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We talking stocks in the Teva Pharmaceutical Industries? Who also produces


http://www.tevapharm.com/Products/Pages/default.aspx

Drugs for Central Nervous System, Respiratory products, Oncology (made one of the meds that saved my ass), Women Health Products (mention in the article posted), pain meds for cancer which also helped my ass, and transplant meds.

I didn't think they, Teva deal solely with just Women Health Meds. As for the Health insurance companies. Is there any that does not have abortion in one of their policies?

 whembly wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
They can just pay the penalty and not provide anything.

If this is the case, then the law already makes an accommodation for Hobby Lobby. They should have put their money where their mouth is, paid the fine. Instead, we get the will of the people as manifested by their elected representatives overturned, with a clear precedent of special religious pleading that will flood the courts for years and years and years.

So for wont of four kinds of birth control out of 20 you have a company wack everyone's health insurance? I don't know, heartless bastard comes to mind...

The larger issue is that now, a company has a Supreme Court stamp of approval to dream up any reason they can think of to break the law, so long as it is on the basis of religion, which lets face it is tennis without a net, and so long as they are 50% owned by a "true" religious family. Despite Scalia's attempt to narrow down the decision, it distinctly does not exclude the possibility of state-sanctioned discrimination on the basis of such important issues as age, sexual preference, and many other common forms of discrimination, purely on the basis of religious objections by companies owned by 50% family who can pass some vague religious litmus test (which in itself is a very, very scary business for our government to get involved in, and is, indeed, unconstitutional).

This decision is bizarre in so many ways. The fact that Scalia did enter those exemptions into the majority decision proves that he knows, however much he conceals it from himself, that this case is no different.

The court simply affirmed RFRA... a law sponsored by Ted Kennedy and signed by Bill Clinton.

II take it your reading into things that I'm a Democrat, but that is incorrect. Is it quite possible that if the RFRA itself is fundamentally flawed and unconstitutional? I think so. "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" means exactly what is says to me.

 Jihadin wrote:
We talking stocks in the Teva Pharmaceutical Industries? Who also produces


http://www.tevapharm.com/Products/Pages/default.aspx

Drugs for Central Nervous System, Respiratory products, Oncology (made one of the meds that saved my ass), Women Health Products (mention in the article posted), pain meds for cancer which also helped my ass, and transplant meds.

I didn't think they, Teva deal solely with just Women Health Meds. As for the Health insurance companies. Is there any that does not have abortion in one of their policies?

And they make abortion drugs, paid for by Hobby Lobby investment money.

 jasper76 wrote:


II take it your reading into things that I'm a Democrat, but that is incorrect. Is it quite possible that if the RFRA itself is fundamentally flawed and unconstitutional? I think so. "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" means exactly what is says to me.

In fact, the RFRA has been denounced by state courts as unconstituional. So far as I can tell from basic searching, the constiutionality of that law has never been tried in federal court.

So are you arguing that the act of forming a corporation and opening for business operates as an effective waiver of your most basic liberties, including free speech, free exercise of religion, and virtually all of property rights?

 whembly wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:


II take it your reading into things that I'm a Democrat, but that is incorrect. Is it quite possible that if the RFRA itself is fundamentally flawed and unconstitutional? I think so. "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" means exactly what is says to me.

In fact, the RFRA has been denounced by state courts as unconstituional. So far as I can tell from basic searching, the constiutionality of that law has never been tried in federal court.

So are you arguing that the act of forming a corporation and opening for business operates as an effective waiver of your most basic liberties, including free speech, free exercise of religion, and virtually all of property rights?

Nope. IMO, the very idea that a business or corporation is considered a "person" is perverse and illogical, almost Orwellian, at face value, and the fact that it is so commonly referred to as an accepted normalcy is quite disturbing to me. All I am saying, is that if you form a corporation and open for business, your corporation should be subject to the same exact federal laws as every other corporation, no matter what your religious convictions happen to be, no matter how sincere or fraudulent they may be.

 whembly wrote:
So are you arguing that the act of forming a corporation and opening for business operates as an effective waiver of your most basic liberties, including free speech, free exercise of religion, and virtually all of property rights?

No, YOU do not lose any rights. The corporation losing rights is not the same thing as the owners or employees losing rights. For example, those "lost" property rights do not affect you in any way because you do not own the corporation's property. In fact, that's the whole point of forming a corporation, to put a hard line between your personal property and the corporation's property. Similarly, a restriction on what the corporation can say is not in any way a restriction on your right to free speech. The corporation being forced to pay for "abortions" is not imposing on your freedom of religion because you are not paying for it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jasper76 wrote:
IMO, the very idea that a business or corporation is considered a "person" is perverse and illogical, almost Orwellian, at face value, and the fact that it is so commonly referred to as an accepted normalcy is quite disturbing to me.

As a legal fiction that makes certain things work more efficiently it makes a lot of sense. For example, it's very helpful if the corporation itself can sign a contract or have a bank account, and the most straightforward way to do that is to treat it as a "person" for those purposes. Corporate personhood only becomes a problem when you start to introduce the absurd idea of this legal construct having the same human rights as a real person and use it as an excuse for why you don't have to follow the rules.

 Peregrine wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jasper76 wrote:
IMO, the very idea that a business or corporation is considered a "person" is perverse and illogical, almost Orwellian, at face value, and the fact that it is so commonly referred to as an accepted normalcy is quite disturbing to me.

As a legal fiction that makes certain things work more efficiently it makes a lot of sense. For example, it's very helpful if the corporation itself can sign a contract or have a bank account, and the most straightforward way to do that is to treat it as a "person" for those purposes. Corporate personhood only becomes a problem when you start to introduce the absurd idea of this legal construct having the same human rights as a real person and use it as an excuse for why you don't have to follow the rules.

I couldn't agree with you more on this point. Perhaps it would be best if we just legally codified what exact rights a corporation has, and differentiate them, perhaps even constitutionally, from the rights a citizen has.

Listening to people trying to explain why corporations are people under the constitution hurts my brain as much as listening to sovereign citizens trying to explain why they are not...

 whembly wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Stay on topic, and polite.

Sorry boss... we'll play nice.

Yea you heard THE MAN! Stay on topic!
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q22/sedryn/SC.jpg


To topic, again, if they are a for profit corp, they should not have the right to a personal or religious opinion. Sorry but thats just stupid.

The happiest Sith you ever saw...except Thomas...does that dude ever smile???

C'mon dude....you're more powerful than the President, and you'll be in office far after he's gone...show us some pearly whites!

 jasper76 wrote:
The happiest Sith you ever saw...except Thomas...does that dude ever smile???

He's too busy plotting the rise of the empire.

 LordofHats wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
The happiest Sith you ever saw...except Thomas...does that dude ever smile???

He's too busy plotting the rise of the empire.

Cheney's obviously Palpatine, and I think we've found our Skywalker!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Well, gak...Scalia's the one with the light sabre

However small, this ruling has set a precedent that it is OK to break the law if your religion conflicts with it. Not only that, but you or your company can be found without fault when actually taken to court.

 Frankenberry wrote:
However small, this ruling has set a precedent that it is OK to break the law if your religion conflicts with it. Not only that, but you or your company can be found without fault when actually taken to court.

Amen...its one small step from "My archaic form of Catholicism teaches me contraception is bad, so I won't cover it for my employees" to "My archaic form of Mormonism teaches me that black people don't have souls, so I won't employ them".

I mean think even broader than that, what sort of massive hole is this going to present to other, more insidious corporate flunkies?

Maybe I'm doomsaying a bit here, but doesn't this open the way for a problem that could cause some real damage?

I'm right with you, because I know now that I can form a corporation, and raise any objection to any number of federal laws to save $$$ on the make-believe basis of "I really, really believe I shouldn't have to obey this law, because God Himself prohibits me from doing so", and have my day in court....no matter whether I believe that or not.

Probably the best summation of the reaction to this ruling has been this;

Sean Davis wrote:"Get your politics out of my bedroom!"
"Not a problem. I'm just going to grab my wallet before I leave."
"The wallet stays, bigot."

The really frightening thing is how many people seem to have honestly internalized the idea that Tyranny is employers offering their employees the compensation packages they think are appropriate.

Liberty though, that's the government of the United States telling employers that the government understands the tenants of their faith better then they do.

This isn't fundamentally a disagreement about medical insurance: this is a fundamental disagreement about the relationship between the individual and the state.

I was opposed to that part of the ACA from the start, simply because it's bad policy for government to decide something is important and then tell companies they have to pay for it. Same reason I think the employer mandate is a terrible idea. But this ruling is really, really terrible. The idea that an employer's private religious beliefs can be used to dictate how he will pay secular employees is a really terrible principle to enshrine in precedent.

Personally, I think the corporation element of this is a complete red herring, if this case were a private individual who directly employed 13,000 people, then it would be just as bad.

Simple reality is that this states that an employer gets to use his own private religious beliefs to determine how they pay their staff. That's fethed. You pay someone to do a job completely separate from your religious beliefs, then you can't use your religious convictions to put limits on how you pay that employee. There used to be a system where companies would pay men for a day's work, but tell them they could only spend that money in the places the company wanted them to spend it. We called that system Company Towns, and we made it illegal because that system was really fething exploitative.


And the other issue, as I pointed out in the ACA thread and others have mentioned in this thread, is how selective this ruling is. JW have been paying for healthcare coverage for their employees for years, and that coverage included blood transfusions, and no-one gave a gak despite blood transfusions being against their religious beliefs. But if something is perceived as infringing on the religion of a majority group, well then gak gets done. All this shows is that anyone who believes religious freedom is about every religious group, no matter how minor, is absolutely kidding themselves.

 Buzzsaw wrote:

Liberty though, that's the government of the United States telling employers that the government understands the tenants of their faith better then they do.

This isn't fundamentally a disagreement about medical insurance: this is a fundamental disagreement about the relationship between the individual and the state.

The Spaghetti Monster on Alpha Numaris, my own God, has been telling me and my wife for 13 years that I don't need to pay federal taxes, and neither does anyone under my employ...so I will kindly stop paying my taxes.

 easysauce wrote:
But you are 100% wrong, it doesnt actually force people to pay for anything.

it forces the government to pay for it, taking the "guilt" off the taxpayer.

I like how you just assert this is true, do nothing to actually establish it and then carry on as if your argument was proven.

d-usa wrote:Listening to people trying to explain why corporations are people under the constitution hurts my brain as much as listening to sovereign citizens trying to explain why they are not...

Carried over from Boehner thread eh. Because I am somewhat not liking the job. I feel avenged from you updating me on Dumbee

Frankenberry wrote:However small, this ruling has set a precedent that it is OK to break the law if your religion conflicts with it. Not only that, but you or your company can be found without fault when actually taken to court.

Did it go under as a Tax law though from SCOTUS decision?

If a Muslim owned corporation refused liver treatments because it was caused by booze would that fly? If a jeopardy witnesses did no blood because it's against their religion would that fly? What ticks me off is two thing 1: it Is only allowed because they are christian. And 2: is because see is Involved the treatment is I'm moral or something.

Well, it's not 'break the law' so much as 'exempt from the law.'

Realistically, I doubt someone will be able to claim "I don't believe in taxes because of my religion, so I shouldn't ahve to pay them" and get it. The issue of abortion is one of the longest standing religious conflicts in the US, and there aren't that many like it, so I think being worried that this will lead to great and terrible things is jumping the gun a little. Religion can get away with this because it's abortion. Who knows if it'll go farther than that.

 LordofHats wrote:
Well, it's not 'break the law' so much as 'exempt from the law.'

Realistically, I doubt someone will be able to claim "I don't believe in taxes because of my religion, so I shouldn't ahve to pay them" and get it. The issue of abortion is one of the longest standing religious conflicts in the US, and there aren't that many like it, so I think being worried that this will lead to great and terrible things is jumping the gun a little.

I understand where you are coming from, but the exact same logic for the taxes is the same for contraception.

The specific issue here, by the way, is not abortion. It is contraception. But I think the larger issue of religious entitlement to exemption from law is the more interesting issue, and it is certainly why the outcome of this case is so profound and worrisome in its implications.

 jasper76 wrote:

 Buzzsaw wrote:

Liberty though, that's the government of the United States telling employers that the government understands the tenants of their faith better then they do.

This isn't fundamentally a disagreement about medical insurance: this is a fundamental disagreement about the relationship between the individual and the state.

The Spaghetti Monster on Alpha Numaris, my own God, has been telling me and my wife for 13 years that I don't need to pay federal taxes, and neither does anyone under my employ...so I will kindly stop paying my taxes.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but do you really feel that expressing contempt for what gives meaning to others lives undermines my point about a "fundamental disagreement", or was that your attempt at ironic agreement?

 d-usa wrote:
At least God doesn't mind them making money of what they don't like...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2014/04/01/hobby-lobby-401k-discovered-to-be-investor-in-numerous-abortion-and-contraception-products-while-claiming-religious-objection/

Yeah, that was raised in the ACA thread as well. And it's what makes such a ridiculous joke of Hobby Lobby's claim that their religious liberty has been offended.

Thing is, Hobby Lobby probably didn't even know that some of the companies they invested in made abortion and contraception materials... because investing involves putting money in a lot of companies, and you can't be expected to know absolutely every facet of each of the companies you invest in. Anyone who's ever looked in to ethical investments knows it is a lot harder than you'd think. It's basically just a reality of the modern world - any action you take will have all sorts of unknown knock on effects that you'll never be aware of.

And I think it's more than a bit ridiculous to claim someone has breached their religious standards when they weren't even aware of what a third party was doing. But then, that's exactly why Hobby Lobby's claim in this case is so fething ridiculous.

I mean, Rick Warren of Saddleback Church said he'd go to jail to stop having to pay for contraception for any of his staff. Only to be quietly told that actually under California law he'd been providing those benefits to his staff for years without ever knowing about it.

If it can happen without you even knowing about, then it really, really isn't a breach of your religious liberty.

 Buzzsaw wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 Buzzsaw wrote:

Liberty though, that's the government of the United States telling employers that the government understands the tenants of their faith better then they do.

This isn't fundamentally a disagreement about medical insurance: this is a fundamental disagreement about the relationship between the individual and the state.

The Spaghetti Monster on Alpha Numaris, my own God, has been telling me and my wife for 13 years that I don't need to pay federal taxes, and neither does anyone under my employ...so I will kindly stop paying my taxes.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but do you really feel that expressing contempt for what gives meaning to others lives undermines my point about a "fundamental disagreement", or was that your attempt at ironic agreement?

Federal Government does not have a list of recognize religion. The US Military does how ever. I think an off the wall religion would not stand a chance but a main line religion will. As an individual though one cannot fund legal representation for themselves to get "exempt" from laws of this caliber

 jasper76 wrote:
I understand where you are coming from, but the exact same logic for the taxes is the same for contraception.

Yeah it's the same logic, but that doesn't mean a court will buy it. If a corporation can't be forced to provide one kind of medical coverage because it violates their beliefs, it's the same logic they shouldn't be forced to provide any, but the court didn't strike down the ACA and a lot of people make claims about religion saying they shouldn't have to give a man a fish.

The specific issue here, by the way, is not abortion. It is contraception.

They made the argument that the contraception is tantamount to abortion which isn't an argument they created. It's as old as the abortion debate and contraception itself. They go hand in hand. This case presents an unusual convergence of special interests. It very well could end there and go no further.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
If a Muslim owned corporation refused liver treatments because it was caused by booze would that fly? If a jeopardy witnesses did no blood because it's against their religion would that fly? What ticks me off is two thing 1: it Is only allowed because they are christian. And 2: is because see is Involved the treatment is I'm moral or something.

On what basis do you make claim 1 "it Is only allowed because they are christian"? Do you really believe that Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists etc that possess similar objections would not be covered under this ruling, or that the Supreme Court would have ruled differently had the plaintiffs been, for example, Sharia-compliant investment fund managers?

Or are you alleging that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was instigated to protect the right of Native Americans to use peyote, applies only to Christians?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
If a jeopardy witnesses did no blood because it's against their religion would that fly?

Best auto-correct ever.

I too have witnessed Jeopardy.