You mean like black slaves being 3/5ths of a person? (Art 1 Sect 2) (they were *very* careful not to use the words slave or slavery in the US Constitution until the amendment for abolition of Slavery in 1865).
You should smile when you're doing something that you don't think subverts the Constitution, but you know that not everyone agrees. :-)
I do think Obama is the kind of guy who decides what he wants to do first and then tries to figure out a way to make it Constitutionally-viable, even if that means some very loose interpretations of it.
Oops, sorry about that. I guess it's just been out of the news by virtue of the spreme court hearings on the health care bill?
The thing is, these issues aren't irrelevant to everyone. They may be to you (which is fine), but if you're going to gain popular support (aka, "win friends and influence people"), you need to be aware of them and address them rather than just dismissing them as irrelevant -- everyone else gets the same number of votes you do, after all.
It happens every day: See, e.g., involuntary commitment.
But how did we get on to the government forcing medical treatment on people? No one is going to force Catholics to use birth control if they don't want to, after all?
No, it's really quite true. After all, in peace time, most of the military is 0% efficient, right? Yet of course almost everyone agrees that funding it continuously is a very good idea.
With many social programs, the problem is that it's often very difficult to put a monetary value on the results. E.g., say you cut out school breakfast programs. You save some money, but say you also are able to demonstrate that the average grades of the kids previously on the program fall. And you know that overall kids with lower grades will be less prosperous in life. How in the world do you get back to deciding whether or not those school breakfast programs where "efficient" or not? What's a metric that you'd be able to get most people to agree on?
I'm definitely just armchair-debating here. I primarily have anecdotes and my own opinions and observations; I often cannot readily provide solid statistics, studies, etc. for them. :-)
Additionally, the "sellers" in the market purposely try to make it difficult to obtain "perfect information" as doing so is typically not in their interest. E.g., here in the U.S., there are a lot of mattresses that are manufactured identically, but for each retail chain they're sold to they're given a different model number so that it's difficult for consumers to compare prices. It also allows each chain to make the seemingly-consumer-friendly but actually-meaningless claim of having the "lowest price guarantee" on their goods.
Another annoying thing along these same lines in the U.S. is that there isn't a single cellular phone service provide out there AFAICT that advertises the *real* price. If they advertise, e.g., $40/mo, there's ALWAYS some additional junk fees added (typically ~10%): Some marketing guy noticed that if these fees are lumped together next to government taxes, people would often erroneously assume that the junk fees were government-mandated as well and that other carriers would hence be the same and therefore they wouldn't compare the *total cost* between carriers.
Agreed, pre-paid plans seem to be about the most "honest" plans out there in terms of not having junk fees. However, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint all have these junk fees on their regular (contract) plans, and I would guesstimate that between the four of them that's at least 90% of the (non-pre-paid) market.
It is annoying that some phones don't have a "cellular data off, WiFi on" mode so that you can still use them for Internet access (with, e.g., the WiFi in your house) with carriers offering "$x per day, but only when you actually use cellular services" plans.
No, he simply doesn't care, nor do any of the Democrats. Note the answers when they were asked under what Constitutional power they came up with Obama care. The answers were revealing. The fact is they do whatever they want and make excuses later. ...and you lefties eat it up.
Some like word salad. The other one, here, that comes to mind is AlwaysWrong.
Again, the infirm are not in control of themselves. Note that this does require a court order. I also note that you declined to answer the question, rather threw up another strawman.
Moron! They're forcing Catholics to PAY for abortion and birth control. Can't you get that simple fact through your thick skull?!
Bullshit.
Point...
OK, what has that to do with efficiency? You do remember the $350 toilet seats, right?
Particularly when it's nonexistent or negative.
Show me where that's Constitutional!
They're falling now. You're not talking about efficiency anyway. Effective efficient.
You've failed to show that breakfast improves learning. In fact it hasn't. By all measurements, school effectiveness is falling, not rising.
For a Federal program, you don't. You note that it's unconstitutional, get rid of it and move on.
More money => lower grades doesn't seem to imply efficiency or effectiveness.
This sort of black & white view of the folks you disagree with is seldom true and typically only serves to hamper working together. You attract more flies with honey than vinegar, and all...
Because it's only true if Catholics go out and start having abortions (which it's not at all clear they'd be required to cover anyway) or using birth control.
Otherwise it's just a shell game with the money: Instead of the church and some other company each paying, say, $3.50/ea for birth control and $3.50/ea for, I dunno, say mumps immunizations, you might as well say the church is paying all $7 for mumps immunizations and the other company (let's say, Planned Parenthood :-) ) is paying all $7 for birth control.
I mean, your argument seems no different than people who don't have kids complaining that they don't like having to pay for schools...
The point is that the vast majority of people in any modern society support funding government programs that, by most measures, are horrifically inefficient. So horrific inefficiency (by such measures) doesn't imply that a given government program is always a bad idea.
...whereas I'd argue that creating a for-profit commercial entity that's horrifically inefficient is pretty much always a bad idea. :-)
Even traditional Adam Smith-style economics recognizes this, with the concept of natural monopolies, for instance.
Definitely a lot of needless waste there, I'll grant you. Although I doubt the provider of those toilet seats was in much of a hurry to try to help the feds re-spec the seats to get the price down, which IMO is an almost traitorous act.
Yep, agreed.
It's not obvious to me or you, but I'm sure at the time such programs were introduced someone made *some* argument as to why they're constitutional. :-)
How do you convert between "effective" and "efficient" on an absolute scale, though?
Geez, you're so skeptical. :-) OK, here's one of the first hits Google finds on school breakfasts improving learning:
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. It's easy to find plenty more...
Hey, if you want to challenge it in court, I completely support your efforts to have your day...
No, it's not. I suppose you didn't listen to them after passing Obamacare. You attract too many (Democ)rats with honey. It's *long* past time to "negotiate" with them.
Good grief. Their employees AREN'T ALL CATHOLICS! Can't you understand these SIMPLE facts?
No, it's NOT. It is their money and the Constitution clearly says the government has no business telling them what to do with it.
Oh, crap. Not that asinine argument again. I thought I buried that one but apparently you *can't* read.
Diversion noted.
Nonsense. For-profit enterprises are far more efficient *because* of profits. What they don't spend creating the widget (or service) they keep to pay their bills. Efficiency is a huge incentive. Government has no such feedback.
More irrelevance.
Utter nonsense but the point is that there is no incentive for government to be efficient. There certainly is for for-profit corporations (and some non-profits, but they're a strange exception).
The fact is that few "social programs" benefit those who they are supposed to benefit. The real beneficiary is government. It's a self-feeding monster.
Nonsense. They simply don't care. That's the problem, even you don't care.
How the hell do I know? YOU are the one who is trying to equate the two!
No, I can see trees as well as the forest. Apparently you're so nearsighted that you're stuck at your nose.
Yet school scores plummet.
The courts don't care. What's scary is that you don't care.
You might figure the Democratic leadership is corrupt and beyond negotiation (fair enough), but in such a case it's all the more important to respect the (presumably misguided) Democratic rank & file.
If FDR could get up there after World War II and talk about (and truly mean) that the citizens of Germany were "basically good people" -- and then start sending a lot of money their way to re-build the place -- the Republican leadership should be able to focus on getting rid of Obama and other high-ranking Democratic officials while not completely alienating rank & file Democrats in the process. They're "basically good people" too. :-)
If you instead go after all Democrats, the likely result is a civil war. That's an option I'd certainly like to avoid -- and I believe the results aren't nearly as predictable as anyone might like to think.
I probably wasn't around for that particular round of arguments.
The desire for politicians to continue to be re-elected (i.e., not "fired") from their jobs? Business transaction details that are far more open than any private corporation, thereby inviting anyone to go and demonstrate just how efficient (or not) the government is, creating embarrassment when those $350 toilet seats are found?
Patriotism? The back desire of most people to perform a high-quality, efficient job for their employer?
That all sounds like feedback to me.
Here's a good non-profit that's very much run like a traditional corporation for you, next time you're feeling charitable:
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-- it was started by a guy who used to be VP of marketing or something along those lines at Microsoft; he's definitely a no-nonsense kind of guy. I bet you'd like him; he might even be a Republican. :-)
(I have donated money to them in the past.)
What's your favorite charity?
That's certainly a problem and I'm all for fixing it, but I wouldn't want to just stop such programs entirely until I'd figured out a way to continue supporting the people they *were* supposed to benefit.
That's true, in most cases I just assume that if a law passed, well, heck, it's likely more or less legal (i.e., constitutional). If it isn't, I figure that someone who cares about this more than I do will go start a lawsuit...
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Well, again, I fully agree that this is a problem that needs fixing. However, if those school breakfast programs didn't exist, I can easily imagine that the scores might have plummeted *more*.
I realize that a single case doesn't mean anything statistically, but I happen to recall that in this book:
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... there's one story about a kid who outright states that the primary reason she bothered to show up at school was for breakfast and lunch (since her parents weren't feeding her at home). That's one kid who otherwise likely wouldn't have gotten any education without such programs.
(It's actually a good book overall -- it demonstrates how much various Departments of Human Services [the folks administering foster care] both helped a lot of kids, but also that in many cases they hurt the kids as well. It's not at all a, "ra ra, go go, look we spent a billion last year on DHS and everything was wonderful, let's spend two billion this year!" kind of liberal self-congratulatory tome. But it does demonstrate just how awful some parents are towards their kids in this country, and at least in my mind it's so bad that traditional "private interests" such as churches and charities just don't have the resources
-- nor often legal authority -- to provide for those kids; it really does require some government intervention, which of course requires funding.)
Oh, I care, just not nearly as much as you do. If I were *that* passionate about it, I probably would have gone into law rather than engineering?
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