RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Acts Like Soviet Propagandist, Spreads Wacky Death Panel Rumor

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Acts Like Soviet Propagandist, Spreads Wacky Death Panel Rumor

On Sunday, CNN’s State of the Union invited Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus to offer what turned out to be little more than a dump of Republican talking points opposing the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare is “European, socialist style-type health care,” Priebus told CNN. He even claimed that Republicans — who have now voted to repeal Obamacare’s protections for people with preexisting conditions 40 different times — are the true defenders of people who are unable to obtain health insurance without health reform. And then he dropped the death panels line — “what people don’t want are government panels deciding whether something’s medically necessary.” Watch it:

Priebus’ decision to drop this line without any context whatsoever represents an innovation in Republican messaging against providing health care to millions of Americans. The “death panel” smear originally emerged on former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) Facebook page, and was widely viewed at the time as an attack on a bipartisan proposal to enable Medicare to cover voluntary end-of-life counseling. After that proposal was dropped from the bill that ultimately became the Affordable Care Act, several Republicans — including Palin once again — retconned the term “death panels” to refer to a cost-cutting measure known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board or IPAB.

Although the IPAB is empowered to take some measures to bring down Medicare costs if those costs grow faster than a certain rate, it is expressly forbidden to take any action that might qualify as rationing care. Under the Affordable Care Act, no proposal generated by the IPAB may include “any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.” Moreover, it is not at all clear that the IPAB will do anything at all, because Medicare costs are currently not growing fast enough to trigger the IPAB’s authority.

So the first provision Republicans labeled as a “death panel” wasn’t actually a death panel, and it didn’t even make it into the law itself. The second provision they labeled a “death panel” also isn’t a death panel, and it may not actually do anything at all. Four years after Sarah Palin invented this canard, the Republican National Committee Chair is reduced to simply asserting, without context or explanation, that death panels exist — and hoping someone out there will still believe him.

It is difficult to say where Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus received his political education, from the old Soviet Communists or from read fascist literature. Either way disinformation campaigns like his, Sarah Palin and the Republican party are not American ideals. These radical conservatives will not be happy until they impose an Iranian style totalitarian theocracy on the USA. That is why they wear flag pins and talk about god and country so much, to cover their UnAmerican agenda. These wacko radicals believe that they can fool all the people all the time.

With Paranoid Conspiracies Dancing In Their Pointed Heads, Conservatives Create Kool Secret Organizations

 With Paranoid Conspiracies Dancing In Their Pointed Heads, Conservatives Create Kool Secret Organizations

Do you have Groundswell fever? I do! “Groundswell” is the secret organization run by cool right-wingers like Ginni Thomas and John Bolton, a group charged with winning the 30-front war on liberalism. Long story short: Mother Jones’ David Corn received another wonderful leak. This one is about a bunch of true-believing far-right clowns, and how hard they are all working at fighting a bunch of people who didn’t even know they were involved in an ideological war against Ginni Thomas.

So, this is a great and delightful scoop, and bless David Corn for reporting it. But let’s get real: While the people involved in this organization probably think that Corn has exposed a vast right-wing conspiracy, what he really exposed is the silliest corner of the vast right-wing conspiracy. Thomas and Bolton are both sort of “important” people, in terms of their familial or professional connections to people with actual power, but neither one of them has actual power or authority. John Bolton is a mustachioed parody of neoconservative foreign policy belligerence. Thomas is a true-believing weirdo. The media figures involved in this group are mostly marginal and widely disrespected even by conservatives. But that doesn’t mean the group is entirely unimportant.

The conservative movement has this recurring tendency to create institutions and organizations based on what they imagine, in their fevered minds, that The Left is doing. They believe liberal bias is an intentional conspiracy to delude Americans by publishing purposefully slanted stories, so most explicitly conservative “journalism” outlets publish purposefully slanted stories where facts are subordinate to political point-scoring. Sometimes they create entirely redundant institutions when this process laps itself. They believed Brookings was super liberal, so they created Heritage. The Left created CAP in response to Heritage, so the Right creates 10,000 useless nonprofits that exist solely to fundraise.

It is also the case that, generally, The Right thinks The Left is already doing whatever they’re doing, but more efficiently and better and also more viciously. As I’ve said before, there really is a right-wing talking points pipeline of sorts, and a great deal of “message coordination” among the various pillars of the movement, including conservative media figures. Because that’s the case, because the Right is sort of decent at message coordination, they imagine that liberals are great at it, and that our commentators all get their marching orders from on high and dutifully repeat them until the world is convinced of lies like “George Bush was a bad president” or “immigrants aren’t all drug-traffickers.”

So when JournoList happened, dumb (and less-dumb) members of the right-wing media machine looked at it and saw evidence of conspiracy, instead of a bunch of like-minded people debating and arguing and desperately begging for links from commentators with higher profiles. Where there was consensus, they saw “coordination.” They thought this because the Right sort of already did all that. And so now it only makes (tragic, hilarious) sense that some of the least intellectually impressive members of the conservative movement have banded together to create their own sad, weird parody of Grover Norquist’s “Wednesday meetings” combined with what they imagined JournoList to be. This is the result: Groundswell. A cracked-mirror imitation of an imaginary conspiracy.

But this group of clowns and idiots has attracted the attention and participation of members of Congress, and the staff of at least one senator.

If every patriotic Americans - that is most people who are not conservatives - stayed home and watched TV, never voted and just bought the crappy products and services conservatives hire wage slaves to produce for them, conservatives would still start secret weirdo organizations with freaks like Ginni Thomas and John Bolton because conservatism uses paranoia as a fuel. If the paranoia went away and REALITY set in, they would have next to nothing to complain get their false outrage fired up.

The Biggest Anti-American Clowns of the Week: Erick Erickson, Lou Dobbs, Paul Ryan, Ken Cuccinelli and Bryan Fischer

The Biggest Anti-American Clowns of the Week: Erick Erickson, Lou Dobbs, Paul Ryan,  Ken Cuccinelli and Bryan Fischer: The following are just some snips from the full article at the link,

1. Erick Erickson: Self-administered abortions are a real yuck fest.

Shortly after the vote to approve the draconian abortion ban, right-wing blogger Erick Erickson tweeted a link to a wire coathanger supplier, telling “liberals,” and really, the women of Texas, to “Go bookmark this site.” Rather like Geraldo’s jackass comments, this can be an instance of the right wing making the case against itself: Yes, your laws will drive women to desperate life-endangering measures, that is what we have been saying. Perhaps Erickson realized his mistake because he later deleted the tweet. But wait, then he defended his tweet against detractors by saying that before Roe v. Wade “only” 39 women died from self-administered abortions. Oh, only 39. (Not that we accept his accounting.) He also stands by his view that working women are “against nature.” Yeah, that one is still good.

2. Lou Dobbs: Eric Holder is a radical racist. DOJ organized and paid for protests.

Since we revisited Texas, let’s revisit Florida and Trayvon Martin as well, just for the sheer perversity of the reactions to the case. On Monday, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs promoted the conspiracy theory that the Department of Justice organized the protests over the killing of Trayvon Martin. Why is that? Well, because Attorney General Eric Holder is a radical racist. Just like his boss.

Yes, this cabal of black men at the pinnacle of American power used “thousands” of taxpayer dollars to train people to go out and pretend to be mad back when Martin was shot. And they are doing it again, because black people have to be paid to be mad about having their innocent young men gunned down.

3. Paul Ryan: Undocumented immigrants don’t want to be citizens.

Wrongheaded on a number of issues—most famously the federal budget and the path out of deficit spending (now on the back burner)—Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has redeemed himself ever so slightly by at least advocating for immigration reform in the House, the version with a militarized, drone-patrolled Mexican border that the Senate passed in June. He has even used his own Irish-immigrant lineage to argue in its favor. But on Thursday, Ryan made the rather curious claim that undocumented immigrants don’t want a path to citizenship.

“Most people just want to have a legal status so they can work to provide for their families,” he said.

It’s one thing to oppose a path to citizenship, which many Republicans do unabashedly, but quite another to dishonestly project that opposition onto the very people asking for it. In fact, as Think Progress reports [4]:

 Almost 90 percent of undocumented immigrants said they would apply for citizenship if allowed. The vast majority have family members who are U.S. citizens. Moreover, citizenship opens up more job opportunities and wage gains. Granting citizenship would also boost the economy; immigrants would pay more in state and local taxes if they became citizens.

4. Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia Republican and gubernatorial hopeful, has a problem with sodomy.

Woe to consenting heterosexual couples, consenting homosexual couples and people interested in having sex in positions other than the missionary, if Ken Cuccinelli becomes the next governor of Virginia. They’ll all have to wave bye-bye to all that oral and anal sex they are having. Cuccinelli wants to get that good ol’ anti-sodomy law back on the books.

Cloaking the push as an attempt to keep children safe from sexual predators, when everyone knows that he is targeting the LGBT community, Cuccinelli has launched a website [5] in his ongoing effort to reinstate a “Crimes Against Nature” law, which the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas.

5. Bryan Fischer: Being gay, robbing banks and dealing drugs are all comparable lifestyle choices.

American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer is very mad at the Cheneys, especially Dick and Liz. He is not mad at Liz for the same reason other Republicans are mad at Liz, which is that she is dividing the party by running against a fellow Republican for Wyoming Senate. And he is certainly not mad at Liz and Dick for the same reasons progressives are, namely that they are evil incarnate. No, he’s mad because Liz being out and gay has made the whole family go soft on the issue of same-sex marriage.

“That complicates things for a lot of people,” Fischer said on the radio program he hosts. (Fischer and his pal Cuccinelli seem to think constantly, have never ending fantasies, about other people's private consetual behavior. Maybe these two need to check into some kind of clinic for weirdos who are obsessed with other people's sex lives.

I don't understand why Fischer doesn't like Liz Cheney, she loves violating the law, loves to torture people and thinks the president should have all the power and privileged of a dictator - as long as the president is an anti-American conservative anyway. 

 

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) Got His Political Platform Straight From The Taliban

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) Got His Political Platform Straight From The Taliban

In an unusual move, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), his party’s nominee for governor, launched a new campaign website [3] Wednesday highlighting his efforts [4] to reinstate Virginia’s unconstitutional Crimes Against Nature law. The rule, which makes felons out of even consenting married couples who engage in oral or anal sex in the privacy of their own homes, was struck down [5] by federal courts after Cuccinelli blocked efforts to bring it in line with the Supreme Court’s 2003 Lawrence v. Texas [6] ruling.

The new site, vachildpredators.com [7], highlights 90 people identified “sexual predators” in Virginia who have been charged under the law [8] since the 2003 ruling, which held that states could not ban private, non-commercial sexual relations between consenting adults. Cuccinelli warns that these offenders “could come off Virginia’s sex offender registry if a Virginia law used to protect children is not upheld,” and identifies the sodomy law as only the “Anti-Child Predators Law.” While it is true that many sex offenders are charged under the Crimes Against Nature law, it is far from the only tool prosecutors have to punish child predators [9].

The law states [8], “If any person carnally knows in any manner any brute animal, or carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth, or voluntarily submits to such carnal knowledge, he or she shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony…” Cuccinelli claims that the law “is only applied to sodomy committed against minors, against non-consenting adults, or in public,” but fails to mention that what he wants to keep on the books criminalizes the private behavior of consenting grownups.

In fact, Cuccinelli is a major reason [10] that the provisions of this particular law governing non-consensual sex were left vulnerable to court challenge. In 2004, a bipartisan group [11] in the Virginia General Assembly backed a bill [12] that would have brought the law in line with the Supreme Court’s ruling. They proposed to eliminate the Crimes Against Nature law’s provisions dealing with consenting adults in private and leaving in place provisions relating to prostitution, public sex, and those other than consenting adults. Cuccinelli opposed the bill in committee and helped kill it on the Senate floor.

In 2009, he told a newspaper why he supported restrictions on the sexual behavior of consenting adults [13]: “My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. … They don’t comport with natural law.” As a result of Cuccinelli’s homophobia, the law’s text remains unchanged a decade after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

While Cuccinelli tries to spin his efforts as “Virginia’s appeal to preserve a child-protection statute,” this amounts to little more than his attempt to restore the state’s unconstitutional ban on oral sex.

Ken and the Taliban are perfectly aligned in their anti-American/anti-democracy agenda. Conservatives think of women as property, so does the Taliban. Ken thinks he should be able to control the private behavior of consenting adults, so does the Taliban, and China. rather than use all his energy trying to turn the USA into a a authoritarian state modeled on Taliban thinking, why doesn't Ken and his ideological comrades just buy a plane ticket to Afghanistan. Ken the conservative movement have conned Virginians out of millions of dollars so we know they can afford the plane tickets.

America Hating Conservative Freak E.W. Jackson’s ‘Prosperity Gospel’ Is Fraud Perpetrated On Low-Income Virginians

America Hating Conservative Freak E.W. Jackson’s ‘Prosperity Gospel’ Is Fraud Perpetrated On Low-Income Virginians

Ever since Virginia’s Republican Party chose E.W. Jackson as its nominee for the Lieutenant Governor’s race last week, media outlets and political commentators have shed light on the pastor-turned-politician’s alarmingly extremist views. But as Americans balk at Jackson’s often vitriolic statements about LGBT people and AIDS victims, there is another side of his public persona that could spell even worse news for low-income Virginians: His theology.

Potential lawmakers such as Jackson are entitled to their own religious views, and the U.S. Constitution prohibits subjecting political candidates to a “religious test.” But Jackson, a former minister of the so-called “prosperity gospel,” insists on making public connections between his theological convictions and his political actions. According to Jackson’s campaign website, he is founder of Staying True to America’s National Destiny, or S.T.A.N.D., an organization “dedicated to restoring America’s founding values which were informed by the principles found within the Jewish and Christian faiths.” What’s more, Jackson, who has accused Democrats of being “anti-God,” is also head of “Exodus Now”, a national effort that encourages “Christians and other people of moral values within the black community” to leave the Democratic Party.

To get a better look at what Jackson’s politicized theology could mean for Virginians, Think Progress looked at a copy of Jackson’s 2008 book Ten Commandments To An Extraordinary Life. In it, Jackson offers an extensive – and often unsettling – peek at his bizarre religious views.

Jackson, for instance, suggests in his book that people should prioritize giving to the wealthy, not to the poor:

    “One of the common mistakes made by those who have a heart is to assume that the only appropriate giving is downward, i.e. to the poor. While giving to the poor is important, the most powerful giving for wealth building is upward giving.” (page 177)

In fact, Jackson seems to hold up wealth as the ultimate religious ideal, and even indicates that having money makes someone a better person in God’s eyes:

    “Money is not evil, nor does it make people evil. Money magnifies the character of an individual. It gives you more opportunity to be who you really are. God is the creator of silver and gold. He has nothing against money, in fact he values it.” (page 172)

Finally, Jackson provides a framework for how the simple act of positive thinking can force God to provide believers with personal wealth:

    “God says He will prosper you. Believe it in the face of overwhelming financial hardship, and your poverty will become prosperity. God says he has healed you. Believe it when every fiber screams sickness, and your sickness will become health.” (page 18)

These unorthodox religious claims may appear inscrutable, but Jackson’s theology is actually a form of American Christianity known as the “prosperity gospel.” The controversial — but growing — movement teaches believers that they can get rich by thinking positive thoughts and by giving large sums of their money to their church and pastor. Not surprisingly, prosperity gospel preachers have been fiercely criticized by a wide array of religious leaders, including conservative evangelical leaders such as Rick Warren and Jerry Falwell, who decry its rabid focus on accruing personal wealth as heretical.

In fact, the lavish lifestyles and questionable financial practices of several prosperity gospel preachers led to a federal probe by Senator Chuck Grassley (IA-R) in 2007. Grassley attempted to evaluate the records of six prosperity gospel televangelism ministries to see if they violated federal regulations, but the probe ended in 2011 after most of organizations refused to cooperate with investigators.

E.W. Jackson continues a long tradition of using religion as an instrument of hate and profit. No wonder so many Americans are trending towards not being affiliated with any organized religion.

Red States Rejecting Obamacare Medicaid Expansion Need It Most

From the beginning, the defining irony of the never-ending debate over Obamacare is this: health care is worst in those states where Republicans poll best. The map of the states with the worst health care systems largely mirrors GOP strongholds in the Electoral College. Red state residents are generally the unhealthiest and more likely than their blue state cousins to be uninsured. Nevertheless, the New York Times reminded readers on Friday, Republican governors and legislators are rejecting the ACA's expansion of Medicaid that could bring health insurance to millions more of their residents.

Conservatism is a special kind of cancer, composed partly of pure spite. Many conservative politicians would rather their constituents be in bad health or dead, than adopt a program passed by Democrats, but which ironically, was first conceived by a conservative think tank.

Anti-American Legal Analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. Joins Fox News In Spreading Health Care Lies

Anti-American Legal Analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. Joins Fox News In Spreading Health Care Lies

During an appearance on Fox and Friends Friday morning, Fox News contributor and legal analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. claimed that Medicare beneficiaries who are losing access to critical medical services as a result of sequestration “ain’t seen nothing yet,” as Obamacare will kill off far more Americans in the next ten years.

During a segment discussing how the budget sequester’s two percent cut to Medicare is forcing cancer clinics to deny chemotherapy to thousands of beneficiaries, Johnson told host Steve Doocy that elderly Americans should expect a lot more bad news in the coming decade as a direct consequence of the health care law:

    DOOCY: This story is going to disturb you. Cancer clinics across this country are turning away thousands of Medicare patients in need of chemotherapy. You can blame the sequester. Is there more to come? Peter Johnson, Jr. has a prescription for truth. Peter, what is this about?

    JOHNSON: This is about people dying as a result of Obamacare and as a result of the sequester. What the oncology association is saying is that thousands of chemotherapy patients who should have received their treatments, their benefits under Medicare, will not based on a 2 percent reduction under the sequester. What they fail to understand — and maybe they do and they don’t want to discuss it at this point — is that over the next ten years, 2013 to 2023, under Obamacare, there will be a $716 billion reduction [to Medicare] in Obamacare. We’re talking about a $3 billion reduction in the sequester now and the $3 billion reduction in Obamacare –

    DOOCY: This is a preview of coming awful things.

    JOHNSON: You haven’t seen anything yet. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Johnson’s conflation of the sequester’s ham-fisted spending cuts with Obamacare’s Medicare savings demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the sequester, Obamacare, and how federal budgeting works. Sequestration is causing cancer clinics to turn people away because they can’t afford to keep providing expensive chemotherapy drugs to patients in the face of a two percent cut to Medicare Part B that has to come entirely out of clinics’ overhead funding — making the sequester cut more akin to a double-digit pay cut. Obamacare’s $716 billion in Medicare savings come from reducing historically excessive payments to providers that service private Medicare Advantage plans, meaning that it doesn’t affect benefits. Conservatives have consistently fear-mongered over those savings despite including them in their budgets.

Later on in the program, Johnson also revived the widely debunked claim that Obamacare has “death panels” — a claim that is so patently false that Politifact named it 2009's “Lie of the Year.”

Johnson is a wild eyed zealot for a proto-facist agenda who is willing to tell the most blatant lies to advance his anti-American agenda. he is hoping no one will look up the simple fact that conservatives voted for the sequester and held the budget and Medicare hostage because they claimed the sequester cuts are nothing. The review broads that review medical care costs are what pathological ideologue such as Johnson and Fox are calling death panels - only once again they are hoping fair minded Americans do not look up the facts - conservatives voted for such a panel. Americans should also be asking themselves why why a foaming at the mouth America hater like Steve Doocy makes millions of dollars for doing nothing but misleading the nation on crucal public policy issues. It sure looks like hating freedom and democracy pays well.

Why Does Conservative Fox News Hate America and Progress

Why Does Conservative Fox News Hate America and Progress

A Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report released Tuesday finds that green jobs grew four times faster in 2011* than jobs in other sectors, continuing a trend of rapid growth in the U.S. But Fox News is still pushing the narrative that investing in clean energy is a "boondoggle."

The U.S. added more than 150,000 green jobs in 2011, including more than 100,000 construction jobs and 14,000 manufacturing jobs. In total, the green sector now employs more than 3.4 million workers in the U.S. The following chart shows that green jobs in the private sector increased in nearly every category in 2011:

This is not a new trend: the Brookings Institution previously found that the clean economy added half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010, and that clean tech jobs grew "more than twice as fast as the rest of the economy" during that period.

As the Los Angeles Times noted, the recent growth in green jobs "parallels a surge in public and private money" invested in clean energy in 2011.

Nevertheless, Fox News continues to distort the facts in an effort to portray government investments in clean energy as a waste of money. Fox News' Brit Hume claimed in 2011 that the Obama administration's green investments have "utterly failed to produce meaningful jobs." Last month, the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes claimed on Fox News that "we haven't seen many gains" from these investments. Just this week, Neil Cavuto said on his Fox Business show that Obama's green initiatives have "not had the big tangible jobs bang for the buck that you would think."

Faced with clear evidence that clean energy investments are paying off, will Fox change its tune?

Most of the talking heads at the conservative slanted Fox News make salaries in the 7 figure range ( serial liar and rabid America hater Bill O'Reilly is said to make around 3 million a year - scientists are said to be studying what he does that is worth more than  2 cents an hour). Raking in all this cash one would think Fox News would love America, not hate America, American workers, women, rape victims, the working poor or anyone that stands up for real American values.

While The North-East Waits For Sandy Relief, Wacky Freedom Hating Republicans Reintroduce Obamacare Repeal

While The North-East Waits For Sandy Relief, Wacky Freedom Hating Republicans Reintroduce Obamacare Repeal

The 112th Congress gaveled to a close on Thursday afternoon without passing a relief package for victims of Hurricane Sandy or reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, but Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) isn’t too concerned about finishing what Republicans had left undone. Instead, at 12:00 PM she introduced the very first piece of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which states are now busily implementing.

House Republicans have unsuccessfully voted 33 times in the last two years to eliminate health care reform and wasted at least 88 hours and $50 million, while failing to pass a single piece of job creation legislation in the last session of Congress.

Dozens of Republicans, including 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, ran against Obamacare, yet the party suffered losses every step along the way. The Supreme Court upheld the law, House repeal efforts went nowhere in the Democratically-controlled Senate, and President Obama has pledged to veto any effort to rescind the measure. Even newly reelected Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was compelled to admit in November that Obamacare is now the law of the land (though he later backed away from his own comments and pledged to do everything in his power to undermine it).

But House Republicans are apparently not quite ready to give up the fight. At this rate, they could be on track to becoming even less productive than the least productive Congress in U.S. history.

Michele bachmann and her husband are welfare queens who have probably defrauded the public by failing for Medicare payments for practicing dubious medicare care. They and the family have also sucked down as much in subsidies as they can. Bachmann enjoys government health care benefits along with other House Republicans who make about $179,000 a year. This is the same Michele Bachmann who hoped that the unemployment rate would remain high and said that workers who do not pay federal income tax have no vested interests in the well being of the country. Why hasn't the deeply unAmerican Bachmann and her conman husband been deported to Russia? 

Wackos start trying to use their hate filled trigger happy minds to rationalize not having sensible gun laws, ,New NRA Talking Point: Banning Assault Weapons Is Just Like Racial Discrimination

Wacko Anti-American Zealots Cyril and Jane Korte K & L Contractors Think Their Religious Freedom Means The Right To Tyrannize Their Employees

Wacko Anti-American Zealots Cyril and Jane Korte K & L Contractors Think Their Religious Freedom Means The Right To Tyrannize Their Employees

On Friday, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in an order joined by two conservative Republican appointees, temporarily immunized a company from the Obama Administration’s rules guaranteeing that employer-provided health plans cover birth control. Judge Ilana Rovner, a George H.W. Bush appointee, dissented.

The order is brief, and it mostly deals with the most significant issue in this case in just a single paragraph — holding that a for-profit corporate employer can claim that its religious liberties were somehow violated:

    [T]he government’s primary argument is that because K & L Contractors is a secular, for-profit enterprise, no rights under RFRA are implicated at all. This ignores that Cyril and Jane Korte are also plaintiffs. Together they own nearly 88% of K & L Contractors. It is a family-run business, and they manage the company in accordance with their religious beliefs. This includes the health plan that the company sponsors and funds for the benefit of its nonunion workforce. That the Kortes operate their business in the corporate form is not dispositive of their claim. See generally Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 130 S. Ct. 876 (2010). The contraception mandate applies to K & L Contractors as an employer of more than 50 employees, and the Kortes would have to violate their religious beliefs to operate their company in compliance with it.

As a matter of current law, this decision is wrong. As the Supreme Court explained in United States v. Lee, “[w]hen followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.” Lee established — with no justice in dissent — that religious liberty does not allow an employer to “impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees,” such as by forcing employees to give up their own rights because of the employer’s objections to birth control.

Nevertheless, the Seventh Circuit’s citation to Citizens United is an ominous sign. Lee was decided at a time when the Court understood that corporations should not be allowed to buy and sell elections. That time has passed, and the precedents protecting against corporate election-buying were overruled in Citizens United. It is not difficult to imagine the same five justices who tossed out longstanding precedent in Citizens United doing the same in a case involving whether employers can impose their religious beliefs on their employees.

It is likely that we will know soon whether those five justices are prepared to do so. The Seventh Circuit’s decision is at odds with a decision out of the Tenth Circuit, and the Supreme Court typically agrees to hear cases where two federal appeals courts disagree.

What is Anti-American Zealots Cyril and Jane Korte of K & L Contractors religious beliefs included thinking that pants were sinful, would the male employees have to wear skirts or go pant-less. Cyril and Jane Korte, and K & L Contractors have a lot in common with the Taliban and Iranian fundamentalists who think what they believe trumps basic human rights and dignity.

10 Dumbest Things Fox Said About Climate Change In 2012 

3. Fox "Expert": Carbon Dioxide "Literally Cannot Cause Global Warming." Joe Bastardi is a meteorologist that is often presented as a climate change expert on Fox News, even though he has no climate science training. Bill O'Reilly has cited Bastardi as the reason that he is "skeptical" about global warming, but scientists have called Bastardi's statements "completely wrong," "simply ignorant," and "utter nonsense." In March, Bastardi attempted to "throw out 150 years of physics" by dismissing the greenhouse effect -- the reason there is life on Earth -- as impossible. Bastardi stated on Fox Business that carbon dioxide (CO2) "literally" -- yes, literally -- "cannot cause global warming" because it doesn't "mix well in the atmosphere." But physicist Richard Muller told Media Matters that CO2 is actually "completely mixed."

 This is the way radical anti-American Rupert Murdoch's news organizations always act - they shout falsehoods with an attitude of absolute certainty - that creates some kind of voodoo magic that makes their crazy bogus claims true. What century are we living in?