This really seems like an over-hyped, massively expensive technical solution to a problem that could easily be fixed with some volunteer organizations providing guides on an as-needed basis. Here's a thought: require all public high school students to provide X number of hours (start with 200) of public service as a requirement for graduation. Do something similar with college students receiving Federal student aid. Oh look, suddenly volunteers everywhere! And these volunteers can actually adapt to the needs of individuals and don't cost a fortune to implement, update, and maintain!
In light of this understanding, it does make me wonder why your country doesn't have a National Health Service favoured by many civilized countries.
My guess is because we don't like paying vastly higher taxes, waiting in seemingly endless (up to two years for an operation during certain periods) lines for care (well, unless you're rich of course, in which case you don't bother with the public system in countries like the UK or Canada), being denied newer and better treatments because a committee decided against it (here coverage is determined by the insurance company and you can choose your insurance provider and plan based on your specific needs, such as necessary coverage for specific medications), facing a "post code lottery" where your quality of care depends on what side of an imaginary line you live on, higher heart disease mortality (36% higher in the UK over the US, which is bad considering how much we abuse our hearts over here), not being able to find a doctor or dentist at all (70% of dentists in Quebec opt out of the public system), and on and on and on.
The system we have is imperfect, but it has clear benefits over the ones in Canada and the UK. I've never waited more than a week to have anything treated and I almost always get treatment the same day or the next day for any issue I have. Of the two operations I've had, one was scheduled on my schedule - I picked the date and time to fit well with my work schedule about a week after it was determined to be necessary - and the other was on an emergency basis where my doctor met me at the hospital and had me on the operating table within about 30 minutes. Any testing I need can be done same-day. A quick glance at my doctor's availability (that office has a mobile app for scheduling appointments) shows I could have a 15 or 30 minute appointment with her tomorrow or up to 45 minutes the day after.
I'm not rich; I work for a living. Yet I don't wait for anything. I don't wait to be seen by a doctor. I don't wait to get any testing I need. I don't wait to get any procedures I need. I don't wait for medications. It all happens on my schedule and as quickly as I'd like it. I pay $15 to see the doctor and $50 if I end up in the hospital for something serious. Anything paid out of pocket gets taken care of with untaxed money, meaning it's at a huge discount to me. And it isn't just me (nor is it just about me); everyone I know who has a job has great healthcare coverage. Is it a perfect system? No. Does every single person have perfect access to outstanding care? No. But we're improving all the time and it isn't (at least as of yet) coming at everyone else's expense.
To me, it's an argument of most people getting great care versus everyone getting mediocre to poor care (see also: the VA medical system). Quite similar to the classic market system argument of capitalism versus socialism. You can either give everyone the chance to get rich (with some ending up poor and most somewhere in the middle) or ensure everyone is equally poor. If the people in the UK, Canada, France, etc are happy with their system, great! I don't begrudge their happiness. However, I don't think the benefits of moving to such systems outweigh the drawbacks in the minds of most Americans. Rather than pretend either system is perfect, I think it best to recognize that each has its pros and cons and that the priorities and sensibilities of the people in a given country drive their decisions on how to achieve the greatest good.
So when an artist creates something they can be copied by any big business that wants to. The individual has no recourse because the large company will just bury them in lawyers. So in effect you are saying that anyone who does not have the resources to defend their copyrights have no copyrights.
I'm saying that civil suits are the appropriate response to copyright infringement. If big companies can bury individuals with armies of lawyers such that nobody can defend themselves and their rights in court against big companies, then that's an issue with the court system; not anything specific to copyright law. If the court system is not doing its job and is effectively a place where whoever has the most money wins, that should be corrected. The process should not simply be replaced by SWAT teams.
Let's assume the same thing happens in custody cases: that whoever has the most money always wins. Is the appropriate response to then simply have government agents arbitrarily decide who should have the kid(s) and send armed agents crashing through the doors and windows of the home of the one who didn't get picked? We should have fair courts where righteousness trumps legal trickery. If we don't, that's the problem we should solve.
Theft: the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it Copyright infringement: the use of works protected by copyright law without permission, infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works.
A copyright owner has the right to control how their protected works are reproduced and distributed. When that right is violated, a civil suit is an appropriate response. When someone steals your car, a criminal investigation by government authorities is an appropriate response. In this case, theft of the movie would entail someone (or a group of someones) taking the only available copies from their rightful owner such that the original owner no longer had access.
It may not seem like an important distinction from where you're sitting, but it's important in that we shouldn't have SWAT teams busting down teenagers' doors because they shared a movie on the Internet.
Theft of intellectual property should be a criminal matter.
Copyright infringement should be a civil matter. Since This article is talking about a movie being copied and shared (copyright infringement), it should be strictly a civil matter. Of course, the government being the enforcement wing of large companies, the full weight and force of the Federal government will extend its infinite reach across the globe to annihilate anyone who so much as thinks about infringing on the absolute rights of the government's benevolent benefactors.
Sounds like your IT has been outsourced to India, who as a culture, literally does not know how to say "no".
It takes two to fail to communicate. You should not be asking questions that require a direct "yes or no" answer. In many cultures, that is considered rude.
So they lie because their culture tells them to and it's my fault for not identifying that they're lying and taking careful steps to help them not lie?
Sorry, but that's absurd. If one's culture does not allow one to perform one's job correctly, one needs to either find a new culture or find a new job.
I don't pay interest on my credit cards and they pay me cash back. I use the reward points and cash back for free vacations. I financed my last car at below the rate of inflation. Adjusted for inflation, the bank paid *me* for the privilege of buying me a car.
It isn't a scam; it's a game. And rule number 1 is understand basic mathematics.
I pay for everything cash, so I have a low credit score. How the fuck does that work?
Your credit score is the calculated chances that you'll stick to the terms if credit is offered. It's based on past performance and present (credit-based) circumstances. If you have no history, they can't score you. That's how the fuck that works.
I paid for my car cash, I pay my rent cash, I pay the cable company cash. I have over $30k in the bank and I have monthly paychecks.
None of this hits your credit report, so it can't be used to score you. Money in the bank isn't reported and isn't scored. Paychecks and income aren't reported and aren't scored.
So I should have a much higher credit rating than someone who is constantly paying with credit cards in my opinion. I wouldn't even mind so much, except that when renting a house they do a background check, and they expect to find a credit history, which I don't have.
Someone who is paying with credit cards and is keeping those accounts paid as agreed has a demonstrated history of responsibly managing their credit. You don't have that. That's why they score higher. You seem to want a credit score that's based on some personal knowledge of you, or your handshake, or a magic 8 ball or something. But that isn't how it works because we no longer live in villages of 20 families. Various items related to how you've handled credit/debt are reported to credit reporting agencies. Other companies (okay, pretty much just FICO) have developed various scoring models that take the information reported to the CRAs and turn that information into a single, simple number which represents the chances that you'll stick to the terms of credit is offered. Since they don't have any information about you, you don't get scored.
I pay for everything with credit cards, pay them off every month so there's no interest, and then I take free vacations with the reward points and cash back money. I have a long credit history showing that whenever someone provides me credit, I manage it responsibly and pay them on time as agreed. If someone is thinking about offering me credit, they can look at that long history (or just the number) and see that I'm a pretty safe bet. They can look at someone else who has a long history of failing to pay back everyone who lends them a dime and see that person is a huge risk. They look at you and they see a mystery box. What exactly would you expect to happen?
No need to look up how FICO works, no one actually uses FICO when considering you.
Except for credit cards, car loans, mortgages; just about anything that requires credit. But yeah, except for those things, nobody actually uses FICO.
There are many many systems to calculate a credit score and if you go apply for a loan/credit card/anything that gives you a score from 5 different places the same day you'll get 5 different credit scores and the difference has nothing to do with recent credit inquiries.
Just wrong time and time again. First of all, there aren't 5 different places. There are 3: Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Secondly, there are multiple types of FICO scores and the lender chooses which type to use. Auto-enhanced FICO scores weigh vehicle loans differently, but are otherwise very similar to the consumer FICO score you can pull. Most differences between scores from different CRAs are due to differences in the credit reports themselves. Often times, accounts (in good standing or otherwise) aren't reported to all three CRAs, which means you'll have different histories and different scores with them. And yes, there are other proprietary models available, but they're hardly ever used (as in 10% of the time).
When it comes to applying for credit, FICO is still the kind of the castle precisely because it does adapt and broadly predict consumer behavior, allowing lenders to appropriately price risk.
First off, 60% credit utilization is too high. I haven't looked up the numbers recently, but there are people out there who game the system and have figured out near optimal values.
Depends on the scoring model and your personal 'bucket', but the optimal is typically 9% total utilization for revolving accounts. Keep in mind that certain scoring models (TU98 comes to mind) want that all on one revolving account. Any more and you'll lose the small bit of bonus you get for having the balance at all. That said, the typical bump to credit score is often less than 10 points. It can be used for a temporary bump prior to seeking big credit or for bragging rights, but honestly, you're just about as well off paying everything to zero each month prior to CRA reporting.
Are you certain those two collections are on your TransUnion credit report (the one Discover pulls for that monthly score update)? I'd be truly shocked if you broke 800 on a real FICO score with two collections present. I've never seen anything close to that - not with two collections.
Because we don't like paying 70% income taxes and waiting for months on end for treatment. We like having the treatment centers that people from single-payer countries fly/drive in to pay to use when they can't wait any longer.
If I wanted to sit on a waiting list until I died from lack of care, I'd have joined the Army. *ZING!*
His loan officer told him his credit score would reflect more positively if he used only about 60% of his available credit line each month, and left 15 or 20 dollars per month in carryover balance, instead of paying off the entire balance each month.
Truth or bullshit?
Bullshit, to an extent. First, FICO only sees your balance as it's reported. When your card company reports it to the credit reporting agencies depends on the card, but it'll typically be shortly after the statement date. You can use 100% of the card's credit, then pay it off a dozen times over the course of the month but if the issuer reports $0 to the CRAs, the FICO score pulled will reflect that.
You also want to be careful about where you leave balances. Now this is one of the areas where different FICO formulas will give different results. The overall message is this: having a zero balance reported on all cards is fine. You'll have pretty much full points on the revolving credit portion of your FICO score by doing this. It's possible to squeeze a small number (typically single digits) out of your score by keeping about 9% utilization on your revolving accounts. Where it gets messy is that different scoring models treat where that balance sits in different ways, but I honestly wouldn't worry about that; just pay them off and make sure they're at $0 when the issuers report them. You can find more about this sort of thing at the MyFICO forums at http://ficoforums.myfico.com/
Keep in mind that if your son is looking for a vehicle loan, that's going to be an auto-enhanced FICO score, which you can't get your hands on until he actually applies. That won't change much from what you can pull on your own if he hasn't had car loans before. As a general rule, if he's had car loans and paid on time as agreed, his auto-enhanced FICO score will be somewhat higher than his regular FICO score. If he's had car loans and didn't pay as agreed, it can be a bit lower (possibly quite a bit lower).
Word of advice on vehicle loans: shop around and be smart about it. Did you know that if the dealership shops you around to different banks and finds one that'll finance you at 5%, they can tell you 10% and keep the difference? Know your score before you walk in the door so they can't try pulling a fast one on you. Also, don't walk in the door without financing already available. Why? Because you then have all the power and you can shop like a cash buyer. Since you have a relationship with a credit union, it's likely you've been thinking about just going through them for it. They probably even have pretty good rates (credit unions are often quite good). When you apply for some types of credit, like a credit card, the issuer will do a "hard pull" on your credit to check your score and credit history and that inquiry will cost you a few points. However, some credit types like mortgages and vehicle loans have a grace period allowing you to shop around for the price of a single inquiry. So when he's ready to buy, have him make sure his report is accurate and clean as possible (no 30 day lates or other delinquencies on any of the three reports - and yes, check all 3), then shop around with the credit union, other banks you may have a relationship with, anyone who's advertising good rates, etc.
Many places will run through a quick approval process over the phone and if approved, they'll mail you a check good for x number of days (usually anywhere from a couple weeks to a month or two) for up to y amount of money. The loan doesn't actually happen until you fill out the check and hand it to someone, so start with finding the best deal before you go to any dealership, then get that check in hand. Obviously shop around for the car as well, but once you've got it narrowed down to a few dealerships, walk in and let them know right away you have that check in hand. Negotiate like you've got a suitcase full of cash in hand because that's essentially what you have. Try and find
In 1991, the USSR's per capita income was $9,130. Germany's was $14,600. The UK's was $15,000. In the US it was $21,800. The rate of inflation was 14% in the USSR. It was 9.3% in the UK and 5.4% in the US. GNP was dropping by around 4% in the USSR at that time.
With the economy collapsing, strikes were common and people turned to the grey market and black market for even basic necessities. Bartering became common as did thievery and bribery. Paint whatever picture of paradise you like leading up to it, but understand that they ran out of other peoples' money and the whole thing ended in tears.
Not that I disagree in principle, but it seems as though home ownership is only now available in many areas to those who are either making truly ridiculous amounts of money or those who are making very good money and are willing to live house-poor. I don't know any home owners making truly ridiculous amounts of money, but I do know plenty of people who make good money, own their own homes (with a mortgage), and have almost no room in their budgets for things like going to the movies or going out to eat, let alone actually do real vacations or weekend trips. I'm talking about people with household incomes in the top 15% of the country who didn't run around buying ridiculous homes; just nice normal ones.
I guess I just don't understand how you have huge areas where you don't see anything selling at under $650,000. Hundreds of houses in neighborhood after neighborhood all across the region that sell easily at prices that maybe 3-4% of households could possibly afford. In my area, $350k+ is considered a normal price for an okay home in an okay neighborhood. Nothing fancy, not even especially nice, just okay. That excludes around 83% of households from being able to affordably buy one, yet there they go, all day long selling like hotcakes. Who the hell is buying these things?
The whole point of a "credit score" is horribly broken.
The idea isn't bad. The implementation is okay, though it can be gamed to some degree. The biggest issue most people actually have with it comes down to a serious lack of financial education. It isn't the easiest or most intuitive system; it's the one that's worked well for a long time thanks to a lot of trial and error.
In order to get approved for debt, you must have debt.
Now that's just untrue. If it were true, you'd have a chicken and egg problem with debt. The reality is that certain types of credit/debt (e.g. student loans) don't care whether you have other credit/debts or not. Some types of credit/debt (e.g. credit cards) are rate-sensitive to whether you've demonstrated - through your behavior with previous credit/debts - the likelihood that you'll stick to the terms of the new credit vehicle. Some types of credit/debt (e.g. a mortgage) are much more difficult to get at all without a demonstrated ability to manage credit/debt responsibly. That's due to the fact that different types of credit have different risk profiles. A credit card company can set a ceiling on how much the issuer can lose if you're a high or unknown risk. When it comes to a mortgage, you're talking about tying yourself to the borrower for a very long time with an asset that could tank in value anywhere during that time. Since student loans survive everything up to and including the end of the world, they're easy to get.
If you have money in the bank and no monthly debt payments you have a reduced score.
The first part is another myth. The amount of money you have in the bank means absolutely zero to a FICO score. It means something to a mortgage company, but that's it. FICO scores are completely unaffected by money in the bank. The second is somewhat true, depending on circumstances. Cracking 800 is going to be very tough without some sort of installment loan (vehicle or mortgage). That said, you can hit top-tier rate scores (740+, even 760+) without either of those. You can have credit cards you pay off every single month and hit the scores you need to secure the best available rates. No debt required. It's just tougher.
It's a SCAM! A scheme to make sure that you are constantly in debt, and yet it's perfectly legal.
Wait, what? People with the highest FICO scores typically have little to no debt, aside from perhaps a mortgage, maybe a car loan. It's rare that they'll have any serious credit card debt or other revolving accounts with any substantial balances. In fact, having substantial balances on your revolving credit accounts hurts your score. The point isn't to keep anyone in debt, it's to provide a score that tells potential lenders how likely it is that an individual they've never met before will stick to the terms of their agreement if they're granted credit.
I don't have a lot of debt so have a laughably low credit score.
If your credit score is "laughably low", it isn't because you don't have enough debt. In reality, what drives your score is 5 simple things. The largest component is payment history. Don't pay back debts? Bad history, bad score. A perfect score here is no delinquencies or bankruptcies. Any accounts listed should be "paid as agreed" or something to that effect. If you have no debts, pay your utilities and medical bills (things that report delinquencies to the credit reporting companies), and pay that car loan on time, you should have a perfect score here. The second is the balance of all your revolving accounts. No balances on credit cards? Low balances relative to total available credit? Perfect or near perfect score. That's 65% of the total score right there. More info here: http://www.myfico.com/credited... (bank balance isn't listed because it doesn't apply).
Self-assessment is the method used by the vast majority of small businesses, and they're often not even required to do even minimal work to get started. The acquiring bank will just set them up an account and start the ball rolling after Farmer Bob buys a cheap swipe terminal off eBay for the weekend Farmer's market and signs a couple papers. For those organizations that aren't self-assessing, they get to deal with the fact that QSAs often can't even agree on what some requirements mean in principle, let alone when applied to their specific circumstances. Show three different QSAs the same architecture and documentation, get three different reports. That ROC? That's good for toilet paper by the time the QSA pulls out of the parking lot. Don't believe me? Have a data breach and watch Visa roll in with auditors who won't leave until they find a reason to fail your compliance. That's just how the game is played.
All that said, people just declaring that they are PCI DSS compliant is actually exactly what happens. You tell the acquiring bank that you're PCI compliant (either via SAQ or QSA/ROC). If you've met certain levels of activity, the acquiring bank may pass along some paperwork regarding your audits to certain payment brands who require it. They then effectively state that your paperwork appears to be in order and begin processing your credit card transactions. At no point do they declare you PCI DSS compliant and they will most certainly toss your ass to the wolves the second there's a whiff of trouble. And even if they did say you were compliant at filing time, any QSA will tell you that any minor change, lapse, or mistake can completely alter the state of your compliance. From the PCI SSC website: "There are three steps for adhering to the PCI DSS – which is not a single event, but a continuous, ongoing process."
In other words, yesterday you might have been compliant, and tomorrow you might be compliant, but today (always of course the day of the breach), you're non-compliant.
No, there's no certificate, but there is a process of documentation and testing commonly referred to as "certification" before you are allowed to process credit card transactions.
This depends entirely on the organization and their acquiring bank's requirements (ultimately the acquiring bank is the only one who matters, but most reasonably organizations develop their own process to ensure they're covered as much as possible). For many small businesses, they're often times just buying a cheap terminal and swiping away. The acquiring bank isn't pressing them for details of their security measures and they're often completely clueless about any requirements they're supposed to be meeting. They aren't bringing in a QSA. Even if they were, bring in three QSAs to any decently sized organization and get three different opinions about your scope and your compliance measures. Half the fun of PCI assessments is determining what the requirements mean, how they apply in your specific instance, and where scope ends. But the point is, there's no issuing authority to say that you're PCI compliant. There's no governing body certifying anyone. The only thing that's actually there are the contractual relationships between the merchant and the acquiring bank and the contractual relationships between the acquiring bank and the payment brands.
I work in point of sale software development and have had to help retail chains overcome problems found in their certification tests. You either don't know what you're talking about, or you're playing a pointless semantic game.
It's not a pointless semantic game because it's the unspoken risk for anyone accepting credit cards. Since there is no official PCI certification and since there is no agreement between QSAs on what the requirements mean in principle (let alone in practice in a specific organization's situation), the PCI SSC gets to stick the claim up on their website that no breach has ever occurred in a PCI-compliant vendor. Best of all, each individual payment brand actually gets to decide what requirements have to be met in which situation by which type of vendor doing what type of business at what scale and via which medium. The ambiguity and the leverage the payment brands hold allows them to arbitrarily decide who is and who isn't compliant at any given moment.
So you keep on doing your documentation and your testing processes (and you should, it's good practice), but if you think for a second your customers are somehow protected from Visa, Mastercard, etc in the event of a breach, you'd best think again. It's a shell game designed to ensure that whenever things go south, the payment brands are never the ones left holding the bag.
As an organisation accredited to be following PCI-DSS
You aren't accredited to be following PCI because nobody is. There is no certificate. There is no special seal of approval. You provided security information to your acquiring bank(s) and you were allowed to process credit card transactions. There's no such thing as certification or accreditation for PCI.
we would be crucified if the PCI auditor found us holding the PAN (the long number on the front of your credit card, PAN = primary account number) in plain text. Surely the airlines/booking agents should not be passing the PAN to anyone else if they are following PCI-DSS (which is mandatory if you want to accept card payments)?
Who says they're holding the PAN in plaintext? They can decrypt it to send it to the Feds as needed without keeping it in plaintext in their systems. The Feds have no agreement with an acquiring bank, so they don't have to worry about how they store it. Nobody can do anything to them. Any agreement the airlines have with their acquiring banks undoubtedly includes plenty of cover for Federal data reporting requirements (likely a blanket "if the Feds come calling, we're just going to give them everything"). So long as the acquiring banks have signed off on it, they're in the clear. And since all these guys would like to continue doing business in the largest economy in the world, nobody's going to say no.
Assuming I found the idea of male or female genital mutilation and "straight camps" reprehensible I absolutely would feel the same way. See below.
I was hoping one of those might strike a cord, but consider if the Federal government stated you had to directly fund the murder of children up to say 5 years of age. Since many religious people believe that the life of a child begins at conception, that's what people like the founders of Hobby Lobby believe they are being told to do: directly fund the murder of children, not with the collection of taxes that go to a general fund, but rather by paying the private business that pays the private business that murders children. I would assume you would have significant objections to being forced to pay someone to murder children, but would you do it anyway simply to comply with the law? Or would you seek to be excluded from that requirement?
If I consider cockroaches holy I still don't have the right to forbid or obstruct a fumigator from doing his job.
No you don't, but I think you have to admit that a fetus/unborn child/baby/whatever-you-want-to-call-that-thing is significantly different from a cockroach, assuming you consider human life to be more important than insect lives. If you don't, that's fine, but I don't think we can have a good discussion. Assuming that you do, I actually still agree that no one has the legal right (though I would consider moral right a tougher call) to prevent someone from having a legal abortion or to prevent a doctor who performs abortions from doing his job. However, that isn't what's being discussed here. What we're talking about is the founders of Hobby Lobby, whose religious beliefs consider abortion to be murder, being forced by their government to directly fund that practice. In essence, from the perspective of their religion, they're being forced to directly fund the murder of children. Regardless of what you or I or any of the justices of the Supreme Court believe, it's what the founders of Hobby Lobby believe and they would almost certainly have to conclude that compliance with that law would damn their immortal souls to Hell for all eternity. I think that makes it rather difficult to defend for a nation that purports to respect religious beliefs.
There are many actions I disagree with committed in my name (and with my tax money) by the federal, state and local governments in whose jurisdiction I happen to reside. The fact I don't like how my resources are being utilized does not give me the right to refuse to pay taxes, permission to disrupt law enforcement activities or anything similar.
Your tax dollars go into a general fund. From that fund, activities you disapprove of are funded. Yet that's a far cry from them forcing you to pay for those activities directly. For instance, if you believe that all wars are evil and that fighting them and killing in them is murder (the truly convicted total pacifist), you may not like that the US government buys bombs and missiles with monies collected through taxes, but they aren't telling you that you have to write a check to Lockheed for an order of 5,000lb JDAMs so they can be dropped on someone's house. In other words, there's at least some difference between being forced to pay into a fund of fungible funds which is sometimes used for things you dislike and being forced to cut a check to pay for something that directly contradicts your firmly held beliefs.
In both cases there is a law in place. In my case I have to comply or face the consequences. In HL's case, they apparently do not have to comply with some of the law because they don't like it?
There are plenty of cases where you don't have to comply with the law. For instance, it's against the law to kill another human being. However, if that human being is trying to seriously harm you and you have no other choice to avoid that serious harm, you're exempted from the consequences of violating t
What an interesting perspective. Pray tell, once the baby is born, but still attached via the umbilical cord, is it still a parasite you can destroy at will? I don't actually care one way or another about abortion, but I do care about consistency. From a medical standpoint, there are some specific events such as fertilization, implantation, birth, etc which could be used as a basis for drawing the line between a non-human thing (which one might describe - as you did - as a "parasite") and a human being. Thus far, the only group that seems to define that line at a medically objective point are the religious crowd (who use fertilization as their starting point). Again, consistency.
Because the people who founded this country came here seeking relief from religious oppression. Thus, when they created their own government (the one we have today), they ensured that the highest law of the land specifically restrained the government from doing to future generations what the Crown had done to them. If you don't think religious beliefs deserve special consideration, feel free to propose an amendment to the US Constitution stating so.
Could a non-religious person decide they "believed" in not providing certain healthcare to their employees and just let the government pick up the bill instead?
That would be a more challenging case to prove. The benefit of belonging to a popular religious group is that the tenants are widely known. As such, one must only then demonstrate that one actually belongs to that group (and even so, only minimally; stating as much without evidence to the contrary would typically be enough) to gain protection from government policy, law, or action which would violate that group's religious beliefs. In the Hobby Lobby case, there were 4 specific methods of birth control out of 20 which the owners maintained violated their core beliefs. In essence, they viewed those 4 specific methods as murder, but raised no objection to the other 16. The SCOTUS found those beliefs to be sincere and reasonable, and found that there was no interest at stake compelling enough to override the protections afforded to the owners of Hobby Lobby by the US Constitution. This was found in no small part due to the multitude of other options available for those seeking to attain the goals of the underlying legislation.
It's actually a pretty mundane case and shouldn't get people this riled up, but it does because the ACA and the President are attached to it. If this case involved any other law but the President's signature legislation, nobody but SCOTUS buffs would have heard a word about it.
This is getting a bit muddled, so I'd like to list a couple points of fact:
- HL is required to provide healthcare to their employees. The legislation has been enacted, it's a done deal.
- This birth control is part of that healthcare.
Nobody is telling the owners of HL not to use birth control. They have the right to make that choice for themselves.
We are talking about weather HL has the right to selectively refuse to provide this federally mandated medical care coverage to their employees because they (HL) don't like/agree/approve of it.
I tend to wonder if you'd feel the same way if you owned a business and the Federal government passed a law stating you had to pay for female genital mutilation procedures for young girls and "straight camps" for gays.
Not advocating a side, just seeking consistency. Out of 20 different birth control methods, the SCOTUS ruling continues to require HL and others like them to provide coverage for 16. There were 4 specific methods which the owners found to be abhorrent to their religious convictions. In essence, they consider those 4 specific methods to be murder. The other 16 are covered without objection and if the employees just have to use those four specific methods, there's nothing in the SCOTUS ruling stating that they can't; they'll just have to bankroll them on their own.
This doesn't strike me as a case where the concept of birth control or 'reproductive health' as a whole are under attack. Rather, this seems to be a legitimate situation wherein reasonable religious conviction clashed with law passed by Congress. The impact is quite limited and thus, the SCOTUS correctly provided reasonable latitude to the religious beliefs over the law.
People on the right are blowing this case way out of proportion because they see it as a victory against the ACA. People on the left are blowing this case way out of proportion because they either don't understand what actually happened or they're convinced it's a victory against the ACA. The reality is that it isn't any such thing; rather it's a fairly mundane case which wouldn't make it to page 4 below the fold if it weren't tied to the ACA and the President. In other words, relax, it's really no big deal.
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This really seems like an over-hyped, massively expensive technical solution to a problem that could easily be fixed with some volunteer organizations providing guides on an as-needed basis. Here's a thought: require all public high school students to provide X number of hours (start with 200) of public service as a requirement for graduation. Do something similar with college students receiving Federal student aid. Oh look, suddenly volunteers everywhere! And these volunteers can actually adapt to the needs of individuals and don't cost a fortune to implement, update, and maintain!
In light of this understanding, it does make me wonder why your country doesn't have a National Health Service favoured by many civilized countries.
My guess is because we don't like paying vastly higher taxes, waiting in seemingly endless (up to two years for an operation during certain periods) lines for care (well, unless you're rich of course, in which case you don't bother with the public system in countries like the UK or Canada), being denied newer and better treatments because a committee decided against it (here coverage is determined by the insurance company and you can choose your insurance provider and plan based on your specific needs, such as necessary coverage for specific medications), facing a "post code lottery" where your quality of care depends on what side of an imaginary line you live on, higher heart disease mortality (36% higher in the UK over the US, which is bad considering how much we abuse our hearts over here), not being able to find a doctor or dentist at all (70% of dentists in Quebec opt out of the public system), and on and on and on.
The system we have is imperfect, but it has clear benefits over the ones in Canada and the UK. I've never waited more than a week to have anything treated and I almost always get treatment the same day or the next day for any issue I have. Of the two operations I've had, one was scheduled on my schedule - I picked the date and time to fit well with my work schedule about a week after it was determined to be necessary - and the other was on an emergency basis where my doctor met me at the hospital and had me on the operating table within about 30 minutes. Any testing I need can be done same-day. A quick glance at my doctor's availability (that office has a mobile app for scheduling appointments) shows I could have a 15 or 30 minute appointment with her tomorrow or up to 45 minutes the day after.
I'm not rich; I work for a living. Yet I don't wait for anything. I don't wait to be seen by a doctor. I don't wait to get any testing I need. I don't wait to get any procedures I need. I don't wait for medications. It all happens on my schedule and as quickly as I'd like it. I pay $15 to see the doctor and $50 if I end up in the hospital for something serious. Anything paid out of pocket gets taken care of with untaxed money, meaning it's at a huge discount to me. And it isn't just me (nor is it just about me); everyone I know who has a job has great healthcare coverage. Is it a perfect system? No. Does every single person have perfect access to outstanding care? No. But we're improving all the time and it isn't (at least as of yet) coming at everyone else's expense.
To me, it's an argument of most people getting great care versus everyone getting mediocre to poor care (see also: the VA medical system). Quite similar to the classic market system argument of capitalism versus socialism. You can either give everyone the chance to get rich (with some ending up poor and most somewhere in the middle) or ensure everyone is equally poor. If the people in the UK, Canada, France, etc are happy with their system, great! I don't begrudge their happiness. However, I don't think the benefits of moving to such systems outweigh the drawbacks in the minds of most Americans. Rather than pretend either system is perfect, I think it best to recognize that each has its pros and cons and that the priorities and sensibilities of the people in a given country drive their decisions on how to achieve the greatest good.
So when an artist creates something they can be copied by any big business that wants to. The individual has no recourse because the large company will just bury them in lawyers. So in effect you are saying that anyone who does not have the resources to defend their copyrights have no copyrights.
I'm saying that civil suits are the appropriate response to copyright infringement. If big companies can bury individuals with armies of lawyers such that nobody can defend themselves and their rights in court against big companies, then that's an issue with the court system; not anything specific to copyright law. If the court system is not doing its job and is effectively a place where whoever has the most money wins, that should be corrected. The process should not simply be replaced by SWAT teams.
Let's assume the same thing happens in custody cases: that whoever has the most money always wins. Is the appropriate response to then simply have government agents arbitrarily decide who should have the kid(s) and send armed agents crashing through the doors and windows of the home of the one who didn't get picked? We should have fair courts where righteousness trumps legal trickery. If we don't, that's the problem we should solve.
Theft: the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
Copyright infringement: the use of works protected by copyright law without permission, infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works.
A copyright owner has the right to control how their protected works are reproduced and distributed. When that right is violated, a civil suit is an appropriate response. When someone steals your car, a criminal investigation by government authorities is an appropriate response. In this case, theft of the movie would entail someone (or a group of someones) taking the only available copies from their rightful owner such that the original owner no longer had access.
It may not seem like an important distinction from where you're sitting, but it's important in that we shouldn't have SWAT teams busting down teenagers' doors because they shared a movie on the Internet.
Theft of intellectual property should be a criminal matter.
Copyright infringement should be a civil matter. Since This article is talking about a movie being copied and shared (copyright infringement), it should be strictly a civil matter. Of course, the government being the enforcement wing of large companies, the full weight and force of the Federal government will extend its infinite reach across the globe to annihilate anyone who so much as thinks about infringing on the absolute rights of the government's benevolent benefactors.
Sounds like your IT has been outsourced to India, who as a culture, literally does not know how to say "no".
It takes two to fail to communicate. You should not be asking questions that require a direct "yes or no" answer. In many cultures, that is considered rude.
So they lie because their culture tells them to and it's my fault for not identifying that they're lying and taking careful steps to help them not lie?
Sorry, but that's absurd. If one's culture does not allow one to perform one's job correctly, one needs to either find a new culture or find a new job.
I don't pay interest on my credit cards and they pay me cash back. I use the reward points and cash back for free vacations. I financed my last car at below the rate of inflation. Adjusted for inflation, the bank paid *me* for the privilege of buying me a car.
It isn't a scam; it's a game. And rule number 1 is understand basic mathematics.
I pay for everything cash, so I have a low credit score.
How the fuck does that work?
Your credit score is the calculated chances that you'll stick to the terms if credit is offered. It's based on past performance and present (credit-based) circumstances. If you have no history, they can't score you. That's how the fuck that works.
I paid for my car cash, I pay my rent cash, I pay the cable company cash.
I have over $30k in the bank and I have monthly paychecks.
None of this hits your credit report, so it can't be used to score you. Money in the bank isn't reported and isn't scored. Paychecks and income aren't reported and aren't scored.
So I should have a much higher credit rating than someone who is constantly paying with credit cards in my opinion.
I wouldn't even mind so much, except that when renting a house they do a background check, and they expect to find a credit history, which I don't have.
Someone who is paying with credit cards and is keeping those accounts paid as agreed has a demonstrated history of responsibly managing their credit. You don't have that. That's why they score higher. You seem to want a credit score that's based on some personal knowledge of you, or your handshake, or a magic 8 ball or something. But that isn't how it works because we no longer live in villages of 20 families. Various items related to how you've handled credit/debt are reported to credit reporting agencies. Other companies (okay, pretty much just FICO) have developed various scoring models that take the information reported to the CRAs and turn that information into a single, simple number which represents the chances that you'll stick to the terms of credit is offered. Since they don't have any information about you, you don't get scored.
I pay for everything with credit cards, pay them off every month so there's no interest, and then I take free vacations with the reward points and cash back money. I have a long credit history showing that whenever someone provides me credit, I manage it responsibly and pay them on time as agreed. If someone is thinking about offering me credit, they can look at that long history (or just the number) and see that I'm a pretty safe bet. They can look at someone else who has a long history of failing to pay back everyone who lends them a dime and see that person is a huge risk. They look at you and they see a mystery box. What exactly would you expect to happen?
No need to look up how FICO works, no one actually uses FICO when considering you.
Except for credit cards, car loans, mortgages; just about anything that requires credit. But yeah, except for those things, nobody actually uses FICO.
There are many many systems to calculate a credit score and if you go apply for a loan/credit card/anything that gives you a score from 5 different places the same day you'll get 5 different credit scores and the difference has nothing to do with recent credit inquiries.
Just wrong time and time again. First of all, there aren't 5 different places. There are 3: Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Secondly, there are multiple types of FICO scores and the lender chooses which type to use. Auto-enhanced FICO scores weigh vehicle loans differently, but are otherwise very similar to the consumer FICO score you can pull. Most differences between scores from different CRAs are due to differences in the credit reports themselves. Often times, accounts (in good standing or otherwise) aren't reported to all three CRAs, which means you'll have different histories and different scores with them. And yes, there are other proprietary models available, but they're hardly ever used (as in 10% of the time).
When it comes to applying for credit, FICO is still the kind of the castle precisely because it does adapt and broadly predict consumer behavior, allowing lenders to appropriately price risk.
First off, 60% credit utilization is too high. I haven't looked up the numbers recently, but there are people out there who game the system and have figured out near optimal values.
Depends on the scoring model and your personal 'bucket', but the optimal is typically 9% total utilization for revolving accounts. Keep in mind that certain scoring models (TU98 comes to mind) want that all on one revolving account. Any more and you'll lose the small bit of bonus you get for having the balance at all. That said, the typical bump to credit score is often less than 10 points. It can be used for a temporary bump prior to seeking big credit or for bragging rights, but honestly, you're just about as well off paying everything to zero each month prior to CRA reporting.
Are you certain those two collections are on your TransUnion credit report (the one Discover pulls for that monthly score update)? I'd be truly shocked if you broke 800 on a real FICO score with two collections present. I've never seen anything close to that - not with two collections.
Because we don't like paying 70% income taxes and waiting for months on end for treatment. We like having the treatment centers that people from single-payer countries fly/drive in to pay to use when they can't wait any longer.
If I wanted to sit on a waiting list until I died from lack of care, I'd have joined the Army. *ZING!*
His loan officer told him his credit score would reflect more positively if he used only about 60% of his available credit line each month, and left 15 or 20 dollars per month in carryover balance, instead of paying off the entire balance each month.
Truth or bullshit?
Bullshit, to an extent. First, FICO only sees your balance as it's reported. When your card company reports it to the credit reporting agencies depends on the card, but it'll typically be shortly after the statement date. You can use 100% of the card's credit, then pay it off a dozen times over the course of the month but if the issuer reports $0 to the CRAs, the FICO score pulled will reflect that.
You also want to be careful about where you leave balances. Now this is one of the areas where different FICO formulas will give different results. The overall message is this: having a zero balance reported on all cards is fine. You'll have pretty much full points on the revolving credit portion of your FICO score by doing this. It's possible to squeeze a small number (typically single digits) out of your score by keeping about 9% utilization on your revolving accounts. Where it gets messy is that different scoring models treat where that balance sits in different ways, but I honestly wouldn't worry about that; just pay them off and make sure they're at $0 when the issuers report them. You can find more about this sort of thing at the MyFICO forums at http://ficoforums.myfico.com/
Keep in mind that if your son is looking for a vehicle loan, that's going to be an auto-enhanced FICO score, which you can't get your hands on until he actually applies. That won't change much from what you can pull on your own if he hasn't had car loans before. As a general rule, if he's had car loans and paid on time as agreed, his auto-enhanced FICO score will be somewhat higher than his regular FICO score. If he's had car loans and didn't pay as agreed, it can be a bit lower (possibly quite a bit lower).
Word of advice on vehicle loans: shop around and be smart about it. Did you know that if the dealership shops you around to different banks and finds one that'll finance you at 5%, they can tell you 10% and keep the difference? Know your score before you walk in the door so they can't try pulling a fast one on you. Also, don't walk in the door without financing already available. Why? Because you then have all the power and you can shop like a cash buyer. Since you have a relationship with a credit union, it's likely you've been thinking about just going through them for it. They probably even have pretty good rates (credit unions are often quite good). When you apply for some types of credit, like a credit card, the issuer will do a "hard pull" on your credit to check your score and credit history and that inquiry will cost you a few points. However, some credit types like mortgages and vehicle loans have a grace period allowing you to shop around for the price of a single inquiry. So when he's ready to buy, have him make sure his report is accurate and clean as possible (no 30 day lates or other delinquencies on any of the three reports - and yes, check all 3), then shop around with the credit union, other banks you may have a relationship with, anyone who's advertising good rates, etc.
Many places will run through a quick approval process over the phone and if approved, they'll mail you a check good for x number of days (usually anywhere from a couple weeks to a month or two) for up to y amount of money. The loan doesn't actually happen until you fill out the check and hand it to someone, so start with finding the best deal before you go to any dealership, then get that check in hand. Obviously shop around for the car as well, but once you've got it narrowed down to a few dealerships, walk in and let them know right away you have that check in hand. Negotiate like you've got a suitcase full of cash in hand because that's essentially what you have. Try and find
In 1991, the USSR's per capita income was $9,130. Germany's was $14,600. The UK's was $15,000. In the US it was $21,800. The rate of inflation was 14% in the USSR. It was 9.3% in the UK and 5.4% in the US. GNP was dropping by around 4% in the USSR at that time.
With the economy collapsing, strikes were common and people turned to the grey market and black market for even basic necessities. Bartering became common as did thievery and bribery. Paint whatever picture of paradise you like leading up to it, but understand that they ran out of other peoples' money and the whole thing ended in tears.
Not that I disagree in principle, but it seems as though home ownership is only now available in many areas to those who are either making truly ridiculous amounts of money or those who are making very good money and are willing to live house-poor. I don't know any home owners making truly ridiculous amounts of money, but I do know plenty of people who make good money, own their own homes (with a mortgage), and have almost no room in their budgets for things like going to the movies or going out to eat, let alone actually do real vacations or weekend trips. I'm talking about people with household incomes in the top 15% of the country who didn't run around buying ridiculous homes; just nice normal ones.
I guess I just don't understand how you have huge areas where you don't see anything selling at under $650,000. Hundreds of houses in neighborhood after neighborhood all across the region that sell easily at prices that maybe 3-4% of households could possibly afford. In my area, $350k+ is considered a normal price for an okay home in an okay neighborhood. Nothing fancy, not even especially nice, just okay. That excludes around 83% of households from being able to affordably buy one, yet there they go, all day long selling like hotcakes. Who the hell is buying these things?
And bread was free too, just had a small line to stand in: http://www.geardiary.com/wp-co...
The whole point of a "credit score" is horribly broken.
The idea isn't bad. The implementation is okay, though it can be gamed to some degree. The biggest issue most people actually have with it comes down to a serious lack of financial education. It isn't the easiest or most intuitive system; it's the one that's worked well for a long time thanks to a lot of trial and error.
In order to get approved for debt, you must have debt.
Now that's just untrue. If it were true, you'd have a chicken and egg problem with debt. The reality is that certain types of credit/debt (e.g. student loans) don't care whether you have other credit/debts or not. Some types of credit/debt (e.g. credit cards) are rate-sensitive to whether you've demonstrated - through your behavior with previous credit/debts - the likelihood that you'll stick to the terms of the new credit vehicle. Some types of credit/debt (e.g. a mortgage) are much more difficult to get at all without a demonstrated ability to manage credit/debt responsibly. That's due to the fact that different types of credit have different risk profiles. A credit card company can set a ceiling on how much the issuer can lose if you're a high or unknown risk. When it comes to a mortgage, you're talking about tying yourself to the borrower for a very long time with an asset that could tank in value anywhere during that time. Since student loans survive everything up to and including the end of the world, they're easy to get.
If you have money in the bank and no monthly debt payments you have a reduced score.
The first part is another myth. The amount of money you have in the bank means absolutely zero to a FICO score. It means something to a mortgage company, but that's it. FICO scores are completely unaffected by money in the bank. The second is somewhat true, depending on circumstances. Cracking 800 is going to be very tough without some sort of installment loan (vehicle or mortgage). That said, you can hit top-tier rate scores (740+, even 760+) without either of those. You can have credit cards you pay off every single month and hit the scores you need to secure the best available rates. No debt required. It's just tougher.
It's a SCAM! A scheme to make sure that you are constantly in debt, and yet it's perfectly legal.
Wait, what? People with the highest FICO scores typically have little to no debt, aside from perhaps a mortgage, maybe a car loan. It's rare that they'll have any serious credit card debt or other revolving accounts with any substantial balances. In fact, having substantial balances on your revolving credit accounts hurts your score. The point isn't to keep anyone in debt, it's to provide a score that tells potential lenders how likely it is that an individual they've never met before will stick to the terms of their agreement if they're granted credit.
I don't have a lot of debt so have a laughably low credit score.
If your credit score is "laughably low", it isn't because you don't have enough debt. In reality, what drives your score is 5 simple things. The largest component is payment history. Don't pay back debts? Bad history, bad score. A perfect score here is no delinquencies or bankruptcies. Any accounts listed should be "paid as agreed" or something to that effect. If you have no debts, pay your utilities and medical bills (things that report delinquencies to the credit reporting companies), and pay that car loan on time, you should have a perfect score here. The second is the balance of all your revolving accounts. No balances on credit cards? Low balances relative to total available credit? Perfect or near perfect score. That's 65% of the total score right there. More info here: http://www.myfico.com/credited... (bank balance isn't listed because it doesn't apply).
Self-assessment is the method used by the vast majority of small businesses, and they're often not even required to do even minimal work to get started. The acquiring bank will just set them up an account and start the ball rolling after Farmer Bob buys a cheap swipe terminal off eBay for the weekend Farmer's market and signs a couple papers. For those organizations that aren't self-assessing, they get to deal with the fact that QSAs often can't even agree on what some requirements mean in principle, let alone when applied to their specific circumstances. Show three different QSAs the same architecture and documentation, get three different reports. That ROC? That's good for toilet paper by the time the QSA pulls out of the parking lot. Don't believe me? Have a data breach and watch Visa roll in with auditors who won't leave until they find a reason to fail your compliance. That's just how the game is played.
All that said, people just declaring that they are PCI DSS compliant is actually exactly what happens. You tell the acquiring bank that you're PCI compliant (either via SAQ or QSA/ROC). If you've met certain levels of activity, the acquiring bank may pass along some paperwork regarding your audits to certain payment brands who require it. They then effectively state that your paperwork appears to be in order and begin processing your credit card transactions. At no point do they declare you PCI DSS compliant and they will most certainly toss your ass to the wolves the second there's a whiff of trouble. And even if they did say you were compliant at filing time, any QSA will tell you that any minor change, lapse, or mistake can completely alter the state of your compliance. From the PCI SSC website: "There are three steps for adhering to the PCI DSS – which is not a single event, but a continuous, ongoing process."
In other words, yesterday you might have been compliant, and tomorrow you might be compliant, but today (always of course the day of the breach), you're non-compliant.
No, there's no certificate, but there is a process of documentation and testing commonly referred to as "certification" before you are allowed to process credit card transactions.
This depends entirely on the organization and their acquiring bank's requirements (ultimately the acquiring bank is the only one who matters, but most reasonably organizations develop their own process to ensure they're covered as much as possible). For many small businesses, they're often times just buying a cheap terminal and swiping away. The acquiring bank isn't pressing them for details of their security measures and they're often completely clueless about any requirements they're supposed to be meeting. They aren't bringing in a QSA. Even if they were, bring in three QSAs to any decently sized organization and get three different opinions about your scope and your compliance measures. Half the fun of PCI assessments is determining what the requirements mean, how they apply in your specific instance, and where scope ends. But the point is, there's no issuing authority to say that you're PCI compliant. There's no governing body certifying anyone. The only thing that's actually there are the contractual relationships between the merchant and the acquiring bank and the contractual relationships between the acquiring bank and the payment brands.
I work in point of sale software development and have had to help retail chains overcome problems found in their certification tests. You either don't know what you're talking about, or you're playing a pointless semantic game.
It's not a pointless semantic game because it's the unspoken risk for anyone accepting credit cards. Since there is no official PCI certification and since there is no agreement between QSAs on what the requirements mean in principle (let alone in practice in a specific organization's situation), the PCI SSC gets to stick the claim up on their website that no breach has ever occurred in a PCI-compliant vendor. Best of all, each individual payment brand actually gets to decide what requirements have to be met in which situation by which type of vendor doing what type of business at what scale and via which medium. The ambiguity and the leverage the payment brands hold allows them to arbitrarily decide who is and who isn't compliant at any given moment.
So you keep on doing your documentation and your testing processes (and you should, it's good practice), but if you think for a second your customers are somehow protected from Visa, Mastercard, etc in the event of a breach, you'd best think again. It's a shell game designed to ensure that whenever things go south, the payment brands are never the ones left holding the bag.
As an organisation accredited to be following PCI-DSS
You aren't accredited to be following PCI because nobody is. There is no certificate. There is no special seal of approval. You provided security information to your acquiring bank(s) and you were allowed to process credit card transactions. There's no such thing as certification or accreditation for PCI.
we would be crucified if the PCI auditor found us holding the PAN (the long number on the front of your credit card, PAN = primary account number) in plain text. Surely the airlines/booking agents should not be passing the PAN to anyone else if they are following PCI-DSS (which is mandatory if you want to accept card payments)?
Who says they're holding the PAN in plaintext? They can decrypt it to send it to the Feds as needed without keeping it in plaintext in their systems. The Feds have no agreement with an acquiring bank, so they don't have to worry about how they store it. Nobody can do anything to them. Any agreement the airlines have with their acquiring banks undoubtedly includes plenty of cover for Federal data reporting requirements (likely a blanket "if the Feds come calling, we're just going to give them everything"). So long as the acquiring banks have signed off on it, they're in the clear. And since all these guys would like to continue doing business in the largest economy in the world, nobody's going to say no.
It's Texas, they broke ground three weeks ago.
FAA? Never heard of 'em.
Assuming I found the idea of male or female genital mutilation and "straight camps" reprehensible I absolutely would feel the same way. See below.
I was hoping one of those might strike a cord, but consider if the Federal government stated you had to directly fund the murder of children up to say 5 years of age. Since many religious people believe that the life of a child begins at conception, that's what people like the founders of Hobby Lobby believe they are being told to do: directly fund the murder of children, not with the collection of taxes that go to a general fund, but rather by paying the private business that pays the private business that murders children. I would assume you would have significant objections to being forced to pay someone to murder children, but would you do it anyway simply to comply with the law? Or would you seek to be excluded from that requirement?
If I consider cockroaches holy I still don't have the right to forbid or obstruct a fumigator from doing his job.
No you don't, but I think you have to admit that a fetus/unborn child/baby/whatever-you-want-to-call-that-thing is significantly different from a cockroach, assuming you consider human life to be more important than insect lives. If you don't, that's fine, but I don't think we can have a good discussion. Assuming that you do, I actually still agree that no one has the legal right (though I would consider moral right a tougher call) to prevent someone from having a legal abortion or to prevent a doctor who performs abortions from doing his job. However, that isn't what's being discussed here. What we're talking about is the founders of Hobby Lobby, whose religious beliefs consider abortion to be murder, being forced by their government to directly fund that practice. In essence, from the perspective of their religion, they're being forced to directly fund the murder of children. Regardless of what you or I or any of the justices of the Supreme Court believe, it's what the founders of Hobby Lobby believe and they would almost certainly have to conclude that compliance with that law would damn their immortal souls to Hell for all eternity. I think that makes it rather difficult to defend for a nation that purports to respect religious beliefs.
There are many actions I disagree with committed in my name (and with my tax money) by the federal, state and local governments in whose jurisdiction I happen to reside. The fact I don't like how my resources are being utilized does not give me the right to refuse to pay taxes, permission to disrupt law enforcement activities or anything similar.
Your tax dollars go into a general fund. From that fund, activities you disapprove of are funded. Yet that's a far cry from them forcing you to pay for those activities directly. For instance, if you believe that all wars are evil and that fighting them and killing in them is murder (the truly convicted total pacifist), you may not like that the US government buys bombs and missiles with monies collected through taxes, but they aren't telling you that you have to write a check to Lockheed for an order of 5,000lb JDAMs so they can be dropped on someone's house. In other words, there's at least some difference between being forced to pay into a fund of fungible funds which is sometimes used for things you dislike and being forced to cut a check to pay for something that directly contradicts your firmly held beliefs.
In both cases there is a law in place. In my case I have to comply or face the consequences. In HL's case, they apparently do not have to comply with some of the law because they don't like it?
There are plenty of cases where you don't have to comply with the law. For instance, it's against the law to kill another human being. However, if that human being is trying to seriously harm you and you have no other choice to avoid that serious harm, you're exempted from the consequences of violating t
What an interesting perspective. Pray tell, once the baby is born, but still attached via the umbilical cord, is it still a parasite you can destroy at will? I don't actually care one way or another about abortion, but I do care about consistency. From a medical standpoint, there are some specific events such as fertilization, implantation, birth, etc which could be used as a basis for drawing the line between a non-human thing (which one might describe - as you did - as a "parasite") and a human being. Thus far, the only group that seems to define that line at a medically objective point are the religious crowd (who use fertilization as their starting point). Again, consistency.
Why are certain beliefs privileged?
Because the people who founded this country came here seeking relief from religious oppression. Thus, when they created their own government (the one we have today), they ensured that the highest law of the land specifically restrained the government from doing to future generations what the Crown had done to them. If you don't think religious beliefs deserve special consideration, feel free to propose an amendment to the US Constitution stating so.
Could a non-religious person decide they "believed" in not providing certain healthcare to their employees and just let the government pick up the bill instead?
That would be a more challenging case to prove. The benefit of belonging to a popular religious group is that the tenants are widely known. As such, one must only then demonstrate that one actually belongs to that group (and even so, only minimally; stating as much without evidence to the contrary would typically be enough) to gain protection from government policy, law, or action which would violate that group's religious beliefs. In the Hobby Lobby case, there were 4 specific methods of birth control out of 20 which the owners maintained violated their core beliefs. In essence, they viewed those 4 specific methods as murder, but raised no objection to the other 16. The SCOTUS found those beliefs to be sincere and reasonable, and found that there was no interest at stake compelling enough to override the protections afforded to the owners of Hobby Lobby by the US Constitution. This was found in no small part due to the multitude of other options available for those seeking to attain the goals of the underlying legislation.
It's actually a pretty mundane case and shouldn't get people this riled up, but it does because the ACA and the President are attached to it. If this case involved any other law but the President's signature legislation, nobody but SCOTUS buffs would have heard a word about it.
This is getting a bit muddled, so I'd like to list a couple points of fact:
- HL is required to provide healthcare to their employees. The legislation has been enacted, it's a done deal.
- This birth control is part of that healthcare.
Nobody is telling the owners of HL not to use birth control. They have the right to make that choice for themselves.
We are talking about weather HL has the right to selectively refuse to provide this federally mandated medical care coverage to their employees because they (HL) don't like/agree/approve of it.
I tend to wonder if you'd feel the same way if you owned a business and the Federal government passed a law stating you had to pay for female genital mutilation procedures for young girls and "straight camps" for gays.
Not advocating a side, just seeking consistency. Out of 20 different birth control methods, the SCOTUS ruling continues to require HL and others like them to provide coverage for 16. There were 4 specific methods which the owners found to be abhorrent to their religious convictions. In essence, they consider those 4 specific methods to be murder. The other 16 are covered without objection and if the employees just have to use those four specific methods, there's nothing in the SCOTUS ruling stating that they can't; they'll just have to bankroll them on their own.
This doesn't strike me as a case where the concept of birth control or 'reproductive health' as a whole are under attack. Rather, this seems to be a legitimate situation wherein reasonable religious conviction clashed with law passed by Congress. The impact is quite limited and thus, the SCOTUS correctly provided reasonable latitude to the religious beliefs over the law.
People on the right are blowing this case way out of proportion because they see it as a victory against the ACA. People on the left are blowing this case way out of proportion because they either don't understand what actually happened or they're convinced it's a victory against the ACA. The reality is that it isn't any such thing; rather it's a fairly mundane case which wouldn't make it to page 4 below the fold if it weren't tied to the ACA and the President. In other words, relax, it's really no big deal.