Conrad Theodore Seitz

The Supreme Court handed down an emergency order on Thursday evening that allowed Wheaton College to refuse to fill out a form stating that it had religious objections to providing contraceptive insurance coverage to its students and employees.  This flies in the face of Justice Alito’s claim in the Hobby Lobby decision that the use of this form would be a viable and less burdensome alternative for Hobby Lobby to use in furthering its refusal to provide contraceptive insurance coverage to its employees.

For reasons that are beyond my understanding, the Court feels that it is too burdensome for an organization to have to fill out a form that simply states that it refuses to provide the mandated insurance and send the form to the insurance company.  Somehow, signing such a form is a burdensome violation of one’s religious beliefs, too burdensome for Wheaton College.  The College claims that, by signing the form and sending it to the insurance company, they are in some way tacitly agreeing to the provision of religiously objectionable birth control methods by the insurance company.  They insist that they can only send the government a letter to that effect, not send the letter to the insurance company; signing the form and sending it to the insurance company is tantamount to providing the prohibited contraceptives themselves.

This objection goes beyond religious scruples and enters the domain of religious fantasy.  They think that, somehow, by not sending the letter to the insurance company, they can register their objections in a more effective manner.  Never mind that the affected women will still obtain contraceptives through the insurance companies, as a result of government action.  Never mind that, no matter how hard they try, a private company cannot prevent its employees from engaging in sexual intercourse and simultaneously not taking the risk of having children.

The myopia of religious people knows no bounds.

Wheaton College is no isolated case: there are at least 122 cases pending in lower courts that voice the same objection to sending the form to the insurance companies.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/07/after_hobby_lobby_there_is_only_rfra_and_that_s_all_you_need.html

The Slate writers state that “The most important precedent is United States v. Lee, which rejected an Amish employer’s claim for an exemption from paying Social Security taxes. In Lee, the court wrote that “[w]hen followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity. Granting an exemption from social security taxes to an employer operates to impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees.” It hard to imagine a precedent more directly foreclosing Hobby Lobby’s exemption to paying for contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act.”

The majority in the Hobby Lobby case has treated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as an excuse to make a complete break from this precedent, in order to signal that it reverses the judgement in the case in which the Court sanctioned the firing of Native Americans who used peyote as part of their religious observances.  Justice Alito stated in his opinion that: “This decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates, that is for blood transfusions or vaccinations, necessarily fail if they conflict with an employer’s religious beliefs…”  However, he appears to ignore all previous precedents as if they were annulled by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  He states that RFRA is “a complete separation from First Amendment case law.”

Justice Sotomayor’s response to this outrageous coddling of Christian fundamentalists: “Let me be absolutely clear,” she wrote, “I do not doubt that Wheaton genuinely believes that signing the self-certification form is contrary to its religious beliefs. But thinking one’s religious beliefs are substantially burdened—no matter how sincere or genuine that belief may be—does not make it so.”

The Court’s decisions have lifted the burden on the employer’s exercise of religious scruples and placed the burden directly upon the employees.  Never mind that the employer’s free exercise of religion impairs the employee’s free exercise of personal choices which are theoretically based on their own consciences, not the company’s.

In his most recent column, the New York Time’s resident economist, Paul Krugman, tells us about the wrongheaded decision of the Kansas legislature to raise taxes on the poor and cut taxes on the rich.  Specifically, Kansas cut income taxes for the rich about two years ago, while simultaneously increasing sales taxes (the burden of sales taxes falls mainly on the poor.)  The result: a nearly one half billion dollar current accounts deficit for the state of Kansas, accompanied by reduced social services for the needy.

Other states are trying this same absurd strategy, egged on by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and a strange man from the past, Arthur Laffer.   It was this same Arthur Laffer who convinced Ronald Reagan, when he was a candidate for President, that slashing taxes on the rich would yield increased government revenues.  Nothing of the sort happened, and the resulting deficit forced Mr. Reagan to raise taxes again (slightly.)  His successor, George HW Bush, was forced to raise taxes again (slightly.)

It was not until Bill Clinton raised taxes again, more substantially, that we were put on the road to a balanced budget.  None too soon, for an impressive economic boom followed.  This boom was completely unanticipated by Mr. Laffer and was contrary to his dogma that taxes should always be lowered to help the economy.  Despite the evidence showing him to be dead wrong, Mr. Laffer has continued to spread his dogma to any conservative who would listen.

The claim that taxes on the rich are a drag on the economy has been thoroughly discredited by all the evidence, yet this claim persists everywhere conservatives hold sway.  There is no more obvious example of the universal truth that one’s ideology can distort one’s view of the facts.  This distortion has increasingly affected politics because organizations like ALEC, paid for by rich conservatives, make contributions to politicians who become beholden to them.

The fact is that the government, as the feared engine of redistribution of wealth, can be a tremendous boost to the economy by supporting consumers.  The economy, which we think of as consisting of producers, is completely depend on consumers for its health.  The government can create or support consumers by giving money to poor people, who then go from being inert lumps to buyers of goods and services.  Without this stimulus, the producers are dependent on consumers who already have enough money and have already bought most of the goods they need: a less attractive market to the producers.

The result of this lack of stimulus can be seen in the economy today: corporations are sitting on over two trillion dollars in cash because there is no market of consumers to support expansion and hiring.  The economy is in the doldrums despite its apparent recovery from the Great Recession because no new markets of consumers are developing. No new market is appearing because the unemployment rate (particularly those who have withdrawn from the jobs market altogether) has remained high and median income has not increased.  Even those who are employed cannot spend because the minimum wage has not gone up significantly in many years.

Productivity has greatly increased since 1979 but compensation has not.  Thus, more goods and services are being produced per unit of work, but there is no more money being paid out to allow workers to purchase those goods and services.  The result is economic stagnation or even depression.

The money that is being made from that increase in productivity is not flowing to workers, but instead to the most highly paid people, the top 0.1%; these people have more money than they need, and thus don’t spend the money they get.  Their money flows into savings and investment; without an enlarging market made by workers spending money, there is nothing to enlarge the economy as a whole.

These facts are in conflict with the conservative ideology that people should compete “on a level playing field” to gain their compensation, and that those who are not productive don’t deserve to have compensation.  This ideology extends to the basic needs of living, and if you are not productive, you don’t deserve to live.  Apart from their complete lack of compassion for others, following this ideology leads to economic stagnation rather than revitalization.  The fact is that there is no “level playing field”: some people start out with overwhelming advantages due to their positions of power, and without help, other people, even very productive ones, are never able to catch up. Following the ideology of Ayn Rand and ignoring the needs of others, however unproductive, is a self-defeating strategy.  This has been shown by many examples over the last hundred years.

The truth is that compassion and other-oriented strategies rebound upon the practitioner with increased benefits for the self as well as society.  There is no need to impoverish oneself in order to help others; a reasonable level of compassion, if practiced by everyone, will raise all boats.

Krugman’s column can be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/opinion/paul-krugman-charlatans-cranks-and-kansas.html

By now you’ve seen the news: the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, has ruled that Hobby Lobby has the right to refuse to supply contraceptive insurance to its female employees (on the basis of its objections to certain contraceptives that they claim induce abortions) for “religious reasons.”  The Supreme Court says that “closely held” corporations (those with five or fewer shareholders having over 50% of the stock) have this religious right.  This ruling, despite its claim to narrowness, applies to 90% of American corporations (all those who are closely held.)

This ruling is stunning for being totally disingenuous.  The Court ignores the fact that, as it admits, the federal government has a compelling interest in requiring this form of insurance.  It claims that the mechanism the government uses is not the “least intrusive.”  This is not true because, if Hobby Lobby were to provide “free” contraception, its total insurance costs would actually be lower (because there would be fewer pregnancies and deliveries, which are expensive) according to research studies.  In addition, Hobby Lobby could simply opt out of providing insurance at all and instead pay a tax, which is cheaper.  The Court claims that a less intrusive method would be to allow Hobby Lobby the same exemption given to explicitly religious organizations, namely to transfer the responsibility to the insurance company.  The insurance company doesn’t mind, since it is cheaper anyway.

The suit brought by Hobby Lobby, and the Supreme Court decision, seem to be designed rather to make a point about religion, that is, that powerful business figures can impose their idea of religious righteousness on their employees.  This is sympathetic with the Court’s decisions about unions, which have taken severe hits over the last fifty years, and further the right wing line that unions are an impermissible intrusion on the employer’s right to control his employees.

If you extend this reasoning, you end up with single-payer health insurance, which would be the ideal result in any case.  However, the insurance companies don’t like this idea, so don’t expect to see it in the US anytime soon.

What you have, with this limited ruling, is a further fractured health care system with insurance still depending on one’s employer.  The insurance companies don’t mind, and the employers see their rights to control their employees further aggrandized.

This ruling, and others of its type, show how distorted the Supreme Court’s judgment has become.  The Court favors the powerful, the employers, over the weak, the employees, and enables the powerful to control the weak more effectively.  This is not a good thing for the USA.  How can we be free if we are constantly under the control of our employers?

There is little disagreement about the dramatic rise in income inequality during the last forty years.  What is not so clear is the precise cause.  We know that the labor movement suffered a loss of population in the unions over this time.  There is some indication, however, that the rise is related to a backlash against the civil rights movement, according to an article in UC Berkeley’s blog.  The idea is that insecurity leads to a fear of the other, and that this causes an increase in racism.  Read the article at: /http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/05/02/inequality-in-the-twenty-first-century/

This increase in racism has been attributed to the election of a black President, but it was present before that.  Tea Party adherents showed a definite tendency to racial distrust, envy, and hostility.  Many populists were already familiar with the image of the black welfare queen driving a Cadillac.  Such attitudes are only made worse by economic uncertainty.