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U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Religious Objections To Contraception
An anonymous reader writes In a legislative first, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that for-profit companies can, in essence, hold religious views. Given the Supreme Court's earlier decisions granting corporations the right to express political support through monetary donations, this ruling is not all that surprising. Its scope does not extend beyond family-owned companies where "there's no real difference between the business and its owners." It also only applies to the contraception mandate of the health care law. The justices indicated that contraceptive coverage can still be obtained through exceptions to the mandate that have already been introduced to accommodate religious nonprofits. Those exceptions, which authorize insurance companies to provide the coverage instead of the employers, are currently being challenged in lower courts.
The "closely held" test is pretty meaningless, since the majority of U.S. corporations are closely held.
Go get all the abortions you want, but private businesses have the option to not pay for it.
So I hope that a business can refuse to pay for it even without having to pretend to believe in an invisible man in the sky..
If not, I hope one of them sues, because the government is then preferring one religion over another.
(I think this, and many other things, should be paid for by the person themselves...)
Let the flame fest begin!
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
put their religion before the constitution. Shocking.
Religious fuckers are destroying this country.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Are condoms covered by insurance? Nope!
Equal protection folks; this is more than just women's rights. When male contraception is mandated to be fully covered by insurance with no cost share then I'm ok with female contraception covered too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraceptive_mandate_(United_States)#ACA_mandatory_coverage_for_contraceptives
My religion says that killing is wrong. Can I refuse to pay the percentage of taxes which goes to the military?
To start with Hobby lobby was NOT against contraceptives, and offered it to their employees. They were against 'after the fact' options. Like "plan B".
Avoiding the truth was a plan to harass and go after them using media bias, much like Chick-fil-A was attacked.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Superstition trumps health care for women.
It was a few hundred years before that when corporations were created as legal persons who could purchase ships, undertake voyages, be sued, etc.
The whole idea of a corporation is that me, you, and a hundred other people can pool our resources to do something big, such as buying and outfitting a ship (or ISP), and if something went wrong a creditor could take the ship and its cargo, but you wouldn't be risking your house. As a legal person, the corporation could be sued, rather than filing 100 law suits against each of the individual investors, none of which could pay the judgement.
You bitch about paying for welfare kids, and you bitch about women not wanting kids to abort them. PICK ONE AND STFU!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
... stuff that matters. On a scale of stuff that matters, this ranks pretty high.
"stuff that matters"
And if you dont think a ruling like this doesn't matter to everyone in this country that has a job, you need to get out of your mothers basement more often.
( of course /. no longer advertises either.. but i guess you missed that. )
And what the hell is up with this posting time limit, for people logged in?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Healthcare is a form of compensation, just like your wages, your employer can not tell you how to spend your wages, why can they tell me what healthcare services I can utilize? Also, companies don't "pay" for healthcare like its some sort of charity they generously give to there subjects, employees pay for it themselves by providing work for the company!
This is really bad.
Lets see how quick other companies jump on this bandwagon and try to push it further.
I am betting we will actually see a few companies trying to say that modern medicine is against their religion and opt for prayer healing instead. Or maybe a few companies may use this to force their employees to follow their religious dress codes to deter employees and a whole other barrel of monkeys on this one.
Honestly, what CAN'T you do based on a religion? Especially when people can actually make up their own religion if they can get enough support, and I am betting that if enough rich people get behind one, they can make an official one with all kinds of cost effective religious practices.
What if I object to funding the health care of people who smoke, drink or don't belong to whatever small sect of a Church I belong to? That's going to create a budget hole plus an expensive tangle of red tape once that sort of "freedom" gets going.
If people want a government run on religious lines instead of for everyone there's one setting up in the middle of Iraq and Syria about now.
Particularly a $12 movie, which is what they would have to cost to equal the cost of the Pill. (Not counting the mandatory biannual medical exams, without which you can't get a prescription.) Ginsberg noted in her dissent that the cost of an IUD is comparable to a month's salary for a person making minimum wage. Then again, I'm sure you'll also agree that the cost of your own vaccines and blood transfusions are also reasonable when those folks start claiming their exemption under this stupid ruling.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Hobby Lobby pays a minimum of $14/hr for full time employees. This is $6.75/hr over the federal minimum wage of $7.25. Plan B costs about $50 out of pocket at Walgreens. In this situation, an otherwise minimum wage employee could afford about one Plan B dose per workday on the EXTRA money that Hobby Lobby voluntarily pays them.
No, you fucking moron.
Corporations are "persons" not "people" and moreover, only "Citizens" can vote. Corporations are not now, have never been and shall never be "citizens".
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Getting hormonal birth control from a doctor other than your regular doctor means that those two doctors have to both have access to your medical records or both consult on any issues you might have.
Different pills have different effects (and side effects) on different women.
The only time it makes sense for a woman to get hormonal birth control from a free clinic is when that is her only source of non-emergency medical care.
You should bump up those limits. Liability coverage is cheap and will keep you out of bankruptcy court if things go wrong one day. I have the max, $500,000 combined single limit, with another $1,000,000 of umbrella coverage hanging over that.
I'm dinged on a few areas I have little control over. First being the car, apparently it's one of the most popular stolen cars in America. Then our geography, we're in a part of New York with high DWI rates. Progressive was far and away the cheapest for both of us. I periodically check to see if this is still the case (easy to do when you work for an insurance agency) and so far it is. More's the pity.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Does this mean that a Jehovah's Witness run company can deny coverage of blood transfusions because it is against their religion? Something to think about.
the idea of "when life starts" which is a philosophical, not a scientific problem
Pro-life scientists point out that an embryo is a distinct organism because it has distinct DNA. The life associated with that DNA thus begins when sperm meets egg.
Coupling the two has always been a cluster fuck. This is just one more reason to abolish this particular linkage.
The insurance companies charge different rates for different demographics because the insurance companies have the statistics to back up their pricing.
Insurance is heavily regulated at the federal and state level. If the insurance companies are charging demographic X more than demographic Y they had to provide evidence based upon statistics that showed X is involved in more accidents or more costly accidents than Y.
Do your 'sincerely held religious beliefs' outlaw blood transfusions? Looks like your exployees are going to be paying for that themselves.
A health insurance plan tuned for the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses would still pay for blood substitutes, iron supplements, and other expenses associated with bloodless surgery. Some insurers might prefer bloodless surgery anyway because it keeps the insurer from having to pay for units of blood and pay to treat blood-borne diseases.
Corporations are people too.
As in the Citizen's United case, this ruling is a complete perversion of constitutional rights on the American Public, and both as abominable as Plessy v. Ferguson. Here's the train of logic that the majority took:
1) Take a piece of legislation originally designed to protect sacred American Indian worship sites, though more broadly individual religious freedoms,
2) And extend those freedoms to corporations with this hocus-pocus incantation: "The purpose of extending rights to corporations is to protect the rights of people associated with the corporation, including shareholders, officers, and employees." (573 U.S. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Syllabus, pg. 3)
And while I was never a fan of Ginsburg in my younger years, given the recent evolution of the SCotUS, that opinion is rapidly changing, especially when she has this to say on the matter (573 U.S. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Ginsburg dissent, pg. 14):
Until this (Citizens United) litigation, no decision of this Court recognized a for-profit corporation’s qualification for a religious exemption from a generally applicable law...the exercise of religion is characteristic of natural persons, not artificial legal entities. As Chief Justice Marshall observed nearly two centuries ago, a corporation is “an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.” (Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, 636 [1819]).
Should just rewrite the Preamble of the Constitution now to read, "We the Corporations of the United States..."
on the one hand it means religions, er, corporations, can discriminate against everything from blood transfusions to births without circumcision, but...it also means the opinion shreds whatâ(TM)s known as the corporate veil (the principle that establishes a corporation as a distinct entity from its owners or shareholders). This would mess with a lot of businesses and how they do business.
Hobby Lobby 'also for all its piousness' has a retirement plan that invests very heavily in the manufacturers of the forms of contraception it claims to abhor so much. make of that what you will.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Then your family business will still have to pay up to insure the health of people earning below poverty because such people can't pay for things themselves.
This is not the philosophy of liberty; this is the philosophy of a religious oligarchy.
If we indeed has 100% employment and people could easily float between jobs it would be a win for freedom. But since people are frequently stuck with the job they have it is a loss. Because now the people with the money get to impose their religious doctrine on their employees.
As a follower of THOR, the God of Thunder, I have been forced to operate my business in a manner which directly contradicts my faith. Government mandated building codes have forced me to maintain so-called safe electrical wiring so that my employees don't get electrocuted. I sincerely believe that this is merely a way for the faithless cowards to avoid Thor's judgment. You see, if you die of electrocution, it means that you have offended the Thunderer and have been righteously smitten by his divine will.
Thor asks little of us, save that we provide an offering of mead to him at each meal. Yet most of my foolish employees would deny him even this small request. That I'm forced to provide buildings which shield these wicked individuals with safe, modern, electrical wiring is a troubling incursion upon my religious freedoms as a business owner. I feared that if I continued to follow the Government's secular laws, that I would be denied access to Valhalla.
Thanks to the Supreme Court's wise decision today, Obama and all of the witless cretins in my employ shall soon feel the wrath of Thor's mighty hammer, Mjolnir!
Praise be to Thor!
Everyone uses the slippery slope argument in politics and the media... Even on /.
IMO, this whole fuss on Plan B is kind of a crock. It costs about $50 at a drug store (you can get it over the counter and buy it with a downloadable $10-off coupon) with a $35 generic available. Comparatively, a birth control pill runs anywhere from $10-$100 (but mostly commonly hovers around $20 and mail order saves you about $5) and generally requires a prescription to be covered in a health plan (because they will make you mail order it to save money).
Don't know how often people would need to fork over for plan B out-of-pocket in a year, but I think if a person needed emergency contraception more than a couple times a year (out of 12 months) seems like that person probably should be looking at some other form of birth control, maybe? Of course if someone else is paying for it and such a person didn't have a moral problem with it, maybe people don't really care (but people *should* care because currently existing emergency contraception has quite a few serious side effects for those under 25 or have a high BMI which described a large part of the userbase for these drugs, but of course that's not part of the marketing material and no prescription or consultation is required).
FWIW you can't get aspirin/acetaminophen, cold symptom relief, or acne medicine covered as an over the counter medicine as part of a health plan (unless you get a prescription), but because of politics, emergency contraception has a special carveout in this market. Of course the generics available outside the USA (e.g, I-pill) is only about $10 a dose (about the same price as "emergency" Nyquil or Sudafed which your insurance company won't cover). On the other hand, insurance companies would probably gladly cover it gratis (since it's cheaper than pre-natal/pregnancy for them) and they already have this exact legal carveout for non-profits, but it's more fun to raise a stink and energize the base (on both sides of the aisle)...
Saying they ARE people is a power grab ...
The US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
What the Court actually said is that
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights are individual persons.
(2) It doesn't matter what the nature of the group of people is; corporation, labor union, public interest group, etc.
No, you fucking moron.
Corporations are "persons" not "people" and moreover, only "Citizens" can vote. Corporations are not now, have never been and shall never be "citizens".
LK
Yet. Give it time and they will be.
Those exceptions, which authorize insurance companies to provide the coverage instead of the employers
If ever there were a case of smoke-and-mirrors, this is it. Saying that the insurer, not the company paying for the policy, is (wink, wink) paying for a benefit offered to the insured under the policy, a benefit the insurer does not simply give away to all comers, is transparently absurd. Whatever you may think about forcing companies to pay for policies that cover particular things, at least be honest about it.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
The central tenet of atheism is that there exist no sentient beings that are "above" the physical laws. A consequence is that ethics derived from logic should govern humans' interaction with one another and the rest of the universe.
If this actually sticks:
Oh, wait, nevermind, as soon as someone sues them there'll suddenly be a "real difference" again and mommy government will ride in to save them from their actions.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The opinion restricts itself to "closely-held corporations" (a phrase used dozens of times) rather than /all/ corporations. They don't define with precision what that exactly means -- that kind of drudgery is the domain of the lower courts -- they did point out that Hobby Lobby is privately held by a small number of folks from the same family. It would seem clear to infer that "closely-held" is sort of an antonym to "publicly-held" here, so I think there's virtually no chance any lower court would allow Wal Mart or Exxon to assert a RFRA claim.
Now, since companies under 100 employees are already exempt from most of PPACA, the net net of this only covers the rare company that simultaneously large enough to be hit by the mandate but still owned closely enough to merit RFRA protection. In other words, not too many in the scheme of things.
[ Full Disclosure: I don't support what Hobby Lobby believes, I think they deserve to lose on the merits. But at the end of the day, I'm not going to make a molehill into a mountain for rhetorical or fundraising purposes. ]
Healthcare is earned and part of pay. It is NOT paid for by the company. Another absurdity in this whole mess.
However until recently the healthcare policy and what it covered was in fact chosen by the company. Employees could not choose any plan they wished, they had to pick from the company offerings.
Is a baby chicken a baby chicken when the fertilized egg/sperm combo has divided into 16 cells, none of which have differentiated, none of which are nerves, spine, brain, eye, etc.?
The answer to that -- obviously, unless you're utterly bewildered or completely ignorant of the process itself -- is no. It's not philosophical; it's fact-based science. A potato is more sophisticated. Its cells even have more chromosomes than humans do.
The line is blurry, all right, but it isn't blurry at conception (that's not a person OR a chicken) and it isn't blurry anywhere near term (that IS a person or a chicken.) The blurry part, that's the real problem, because the determination needs to be based on something rational and functionally able to ensure we do not do unintended harm or harm in ignorance. Religious hucksterism aside, there are readily determinable progressions in the process that cross various well defined lines.
Personally, I view it this way: If the organism doesn't have a differentiated nervous system, at best, it is directly comparable in its current state to plant life. As soon as it does, however, you've got animal life, and now we've crossed a line where the well-being of something that can feel is at stake.
The entire argument is muddied by the concept of potential; I agree potential is there, but it was also there for every sperm that missed the mark and every egg that remained unfertilized.
So -- were I able to make it so, which is not only not the case but laughably far from the case -- I'd draw the line for abortion that is not directly amelioration for serious health risk to the mother, or a consequence of known problems with the growing organism (no brain, etc.) right where the nervous system begins to develop such that there are actual nerves present.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Saying they ARE people is a power grab ...
The US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
What the Court actually said is that
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights are individual persons.
(2) It doesn't matter what the nature of the group of people is; corporation, labor union, public interest group, etc.
I actually interpreted it a slightly different way, but the difference is important.
They specifically stated that "closely held" corporations could hold this exemption. To point, these are corporations that have a very small number of owners indeed. The way I see it, the intent is this: the people who own the corporation do not wish to have the resources of that corporation...which they themselves own and govern...used for purposes that conflict with their moral views. We're not talking IBM or Google here, with tens or even hundreds of thousands of stakeholders. We're talking corporations that are held by a handful of people whose views of such things align closely with one another.
As it stands today, 85% of corporations proactively supported paying for contraception ahead of Obamacare or any other mandate from state or federal government. But the stalwarts were those that fit the above description. Me, I'm not at all aligned with the pro-life crowd...but I can at least see the logic here. Just because I own a corporation doesn't mean that I can't care about what the money produced by it helps support, even indirectly. It's one of those fine lines that makes America challenging, because of the incredible demands that freedom and the citizenship that goes with it place on us all.
And I think it's cool as shit that we are debating it. The fact that we all care, one way or another, is absolutely, utterly, and incredibly beautiful.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Sorry, but a corporation is not "just" a group of people.
If a group of people breach a contract, you can sue them and they will have to pay you back from their own assets. If a corporation breaches a contract, you can only touch corporate assets.
If a group of people dump toxins into the environment, they can be personally fined and put in jail. If a corporation dumps toxins into the environment, the corporation pays a fine and the people who initiated the dumping don't get touched.
If a group of people destroy the economy through fraud, they can be fined and put in jail. If a corporation destroys the economy through fraud, it gets a slap on the wrist from the SEC.
The law treats corporations differently from "groups of people" in many respects. One of those respects should be their rights. The underlying people have the same rights as before, but the corporation -- as its own entity -- need not have all the same rights as those people.
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights are individual persons.
Oops, typo, "as" not "are". The Supreme Court has better proofreaders. :-)
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights as individual persons.
The error here is not with SCOTUS, it's with people who hear "corporation" and think "GM" and "Apple". There is indeed no reason why GM or Apple should engage in political speech or have religious rights as corporations.
But it is precisely the fact that many corporations are "closely held" that justifies this ruling: most corporations are not big, nameless behemoths, they are small organizations founded and run by a small number of people. Denying these individuals free speech or religious freedom when they run their business would be wrong.
Many other "corporations" are nonprofit corporations expressly created for the purpose of speaking on political matters or supporting a religious community. How are people supposed to organize politically or religiously themselves if they can't form nonprofit corporations?
Without being able to form a corporation, many forms of political activity, speech, and business would simply be too legally risky to engage in. That's why we have for-profit and nonprofit corporations in the first place.
I know the "corporations are not people" thing gets people riled up, but let's just think this through logically.
So, if I am an independent contractor making widgets, and then I decide to incorporate to limit liability but am the sole owner and employee, and then I decide to outsource my accounting to an external one-person company, and then I hire the accountant directly as 1099 rather than being a customer, and then I hire her as W-2 employee... At what point do I stop being a person and give up my religious rights?
New here, then? That kind of moderation is not only common, there are times it comes from those in control of the site. Just read the rules: They have infinite mod points, and they aren't afraid to use them. Your post suddenly take a multi-point drop? You know it isn't a normal moderator.
This is why they never fix the mod system. If confers limitless, attribution-free power on site operators. They love it.
The good news? You can read at -1 and ignore moderation completely. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The SC has now opened two doors: 1- who will define what "Christian values" are? Could a Catholic bookstore charge Baptist patrons more? And what of non Christian companies - can an conservative Jewish run business be allowed to flog customers that do not cover their heads? The way the ruling is, anyone can claim Christian values, no matter what they may be. I could now sell my fictional daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Leviticus and nothing can be done to stop me, because it's "Christian values". or heck, even a return to polygamy. And note what Robert Reich said today - in sum, to quote the court -âoeThe most straightforward way of doing this would be for the Government to assume the cost of providing the four contraceptives at issue to any women who are unable to obtain them under their health-insurance policies due to their employersâ(TM) religious objections.â IOW, the court just established single payer for people who cannot get health coverage, even if it is their employer who fails to provide it..
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
We need a 28th Amendment to the Constitution - All rights specified in the Constitution of the United States and all Amendments thereto shall apply to Natural Persons only.
We can call it the Commonsense clause.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
"Groups of people have the same free speech rights are individual persons"
That's not at all what it said. It is a simple but misunderstood idea: Corporations are *not* just "groups of people."
Corporations are a specific legal entity, recognized in law, created by a government-granted charter, for a special organization that is allowed extra legal benefits. There is supposed to be a tradeoff for the benefits a corporation is endowed with by the government. These decisions are removing that tradeoff.
Trying to portray corporations as just "groups of people" is the gross mis-characterization.
Sorry, but a corporation is not "just" a group of people.
Apologies if my typo confused things, the first point should have been:
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights as individual persons.
The Court never said corporations are people, singular or plural. All they said is that the constitutionally guaranteed right of a person to free speech exists both as a single individual person and as a group of people. In other words people do not loose a constitutionally protected right by associating or operating as a group.
With respect to breeching contracts, polluting the environment and destroying the economy; none of these are constitutionally protected rights. Sadly it may seem otherwise but no such rights exist.
Completely, 100% wrong. Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods. That's all it is. Anything else, *anything*, is an add on from some other idea. I'm absolutely, completely, atheist -- I hold no belief in a god or gods whatsoever -- but I am not opposed to religion, in fact, I can cite you chapter and verse as to many of the benefits religion brings, and has brought, to our society. I live in a church. What I am opposed to is any particular religion getting control of law and/or government. Because that has demonstrably caused harm almost without surcease. But again, even this is not a consequence of my position that the idea of god or gods is ridiculous, rather it is a consequence of my observation that every religiously influenced law I know of is extremely bad law, and furthermore, tends to favor group A over group B in such a way that there is no sane basis for it.
Theism: Belief in a god or gods.
Atheism: Without belief in a god or gods.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Religious objection has just won a battle it had no right to fight. Religious views should not be allowed to influence society, freedoms or laws of any kind, and this ruling true shows how far the intelligence level has fallen in the US.
This is a very accurate view of a theological view on religion. When you're very young, maybe 2 or 3, you have a blanky that can protect you from everything and has super natural powers. As you grow up generally you get rid of the blanky and pick up maturity and rationality. Religion is the exact opposite action, it's refusing to let go of the all powerful, unproven blanky. It allows an immature, irrational, illogical human to feel comfort by being able to tell themselves that blanky will scare away the monster under the bed, will keep them safe as they sleep and will fix all the problems. Just as no one can see the blanky of a little child actually protect them, no one has ever seen the blanky of religion ever do anything supernatural either. People who hold religious views that are based in theology land really lie to themselves over and over until they actually believe a blanky will protect them.
So after reading that, how the hell does anyone thing that blanky should be allowed to influence laws? Your letting the equivalent of a childs comfort element run society, the next most logical move would be to declare a unicorn day. This isn't just a blow the image of the US, this is proof that the governmental system in the US really does put it's blanky before science and thinks that gripping it tight in the dark with a night light on will win in the real world.
The solution to the problem is to not incorporate. Then one can run the business however they want.
Keep in mind that a corporation is a government-created entity in the first place. The charters are granted by state or federal government. Essentially, they can (should) set the rules by which the corporation's extra-legal benefits are given.
Essentially, if your own skin isn't in the game (your personal assets are shielded from your failed company), it isn't "your" business anymore.
Trying to portray corporations as just "groups of people" is the gross mis-characterization.
You are mischaracterizing the Supreme Court decision Citizens United. The Court only ruled that groups of people, regardless of the nature of their organization, have the same free speech rights as individuals. In other words they say a person does not lose the constitutionally protected right to free speech by organizing into a group.
Essentially, if your own skin isn't in the game (your personal assets are shielded from your failed company), it isn't "your" business anymore.
Financially shielding yourself from company failure is one thing, and its also a myth to a degree. Losing your constitutionally protected right to speech because you are now part of an organization is something completely different.
Regarding the myth of being shielded from company failure. Go start a corporation. Now try to get a company credit card or other line of credit, the bank will require a personal guarantee on that card or credit line. The closely held corporations (5 or fewer people) that this ruling applies to general have skin in the game.
It takes a long and close working relationship before a bank will offer credit purely secured by company assets.
But a corporation isn't an organized group of people. It's a legal entity with special privileges granted by the government.
Simply solution: Don't incorporate. Let your personal assets be on the line for a failed business. Then it's a business "owned" by the person or family.
The Court ruled that corporations are one of various organizations where people do not lose their right to free speech. As for personal assets being on the line, they usually are even when incorporated. See this other slashdot post to avoid redundancy. http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
The solution to the problem is to not incorporate. Then one can run the business however they want.
Keep in mind that a corporation is a government-created entity in the first place. The charters are granted by state or federal government. Essentially, they can (should) set the rules by which the corporation's extra-legal benefits are given.
Essentially, if your own skin isn't in the game (your personal assets are shielded from your failed company), it isn't "your" business anymore.
When most of these corporations first formed, the form of contraception being discussed in this case didn't exist. So...you're saying that if anyone incorporates, they should be willing to accept the consequences of anything that technology may come up with in the future? Um...no. That's not how rights work, and starting a business does not deprive someone of their rights.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
It's not up to me, but it is up to the government. Try to smoke peyote and claim your religion demands it. Unless you are Native American, you will be in trouble. Because the government decides which is an established religion, and which is just people inventing things.
Whether you use a building or not doesn't make any difference whether you say "religion" or "church". I used the word church because the poster I responded to used the word. Was that not obvious?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Why is this story posted here? How is this news for nerds?
Of the 250+ posts I just skimmed, am I the first one complaining?
It's not up to me, but it is up to the government. Try to smoke peyote and claim your religion demands it. Unless you are Native American, you will be in trouble. Because the government decides which is an established religion, and which is just people inventing things.
Then that just means our system of government is flawed beyond all belief.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
or owns a business or cares about freedom, etc.
People generally have absolute control over the make and model of car they purchase/lease.
You can get 50% off all your groceries for a week! Faith holders earn points on every purchase that can be redeemed at any of our outlets in heaven! Switch your religion to Waltonism and start saving today!
(This offer does not apply to purchases of contraceptives.)
And why should it be a matter for the government if somebody does not wish to hire someone based on skin color or hair color, etc. Does the government get involved when those same people choose not to want to work for someone based on skin color or hair color, etc. Is not depriving someone of your awesomeness just as discriminatory as someone choosing not to want your awesomeness? Please explain this without slavery, etc.
It's more important to look at how many people are affected. According to https://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html more than half of the employees in the US are employed by companies with more than 500 employees, which excludes almost all "closely held" corporations.
Sure, there are a lot of "closely held" companies, but most of them are pikers.
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I take this to mean you would have no problem with this ruling if instead of Hobby Lobby, the plaintiff had been a business that was not incorporated and whose owners, on religious grounds, objected to providing "morning after" contraceptive products to their employees?
This belief is based, it appears, on the notion that corporations, unlike natural persons, don't have "rights". Is that correct?
However, this case was not decided on Constitutional grounds (i.e., the Free Exercise clause had nothing to do with the case) so "Constitutional rights" have nothing to do with it. It was decided based on the terms of Federal statutory law - the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) which raised the bar with respect to the level of justification the Federal needs to intrude on a person's religious beliefs coupled with the Dictionary Act's well known definition of how all Federal legislation is to be interpreted.
The RFRA refers to 'persons' without, as far as I can tell, any qualification to exclude corporations so the portion Dictionary Act which specifies
applies and the therefore the protections in the RFRA apply to corporations as well.
This is a simple question of legislative interpretation and there appears to be little room for debate. There is much yammering about the effect of the decision, but the court's should not, in a matter of statutory law, pay much attention to that and clearly should not override the legislators except in response to Constitutional issues or cases where there is ambiguity, conflict, or vagueness in the law which they must resolve because the legislative process did not.
If it is the will of the people to neuter this opinion, it can be done the same way the RFRA and Dictionary Act were instituted and amended over time -- via the legislative process. If that doesn't happen, then in a democratic society we can safely assume that it is not the will of the governed to do so.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Then change the Dictionary Act so "person"/"persons", unless otherwise stated in the text of Federal Legislation, do not include corporations and associations.
You may believe there should be some sort of tradeoff the law doesn't recognize. That's for you to take up with the legislative bodies to get recognized, it's not for the courts to inject their beliefs rather than merely interpret statutory law passed through a democratic process and apply it correctly to specific cases such as this one.
There are people, for example, who believe that all corporations should be disbanded and the workers should, themselves, own all means of production. The burden is on them to get such a structure enacted through the democratic process, it's not for the courts to impose.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
"Citizens_United" Corporations are people too.
In the Citizens United case the US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
What the Court actually said is that
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights as individual persons.
(2) It doesn't matter what the nature of the group of people is; corporation, labor union, public interest group, etc -- any organization will do.
So if they clone a human, the clone is not a distinct organism because it's DNA is not distinct from the original, and thus we can do away with it? Something's seriously rotten with the argument you've presented.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
One question;
How does "free speech" translate into "depriving people of medical benefits"?
The first is conceptual and raising a concern, the second is a fucking benefit, and people having babies and getting abortions is offensive to the Godly, women unwed is offensive to the Godly, and being fucking poor is obviously offensive because God must hate them.
Sorry, I was just showing my free speech. If I had acted like these religious a-holes, I'd be saying that your medical policy will not cover Cancer, because I believe that is self inflicted.
And NO this is a situation where a Corporation is treated as a person -- or a "group of people". If you incorporate -- for that benefit, you leave your provincial ideas behind. If you want to force jesus on the medical policies, stay a single proprietorship.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
actually, the court did say that corporations count as people with regards to the law being discussed.
That is not accurate either. The Court seems to have said that closely held corporation (5 or fewer people) can hold a shared religious belief, not corporations in general. Other posters have pointed out that the Dictionary Act states that legislation that applies to persons also applies to corporation and other organizations if this legislation does not define its scope, and since the Religious Freedom Restoration Act did not define any such scope it applies to corporations as well as persons.
So its not that corporations are people, its that laws apply to both people and corporations unless the legislature says otherwise.
it's -> its
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
You should learn to read. SCOTUS specifically said it has to be a closely knit ownership structure with a history of religious beliefs against abortion. Just like aereo, this is a narrow ruling.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
how is the poster a moron?
I can't say for certain how he or she became a moron but the idiocy he or she is displaying is how I know that he or she is a moron.
Five years ago you would never think a corporation had a right to unlimited political spending in the name of the right of free speech of a corporation.
I argued that exact position before McCain-Feingold became law. If each of the people who own a corporation has the right to free speech, it's unthinkable that when they work together they somehow lose that right.
Last year you would not have thought Hobby Lobby could prevent it's employees from getting their Federally guaranteed earned health benefits in the name of a corporation's religious inclination.
1. No one is prevented from getting anything. Every Hobby Lobby employee who can get a doctor to prescribe birth control pills can still get them. Hobby Lobby just won't be forced to pay for it.
2. Yes, I not only thought but I hoped that would be the case when the issue was decided by the SCOTUS.
It really is just a few months at this rate before they vote.
Yeah, I see why you posted anonymously. If you had used your name, in a year, I would have waited to see you post and then replied to remind you what a fucking moron you are.
It's not going to happen. Ever.
What's to stop it?
The fact that to be able to have the right to vote, one must be a citizen and in order to be a citizen one must be a human being.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
How does "free speech" translate into "depriving people of medical benefits"?
No one claimed it does. Someone used the false meme from the citizens united decision that corporations are people. I respond to that. Apologies for not being clear.
And NO this is a situation where a Corporation is treated as a person -- or a "group of people".
Not really. This seems to be a situation where a law applies to both corporations and people. As other posters have pointed out the Dictionary Act states that legislation that applies to persons also applies to corporations and other organizations if this legislation does not define its scope, and since the Religious Freedom Restoration Act did not define any such scope it applies to corporations as well as persons.
So its seems to boil down to whether a corporation can hold a religious belief. The hobby lobby decisions seems to say that closely held corporations (5 or fewer owners) where the owners share a common religious belief would count as a corporation holding such belief.
If you incorporate -- for that benefit, you leave your provincial ideas behind.
Apparently not if there are 5 or fewer owners who share the same belief. In most such cases this would basically be a family owned business.
There's a moral difference between CAUSING an abortion and ALLOWING one to happen naturally in the eyes of the religious.
To me, the line is more blurry. Is someone who could prevent something but allows it *completely* innocent, really? I mean, we as a society try to prevent deaths by cancer, why not deaths by natural abortion?
Also, some of the religious may argue that to cause an abortion that wouldn't have happened is to thwart God's Plan, but how do these yahoos know that the abortion wasn't God's plan?
And let's go back to the cancer deaths again. Are we not thwarting God's Plan by saving someone with cancer?
In the end, I think there is a fundamental point, the religious pick an arbitrary line between what they like and what they don't, and it doesn't always make rational sense.
I think the rational argument is that no one should be forced to risk their lives to provide life support to another person. My kidneys are MINE thank you very much, don't hook me up to another person as a dialysis machine against my will, even if it saves that person's life. It puts ME at risk and is a great imposition on me. And even if I agree to it at some point, I can change my mind about continuing to risk my life by providing dialysis.
Pregnancy is very much analogous.
--PM
Stupid is as stupid prays.
In England "Jedi" is a government recognized religion. It's just a matter of having the numbers, and filling out the paperwork.
WRONG.
It doesn't matter what license or charter you get from the government, whether sales tax license, medical license, bank charter, corporate charter, or drivers license - your rights are your rights and they cannot be separated from you. A charter or license cannot come with a "speech code," or a religious requirement, or waiver the government to get a search warrant.
A moments reflection would reveal how undesirable it would be to live under such a government.
The corporations are established by the government to have a special relation with a particular religion on which they profit. Basically the money changers of the temple all over again.
Who ever told you liberal ghouls that you entitled to take the lives of millions of children, and force those with a conscience pay for it? Keep your perversions to yourself.
That's right! You tell 'em buddy! God said so!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Did anyone really expect this to go any other way. SCOTUS has been bought and paid for by corporate interests. This is why they should have term limits not unlike the President. 12 - 15 years, max.
tl;dr - There can be no freedom without responsibility.
Considering that the government is supplying these corporations with limited financial liability, I would argue that being covered by that government umbrella makes any such covered organization, by necessity, limited in rights due to that government associated limited liability. Thus this "religious freedom" argument is as much a violation of the first amendment as if the "religious freedom" of a bureaucrat to require you to share their religion in order to provide you with a service.
I would go further and argue that the ability to grant limits on liability is an explicit violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. It's either that or the Government is partially extending its own immunity to the entity, limiting their rights in doing so.
Long story short, the ability to grant limited liability should require a new Constitutional amendment and any person operating under that limited liability umbrella must have, due to the limited responsibility, limited rights. In the absence of an amendment spelling out those limits, the only way to not violate equal protection is to consider persons operating under limited liability to be implicitly operating on behalf of the government.
So you agree with the court that employer provided contraceptives is not a basic civil right, how awesome.
If employer provided health coverage and contraceptives really were a basic right then why did Obama and his cronies bother with a 1200 page law when they could have simply sued a few large corporations for violating those basic rights, won the case and been done with it?
Oh yeah, because it isn't.
No, you cannot dictate what treatment they receive. You can, however, dictate what insurance coverage you will offer them subject to certain laws. This case was about the law crossing a previously established boundary.
Your employees would still be able to get any treatment they want to negotiate with providers. The US still has providers that re not employed by the government and are still free to negotiate treatment with their patients. Insurance won't pay for all treatments in the US but it won't in any other country either.
Because the ruling was not about an interaction with the government. It was about government mandated triangular interaction between an employer, employees and insurance companies. Had Obamacare nationalized health-care and it stuck, then Hobby Lobby most likely would have lost.
For those ranting that corporations should have no religious or speech rights, realize that almost all advocacy groups are incorporated.
One question;
How does "free speech" translate into "depriving people of medical benefits"?
Interesting, if completely irrelevant question. There are two ways a company can provide an employee with access to a type of medical care. The company can provide coverage in some sort of insurance program, or the government can give the employee money, in wages, money that can be exchanged for goods and services including, shockingly, medical services.
If we were talking about a quarter-million-dollar cancer treatment or something, then you might have an argument that by refusing to cover that procedure the company was not enabling access to the procedure. Not "depriving", as companies don't have police officers to arrest you if your family or a charity would cover it, but at least you could argue something. But a procedure costing a few hundred bucks? A company is in no way "depriving" an employee of medical care by refusing to cover that procedure specifically in the insurance plan. Just fork over the cash. Damn, how hard is that you figure out?
But if you really want to take this issue off the table, get employers completely out of the health insurance providing game. No, letting the government choose what to cover is no better, that's just handing your leash to a different master. Health insurance needs to be like car insurance - just buy it retail; done. Full power to the individual, none to the bosses. Like car insurance, you'd want a high-risk pool that the government would need to force insurers to cover at a loss, but we manage that just fine with car insurance.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
s/the government can give the employee/the company can give the employee/g
now the left's got me doing it too!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You are confusing the corporation (chick a fill) and the people serving. The people serving might not be AT ALL bigoted, while the corporation high level might be. Pretending to ask an example of bigotry from the serving people is a strawman. Chick A fill donated 2 million to anti gay group. As such the corporate direction of chick-a-fill is definitively showing their bigoted face, and as such it is valid to state that chick a fill is bigotted (remember the political decision are not decided by the foot-folk, the serving guy). On the other hand It would be definitively WRONG to state chick a fill is bigoted because some serving people refuse to serve gay.
In other word the example you ask is NOT an example of a corporation with an anti gay bigoted supporting agenda, it is an example of a few person serving bigotted. ONLY at the highest level through corporation donation and action can you detect if a corporation is bigotted or not. because it is the A-level manager which give the corporation a face by their decision and politic. not the serving people.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Medicare for all, and if they're going to include Viagra, they damn well better approve of the antidote for the other half.
There... done
Since religious groups don't pay taxes, they have nothing to complain about... except that their "religious liberty" entails denying other people their liberty, by hook or by crook.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It harkens to the old days of the company store and the company town, where the company are "taking care of the employees" but are actually just indenturing them to the company. I'm not saying there is some national conspiracy between the insurance companies and corporate overlords to keep the peons in line, but why then is the outcome exactly as if such a conspiracy existed?
Beginning with Marbury vs Madison in 1803, when the Supreme Court first took upon itself a power not granted in the Constitution to strike down laws duly passed by the legislative branch and signed into law by the executive as "unconstitutional", the Supreme Court has expanded upon this self granted power in numerous cases from Plessy v Ferguson to Brown vs the Board of Education and on through Roe v Wade and continuing until the present time today. It has been variously called "judicial activism" or "legislating from the bench" but the intent, which is to express the fact that the Supreme Court was never explicitly granted this power by the Constitution, is the same. In fact, Congress can specifically limit what the Supreme Court is allowed to rule on as written in Article 3 Section 2 which states that the court's appellate jurisdiction is given "with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make." Congress can and has passed bills including language describing what parts of the bill are not subject to review by the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, we seem to be stuck with judicial review for now unless a Constitutional amendment specifically barring the practice and clarifying the already reasonably plain language in Article 3 against it is enacted.
Saying they ARE people is a power grab ...
The US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
When was Mitt Romney every against corporate personhood? "Corporations are people, my friend."
I referred to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, how is Romney relevant in any way?
Besides you are taking Romney out of context. If you read the full quote you will see that in a very inelegant manner he was trying to say that corporate income goes to employees and shareholders, and for publicly traded companies many of those shareholder are ordinary people via their retirement account.
You: Nu-uh. Only some spokesperson for the losing side said that to put a political spin on it!!!!!!
The corporations are people quote tossed around in recent years started with the attorney who lost the Citizen United case, he said it while being interviewed after the decision. The media liked the quote. Romney later used it in his own special mystifying manner.
The Hobby Lobby case in the Supreme Court came from a 10th Circuit case in which the court held that Hobby Lobby was a person under the Religious Freedom Act of 1993. So the Court may not have said the exact words "corporations are people," but the Court has consistently held that corporations get every right like a person. So, it's just semantics and you're being pedantic.
Nope. As other posters have pointed out the Dictionary Act says that laws that apply to people also apply to corporations and other organizations, unless the legislature defines a scope saying otherwise. In the Religious Freedom Act congress did not define a scope, so the Dictionary Act default that it applies to organizations too comes into play.
So the truth is that the Hobby Lobby decision does not say corporations are people, it says that the Religious Freedom Act applies to both people and corporations.
The real issue here is how can a religious belief be held by a corporation? Well the Court ruled that for closely held corporations, those with 5 or fewer owners who share a common set of religious beliefs, the corporation can be considered to hold those beliefs as well. Note that such closely help corporations will usually be family businesses.
More importantly note that the Court ruling does not apply to corporations in general.
There are People in the deep south who don't have running water much less access to the internet to buy those condoms. There are also places where people (usually religious) go out of their way to limit other people's access to birth control. You're probably someone who lives is a pretty liberal part of the country. Spend a few years in the bible belt or parts of the rust belt. They're scary, scary places...
Wow, stereotype much? I've been all over the deep south, lived in the not-so-deep south (Ashville, NC) for five years, I've yet to encounter any place besides hunting cabins that lack running water.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Just because a corporation you own does not have rights does not mean that you dont either....
When you cant win, ad hominem.
If citizens united went the other way you still would not have lost your rights,,,,You still have the right and do anything you want, just not use corporate assets for it.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The "majority of U.S. corporations:" (90+%) have less than 50 employees and, as such, aren't required to furnish health care and aren't affected by this decision.
To me, it's yet more evidence that our health insurance should not be tied up with our employment. I don't know what the right solution to untangling that mess is, but we have to do something different.
You're honestly comparing health care to an xbox? I wonder why people don't take you seriously...
The way I see it, the intent is this: the people who own the corporation do not wish to have the resources of that corporation...which they themselves own and govern...used for purposes that conflict with their moral views.
The way to prevent their resources being used for things they disagree with is to lobby for political change, just like any other individual. I can't arbitrarily decide not to pay some of my taxes because I don't like some aspect of what the government does. I can't pay someone less than minimum wage because I dislike what they spend their money on and wish to discourage it.
The deal is that you get to benefit from a highly educated, safe and prosperous society where you can make lots of money, in exchange for playing by society's rules. It's a democracy so you have some say over those rules, but you have to abide by them.
So if society thinks employees should get basic healthcare insurance that includes this form of contraception every corporation should be obliged to provide it, while being free to advocate changing the requirement.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You do not get to avoid paying for your share of being defended
We're not exactly doing much defending when we're attacking random countries and starting wars every five seconds. Give the army a chance to defend against something, will you? I also don't consider greatly exaggerated threats to be all that intimidating, so stop holding me at gunpoint, stealing my money, and then claiming that it's for my own good. Screw off.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
One is considered a necessity; the other isn't. Or are you in favor of, say, allowing children whose parents died to starve to death because they can't afford to feed themselves, rather than putting them in state-funded foster care?
After a mutation, a cell's DNA is like a book that has been scribbled in. It isn't a completely different book.
Bzzzt!!! Wrong.
Individuals can be sued of fraud or criminal intent can be proven, not matter what protection the corporation has for it's assets. Martha Stewart went to jail because she lied under oath, not because she broke insider trading laws.
The same is true of corporations. If groups of people in a corporation conspire to dump waste into the environment, they can be sent to jail for it. Same goes for any other actions of a corporation.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Way to start a flame war. This is clearly a yro.slashdot.org story, but the religious aspect was too good to pass up. "Hey, let's poke a bee hive and post this to the science site"
If a group of people breach a contract, you can sue them and they will have to pay you back from their own assets. If a corporation breaches a contract, you can only touch corporate assets.
Generally true, unless the contract is poorly written or invalid from a legal perspective. For example, contracts generally cannot exempt people from criminal wrongdoing, regardless of whether they're part of a corporation or not.
If a group of people dump toxins into the environment, they can be personally fined and put in jail. If a corporation dumps toxins into the environment, the corporation pays a fine and the people who initiated the dumping don't get touched.
False, if criminal actions were involved. The problem with prosecuting groups of people who commit actions is proving exactly who is responsible. That's why corporations often are just charged fines -- not because it's the only course of action, but because it's often quite difficult to disentangle who exactly at fault in complex decision-making process. And fining a company is actually an additional remedy that can be levied against a group of people, even when individual culpability is less certain. It actually in some cases makes it EASIER to punish groups of people in cases of uncertain personal liability
Anyhow, if major criminal violations took place and created environmental damage, individual members of a corporation in charge of decisions or directly responsible for the criminal actions CAN end up in jail.
If a group of people destroy the economy through fraud, they can be fined and put in jail. If a corporation destroys the economy through fraud, it gets a slap on the wrist from the SEC.
False. Yeah, tell that to the executives of Enron who ended up in jail.
Again, from a practical matter, it's harder to figure out who in a group of people is primarily responsible for actions -- whether those people are members of a corporation or not.
But if CRIMINAL fraud has taken place, and prosecutors can prove that certain individuals are primarily responsible for it, they can be personally fined and put in prison.
IN SUM: Being part of a group of people (whether in a corporation or not) can make it easier to hide and more difficult to determine culpability, but individuals are NOT absolved from criminal liability simply because they are part of a corporation.
The law treats corporations differently from "groups of people" in many respects.
That is certainly true. But if you want to talk about this, you'd be better off using examples which are actually correct.
Hobby Lobby's owners find it religiously objectionable to provide health care to its female employees that includes birth control. However, they apparently have no religious objections to investing 401K money in companies that make birth control. Making money off birth control = religiously fine. Providing access to birth control = sinful and must be stopped!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
... the currently-leftwing government ...
You have GOT to be kidding. There is no left-wing in the US mainstream.
I have a religious objection to most people conceiving. It's called anti-stupidism.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
> There's a reason the UK banned them several centuries ago.
Here's the government web site explaining how you form a corporation in the UK:
http://www.companieshouse.gov....
Here are the corporate tax rates in the UK:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rates/c...
> those running it choose to be above the law, no one does time. ...
Jeffrey Skilling 24 years in prison, Andrew Fastow 6 years, Bernard Ebbers 25 years, Bernie Madoff 150 years, John Rigas 15 years, Timothy Rigas 20 years, Dennis Kozlowski 8 years, Mark Swartz 8 years, Jack Abramoff 6 years
> I don't know what the right solution to untangling that mess is, but we have to do something different.
It always scares me when people say that, though it's true. So often it goes like this:
We have to do something different.
Plan X is something different.
Therefore, we have to do plan X.
Plan X may very well be much, much worse than what we have now. Three years ago a lot of people voted for "change", without asking "What change, exactly? Change my full-time job will change into a part-time job?"
If there were "no real difference between the business and its owners" it wouldn't be an incorporated entity - it would just be a business and they would be its owners. When you accept the benefits of incorporation you should also have to accept some of the drawbacks, including slightly more limits on what that business can and cannot do. Any time you take an entity with limited liability and responsibility and give it more freedom you are playing with fire.
Corporations are not people and treating them as such is just fucking stupid. "Corporations' religious beliefs" is a phrase that makes us all dumber every time we are forced to parse it.
At this rate we'd all be better off incorporating ourselves and treating our meat-sacks as employees of our corporate overminds.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Exactly. It's not enough to believe in any invisible sky wizard, you must believe in a particular one. If you believe in the one ( Jehovah's Witnesses ) that doesn't like blood transfusions, you're out of luck.
My church is that of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He doesn't get involved in heathcare, it takes some "all-loving" misogynist prick to do that. Although, FSM does have a thing about ninjas. Where's the anti ninja clause?
Just because you can only protest in the Free Speech Zone doesn't mean your rights are limited! They're not limited because your masters say they're not limited; now back to work, drone! Not limited means not limited, friend.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No one is being deprived of medical benefits. The individual is of course free to pursue these things outside of the employer plan. I did actually see a tweet where a guy was wondering if a manager at Hobby Lobby saw a woman taking a morning-after pill in the break room, could he smack it out of her hand. I have no idea if he was serious or not.
Dark Reflection
If the owners of the "closely held" company feel so morally responsible for payments to an insurance plan, why don't they feel so morally responsible for these payments, and others the company makes, that they will take them on if the company goes belly up. It seems to me the limited liability has separated the owners from these payments, they don't accept them as debt, beyond their initial investment in the company.
If they want the moral responsibility for payments made by the company they should lose the limited liability protection.
See, you argue the Hobby Lobby case for them. If they want to stick to their religious beliefs, then they must give up a protection under the law that is available to those without those beliefs. Effectively, your solution says to either chose your faith or chose the protection under the law. The SCOTUS said that one does not lose their individual rights just because of the legal form in which they chose to run their business.
If citizens united went the other way you still would not have lost your rights,,,,You still have the right and do anything you want, just not use corporate assets for it.
Speaking as a group would have been more difficult is the common argument used. Remember, citizens united is not about corporations, its about all organizations. Labor unions, advocacy groups, etc as well.
I can see how a corporation can be a person. I can see how a corporation could be religious. I don't see how a for profit corporation can be religious. I don't see how a corporation can die and go to heaven.
Can a not for profit be religious? Because both for profit and not for profit corporations must make a profit to stay in business. So, the only difference between the two is what is done with the profits. The courts don't care about heaven, they care about equal protection under the law. "Their" law, not God's.
Its right in front of all of us and yet no one has pitched it on the hill...
Lets just go ahead and make abortion and contraception illegal...for anyone who identifies as Christian/Catholic/Whaterver and call it a day. When you go to your doctor or clinic, you must identify to the doctor what religion you are. This will be the only allowable piece of PII that can be a matter of public record and be searchable by the clinic. If you denounce your religion in order to get medical help, then that is made public. Its just so easy this way. No more squabbling about personal beliefs infecting the general population. You either practice what you state you believe or STFU and quit religion.
Germany had a similar program in the late 1930s and 40s, singling out certain religious groups by making them wear a Star of David. I guess it is really true that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Hobby Lobby's owners find it religiously objectionable to provide health care to its female employees that includes birth control.
Completely untrue. Hobby Lobby provides 16 different types of contraception to its employees.
Here's their statement:
"The Green family has no moral objection to the use of 16 of 20 preventive contraceptives required in the mandate, and Hobby Lobby will continue its longstanding practice of covering these preventive contraceptives for its employees. However, the Green family cannot provide or pay for four potentially life-threatening drugs and devices. These drugs include Plan B and Ella, the so-called morning-after pill and the week-after pill. Covering these drugs and devices would violate their deeply held religious belief that life begins at the moment of conception, when an egg is fertilized.
How outrageous!
Hobby Lobby's owners find it religiously objectionable to provide health care to its female employees that includes birth control. However, they apparently have no religious objections to investing 401K money in companies that make birth control. Making money off birth control = religiously fine. Providing access to birth control = sinful and must be stopped!
Does Hobby Lobby choose which stocks are included in their 401k, or do they outsource to a financial institution?
"Citizens_United" Corporations are people too.
In the Citizens United case the US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
To be fair, it was Mitt Romney who is credited with coining that phrase ("Corporations are people too, my friend"), not 'a spokesperson for the losing side.'
Watch the spin yourself.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Being a "closely held" corporation has nothing to do with the actual number of shareholders. A "closely held" corporation is a corporation in which the majority ie. > 50% of the value of the outstanding shares is owned by five or fewer individuals. In other words, as long as the majority of the shares is held by five or fewer people, there can be many other shareholders and the corporation would still be regarded as being "closely held".
"Citizens_United" Corporations are people too.
In the Citizens United case the US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
To be fair, it was Mitt Romney who is credited with coining that phrase ("Corporations are people too, my friend"), not 'a spokesperson for the losing side.'
Watch the spin yourself.
Nope. The spokesperson was one of the losing attorneys being interviewed immediately after the case was decided. Mitt Romney made his inarticulate comment later. Romney is also saying something different from the spokesperson, Romney's words are taken out of context. If you read Romney's full quote he is saying that the money of corporations go to people, the employees and the shareholders, and for publicly traded corporations these shareholders are often regular people via their retirement accounts. His larger point being that additional corporate taxes would hurt the people, employees and retirement account holders. Romney merely used the phrase currently buzzing about the media at the time, corps are people, misunderstanding the phrase or trying to alternatively define the phrase for some mysterious reason. Oblivious to how the edited sound bite would make him look.
He probably saw "My Cousin Vinny" too many times.
"The people down here sleep with their sister."
Looks around at all the people with guns.
"Well, some of them do."
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
And those were already covered by the employer provided health care in this case.
This case is not about 'the pill', especially not when used for medical conditions rather than birth control.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Saying they ARE people is a power grab ...
The US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people. A spokesperson for the losing side in the court case gratuitously characterized the decision that way, in other words it was just political spin on the decision.
What the Court actually said is that
(1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights are individual persons.
(2) It doesn't matter what the nature of the group of people is; corporation, labor union, public interest group, etc.
I actually interpreted it a slightly different way, but the difference is important.
They specifically stated that "closely held" corporations could hold this exemption. To point, these are corporations that have a very small number of owners indeed. The way I see it, the intent is this: the people who own the corporation do not wish to have the resources of that corporation...which they themselves own and govern...used for purposes that conflict with their moral views. We're not talking IBM or Google here, with tens or even hundreds of thousands of stakeholders. We're talking corporations that are held by a handful of people whose views of such things align closely with one another.
As it stands today, 85% of corporations proactively supported paying for contraception ahead of Obamacare or any other mandate from state or federal government. But the stalwarts were those that fit the above description. Me, I'm not at all aligned with the pro-life crowd...but I can at least see the logic here. Just because I own a corporation doesn't mean that I can't care about what the money produced by it helps support, even indirectly. It's one of those fine lines that makes America challenging, because of the incredible demands that freedom and the citizenship that goes with it place on us all.
And I think it's cool as shit that we are debating it. The fact that we all care, one way or another, is absolutely, utterly, and incredibly beautiful.
The serious consequence is that SCOTUS has pointed a canon at the corporate veil. If it can be pierced one way, it can be pierced the other.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> (1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights are individual persons.
Groups of people don't have the same moral awareness or legal responsibility as individuals do. They are at best, like children and should be thought of as such.
When you take a group of people and put them together, you end up with a rampaging mob. You don't end up with a Bog hive mind with the soul of a Greek poet.
Your entire line of reasoning is pure bullshit that blatantly ignores human nature.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
TL;DR: We hereby decide that those who believe in supernatural creators, talking snakes and magical rib-women are more qualified than medical professionals to decide who gets what medical treatment.
Thank you,
The Christian Republic of United States (Supreme Court Fatwa #1)
So...you're saying that if anyone incorporates, they should be willing to accept the consequences of anything that technology may come up with in the future?
Is there some reason why they could not un-incorporate?
Um...no. That's not how rights work
Um, corporations are fictitious entities, and any "rights" they have are at the sole discretion of the government. So, in the case of corporations, yes, this is exactly how it works.
starting a business does not deprive someone of their rights.
Of course it does not. You are free to start a non-incorporated business. But if you choose to incorporate, there will be trade-offs.
a bureaucracy that will drain that money until very little is left over for actual health *CARE*
And that's why the ACA regulates the medical loss ratio, requiring insurers to treat "very little" as "at least 85 percent".
Sorry, not buying it. Try again.
I admit that my reasoning is a first draft, not a rigorous final publication. For today, I will leave trying again to the people who do this for a living.
What about the rest of the scientists?
Yeah, what about them?
Or are you trying to maintain a one-sided argument?
No, and that's why there's a link "Reply to This" below my post. Feel free to show the contrasting arguments of the rest of the scientists so that other Slashdot users may consider them.
If a distinct culture of diploid H. sapiens cells originating from one fertilization event is not the correct place to draw the line of what constitutes a distinct organism, please tell me where you would prefer to draw the line and why.
A newborn baby girl cannot live on her own but instead relies on parents or other caregivers for food and shelter. Should we allow infanticide?
> You are mischaracterizing the Supreme Court decision Citizens United.
Not at all. He's merely disagreeing with it. This is America. We get to disagree with Kings and Popes and idiots who have the gall to call themselves judges.
There is no direct 1:1 person -> corporate pass through. The whole POINT of a corporation is to prevent that.
What we have here are a legal fiction being granted MORE power than real people while still retaining all of the extra protections they get from not really being people.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You do realize that the government recognizing which religions are establishing is a direct violation of the First Amendment, of course.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
wouldn't we want 100%?
I'm not aware of any business that can operate without administrative overhead. Even in a single-payer system like Medicare, some of the budget is still spent on administrative overhead.
simply run fee for service for chronic and routine care
So if someone develops a chronic condition that he cannot afford to pay to treat, should he be left to suffer and die? Insurance spreads costs associated with the risk of developing a chronic condition among many people.
In the Citizens United case the US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people.
Can you explain to me what the difference between a coorpation and a person is, legally speaking, if they have the same rights? I'm sure even Scalito would concede their difference (i.e. not having noses or toes), but legally speaking, we ought to treat them the same. When someone makes the statement "Coorpations are people", they of course don't mean that it in the "soylent green" context -- and you know this; you're just being pedantic.
Lastly (and because I'm curious why people represent views that are clearly not in their interest), are you a paid coorporate shill or merely delusional (from my perspective, of course)? If you're going to promote the rights of corporations, you may as well get paid for it.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
When Judges are seen to socialize with litigants, would you trust their impartialness?
By Corporations using their free speech of money to create favorable laws, why would they need to vote?
The separation between church and state marked the end of the Middle Ages and the onset of the Renaissance.
Only in the US can its reversal be touted as a "win for freedom".
Last time I checked abortions were recognised medical procedures, so who the hick are those company owners to object to them? What's next? Refusal to pay for vaccinations? Treatment of aids? Psychiatric treatment?
And what if the owners are Muslims? Do they get to pick and choose what kind of treatment they "object to" as well? And followers of Wicca? And Satanists? And how about Scientologists (who are a recognised religion (for taxation purposes) in the US).
If I understand this judgment correctly, every man jack gets to pick a "religion" and gets to limit medical coverage of their employees on basis of whatever religious dogma they subscribe to.
There's your "freedom" boy. Enjoy it.
The commonly quoted "6000 years" is a straw man. A "day" of Genesis 1 is far longer than 86400 seconds, as explained here and here.
There's good evidence to believe that unicorns (genus Oryx ) exist in this universe. See, for example, this photo. And some people find evidence of God in cosmology.
This whole 401k thing is out-of-hand... Generally, an employer who offers a 401k or other like option to its employees doesn't sit around and decide which specific companies to invest in... First... it's usually the EMPLOYEE which decides. And that employee generally chooses from a limited list of mutual funds - provided by whatever brokerage the employer has contracted with... Those mutual funds may invest in hundreds or thousands of companies around the country or world. To make some sort of moral equivalence between these two situations is intellectually disingenuous... I suppose, arising out of some general ignorance of how retirement plans, such as a 401k work. Heck, I don't even know much about them - but know enough to realize what these hysterical people would expect out of Hobby Lobby to absolve themselves from this perceived hypocrisy would be highly impractical or impossible... short of eliminating their 401k program entirely.
In the Citizens United case the US Supreme Court did **not** say that corporations are people.
Can you explain to me what the difference between a coorpation and a person is, legally speaking, if they have the same rights?
You are fixated on corporations and that is leading you astray. The Court said that groups of people have the same ***speech*** rights as individual persons. That the manner in which this group formed does ***not*** matter, it could be a corporation or a union or some other type of organization. They also said that all corporations are equivalent, that a media/news corporations does ***not*** have any additional rights that other corporations lack.
I'm sure even Scalito would concede their difference (i.e. not having noses or toes), but legally speaking, we ought to treat them the same.
Not what they said, you erroneously paraphrase. Again, groups of people, speech rights, news/media corps no different that other corps. That's it.
... are you a paid coorporate shill or merely delusional (from my perspective, of course)? ...
A perspective of erroneous misunderstanding in various ways. No, neither shill nor delusional. I am merely a geek who ***actually read*** the decision when it became public rather than rely on what others told me that it said. Its like reading the source code to see how something really works. I'm also a history geek so I have a tendency to do such things. :-)
If you're going to promote the rights of corporations, you may as well get paid for it.
Actually I care more about the speech rights of unions, watchdogs, advocacy group and other more than corporations. However the Supreme Court has ruled that all of these groups are equivalent with respect to speech rights. Just speech rights, that is all the decision spoke to.
> (1) Groups of people have the same free speech rights as individual persons.
Groups of people don't have the same moral awareness or legal responsibility as individuals do.
First, apologies for the typo, I fixed it above, "are" should have been "as".
.... For example a law that says people can't toss toxic crap into the river would apply to people and corporations.
Actually the Dictionary Act say groups -- corps, partnerships, unions, etc -- do have the same legal responsibilities as people. It says that unless a law defines its scope otherwise the law applies to people and corps and unions
My understanding is that the Religious Freedom Act (or whatever it was called) contained no such scope definition so it applies to corporations as well as people. Now the question is how does a corp have a religious belief. It seems the Court said that if it is closely held (5 or fewer owners) and these owners share a religious belief then their corporation can be considered to have that religious belief. This does not apply to corporations in general, just 5 or fewer owners with a common religious belief. Hobby Lobby was such a family owned business so they are the rare corp that meets these qualification.
There is no direct 1:1 person -> corporate pass through. The whole POINT of a corporation is to prevent that.
You are mistaken. The barrier between person and corporation is leaky, more so for smaller corporations than larger, S-Corp rather than C-Corp. It has always provided limited protection with conditions. One example of this leaky natures is when the owners of a corporation have to become personally liable for corporate debt if they want a credit card or line of credit. Note that this decision does not apply to all corporations. It only applies to corporations with 5 or fewer owners who have a shared religious belief. In such limited circumstances the Court has ruled that a corporation can posses the religious beliefs of its handful of owners.
Nah. They said that the rights of corporations are transcendent over the rights of real, living people because some of the owners technically can be classified as real living people, thus effectively denying folks access to certain healthcare.
No, decision does not apply to corporations in general. It applies only the closely held corporation (5 or fewer owners) where the owners have a common religious belief. In such a limited case the corporation can be considered to hold such a belief. This being relevant since the Religious Freedom Act was written in a manner that it applied to both people and corporations. Not that corps are people, rather that this particular law applies to people and corps, like a law saying don't toss toxic stuff in the river.
Plus, no one is denied certain healthcare. The company can not prevent an employee from having a procedure, they can only decline to pay for it.
Because $5 out of your payday is the same thing as $400 out of your payday, when you're living paycheck to paycheck.
The most common birth control pill in use in the US costs USD$50 a month not counting the mandatory prescriptions. Many countries do sell them cheaper -- but not in the US, and they are never OTC here. Although free clinics do sometimes hand out Plan B I have never heard of one that dispenses regular non-emergency contraception. And this is where the ruling in question applies.
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My wife has been on the Pill for 30 years. Believe me, if there were a cheaper option I'd know about it.
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Nearly everything is much cheaper to an insurance company than it is for you if you walk in the pharmacy and pay for it out of pocket. By not being able to get it on insurance, you lose that discount. Not that it should be that way, but that's how it is, and often that discount is 70% or more because of some foolishness called "differential pricing" instead of by its proper name, "theft."
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...there is no danger of pregnancy when the cucumber loses its cool and rapes you.
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In theory - but in practice that's a joke. No executives have gone to jail or personally finned for blowing up that fertilizer plant, dumping oil all over the gulf, toxic chemicals into that river in West Virginia, Countrywide from stealing people's homes, or the major banks for crashing the economy.
Thanks for the nicely written reply -- I was being snarky out of frustration.
The recent SCOTUS decisions have been overwhelmingly negative from my (liberal) perspective -- perhaps reading Ginsberg's fiery dissent made matters worse;)
Cheers mate.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I love the sound, convincing logic of your post.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
> The way to prevent their resources being used for things they disagree with is to lobby for political change, just like any other individual. I can't arbitrarily decide not to pay some of my taxes because I don't like some aspect of what the government does.
You seem to have decided that because the politicians decide how they use government money from taxes, those politicians should also decide whateveryone does with all of their resources. So basically, you're saying everything belongs to the government / politicians.
Politicians are SUPPOSED to decide how they spend tax money. YOU are supposed to decide how you spend your money. If you don'tewant to donate to the NRA PAC, government shouldn't make you do so. If you'd rather give your money to the KKK or it's parent organization, the DNC, that's your decision, not something the government should make you do.
What about non-closely held corporations? What if they're fundamentally opposed to providing such birth control, but aren't really religious? Do they get a special exception too, or are religious people part of certain kinds of corporations more equal than the rest of us?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Keep in mind that a corporation is a government-created entity in the first place.
So is a citizen.
America Republic of Plutocrats fyck US.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
> You seem to paint only a positive picture of corporations.
The title of my post is "a few hundred years earlier than that". My post talks about when corporations were developed and for what purpose. Obviously, people create new things because they think they'll be good, so I guess in that since the reasons that corporations were first created could be seen as positive. I wasn't making any judgement about any effects of any particular corporations several hundred years later, in the United States. I see you'd like to talk about that separate topic, and you bring up a couple of good questions.
Mainly you seem to be interested in avoiding "accumulated wealth and power". Thanks a good thing to discuss, I think. You're not talking about the mom-and-pop ice cream on the corner, Smithville Cones, Inc. You're talking about big corporations like Microsoft, right? On a side note, Microsoft has about 1 million owners, mostly people who buy a chunk of Microsoft as their retirement savings. The importance of that will become clear in a moment.
We probably don't want to live in a tribal world, where the farthest we can travel in our canoe is a few miles. We want to have ships, factories, and other big things. So somebody needs to have ships and factories and stuff. Earlier in US history it was guys like Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie had $300 billion dollars. To give some perspective, Microsoft is worth about $350 billion and Paypal sold for $1.3 billion. So Carnegie's personal wealth was more than two hundred times that of Paypal. Talk about "accumulated wealth and power"! That's a big pile of wealth for one guy. John D. Rockefeller was similar.
Which is best at avoiding "accumulated wealth and power", if Carnegie and Rockefeller personally own factories and railroads, or if a million different grandmas own the company? Carnegie's empire was the same size as Microsoft. Would you rather have one guy own that empire, or a million people share it? Apple is the world's largest company. For $93.50, you can be an owner of Apple, so when Apple factories do well, you benefit. The corporate structure that allows you to participate for under a hundred dollars is the single best way we know to DISTRIBUTE wealth and power.
How many people become millionaires, and how do they do it? There are 9.6 MILLION millionaires in the country, one of every 30 households, and the vast majority became millionaires by ------ becoming owners, by investing part of their paycheck in corporations and allowing the corporations to make money for them. It is legal structure known as a corporation that allows any employee to become an owner of the company they work for by setting aside 5% of their check to slowly become wealthy. Personally, I much prefer that system to the system where Carnegie and Rockefeller own everything.
I'm going to challenge you to do something. Something that I think you'll find very interesting AFTER you do it, and something that almost everyone had to do before they got any of the "wealth and power" for themselves. I know there is a 99% chance you won't have the courage to step out of your comfort zone and do it. On that 1% chance that you will, I'm going to mention it because it'll raise your awareness and understanding if you do it. Pick a company you like - maybe it's Apple, maybe Starbucks, any company you think is cool. Then go to Scottrade.com and buy a share. Become an owner of the company you like. You may be very surprised at what happens next.
However, I *also* think that it is ethically bankrupt for me to impose my will on the mother.
Funding abortions with tax revenue likewise imposes pro-choice advocates' will on taxpayers. Thus it is ethically bankrupt to require employers to pay for abortifacient means of birth control if they already pay for other, non-abortifacient means. And as I understand it, Hobby Lobby was paying for condoms, diaphragms, the pill, the patch, vasectomies, and more.
What about non-closely held corporations? What if they're fundamentally opposed to providing such birth control, but aren't really religious?
My understanding is that the Court requires the corp to be closely held, that once you have a certain number of owners a shared belief is far less plausible. Also the belief has to be part of some sort of established and recognized religion, you can't just declare yourself a jedi and say jedi's don't believe in abortion.
So large corps or non-religious beliefs, the decision does not apply.
Do they get a special exception too, or are religious people part of certain kinds of corporations more equal than the rest of us?
Well, religion does have special rights according to the Constitution. Government is thereby required to give religious beliefs some weight. Its a balance, religious business owners vs a gov't mandate on healthcare. They seem to have said that for small corps where a shared religious belief is more plausible things tip towards the corp, for larger corps where a shared religious belief is less plausible things tip towards the government.
So large corps or non-religious beliefs, the decision does not apply.
Which is discriminatory and disgusting.
Also the belief has to be part of some sort of established and recognized religion, you can't just declare yourself a jedi and say jedi's don't believe in abortion.
So, in other words, not only do people of specific religions have more rights than the rest of us, but some religions are more equal that others. Do you really want the government to be able to decide which religions are True Religions? What makes one bullshit religion any less valid than any other? That's complete tyranny.
Well, religion does have special rights according to the Constitution.
And there's also supposed to be a separation of church and state, but no one seems to care about that. This is what you get when you have a bunch of religious nutters as judges, rather than people who truly care about secularism, fairness, and the constitution.
This should have nothing to do with religion. Anyone should be able to deny paying for others' birth control, or no one should.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The Arabic countries led by the Muslims were the most advanced scientists and engineers in the world, until they let the religious crazies take over. Just saying, America...
Casteism
The owners' objections to the 4 types not covered are based on religious ignorance rather than actual understanding of how the medications work. The HL CEO is inserting himself between his female employees and their medical professionals. And if he truly had objections to supporting "abortions" with his money, he wouldn't buy all his stock from a country that's been known to force abortion in its population control efforts. I guess his company's "religion" only extends to its bottom line. Question: What prevents every single Corp in the US from suddenly developing a fit of "religious" vapors over, say, interfering with 'God' s will" via implementing OSHA safety standards?
You may want to try to derail my thread, but my simple argument that the GP's assertion was completely false still stands. Nothing that you have written refutes that, at all.
As I replied below, my wife was on the PIll for 30 years. If there was a cheaper alternative I'd know about it.
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Healthcare is not a gift from corporate. It is a benefit. When convenient, corp says, "You actually make more than your salary indicates when you add in benefits."
If "benefits" are actually, "compensation," then what is corporate doing messing with my stuff?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Do you believe in Zeus? How about Jupiter? They were gods too after all
To the extent that "Jupiter" is a corruption of "YHWH Pater", or Jehovah the Father, I do believe in Jupiter. All the rest of the Roman gods are made up.
have you read the bible lately? He does really love the commanding people to maim and slaughter other people for what I can only assume is for his personal entertainment
As I understand the Christian position as described in the Bible, the suffering that humankind experiences under this system of things exists to teach Satan a lesson. Satan has been using the lie "God doesn't want what's best for you and for this reason is holding back good things from you" since the days of Adam and Eve. And God has let Satan have it Satan's way for a few thousand years in order to show that many people will realize how self-destructive Satan's system is and follow God nevertheless. I'm not one of Jehovah's Witnesses, but I found their article on why God continues to allow suffering interesting.
True, morals derived from logic "are a human construct" to the same extent that logic itself is "a human construct". But good luck disproving logic within the framework of human reasoning.
Sure, the system you've devised might be a reasonable and logical way to achieve the goals you intend.. but why do you have those goals? why are those goals "right"?
Start from logic and add the axiom "Humankind ought to continue to exist." If you think this goal isn't right, feel free to remove yourself. Otherwise, you can continue by answering questions like this: Does the benefit to humankind of not living in fear of being murdered outweigh the benefit to humankind of having the freedom to murder someone? If so, create a framework within society to deter murder.
I know this is a late comment, but I like your comment because it reminds us of the way power is delegated. The people delegate power to the states. The states delegate power to the corporations. What our culture seems to have forgotten is the the people are still on top.
Now if we can only remember what happened that brought us here.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.