An Inept Foreign Policy Team

A ton of issues confront America’s foreign policy these days, and it seems that the success of the Obama-Kerry team worsens by the week:
• We back the Ukrainian government in a shooting war with its own citizens
• We can’t get on the same page with Europe regarding Russian sanctions
• Kerry couldn’t get a ceasefire deal in Israel for the current crisis
• Iraq shows that our huge expense on military and police training was a sham. We are now backing a failed state
• Kerry is trying (along with the 5 permanent members of the Security Council + Germany) to close a nuclear deal with Iran by July 20th – yet talk has moved on to debating the length of an extension to the deadline, not just the substance of the deal
• Kerry moved to defuse the electoral crisis in Afghanistan , but his effort had little effect

We could add to this list Syria, Egypt, Libya and China. Oh, and our little spying problem with Germany, or our little banking problem with France.

It is tempting to say President Obama and his Secretary of State are accident-prone, given to stumbles on the international stage. There may be some truth to that. We can say they inherited a set of policies with enough inertia that no single administration could completely alter the outcomes.

That’s all true, but we cannot point to a situation where things have gotten better.

Let’s focus on Afghanistan. Jim White at Emptywheel on Mr. Kerry’s trip to resolve the Afghan electoral crisis:

Three short weeks from tomorrow marks the date on which Afghanistan’s new president is to be sworn in. The problem, though, is that Abdullah Abdullah refuses to believe that he could have beaten Ashraf Ghani by a million votes in the first round and then lost to him by a million votes in the runoff a few weeks later

Kerry did not solve the crisis, but he did lay hands on the next ruler. Pictures can say much more than the words. Check out this photo of Kerry with the two candidates.

Kerry & Afghan leadersReuters carried these photos of Ghani and Abdullah with Kerry In their story on Kerry’s visit to Kabul. Standing in front of the same backdrop of US and Afghan flags, the photo of Ghani and Kerry could pass as a propaganda photo with Ghani at his inaugural as the new president.

The photo with Abdullah, on the other hand, shows an uncomfortable Abdullah in a sideways glance at Kerry, who seems uninterested in shaking hands, as he did with Ghani.

Perhaps Abdullah and Kerry did shake hands, but Reuters selected a photo that seems to capture the essence of the current political crisis.

Kerry and the UN proposed a special audit of suspected fraudulent votes. Outgoing President Hamid Karzai is backing the proposal, which involves an audit of votes from 8,000 polling stations, or about 43% of the 8.1 million ballots cast. From the New York Times:

…within minutes, Mr. Abdullah’s campaign said it had already made clear to UN officials that the plan was not acceptable…A senior aide to Mr. Abdullah said the campaign had its own plan, which would entail audits of votes from about 11,000 of the roughly 22,000 polling stations

So, two plans. What could go wrong? More from Jim White:

The huge problem that Afghanistan faces is that there is no real way to audit this election after the fact… outside of Kabul, Afghan society is structured around village life and women often live their entire lives without going outside the walls of the family compound. Village elders carry huge influence for all residents of the village…

White quotes Anand Gopal, from his book, No Good Men Among the Living, pg. 261, on the 2009 election:

The goal was to ensure that women cast ballots, or, even better, that their husbands did so on their behalf. The men…performed the valuable work of liaising with the village elders and maleks, for whom a vote was not an exercise of democracy but a down payment on access, an effort to ensure that the right people were in power when the time came to call in a favor

So votes typically came in blocks, and apparently, it isn’t unusual for a village to report 90% support for a single candidate. Just how could the UN go about auditing these ballot boxes?

All of our money and all of our young peoples’ lives lost, for dueling ballot box-stuffing, with each side claiming the other is at fault, while vaguely threatening some kind of military force.

Kerry is smiling at the guy who is a member of the majority ethnic group and has the backing of Karzai. And of course, Kerry won’t look at the guy who doesn’t want to do what Kerry did in 2004 – go away quietly.

Apparently, from the perspective of the conventional American viewpoint, Ghani is the “legitimate” winner with a million-vote lead. Backing Ghani offers the Administration and the Pentagon an option to delay US withdrawal from Afghanistan to assure a peaceful transition.

Regardless of Mr. Obama’s true intentions, it appears corporate contractors and military suppliers will get another feed at the trough.

Go Team Kerry!

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 13, 2014

“As things now stand, we could easily become the first people in history to lose democracy and its constitutional freedoms simply because we have forgotten what they are about”– Sam Smith

 

Young children illegals could reach nearly 100,000 this year:

COW Yosemite

On the other hand, perhaps Texas can be convinced to keep a few:

COW Fetus

Not that Texas wants them. All across Texas the fear of the diseased immigrant is reaching near epidemic proportions. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said recently:

…we don’t even know what all diseases they have…Our health care systems can’t withstand this influx

Err, wrong again, Louie. According to the Texas Observer, UNICEF reports that Guatemalan kids are more likely than Texans to be immunized for most infectious diseases. Guatemala has universal health care. Vaccines are 100% percent funded by the government. Overall, 93% of kids in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are vaccinated against measles. That’s slightly better than American kids (92%), and certainly it shows that there is no tsunami of sick crossing our border. BTW, according to the World Health Organization, neither Guatemala nor Honduras has had a reported case of measles since 1990.

Not so, here in America, where we have 500 measles cases this year. Why? Because, freedom.

In other news, Mr. Boehner has a lawsuit:

COW Lawsuit

 

The 38th time that the House Republicans voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they passed the Authority for [Employer] Mandate Delay Act. That demonstrated the House’s willingness to delay the employer mandate. Then the Health and Human Services Department did exactly that, delayed the employer mandate. Strangely, that is EXACTLY what the Speaker’s lawsuit will say is the reason to sue Mr. Obama. Some of the GOP want to impeach Mr. Obama. They basically view a mechanism that was built in to deal with abuses of power as a way to nullify election results that they don’t like.

Sarah Palin was up front with her view:

COW Palin

If the House votes to impeach Mr. Obama, the Senate would then rule on the validity of the charges. It takes a two-thirds majority in the Senate to remove a president from office. Even if the Senate goes to the Republicans, that isn’t happening. So maybe they should move on:

COW Impeach Hillary

 

Israel continues their drive towards Palestine:

COW Israel

 

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Friday Musical Break

TGIF. We head into the weekend with music. Except today, when the musician, the late Ritchie Havens, delivers the spoken word at a favorite Georgetown undergrad hang for the Wrongologist, The Cellar Door.

If you ever saw him live, Ritchie Havens was a force of nature. This is from the Wrongologist’s eulogy:

Havens took his teeth out to sing. Apparently he cared more about how he sounded than how he looked. If you have that much talent, you don’t need teeth. He just sat there with his guitar and sang his songs. He didn’t have a persona, he had no guile.

Havens was also political. Often at concerts, he told the story of being an avid
follower of comic book superheroes, especially, Superman, who fought for
“Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” Here he is explaining just how incongruous the concept (was) is:

See you on Sunday!

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Only Chumps Pay Taxes

Corporate America knows it has a problem when Fortune Magazine calls them out. Fortune has an article by Allan Sloane called “Positively un-American tax dodges.” The headline shows their opinion about large US companies who are moving their “headquarters” overseas to dodge billions in taxes, meaning the rest of us will have to pay their share. From Sloane: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

[There is] a new kind of American corporate exceptionalism: companies that have decided to desert our country to avoid paying taxes but expect to keep receiving the full array of benefits that being American confers, and that everyone else is paying for

One of the companies that is moving offshore is Medtronic, a Minnesota-based medical device manufacturer that is heading to Ireland. But only for tax purposes. The Irish Independent quotes Medtronic’s CEO:

Some people have misinterpreted the recent announcement that we are acquiring an Irish company and declaring our principal executives’ offices in that country to mean that we are leaving Minnesota… Nothing could be further from the truth. The Medtronic operating headquarters where I go to work every day will stay right where it is in Fridley, MN

This is called “Inversion” in tax law circles. Companies buy a foreign-headquarted firm and then make it the parent company for tax purposes. In their quest to maximize shareholder value, multinational companies have outsourced labor to lower-wage countries and shifted profits to subsidiaries in lower-taxed countries. If inversion mergers take hold, it will make matters worse. More from Fortune:

All of this threatens to undermine our tax base, with projected losses in the billions. It also threatens to undermine the American public’s already shrinking respect for big corporations

Here is a picture of how US after-tax corporate profits have grown over the decades:

Corp ATax profits 2014

Since the start of the Reagan era, except for the 2008 recession, it’s been a ride into the stratosphere for Corporate America. Corporations have successfully lobbied Congress for endless deductions and loopholes. From 2009 to 2011, the 280 most profitable companies paid just 18.5% in Corporate Taxes, about half the 35% statutory tax rate. In 1952, corporate taxes accounted for fully one-third of federal revenues, but in 2013 amounted to just under 10%.

And these guys think more is never enough. French economist Gabriel Zucman observes that:
• 20% of all corporate profits in the United States have moved offshore
• Tax avoidance costs the government one-third of the tax revenue it should be receiving from corporations

Zucman also found that $7.6 trillion of personal wealth is hidden in tax havens, which amounts to 8% of the world’s total personal wealth. He estimates the global tax revenues would increase by more than $200 billion if these tax avoidance practices were ended.

The issue is: (h/t Steve Pearlstein) Companies moving their tax jurisdiction want all the rights and privileges of being an American company without paying for the full complement of services that come along with doing business in America.

They want the security that a big military makes possible, one that allows them to operate in all of the advanced economies of the world. They want the world’s most enforceable patent system to protect their intellectual property. They want a fair and efficient judicial system to enforce contracts.

They want a well-educated workforce to design their products, often relying on basic research often done through an extensive network of government-funded institutes and laboratories. They want modern ports and highways and airports to ship products to market.

They require an efficient financial system to provide cheap and plentiful capital. They demand professional, credible regulatory agencies that can expeditiously evaluate products and ensure customers that they are safe and effective.

All of that takes lots of tax revenue. It has to include revenue from corporate income taxes that these firms think is their fiduciary duty to avoid.

It was bound to happen: The government that Corporate America bought for their exclusive use, just isn’t doing a good enough job, so the Corporatists are gonna leave.

Our tax systems must be reformed. We need to take the job of tax reform away from corporate lobbyists. We must make it harder for companies to use internal (“transfer”) pricing to avoid taxes. Companies should be made to book activity where it actually takes place. Barry Ritholtz mentions an idea in the Republican-sponsored Tax Reform Act of 2014 that “fixed” inversion: An annual tax of 8.75% on cash (and equivalents) held offshore, plus 3.5% a year on all other retained offshore earnings. The idea was to reduce the incentive to incorporate offshore by charging taxes on top of the charge by the other locality, be it Ireland or the Cayman Islands. It went nowhere.

Any new system needs to ensure that change results in corporations paying more in taxes with less collection/compliance expenses. The new system must be simpler than today’s.

As Jacques Leslie writes, “there is no economic, political or moral justification for tax evasion.”

 

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Are We the People Becoming “We the Enemy”?

What’s Wrong Today:

“Either you are with us, or you are with the people.” That could be a quote from some government spy involved in domestic surveillance in the not-too-distant future.

In 1975, Sen. Frank Church, (D-ID) chaired the Senate committee that investigated illegal intelligence gathering activities by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In theory, prior to 9/11, only the FBI was able to conduct domestic surveillance.

Today, we know about the NSA’s role in domestic spying. In the post-9/11 world, the NSA has made all the new rules. The new rules it brought into existence are simple enough: Whoever you are and wherever you live, you are a potential target. No one is exempt from surveillance.

But the NSA is not alone.

The Pentagon is looking into how to deal with civil unrest in the US. Launched in 2008, the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) Minerva Research Initiative partners with universities to improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US.

The Guardian reports that last year, the Minerva Initiative funded a project to determine ‘Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?’ The report conflates peaceful activists with “supporters of political violence”, who it sees as different from terrorists only in that they do not embark on “armed militancy” themselves. In 2013, Minerva funded a University of Maryland project in collaboration with the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to gauge the risk of civil unrest due to climate change. The project is developing models to anticipate what could happen to societies under a range of potential climate change scenarios.

The Guardian also said that independent scholars are critical of the US government’s efforts to militarize social science in the service of war. In May 2008, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) wrote to the US government noting that the Pentagon lacks “the kind of infrastructure for evaluating anthropological [and other social science] research” in a way that involves “rigorous, balanced and objective peer review”. The AAA called for such research to be managed instead by civilian agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Dr. David Price, a cultural anthropologist at St Martin’s University in Washington DC, has previously exposed how the Pentagon’s Human Terrain System (HTS) program, which was designed to embed social scientists in military field operations, routinely conducted training scenarios set in regions within the United States. Price reported that the HTS training scenarios “adapted COIN (counterinsurgency) for Afghanistan/Iraq” to domestic situations:

…in the USA where the local population was seen from the military perspective, as threatening the established balance of power and influence, and challenging law and order

Price identified a war game aimed at environmental activists protesting pollution from a coal-fired plant in Missouri. Some of the protesters were members of the Sierra Club. War game participants were tasked to “identify those who were ‘problem-solvers’ and those who were ‘problem-causers‘.” Next, they identified the rest of the population who could be the target of propaganda operations designed to move their “Center of Gravity” towards a set of viewpoints which were the ‘desired end-state’ of the military’s strategy.
Should we be viewing Minerva as a prime example of military ideology? Clearly, security agencies have no qualms about painting the rest of us as potential terrorists.

Here’s more: There is a lawsuit against alleged domestic US military spying, called Panagacos vs. Towery, in the US District Court in Tacoma, WA. It was filed against the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and local law enforcement agencies in 2010, after it was discovered that an activist called “John Jacob” was actually Army intelligence agent John J. Towery from nearby Fort Lewis. Towery spied on and infiltrated the antiwar group Port Militarization Resistance (PMR), which blocked military shipments en route to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007. It also accuses the cities of Olympia and Tacoma of coordinating with the US military to violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights of activists.

So, our military is engaged in domestic COINTELPRO (COunter INtelligence PROgrams). This also happened during the Vietnam War years. Back then, the CIA’s COINTELPRO used “boots on the ground” to neutralize the millions of anti-Vietnam War activists. Martin Luther King, Jr. was under 24/7 surveillance by the 111th Military Intelligence Group, in 1968.

Maybe we need to be paranoid, since republics can fall when they are undermined by their military establishment. Today, US has a mixture of extreme religiosity, ideological conflict in a polarized society, and a militarist culture in which soldiers (now called “warriors””) are worshiped.

This is a toxic brew. Fusion Centers, NSA spying, militarized police forces, criminalization of poverty, erosion of free speech, and now, war gaming against the American public, these are the actions of a fearful American power elite. We have a huge gap between the rich and poor, many areas are deeply racist, the last civil war still rankles with the descendants of some of the losers, and many citizens are armed to the teeth.

Think about this quote from Frederick Douglass:

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

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10% of Voting Age Americans Not Registered to Vote

What’s Wrong Today:

In early June, Pew Research published a study called Political Polarization in the American Public. It reported that Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines than at any point in the past two decades. They surveyed 10,000 adults nationwide and the headline result was that these divisions are greatest among those who are the most engaged and active in the political process. The political center is shrinking while those at the left and right limits are growing. Here is a graph from the report:

PEW Ideological Divide

Now, Pew gives us more reason to be concerned about the future of our politics. The latest Pew Research Center’s political typology report was published on June 28. It sorted voters into 8 cohesive groups based on their attitudes and values, providing us with a political field guide for the elections in November. One of the groups is called “Bystanders”. They are 10% of the voting-age population. Despite all of the movement we see above among other groups, Bystanders were also 10% of voting-age population in 2011. They are one group that will pay little, if any attention, to America’s midterm elections this November. From Pew Research: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Overall, 10% of Americans are what we call Bystanders, or the politically disengaged…None of this cohort say they’re registered to vote, and none say they follow government and public affairs most of the time (this compares with 48% of Americans overall). Virtually all of this group (96%) say they’ve never contributed money to a candidate running for public office

Bystanders are young: 38% are under 30, compared to 22% of the general public; 67% have a high school education (or less), vs. 40% of the general public. Nearly a third (32%) are Hispanic and 29% are not citizens.

Although Bystanders view the Democratic Party more favorably than the GOP, they have a mix of liberal and conservative attitudes. They are sympathetic to the plight of the poor, but as many say that government aid to the poor does more harm than good as vice versa. They express fairly liberal views on homosexuality and same-sex marriage, but 54% say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.

Asked about their interest in a number of topics,
• 73% of Bystanders say they have no interest in government and politics
• 66% say they are not interested in business and finance
• 66% think of themselves as an “outdoor person”
• 64% of Bystanders are interested in celebrities and entertainment (vs. 46% of the public)
• 35% call themselves a “video or computer gamer” (vs. 21% of the public)

Every aspect of our demography is being fundamentally transformed. Huge gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious affiliation, and our use of technology. Are these people our future?

In the Pew survey, Bystanders were more likely than other political cohorts to answer “don’t know,” more likely to say they’ve “never heard of” the topic in question or to refuse to answer questions altogether.

So, taking away the 29% of Bystanders who aren’t US citizens and can’t vote, there are 71% of 10% of voting age Americans − some 7.1% of eligible voters − who could vote if they wanted to register. Or if they can register, since several states have added voter suppression laws since the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County vs. Holder last year.

What would it take to get them to pay attention politically? The 38% of the Bystanders who are Millennials are most likely to have common cause with the Democrats. If even half of them were convinced to register and were to vote blue in 2014 that would be a 2% boost for the Dems.

It might go a long way towards keeping the Senate with the Democrats in November.

Our last 4 presidential elections were based on negative messaging, by Republicans against Obama and by Democrats against GW Bush. We will not end the political polarization or bring the Bystanders into active citizenship until each party offers a positive vision with realistic programs backing it up.

We have to rebalance the social compact to better bind our young and old. Otherwise we will lose these young, less educated Americans who are more interested in celebrities than in the constitution.

In tomorrow’s world, yesterday’s math will not add up.

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Alito: What Could Go Wrong?

What’s Wrong Today:

“If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is.”

This saying has been around for about 20 years. According to Barry Popik, “If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway” was first cited in print in May, 1993 in the Virginia Pilot by Jerry Alley.

The sentiment applies to the Supreme Court now that the Hobby Lobby decision’s slippery slope reasoning is out there being reviewed by lawyers. On July 3rd, just three days after Mr. Justice Alito issued his decision, lawyers for two Guantanamo Bay detainees filed motions asking the DC District Court to intervene after the prison’s military authorities prevented them from praying communally during Ramadan, a holy month for Muslims. The banning of communal prayers at Guantanamo is one of a series of recent measures against detainees who are on hunger strikes.

The lawyers argued that, in light of the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision, the detainees’ rights are protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Requests for Temporary Restraining Orders were filed this week with the Washington DC district court on behalf of Emad Hassan of Yemen and Ahmed Rabbani of Pakistan. The filings were made by a UK-based human rights group Reprieve.

The detainees’ lawyers said courts have previously concluded that Guantanamo detainees do not have religious free exercise rights because they are not persons within the scope of the RFRA, but the lawyers now argue that the Hobby Lobby decision changes that:

Hobby Lobby makes clear that all persons – human and corporate, citizen and foreigner, resident and alien – enjoy the special religious free exercise protections of the RFRA

Which is exactly what Mr. Justice Alito said in his ruling. Despite his claim that it was a narrow ruling, the ruling itself is big enough to drive a truck through. Meet the truck, folks.

More from Cori Crider, an attorney for the detainees and a director at Reprieve:

Why are the authorities at Guantanamo Bay seeking to punish detainees for hunger striking by curtailing their right to pray? If, under our law, Hobby Lobby is a ‘person’ with a right to religious freedom, surely Gitmo detainees are people too

This is one of the unintended consequences from the Hobby Lobby decision: While the owners of Hobby Lobby certainly did not have Gitmo detainees in mind when they took Obamacare to court, it’s clear the ruling has become far bigger than its original purpose. Citizens United argued that “corporations are people,” Hobby Lobby focuses on religious rights and the idea that the government cannot force those corporate people to do things that are against their beliefs.

That could mean anything from refusing to teach evolution in school to ignoring laws designed to prevent discriminatory hiring practices against LGBT people.

The Defense Department did not directly address whether the men were being punished for their hunger strike. US Army Lt. Col. Myles B. Caggins III:

We are committed to religious freedoms and practices for the detainees, keeping in mind the overall goal of security and safety for detainees and staff

The overriding question is if the RFRA is compatible with the First Amendment. It seems to create a special privilege for religious groups that are not enjoyed by anyone else. How is this not itself an establishment of religion? If corporations can say: “but, it is against my religion” to escape the equal application of the laws, isn’t that a special right being bestowed based on religious belief?

Having the Supreme Court actually expand the RFRA beyond the protections put in place by the First Amendment only compounds the problem. Writing new rules to create certain forms of religious privilege seems dubious at best.

Try this thought experiment: Imagine atheists who have a family-owned corporation. Call them the Browns. They hold exactly the same views of birth control and abortion as the Greens, but their beliefs are based on their personal moral views, and not on any religious teaching. Would they be exempt from this mandate?

This isn’t Ms. Justice Ginsburg’s slippery slope, it’s a cliff.

The Supremes have now defined religious freedom not in terms of our own behavior but in terms of our ability to control the behavior of others. The Supreme Court just ruled in favor of more Corporate power, not religious freedom.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 6, 2014

On this Sunday of Independence Day Weekend, let’s think about the differences between patriotism and nationalism. We use them interchangeably, but they are not the same.

“Patriotism” denotes a devotion to fundamental fellowship with other human beings belonging to a geographic region. Patriots love, support and defend their country.

“Nationalism” is a belief, creed or political ideology that involves identifying with, or becoming attached to, one’s nation. One definition of nationalism is excessive patriotism or chauvinism. Nationalism leads to asserting one’s own nation’s interests to the total exclusion of the common interests of some nations, and not just those with which we might be waging war.

You should be a patriot. If you are a patriot, you stand when the national anthem is played. You serve your country in accordance with your abilities.

There is nothing wrong with chants of “USA, USA”. But, there is nothing right about them when the crowds in Murrieta, CA chant “USA, USA” at a bus load of illegal immigrants.

Americans will always profess support for American ideals, but chauvinists are far more willing to ignore those situations where America falls short. Those jingoistic Americans display an attitude that when America falls short, it is not a failing of “America” but rather some group (e.g. “liberals”, “the Tea Party”, “illegals”, “the 1 %”)

Remain suspicious of flag waving jingoists and their self-serving ways. Be true to your own beliefs and pay no attention to those who try to shame you into doing otherwise. Now, for some humor.

Can we march together anymore?

COW July 4We the corps, in order to form a more perfect union:

COW We The Corps

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One version of the Holy Writ:

COW Holy Corps

And the Word was delivered unto them:

COW Court

Let’s remind each other that at no time does a corporation: a) speak clearly, or b) take full responsibility for what they do.

And in international news, hope is dying in Israel:

COW Common Ground

 

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Corporations Celebrate Their Independence Day

Happy Independence Day, corporations!  You’re way more important than women!

Indeed, way back on June 30th, tweeter Scott Wolledge was prescient. The Supreme Court wasn’t done celebrating the religious rights of corporations over those of individuals. After ruling Hobby Lobby had the right to refuse to provide company health insurance coverage for contraception it (erroneously) believed was a form of abortion, the Supreme Court went further and ruled that corporate beliefs about ANY contraceptive trumped all women’s individual rights. From MoJo: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Less than a day after the United States Supreme Court issued its divisive ruling on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, it has already begun to toss aside the supposedly narrow interpretation of the decision. On Tuesday, the Supremes ordered lower courts to rehear any cases where companies had sought to deny coverage for any type of contraception, not just the specific types Hobby Lobby was opposed to.

The Affordable Care Act had listed 20 forms of contraception that had to be covered as preventive services. But Hobby Lobby, a craft supply chain, claimed that Plan B, Ella, and two types of IUD were abortifacients that violated the owners’ religious principles. The science was against Hobby Lobby—these contraceptives do not prevent implantation of a fertilized egg and are not considered abortifacients in the medical world—but the conservative majority bought Hobby Lobby’s argument that it should be exempted from the law.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion, using many qualifiers in an attempt to limit its scope, but orders released by the court Tuesday contradict any narrow interpretation of the ruling.

The Supremes decided that non-profit organizations objecting to birth control coverage were (somehow) being crushed by the “substantial burden” of having to inform the government that they wanted an exemption. So, SCOTUS gave Wheaton College an injunction against having to fill out the required paperwork to acknowledge that they wanted to opt out. More from the NYT:

In a decision that drew an unusually fierce dissent from the three female justices, the Supreme Court sided Thursday with religiously affiliated nonprofit groups in a clash between religious freedom and women’s rights.

The decision temporarily exempts a Christian college from part of the regulations that provide contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

The court’s order was brief, provisional and unsigned, but it drew a furious reaction from the three female members, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. The order, Justice Sotomayor wrote, was at odds with the 5-to-4 decision on Monday in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, which involved for-profit corporations.

“Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “Not so today.”

The court’s action, she added, “undermines confidence in this institution.”

So, corporate personhood trumps human personhood. Worse, the religious rights of a corporation outweigh the individual rights of a woman who knows that birth control is a necessary medical expense for her. And filling out a form is too a harsh requirement for Wheaton College. The idea that what constitutes a “substantial burden” should be determined by the party alleging burden is absurd.

This is a 4th of July that doesn’t feel like most others.

We are a divided people on a day that celebrates our unity. It must change.

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