Morning Fog

Obama Revisits Health Care For Infidels

The President has announced a "compromise" on the business of equal health care for the employees of church-sponsored organizations. 

I don't consider his revised plan, as issued today, much of a compromise, since the elements of the solution were already inherent in the original plan:  Because the church groups would hire insurance companies anyway it would never come down to their directly "offering" birth control.   And unfortunately, Obama's restatement leaves in place a system that allows the church-affiliated groups to duck paying the real cost of their employees' health care.  It also encourages and perpetuates a serious misapprehension on the part of the more conservative churches:  That in all their activities, no matter how secular in nature, they may impose their religious edicts on others. 

But IF, as Obama announced, the rearranged plan has the blessing (pun intended) of both the Catholic Health Association and Planned Parenthood, it clearly has some merit, and may be worth living with if it helps calm the political waters on a matter that clearly is not a political (nor religious) one. 

That's a big "if."  I predict politicians and conservative church leaders will not accept this new version, however, but instead will continue to try to turn the issue to their intrinsic benefit.  Not hard to predict, actually, since one former official of church-in-government, Jim Tohey, has already suggested legal action against the rule.  Evidently, separation of church and state is an OK concept when it might run in favor of the church.  

And will politicians be able to resist continuing to bleat out such irrational sound bites as Rick Santorum did -- "it's not about contraception, it's about government control of people's lives."?   (Actually, Rick, it's about church control of non-parishioners' lives.)

These die-hards are unlikely to shift their position.  Here's the tell:  Have a look at Kathleen Parker's opinion, published yesterday.  Its very title ("Obama runs roughshod over religious freedom") misstates the issue.  It' s NOT a matter of religious freedom, because absolutely no adherent of the Catholic or any other church would be forced by the insurance regulation to do anything against their religious precents.   Parker not only pretends that churchy folks' religious beliefs would be affronted, but she never once mentions those whom the planned regulation is intended to protect:  the non-church employees of church organizations for whose health care said organizations would like to avoid paying.  This holy hypocrisy will keep the matter alive for some.

Sanctum Santorum

Rick Santorum's showing yesterday in three midwestern states is a political shocker.  Pundits still insist that Romney will eventually be the Republican nominee, and they're probably right.

For me, Tuesday's results suggest - as do most of the political developments in the Republican Party over the past couple of years - that Republicans are woefully unrealistic about the extent to which their most regressive beliefs are shared nationally.  It's not Republican voters writ large of whom I speak, but the smaller segment of them who are politically and doctrinally "engaged" - the ones who actually vote in primaries or attend caucuses rather than just stay home and have a beer; the political pros.

I'm not certain if it's delusion or wishful thinking, but it's clear this group is not in the least focused on the practicalities of who can win the coming election.   They are focused far more on what they consider immutable holies of the the conservative movement, e.g., "no taxes," "no abortions," and just plain "no."  Studies now indicate  that "committed" Republicans have moved far more to the right, in our era of extreme partisanship, than  Democrats have moved to the left.   Political scientists are calling this pattern "asymmetrical radicalization."  Others might call it losing touch.

Persistent resort to one "real conservative" after another in the primaries is the symptom.

Health Care For Infidels

There has been a huge outcry from churches, religious groups, and right-wing columnists about the Obama administration's proposed plan that non-religious institutions being run by religious organizations must provide their employees the same healthcare that other Americans are entitled to.

Sorry, I just don't see the problem with such a proposal.  The only problem is that churches naturally don't wish to pay more money if they can escape doing so.  Yet the crux of the matter, to me, is that all Americans should have the same access to services.  

Churches themselves are exempt.  But the many linked institutions they spawn, ranging from schools to clinics to charitable organizations, are not.   These institutions employ thousands upon thousands of people who are not of the same faith as the sponsoring religious organization.   The churches say, in effect, they would like to disenfranchise those people, offering them second-class benefits compared to the rest of the population.  That seems uncharitable, to say the least. 

It cuts no ice, in my opinion, to argue that they forbid family planning and should not need to provide it.  In fact, they may forbid family planning if they want, but that can only apply to their own flock. They can't impose their religious doctrine on the population at large. 

Thus, t's hard to consider that the government proposal presents an ethical or moral dilemma; it seems to me far less ethical to deny a civil right to someone who's not of your religion.   Further, churches won't be paying the costs of these benefits themselves; there are insurance companies for that, so the church is not directly funding the activities it bans for its members.  As for cost, it seems only fair that a church, like any other employer, pick up the costs of standard benefits for its employees.  If they don't, the rest of us pay for them, and enrich the church in the process.  At any rate, churches can bargain for lower rates from insurers, since they can guarantee (?) that a certain percentage of the insured won't be seeking those benefits.

There is talk now that a compromise solution may be reached before the law goes into effect more than a year from now.  There is lots of room for that, so long as churches in one way or another can live up to the national ideal of equality of opportunity.

 

Dies'l Kill Ya!

It's rather amazing to hear that a pending study on the health effects of diesel fuel exhaust in certain enviroments, conducted by two respected government agencies, has been pending for 20 years because private industry hates even the idea of such a study, and even now its publication has been further delayed by mining companies and others who fear its conclusions, and would like to control them.

Amazing, because it is so clearly a false story, made up of whole cloth.  Against the assertions made in the article, we have only to juxtapose what we know from experience and common sense, to wit:

Any fool knows that companies, especially mining companies, set safety as their number one priority and never, ever let the making of a profit stand in the way of their workers' well-being.

It's a longstanding tradition in our country that business interests actively welcome government regulations and standards.

As the Republican Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Workforce has suggested in this article, the Republican party is only interested in assuring that the report meets the "highest standards" of science.  We can take his word for that, because we are all aware that Congressmen generally, and especially Republican ones, are highly trained in science and competent to correct "errors" that less competent scientists might make.  They've already told us, for example, that climate change is a hoax; they've warned us away from the dangers of stem-cell research; and kept us from being led down the garden path by those who claim human history goes back more than 4,000 years.    

If all that weren't convincing enough proof that Mr. Morris's article is irresponsible misinformation (maybe the poor fellow was duped), we can just turn to the evidence of our own senses.  We've been breathing diesel fumes for years, and not just in mines.  We're still alive, so it's obvious that diesel exhaust could not possibly have a deleterious effect on anything or anyone.  Diesel exhaust is not harmful; quite the contrary, it's refreshing and makes us feel happy.  Why else do people go out of their way to get trapped behind a bus in traffic?   Or, take my own experience:  One of the things I recall with greatest joy from my younger years is my experience at Fort Knox being trained as a "tank platoon leader," sitting atop a tank belching diesel fumes for hours on end, making my eyes stream tears, irritating my nasal passages....

Well, that certainly brings me to my senses!  Let's get serious for a minute.  We really can turn to our common sense on this, and we probably don't need no stinkin' report to tell us that diesel cannot conceivably be all that different from other fossil fuels, like wood, refined gasoline, and coal, all of which are known to have deleterious effects on various aspects of human health.  So we know ahead of time what the report will say, and so do the mining companies and Republican politicians who seek to suppress it. 

Straighten Out The Supreme Court

Tired of the constant wrangling in Congress about the selection and confirmation of justices for the U.S. Supreme Court?  Think it's unreasonable for the highest court in the land to be subject to sudden wild swings of opinion literally from one day to the next?  Concerned that the politicization of the Court and its decisions, and the concomitant erosion of respect for the Court, are not good for the country in the long run?

Me too.

As a recent piece in The New Yorker by Hendrik Hertzberg points out, even a bad politician can make a good suggestion now and again.  Rick Perry, when he was running, had refloated an old idea for a Constitutional amendment by which justices would have 18-year terms staggered to expire every two years.  This would give each President the chance to pick two new Justices during a four-year term, and reduce "stretching" a particular ideology across decades or more. 

The devil is in the details, of course (would Congress still have to confirm choices, and if so, wouldn't we still have deadlock?).  And one argument against is that it would make the Court's decisions subject to more frequent back-and-forth swings, rather than less.

Nevertheless, on balance, I like the idea.  Justices would still be shielded from the hurly-burly of day-to-day politics, and free to focus on purely legal issues.  

Amendments aren't easy to achieve.  Maybe impossible, in today's bitterly divided, ideologically infused Congress.  But it might be worth a try.   And while we're at it, maybe we could also patch up the Constitutional oversight that denies residents of the District of Columbia the right to be represented in Congress in the same way as all other citizens.