Pro-life vid of day: Megyn Kelly destroys Hobby Lobby myth
by Kelli
On The O’Reilly Factor, FOX’s Megyn Kelly spelled out the facts in the Hobby Lobby case decided by the Supreme Court this week.
Watch as she responds to the claim made by Sandra Fluke on MSNBC that “What this is really about at its base is trying to figure out as many ways as possible to limit women’s access to reproductive healthcare”:
[HT: The Daily Caller; The Right Scoop]
Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.
Shooting fish in a barrel.
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Del lol. I love Megan K!
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Sandra, let me make this as simple as I can. There is no law that prohibits any woman from obtaining a prescription for contraception from her doctor. There is no law forbidding her to fill that prescription. She and/or her partner can buy condoms over the counter. Put simply, if a woman wants contraception, she can get it. She may have to pay for it but this is nothing new. Women have been paying for their own contraception for generations. My mother paid for her own over 70 years ago.
BTW, should the gas money to the doctor’s and the pharmacy also be covered by the employer? I mean, how else can a woman get her contraception if someone isn’t there to help her every step of the way?
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The words ‘Megyn Kelly’ and ‘spelled out the facts’ do not belong in the same sentence.
“What this is really about at its base is trying to figure out as many ways as possible to limit women’s access to reproductive healthcare” – which is what the Greens and others like them are trying to do.
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Ms Fluke – this is about a base trying to figure out every way possible to save those who can’t or won’t save themselves – that includes the mother, her child and even the father.
And live-abortion is not reproductive healthcare – it’s reproductive termination.
And if you want free conception materials – make the penis pay. He is/they are really taking the free ride.
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I would like to sue this site, and sue Fox for making me dumber by watching that clip.
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If there was any destroying done, it was Megyn Kelly further destroying the truth and any semblance of her own, very limited, credibility. As I point out on Newshounds, the medical community defines pregnancy as beginning at implantation. Emergency contraception prevents ovulation – no pregnancy, no abortion. The IUD prevents implantation – no pregnancy, no abortion. The idea that these types of birth control induce abortions is a theological one held by certain evangelicals and, of course, the Roman Catholic Church which is the religion of the conservative males on the Supreme Court. So no coincidence that the ruling went the way it did as Alito’s commentary was straight of the section of the Catholic catechism involving sin.
The Hobby Lobby decision, as stated by Judge Ginsburg, uses religion to discriminate against women. If you think that it isn’t part of an organized, conservative faith based attempt to curtail women’s access to contraception, you can keep on pretending.
Megyn Kelly lied when she claimed that the above cited methods of birth control are abortifacients. But it’s not surprising given that Fox is a propaganda mouthpiece for the Christian right and the Catholic bishops. The divorced and re-married Kelly is a devout Catholic as are the majority of the conservatives on Fox. To read more, here is my article
http://www.newshounds.us/20140630_megyn_kelly_still_pushing_fox_lie_aca_covers_abortion_drugs
Newshounds Priscilla
“We watch Fox so you don’t have to”
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Does Fluke want us to take her pill for her as well. Big cry baby.
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Priscilla – pregnancy and fertilization/conception are not interchangeable terms.
While “pregnancy” in recent years has been defined as implantation, the fact is that what implants in the uterus is already a living, growing new human life.
Therefore, introducing a “contraception” method that does not actually prevent conception is considered an abortifacient, as it does not prevent fertilization (i.e. the beginning of a new human life), but prevents it from implanting in the uterine wall where it can continue to grow and develop.
“After a long journey, many of the sperm will have died out in their efforts to reach the egg, though some still have to the potential to fertilise it. Each will attach itself to the ovum but only one should succeed in penetrating it. Enzymes contained in the acrosome (head) of the sperm break down the wall of the egg. When fertilised, the egg secretes various hormones to prevent it from being overwhelmed by the other millions of sperm attempting to fertilise it.
Within hours of conception the fused gametes, a zygote, undergoes cell division. The presence of a hormone called progesterone prevents further female eggs being produced. Within the first week after conception the fertilised egg travels towards the uterus, where the continued growth of the zygote will occur in the form of an embryo.”
http://www.biology-online.org/7/1_fertilisation.htm
“Development begins while the fertilized egg is still within the fallopian tube. Repeated mitotic divisions produces a solid ball of cells called a morula. Further mitosis and some migration of cells converts this into a hollow ball of cells called the blastocyst. Approximately one week after fertilization, the blastocyst embeds itself in the thickened wall of the uterus, a process called implantation, and pregnancy is established.”
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/S/Sexual_Reproduction.html
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Both Fox and heather are missing the point.
There are certain regulations that are said that companies should have to abide by.
These regulations which favor employees are being trumped by perceived morals of a person within a company.
Imagine if you rented a place, and your landlord got to play by different rules than what the law said.
Yes, you could move. Sure, these folks could get a different job – but do people really want to use that reasoning in all sorts of other situations in life?
I’m tired of people missing the point on this. Yes, people could buy it themselves. Yes, people could get a different job. That’s not the point.
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“While “pregnancy” in recent years has been defined as implantation, the fact is that what implants in the uterus is already a living, growing new human life.”
Your opinion and that of the anti-choice movement – not the opinion of medical science which does not believe that a pregnancy occurs until implantation. Once again, no pregnancy, no abortion. The issue of “life” is a theological one. At present, prevailing medical opinion, regarding the beginning of a pregnancy, does not morph “life” (a theological and philosophical construct – consider, not all religions believe that “life” begins at conception) with pregnancy. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology even filed a brief, to SCOTUS, in opposition to the Hobby Lobby argument. While you might consider that fertilized eggs that are flushed out during menstruation are miscarriages, official medical opinion would disagree. So until your side can replace those who form policy for the American medical community, the definition of pregnancy will remain.
http://www.arhp.org/Publications-and-Resources/Patient-Resources/fact-sheets/IUC-Myths
Newshounds Priscilla
“We watch Fox so you don’t have to”
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The ironic thing about this law is if the drugs don’t cause abortions in and of themselves, the result of the ruling is that we’ll probably have more abortions in this country.
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OOOh…the anti choice movement!!! OOOOhh.
Priscilla, you’re a tool. I choose not to fund your abortion drugs. The Supreme Court was merely following the law.Hobby Lobby gets to decide what it will fund. Abortifacients: no friggin’ way.
#tolerance
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Priscilla: “The issue of ‘life’ is a theological one.”
Not really. Science textbooks used by secular schools correctly identify fertilization as the beginning of a new individual’s life.
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Priscilla: “The IUD prevents implantation – no pregnancy, no abortion.”
If it prevents the ability of an embryonic human being to implant, then it is precisely equivalent to an abortion. Please deal with facts.
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Reality: “The words ‘Megyn Kelly’ and ‘spelled out the facts’ do not belong in the same sentence.”
— except that she did spell out the facts, as has already been explained to you.
“’What this is really about at its base is trying to figure out as many ways as possible to limit women’s access to reproductive healthcare’ – which is what the Greens and others like them are trying to do.”
No, those women still have access, just like I have access to dental care. They just have to pay for it, as I do when I get my teeth cleaned.
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bmmg39, if proaborts deal in facts, then they need to look, first and foremost, at the pictures of aborted babies. They will not. Facts are not their friends, and love is not on their side. Neither is their twisted idea of what female liberation is.
#lovewins
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“Both Fox and heather are missing the point.”
Projection much?
“There are certain regulations that are said that companies should have to abide by.”
So? That doesn’t automatically mean any and all regulations put forward are automatically good or above reproach.
“These regulations which favor employees are being trumped by perceived morals of a person within a company.”
So? I see no reason that the law should favour employees over employers, or vice versa. Individual issues can be handled on a case by case basis.
“Imagine if you rented a place, and your landlord got to play by different rules than what the law said.”
I’m not sure what this hypothetical adds to the discussion. But, my feelngs on the matter would depend on a) what the law in question was and b) why they were playing by different rules.
“Yes, you could move. Sure, these folks could get a different job – but do people really want to use that reasoning in all sorts of other situations in life?”
Actually, I’m perfectly fine with using this reasoning for other areas of life. Realistically, how often are conflicts like this going to happen anyways.
“I’m tired of people missing the point on this. Yes, people could buy it themselves. Yes, people could get a different job. That’s not the point.”
I would be tired of them missing the point as well, if they were actually missing it.
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JDC –
My point is, if a person has issues with the actual regulation, then they should make that point. The point that is being made is simply “get over it, buy it yourself” – which I think is a backwards, wrong-headed view of it.
This was just a bad ruling by an activist court – and I think it will lead to other bad rulings until it gets fixed at the legislative level. I could give a rat’s behind about the actual product being regulated – it seems massively problematic that a court would declare a company a person, and their perceived beliefs trump over anybody that works for them.
I do think this will speed up the track towards getting employers out of health care, which would be massive wins all around.
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Priscilla,
“not the opinion of medical science which does not BELIEVE(my emphasis)that a pregnancy occurs until implantation”.
Gee, do you mean like some people BELIEVE it occurs at conception?
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Priscilla – ending a new human life is aborting – stopping – that human life from continuing to develop.
I linked you to two different websites (and really, I could have linked to any scientific page on human fertilization) which state that life begins at conception (fertilization) – not at implantation.
You are either deliberately or accidentally conflating the two events. Fertilization happens about a week before implantation. In other words, before the new life has implanted in the woman’s uterus, that life has already existed for a week and has been traveling down the Fallopian tube to the uterus. If that human being does not implant, that human life dies.
This conflation is precisely the problem we have with pro-choice medical groups who decided to redefine pregnancy as implantation. http://www.physiciansforlife.org/content/view/2029/26/
http://www.hli.org/2014/06/hobby-lobby-case-underscores-deception-contraception-life-begins/
We know, biologically, that a new human being is created when the gametes fuse. But by redefining the terms – a “moving of the goal posts”, which is typical of pro-death and dehumanizing movements – we can claim that women aren’t really pregnant until implantation, despite the fact that a developing human life is already inside her, moving nearer to the uterus.
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Corporate personhood has been around since the 1800’s.
http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/hobby-lobby-argument
Free exercise of religion is not absolute, but can’t be imposed upon without a compelling reason and in the least restrictive way. (Thank you RFRA!)
I can hardly fathom that a person of faith would believe that’s a bad thing.
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“except that she did spell out the facts” – no she did not, it was more Fox diatribe.
“as has already been explained to you” – you mean ‘claimed’, not ‘explained’.
“No, those women still have access” – the means of access available to them has been reduced compared to others because of someones religious doctrine.
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Lrning –
As a person of faith, I just don’t see it as a sin.
I mean, confirm this for me – that this is your view:
– if you are a business owner, and you pay money into a health plan, and another individual utilizes a service from that health plan and does something that is *possibly* sinful, it is a sin for you
– if that same business owner gave an employee a bonus, and that individual uses that money given in the form of a bonus to do something *possibly* sinful, it isn’t a sin
I’m just not seeing it.
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“These regulations which favor employees are being trumped by perceived morals of a person within a company.”
By the actual morals of the person paying for the subject of the “regulation”. Fixed that for you.
“- if you are a business owner, and you pay money into a health plan, and another individual utilizes a service from that health plan and does something that is *possibly* sinful, it is a sin for you.”
It’s a sin for you to pay for the service that is provided, regardless if anyone uses it (not possibly a sin – a sin). It’s ESPECIALLY a sin when you are literally paying for the full cost of the service b/c it has to be “free” to the employee.
“- if that same business owner gave an employee a bonus, and that individual uses that money given in the form of a bonus to do something *possibly* sinful, it isn’t a sin”
Correct, because the act of paying a bonus is not sinful. That’s what’s being missed. It is not and never has been about preventing your employees from sinning (or possibly sinning or forcing your concept of sin upon them). If they want to use their money for things the employer considers sinful that’s their right. It is NOT their right to force their employers to pay for it, when the paying is a sin for the employer.
“I’m just not seeing it. ”
You don’t need to see it. That’s where the “freedom” of religion comes in.
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CT –
A person isn’t paying for the health care – a company is – a limited liability company setup to be a separate entity from the individuals. They want their cake and want to eat it to. It’s crap.
On the questions – two more – is it equally a sin then for Hobby Lobby to be investing finances in these companies through the 401K plans, as they do?
Also – you say “I don’t need to see it” – so we need to take all rational decision making out of it? If somebody has religious beliefs regarding overpopulation, the court would be obligated to give waivers to not cover maternity coverage? Or is the US court system now in the business of validating what religious beliefs pass the test?
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“A person isn’t paying for the health care – a company is – a limited liability company setup to be a separate entity from the individuals. They want their cake and want to eat it to. It’s crap.”
It’s not crap – that’s the whole question. Do citizens forfeit their religious freedoms because they run a business and hire people? So if they run their business without a legal corporation they can retain religious freedom that is denied to them if they do take the legal step of incorporating. It’s the same people running the business. There is a legal distinction, but not a moral one. A Catholic can’t go into church and say, “it’s ok father, I didn’t treat my employees badly, my corporation did.” The legal existence of a corporation means nothing to the moral culpability of those directly running a closely held corporation like this.
On the questions – two more – is it equally a sin then for Hobby Lobby to be investing finances in these companies through the 401K plans, as they do?
They don’t invest it. You have no idea how 401k’s work if you think this is an issue. This would be similar to the bonus paid to the employees who are then able to invest it in options as they see fit. This objection is laughable.
“Also – you say “I don’t need to see it” – so we need to take all rational decision making out of it? If somebody has religious beliefs regarding overpopulation, the court would be obligated to give waivers to not cover maternity coverage? Or is the US court system now in the business of validating what religious beliefs pass the test?”
Not all rational decision making needs to be taken out of it, but you need to say more than, it doesn’t seem like a sin to me, or it’s not a sin according to my understanding of my own faith. The US court system is and always has been in the business of balancing government interests against claims that the government’s pursuit of those interests is infringing upon religious beliefs. Every case is decided on its facts, but certainly the sincerity of a claimed religious belief is relevant. As is the sincerity and seriousness of the government’s claimed interest.
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“As a person of faith, I just don’t see it as a sin.”
You don’t have to believe providing abortifacient drugs is sinful to understand that those that do believe it is sinful shouldn’t be mandated that they have to provide them. As a person of faith, you should have an interest in seeing that other people of faith are free to exercise their faith, even if their faith isn’t the same as yours. I’m really surprised I have to explain that to you.
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“if you are a business owner and you pay money into a health plan”
The business owner doesn’t simply “pay money into a health plan”. The business owner also SELECTS the health plan(s) that they will make available to employees. If I select a sinful plan for my employees, of course I am culpable for that decision.
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CT – Hogwash (and I mean that in as loving of a way as I can put it).
Corporations are separate legal entities. An individual remains an individual – yes, the Hobby Lobby owners, taking advantage of the health plan, should not seek services they think are immoral. But the company is a separate legal entity. If you or I sued them, they would be the first to claim that the owners themselves are not legally responsible for debts – it is the corporate entity, and if the entity declares bankruptcy, the owners themselves are not liable. There is a reason the US Chamber of Commerce and other big business groups sat this one out – if you open a big hole and start merging the two, there is the potential for some serious issues.
And on the 401K – they have more of a direct link than in the health plan. In the health plan, they pay money to an insurance company that negotiates deals with organizations and drug companies, and an employee *might* use those specific services.
On the 401K plan, the company is directly paying money to plans they selected that fund these companies that make the drugs. Any match is money right from Hobby Lobby. Any employee who pays towards 401K out of their check is simply doing the same thing they’d do with a health plan. To say one is good and one is bad is simply putting a veil over one’s eyes.
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Lrning –
The business owner most certainly does not – they have an HR department that selects plans with negotiated rates. If an employee never uses objectionable services, no money flows to the objectionable companies (except the 401K money Hobby Lobby directs towards those companies).
On your first post -I have two issues – one is, I don’t the link from the funding to the sin on this one – I just don’t. And if there is one, we’re all damned because almost every dollar we’ll spend on a daily basis will be with companies that provide these same drugs through health plans.
Furthermore, I don’t believe a company can have a free exercise of religion. I mean, tell me – when did Hobby Lobby accept Jesus into his/her heart? What’s his/her favorite verse? What book of the Bible is Hobby Lobby’s favorite book? What church does Hobby Lobby go to and do they tithe? They are serious questions – if Hobby Lobby itself is a person, and a person of faith no less, these things should be important to us.
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You don’t have to make the link from funding to sin. You just have to acknowledge that other people of faith do make that link and recognize that a mandate ignoring that link is an imposition on their free exercise of faith.
“…but the purpose of extending rights to corporations is to protect the rights of people associated with the corporation, including shareholders, officers, and employees. Protecting the free-exercise rights of closely held corporations thus protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control them.”
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf
You’d have to ask the Greens and the Hahns those religious questions. I’m just grateful that people of faith are able to live their lives, including running their businesses, without this immoral mandate being forced on them.
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Lrning –
I’d actually have to ask those questions to Hobby Lobby itself – the Greens are a separate entity, legally, for tax and business reasons.
Anyway, I understand and acknowledge your point on their belief being legit as long as they believe it.
I don’t, and won’t easily, equate a business with personal constitutional freedom of religion – not unless they redo their corporate structure to move away from the limited liability setup. You are one or the other in my book, and if you go through great pains to say you aren’t an individual in the case of lawsuits and debt, then you can’t claim to have personal freedom on the other side. You just can’t.
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“in my book”
Your book continues to ignore that corporate personhood has been around for 100+ years. Not sure why, but that’s your issue, I guess.
“You just can’t.”
You now realize you can and are just venting against that reality, yes?
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Lrning – did you just start reading about this case in the last few days? Is this all new to you? I’m beginning to think you stumbled across a Fox news article and now you think you understand it enough to comment.
The idea of personhood in this manner was far from settled, and to pretend that it was shows an ignorance of this case. There was a friends-of-the-court brief filed by 44 law professors regarding the very issue, and that it would be unprecedented.
You really should read up on the case a bit and then come back later. I’m interested in your two cents, but only if it comes with some educational backing and understanding of the massive leap that was made.
Thanks –
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LOL. Yeah, that’s it. You’re free to ignore that I’ve been commenting about the HHS mandate on this site for 2 years.
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Lrning
If you consider your educated on this, then how could you possibly make a statement implying that the corporate personhood in this case was not a massive fundamental issue – you implied that this wasn’t, and shouldn’t be a question. Was that your point?
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“I could give a rat’s behind about the actual product being regulated – it seems massively problematic that a court would declare a company a person, and their perceived beliefs trump over anybody that works for them.”
Did I misread your statement above, which indicated to me that you believed this Court declared a company a person for the first time?
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In this context, yes. I’m sure you’ll try to twist some case in the past to make a different argument – I suggest you take a read through the below.
http://www.becketfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/13-35413-356tsacCorporateandCriminalLawProfessors.pdf
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Make a different argument? I brought up that corporate personhood has been around for a long time because you seemed to believe it was a result of this case:
“it seems massively problematic that a court would declare a company a person”
As a person of faith, I’m immensely pleased that the Court recognized that in order to protect the free-exercise rights of the Greens and Hahns, those rights needed to be extended to their closely held corporations.
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Ex – It’s not hogwash. I’m perfectly aware of what incorporation means from a legal standpoint. What you failed to address was whether incorporating can remove moral culpability of the owners. It can’t. It doesn’t. So there are real religious liberty issues at stake. You also act like incorporation is some perfect wall of separation, but it is far from that. Owners can be held legally responsible for quite of bit of corporate action. It is ludicrous to suggest that the act of incorporating means the owners lose their first amendment protections vis a vis their business decisions.
I’ll say it again – that is not how 401ks work. The matching money is not paid directly to “plans”. It becomes the property of the employee and is invested in the funds of the employees choice. There are legal limits to an employer’s ability to limit fund options to socially conscious funds.
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Lrning –
We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. Until shown otherwise, I think I’ve properly shown through the brief submitted to the court that this is a massive jump how corporations are treated. And while I sympathize with the owners, when they go through great lengths to create a separate entity for legal protection and benefits, they give up the rights a person would have.
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CT –
As a note, the supremes didn’t rule the case based on the first amendment protections – they based in on an act that anybody would be hard pressed to say was related to companies. Anyway, to your larger point, the owners of Hobby Lobby have many ways they could have structured their company. They decided upon one that created a separate entity. And that separate entity does not have religion – it doesn’t go to church, have a relationship with Jesus, pray, tithe, or any of those things. It is a corporate structure – so it has no moral culpability. The owners do in their person lives. If they’d like it in their business life, restructure the company.
401K options are chosen by the company (Hobby Lobby chose numerous that have these companies in them), the company has personnel they pay to handle the finances and administer the plan, and most likely, Hobby Lobby has a match that they pay as well. And I can GUARANTEE that when they are making hiring decisions, cost cutting decisions, and other decisions, they factor in the employee’s health care and matching 401K contribution in the same bucket of employee compensation. We do it at our work.
What legal limits exist on funding options? They could do a self directed plan.
Regardless – it appears to me that Hobby Lobby has a deep and moral issue when it seems political convenient for them to have a deep and moral issue with something. Would love to see their supplier list and where they get supplies to keep costs down. Throw the whole book of Proverbs out the door after seeing where those goods come from (my guess).
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“Until shown otherwise, I think I’ve properly shown through the brief submitted to the court that this is a massive jump how corporations are treated.”
Who’s saying that this isn’t a change in how *some* corporations are treated? I thought the issue was whether this was a good change or not.
“And while I sympathize with the owners,…they give up the rights a person would have”
Would you clarify this statement? Because it reads like you’re denying the result of this court decision. Is there a word missing perhaps, like “they *should* give up the rights a person would have”?
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Lrning –
I thought you were making the point that this decision for this level of personhood was unprecedented, thus my statement.
On my statement – I’m saying that I disagree with the courts decision – it was an activist ruling that looks politically motivated more than anything. So I’m saying that I agree most closely with the brief that I posted. So until this decision, the word *should* didn’t need to be there. Now it does.
At the end of the day, it really doesn’t affect a ton depending on how slippery the slope gets. The dream for conservatives is tailor made health care plans. The dream for liberals is that this starts the path to universal care. We’ll see. I’m sure our oh-so-wonderful two party system will find a way to make a bigger mess of it then it already is.
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“I’m sure our oh-so-wonderful two party system will find a way to make a bigger mess of it then it already is.”
On this, we agree.
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“As a note, the supremes didn’t rule the case based on the first amendment protections – they based in on an act that anybody would be hard pressed to say was related to companies.”
The RFRA was passed to legislatively strengthen first amendment rights in the face of Supreme Court decisions that had been reading them in a more limited way. This was the first time the question was raised as to whether the act applied to companies so I’m not sure what basis you have for that statement except that YOU don’t think the act applies to companies.
“And that separate entity does not have religion – it doesn’t go to church, have a relationship with Jesus, pray, tithe, or any of those things. It is a corporate structure – so it has no moral culpability.”
Right. So if the “entity” commits fraud and other criminal activity or doesn’t pay its payroll taxes (which are considered a trust tax), the owners won’t go to jail or be held personally financially responsible (respectively). Because this is a perfect wall of separation once you create a corporation. It runs itself, with no moral and legal culpability for the people behind the scenes.
“I can GUARANTEE that when they are making hiring decisions, cost cutting decisions, and other decisions, they factor in the employee’s health care and matching 401K contribution in the same bucket of employee compensation.”
Right but like employee salaries, contributions to the 401K constitute a payment to the employee which is invested at the EMPLOYEE’S discretion. Yes it is part of compensation, but it’s like salary, not like health care which is paid for by the company and then the plan is provided to the employee.
“What legal limits exist on funding options? They could do a self directed plan.”
I’m not sure how a self-directed plan solves the problem. That’s usually presented as an option to employees who are very financially savvy. Unless the employee is a skilled investor, most would not want to choose that option. The legal limit is that the company has a fiduciary obligation in terms of the choice of plans made available.
As to the legal limits, I am not an ERISA expert by ANY stretch of the imagination, but basically the DOL (who enforces ERISA) has issued an advisory letter indicating that plan sponsors may be able to include some socially responsible funds as some percentage (not ALL) of their options and can only do that if it would not be a breach of their fiduciary duties to provide that option (meaning, as I understand it, that the socially responsible plan has to be expected to perform as well or better than non socially responsible alternatives. Socially responsible options may not be provided to the exclusion of all. Hobby Lobby does, in fact, make use of this and provide several socially responsible plans among their menu of options.
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CT –
I’m getting bored of this conversation and think we’re at a bit of an impasse anyway.
I’ll sum up with these points:
– I think it was a big leap to treat corporations in this way. We’ll see if a slippery slope emerges. It’s much ado about nothing if things stay limited to what they are now. We’ll see what happens though.
– I think Hobby Lobby was hypocritical in saying that these drugs were morally an issue, and enough to fund it up to a supreme court battle – while at the same time, supporting funds in which those same companies existed. Companies can pick different funds.
– I praise the Lord that the Lord I praise isn’t as complicated as the case you laid out – where morally you’ve practically got a flow chart out the money trail to see if you’re sinning or not. Imagine that chapter in the Bible…”and if you are part of an S-Corp ESOP, then…” It’s almost funny. I do think companies should be responsible. I do think employers should be as moral as they can in their daily conduct. No position paper is going to convince me that if I am part owner of a business, and a federally mandated law says that when I provide a benefit to employees that it has to meet certain standards, and one of the items in that standard is morally an issue, though a person might or might not use it – I’ll never be convinced that this is some big more issue that comes back on me. If it is, then we’re all damned 100 times over every spending decision we made (as I sit in jeans manufactured in Vietnam and a shirt from China).
Not bored by you – you’ve been civil, made a lot of good points, and I appreciate it. I continue to read on the case and will be interested to see where it goes.
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You’re the one who wants a flow chart where sole proprietorships are treated differently than partnerships and llcs and corporations. I’m the easy one – people are moral agents regardless of whether they incorporate. The law already recognizes that in other areas of corporate law. Everyone has to make their own decisions about when spending crosses the line into immorality. I’m just saying you should be free to make that decision in accordance with your understanding of the requirements of your own faith.
But I’ll end with a point of agreement. This uproar is much ado about nothing.
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