The Phoenix posted an editorial today, entitled “Scott Brown, Crazy Person,” on Scott Brown co-sponsoring legislation that allows employers to restrict contraception coverage. Brown has also move from a moderate position within the Massachusetts legislature to a hard right position as the Obama compromise is in essence what we have been doing in Massachusetts.
When Massachusetts junior senator Scott Brown last week signed on to support a Republican initiative to nullify President Barack Obama’s birth-control compromise, Brown joined the vast and growing right-wing war on women.
Brown’s new archconservative position on birth control stands in contrast to the stance he took 10 years ago when, as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Brown favored legislation requiring all health-care providers to offer contraception coverage.
That law provided a narrow exclusion for churches or “church-controlled organizations,” but it was benign when compared to the pending Republican anti-birth-control legislation. In fact, since 2002, Massachusetts has been operating under what is essentially the Obama compromise.
The GOP scheme would allow any business, not just those allied with a religion, to opt out of providing insurance coverage for birth control if the business deemed contraception to conflict with its moral or religious beliefs.
Another interesting point is that Scott Brown left the usual group of moderates in the Republican caucus behind, both Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins will not support Blunt/Brown, even when hedging support on the compromise.
Brown’s fellow Republican senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, may not have found Obama’s birth-control compromise perfect, but they have said, in effect, that it is perfectly workable.
In case anyone, Republican, Democrat or Independent believes that Brown is taking a moderate position, he’s not, centrist Republicans have abandoned him.
Bernstein was kind enough to post the OdEp Brown graphic alternatives. Pretty funny.
Brown does realize that he does not have a primary opponent, right? That there’s no one running at his right flank…?
Because this whole thing is just so bizarre. Why would he stick his neck out on such a dog-whistle amendment? Unless he’s worried the money train will dry up? But he’s not a small-donor guy…attracting Wall St donations is way more lucrative for him than going for small donations from the crazed right-wing teabagger contingent.
He’s finally realized the liability that comes along with having much of his donor base from the most reviled business sector in the country?
The Blunt amendment allows employers to get around the mandated coverage for pretty much anything, doesn’t it? All they have to do is claim they have a moral objection to providing coverage for, say, sex change surgery, or abortion, or aromatherapy, and they can have get that taken out of their plan.
So it really isn’t about women, or birth control, or religious freedom – that’s just how Obama wants objections to mandated insurance portrayed. He doesn’t want it portrayed accurately, that Blunt means employers can select what they want to cover and do not have to cover things they don’t want to. It’s really about the whole idea of mandated coverage.
he’s been saying something different.
Do you want to tell him he’s full of it?
I was looking for the text of the Amendment and came across this “fact sheet” from lifenews.com
I guess Brown is saying that if an employer were to try to get out of paying for something, then two factors would impede them: they’d have to find an insurer to offer that plan, and a federal court could rule they were making a “spurious claim” – hence, the room for “interpretation.”
lifenews “facts” not withstanding.
I’ll make it simple:
if you don’t want an employer dictating your insurance coverage, don’t co-sponsor a bill providing them that ability.
See, that’s pretty simple.
I morally disagree with and don’t want to be paying for sex changes, IVF, birth control, plastic surgery (except to fix disfiguring injuries), sperm and egg donors, surrogacy, breast reduction, breast implants, penis implants, penis reduction, heart transplants, and maybe some other things. I don’t think people should have to have a job to have insurance that covers injuries and keeping them healthy through a normal lifespan, I think basic health care should be free. If people want to be insured for things other than being healthy, they can buy supplemental insurance.
that has absolutely nothing to do with this post or any comments, thanks for the input.
You are correct, I don’t want an employer dictating my coverage. That’s what bugged me about working, I had to support all sorts of things that the CEO wanted me to have. And if I went to a different company I’d have to get a new plan. And every company had a huge HR department to deal with insurance questions and change insurance plans every couple years. What a waste! Let companies concentrate on their business, and offer straight money for compensation.
Basic health care should be free, and no one should be forced to subsidize things that aren’t health care, like IVF, contraception, sex changes, gyms, etc.
… tlittle (who is having trouble posting):
That “fact check” comes from Blunt himself — not exactly and unbiased source.
http://blunt.senate.gov/public/?p=hot-topics
Nicely unpacked here:
http://blog.showmeprogress.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=6EB894B535B9B0A3ACC6EF382ABA2A2E?diaryId=6948
Seems to perhaps be related to using IE on another computer. Will have to try troubleshooting tomorrow. 🙂
From email today:
Any law that says something is allowed or prohibited “on religious grounds” would appear to be unconstitutional. That includes tax exemptions, of course …
but is it better, from the perspective of the Democrats, for the upcoming Senate election to be about economics or to be about this latest version of the culture war? And I promise I’m not concern-trolling- I really want Warren to win. Also, I understand that there’s more to life than winning. I’m just curious as to whether this is Democrats’ winningest issue- is there available polling on this question?
but a candidate needs to represent what they stand for, if there is a bill that is fundamentally different in the values of the candidate, that’s real, I have no issue with Warren saying why this is so wrong. Don’t need a poll to tell me that.
“We re[fer], you decide” whether you want to examine Senator Fratboy’s spinsters’ own fabric in detail before you place your order. Paddy McTammany can neither confirm nor deny press rumors that this marvelous weave is visible only to the Pure of Heart.
Paddy thinks in general that the Agitprop Arm over to Whight Guard GHQ could do with a stiff dose of that Neo-Elizabethan “intellectual bottom” Peruna kindly recommended to our attention not long ago.
As it is, they have The People’s Seatwarmer™ simultaneously (A) fightin’ in the headline for “religious liberty” against The Mantle of the Oppressor, an’ (B) insistin’ (down in the fine print) that Dogmatic Mythology has nothin’ special to do with it, really–only ‘conscience’ or “moral conviction,” commodities available in principle even to us unregenerate appliances and inanimate objects. [*]
Happy days.
–JHM
[*] Perhaps one must actually be a Mac- or an O’ to rise/sink to the cynicism of guessing that Papishes were deliberately meant to take it the one way, Prods an’ neuters the other.
Local discussion of this topic has been dotted with remarks [**] that amount to claiming that the Funders of Fratboy have entrusted the advertisin’ an’ marketin’ of their product to a pack of sheer boobs. Their worships the Blue Blazers are flirting with a dangerous complacency if they think that. One of these days I shall (maybe) write up what I take to be the Whight Guard’s various other clevernesses so far exhibited in the Path of Fratboy. This particular item is a little trickier to evaluate, and certainly looks as if it will require the serious student to rudely call a spade “an ethnic group” along the lines that Paddy just called two of us. “¿How many of the now Blazers remember Governor King?” is a question that should indicate which way my thoughts are headed on this one.
Be that as it may, the other ploys have been so plainly good and arguably successful that this one is not at all likely to be *just* plumb dumb. Too clever by half, more likely. We’ll see soon enough.
[**] “[T]his whole thing is just so bizarre. Why would he stick his neck out on such a dog-whistle amendment?”
Or, in one word, Crazyland.
The third paragraph of the email I quoted includes the term “religious”. As far as being automatically unconstititional just for mentioning religion I’m not sure that’s true, especially if it could be argued that point of the law is to enhance religious liberty and freedom of conscience. Religious organizations generally are tax-exempt, as are non-religious non-profits, but tax-exemption is a privilege for which the government has the prorogative to set the criteria.
And not answering the question I asked. I did not say “mentioning religion” would make a law unconstitutional. Here is what I did say:
It’s the use of religion to allow or prohibit.
The question I asked was whether the bill had the word religion in it, not whether the email did. The email isn’t going to be voted on or signed into law.
I don’t know, and can’t find, what the bill itself says, so I’m taking the email’s word for it.
I do think the use of religion to allow or prohibit is OK in some circumstances. For example, if you are a Quaker you should be allowed to refuse combat draft, IMO.
Anyone should be allowed to refuse the draft. Basing the ability to do that on religion is patently discriminatory, and serves to establish religion.
The draft as it’s been implemented is involuntary servitude. Not different from any other slavery.