Do Corporations Have the Right to Inflict Religious Views on Employees?

Posted: July 28, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable Care Act, Affordable Care Act (ACA), religious extremists, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights | 16 Comments

Here we go again with the christoban and their desire to force us all to conform with their narrow interpretations of human life.  Will a court grant a nonreligious corporation the right to inflict its religious views on its employees based on the owner’s “freedom of religion”? 

The U.S. District Court for Colorado on Friday blocked the Obama administration from requiring an air-conditioning company in Colorado to provide no co-pay contraceptives to its employees, as the Affordable Care Act directs.

It was, as Sam Baker points out, the first time a federal court has ruled against that provision of the health-care law.

It’s not yet, however, exactly a victory for the contraceptive mandate’s opponents: The injunction is specific to that one company, and it holds only until the judge can reach a verdict on the case’s merits. Still, it could mark the start of a long period of litigation involving one of the health-care law’s most polarizing provisions.

Hercules v. Sebelius is a case brought by Hercules Industries, a Colorado-based air-conditioning company. The four siblings who own the business say they oppose contraceptives — such medications are not included in their current health coverage plan — and “seek to run Hercules in a manner that reflects their sincerely-held religious beliefs.”

The health-care law’s required coverage of contraceptives without co-pay is slated to come into effect next week, on Aug. 1. Religious institutions that primarily serve individuals of their own faith got a one-year reprieve. Hercules, as an air-conditioning company, did not fall into that category.

Hercules is challenging the birth control mandate as a First Amendment violation, inhibiting its ability to practice religion freely. The company also argues that the mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, a law from the 1990s that is meant to afford greater legal protection to religious institutions from federal requirements that “substantially burden” their ability to practice religion.

Obviously, an A/C company is not a church or church-affiliated corporation so it can’t get access to the run-around that the Obama administration set up for catholic-based colleges as an example. But what can of worms would this open?  Does providing birth control for a few employees or their wives put a “substantial burden'”on the religious practice of the owners? Also, what other kinds of heinous practices would get protection should this argument pass muster with the courts?  Firing an GLBT employee  or a woman who doesn’t believe in submitting herself to a husband?  How about a Jewish person that doesn’t want to go along with a christmas party?

The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the ruling.

“This is not religious freedom, this is discrimination,” said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, policy counsel for the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Real religious liberty gives everyone the right to make their own decisions about their own health, including whether and when to use birth control. It doesn’t give anyone the right to impose their beliefs on others.”

I’m sure these people would be screaming bloody murder to the courts if they were forced to recognize the beliefs and practices of other religions.  Suppose I decided I could fire an employee based on them say, eating animal flesh or using an exterminator because it goes against the Buddhist belief of non-harming?  My guess is that they scream about being placed under some form of Buddhist Shari’a.

 

Saturday Reads: Mitt the Twit, The Churchill Bust, And Much More

Posted: July 28, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Corporate Crime, Diplomacy Nightmares, Mitt Romney, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

President Barack Obama shows Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom a bust of Sir Winston Churchill in the private residence of the White House, July 20, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Good Morning!

Mitt Romney’s gaffetastic journey began before he even arrived in London when the Telegraph published this now-infamous article based on interviews with some Romney “advisers” who indicated that Mitt would Mitt would “restore ‘Anglo-Saxon’ relations between Britain and America.” The advisers also said that Romney would

seek to reinstate the Churchill bust displayed in the Oval Office by George W. Bush but returned to British diplomats by Mr Obama when he took office in 2009. One said Mr Romney viewed the move as “symbolically important” while the other said it was “just for starters”, adding: “He is naturally more Atlanticist”.

Romney claims he “does not know who these advisers are,” but he apparently agrees with them about the Churchill bust because last night

he told a group of more than 200 supporters in [a] hotel in the heart of London…[that] he is “looking forward” to returning the bust of Winston Churchill to the White House after it was sent back to Great Britain by President Obama.

Mitt the Twit told these supporters [actually wealthy banksters involved in the LIBOR scandal] that he was deeply impressed by the statue of Churchill in London.

The GOP candidate, who suffered a brutal day of press after he suggested that he wasn’t sure the London Olympics would go off without a hitch, spoke highly of the British monuments — singling out the Churchill statue — that he said he got a firsthand look at while stuck in traffic — likely caused by the Olympic Games.

“You live here, you see the sites day in and day out, but for me as I drive past the sculpture of Winston Churchill and see that great sculpture next to Westminster Abbey and Parliament and with him larger than life, enormous heft of that sculpture suggesting the scale of the the grandeur and the greatness of the man, it tugs at the heart strings to remember the kind fo [sic] example that was led by Winston Churchill,” said Romney, speaking in a ballroom at the Mandarin Oriental hotel on the edge of Hyde Park.

Boy, he really laid it on thick, didn’t he? But Mitt the Twit was misinformed, as were the “advisers” that he says he doesn’t know. It turns out that the Churchill bust never left the White House! The White House put up a “fact check” post to clear up the misinformation, although they studiously avoided mentioning Romney.

Lately, there’s been a rumor swirling around about the current location of the bust of Winston Churchill. Some have claimed that President Obama removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office and sent it back to the British Embassy.

Now, normally we wouldn’t address a rumor that’s so patently false, but just this morning the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer repeated this ridiculous claim in his column. He said President Obama “started his Presidency by returning to the British Embassy the bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office.”

This is 100% false. The bust still in the White House. In the Residence. Outside the Treaty Room.

So where did that story about a bust being removed from the Oval Office come from?

The White House has had a bust of Winston Churchill since the 1960’s. At the start of the Bush administration Prime Minister Blair lent President Bush a bust that matched the one in the White House, which was being worked on at the time and was later returned to the residence. The version lent by Prime Minister Blair was displayed by President Bush until the end of his Presidency. On January 20, 2009 — Inauguration Day — all of the art lent specifically for President Bush’s Oval Office was removed by the curator’s office, as is common practice at the end of every presidency. The original Churchill bust remained on display in the residence. The idea put forward by Charles Krauthammer and others that President Obama returned the Churchill bust or refused to display the bust because of antipathy towards the British is completely false and an urban legend that continues to circulate to this day.

I’m sure this won’t stop Nowhere Man from claiming otherwise, since he appears to delight in lying about just about everything.

Here’s a brief video of some of the reactions to Romney in the London tabloids

I won’t bore you with many more tales of Romney’s European vacation, but I really liked this piece in the Guardian by Jonathan Freedland: Britain is an easy date. So how did Mitt Romney mess up so badly?

For an American politician, Britain is an easy date: just praise the country as a steadfast ally, mention Churchill a couple of times and we’ll roll over. Yet somehow Romney managed to provoke both the prime minister and the capital’s mayor – both fellow conservatives who should regard a Republican nominee as a kindred spirit – into public rebukes. That takes some doing. So what explains how an accomplished politician, with the resilience to have prevailed in a bruising primary campaign, could mess up so badly? The answer says a lot about Romney – and a fair bit about the dire state of today’s Republican party.

In the first category comes the observation that, despite having sought the presidency twice and served as a state governor, Romney is not really a politician at all – not in the Bill Clinton sense of someone who thinks, talks and breathes politically, constantly calculating the likely impact of both words and deeds. Instead Romney speaks and acts like the chief executive he was for so long, whether of private equity firm Bain Capital or the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics of 2002.

As we’ve learned in recent weeks, thanks to the likes of Barclays’ Bob Diamond or G4S’s Nick Buckles, corporate titans, so used to the nodding appreciation of yes men, can lack elementary tact and diplomacy, failing to weigh their words for tone, timing and likely reception. Technically, nothing in what Romney said about London 2012 was especially contentious – if, that is, he were merely the former CEO of the 2002 Games speaking privately to Coe a month ago. But for a man who seeks to be the lead partner in the US-UK alliance, speaking on the day before the Olympic flame was lit, it was a diplomatic disaster.

It’s surely CEO thinking too which has led Romney to refuse to release all his past tax returns, even though President Obama has published his in full. CEOs recoil from such personal transparency, while politicians know they will have to succumb eventually and so had better get it over with. Above all, their exorbitant pay means the elite chief executive class is habitually and unavoidably out of touch with everyone else. It is the Romney of the 1% who could smilingly tell an audience in hard-pressed Detroit that his wife has “a couple of Cadillacs”, beaming again today as his wife referred to the “horses”, plural, she owns (including one competing in the Olympic dressage event, providing a picture-perfect image of elitism for his opponents to feast on).

I thought that was a very insightful assessment.

In other news, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota “being evaluated for depression, ‘gastrointestinal issues'”

This one is for Pat: Katherine Jackson Returns Home, Paris Jackson Tweets About It.

I’m not sure I understand everything that happened, but Katherine Jackson says she needed a rest and so she went to Arizona, getting rid of her cell phone so she wouldn’t be bothered. But there’s something else going on:

While Michael’s will gave Katherine custody of his children and a 20 percent stake in his massive estate, her husband, Joe Jackson, and the eight surviving Jackson siblings were completely cut out. Some of the siblings have reportedly been exploring a move to have the will invalidated by arguing that Michael was in New York on the day that the document was notarized in Los Angeles.

In a video that surfaced earlier this week, Janet Jackson is seen trying to take a cell phone away from Paris, 14, and berating her niece for using her phone to tweet about family business. That video leaked after Janet, Jermaine and Randy Jackson reportedly attempted to persuade Paris and Prince, 15, to leave Katherine’s home on Monday. Both resisted and a short time later, sheriff’s deputies arrived to break up a scuffle between Randy, Jermaine Jackson and TJ.

MTV has more detail on the family fracas via TMZ:

Sources tell TMZ that Randy, Jermaine and Janet Jackson entered the home uninvited and then tried to coerce Michael’s children, Paris, Prince and Blanket, into coming with them to Arizona where their grandmother Katherine has been staying.

Sources say that Paris resisted the intervention and apparently things got violent. Allegedly, Janet slapped Paris and yelled, “You’re a spoiled little bitch!” to which Paris responded with a slap and told Janet, “This is our house. Not the Jackson family house. Get the f–k out!”

TMZ shares that Trent Jackson (Joe Jackson’s nephew who deals with Katherine’s daily affairs) put Randy in a headlock and punched Jermaine in the mouth. Tito Jackson was reportedly trying to get temporary guardianship of Michael’s kids.

And I thought my family was dysfunctional!

There may be a breakthrough in the Eurozone crisis. Reuters:

Stocks rallied on Friday on expectations the European Central Bank will tackle high borrowing costs hitting Spain and Italy, but the euro pared gains on market uncertainty about the specific action to be taken.

The benchmark S&P 500 closed at its highest since early May, climbing further after Bloomberg News said ECB President Mario Draghi will meet with Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann to discuss several measures, including bond purchases, to help the euro zone.

The French and German governments said they are “determined to do everything to protect the euro zone” and its single currency. The joint statement echoed similar remarks by Draghi on Thursday, but in comments on Friday, Germany’s Bundesbank pushed back against Draghi’s pledge.

Tim Geithner will also meet with Schaeuble and Draghi next week in Germany.

The meeting with Schaeuble will take place on the German island of Sylt in the afternoon of July 30, and the session with Draghi will be held that evening in Frankfurt, the Treasury Department said in a statement today.

The Treasury said the meetings will be closed to the press, with a photo opportunity before the Schaeuble meeting. A Treasury official with knowledge of the matter said that Geithner and Schaeuble won’t hold a news conference after the meeting.

The Guardian has a live blog with updates on the ongoing crisis.

Bobby Knight hit the Google top stories list last night, because Neil Reed, the former IU basketball player who was choked by Knight during practice, has died at age 36.

In March 2000, Reed accused Knight of choking him during a practice in 1997. When video of the practice surfaced backing Reed’s claim, Knight, a Hall of Fame coach who was known for his angry outbursts as well as his success, was put on zero-tolerance notice by Dr. Myles Brand, then the university president. That September, Knight was fired after a student said he had grabbed his arm.

Reed transferred to Southern Mississippi shortly after the choking incident and played there in the 1998-99 season.

He is survived by his wife, Kelly, and two daughters.

So sad that he was known for that horrible incident and then died so young. When I first saw Knight’s name on the list, I thought maybe he had died.

Finally, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to hold a fundraiser for Scott Brown in August. Get this:

A spokesman for Bloomberg, Stu Loeser, says the mayor’s top reason for supporting Brown is the senator’s opposition to a proposal backed by the National Rifle Association that would allow gun owners to carry concealed weapons across state lines.

Loeser said Warren’s tough stance on Wall Street regulation was not the basis for the endorsement.

Hahahahahaha!! Somehow I doubt that Warren is a big NRA supporter….

Now what are you reading and blogging about today?

James Holmes’ Psychiatrist at U. of CO Specializes in Schizophrenia

Posted: July 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Crime, Media, open thread | Tags: , , , , , | 50 Comments

Lynne Fenton MD

From the Washington Post:

The shooting suspect in the Colorado theater rampage was seeing a university psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia in the weeks before the July 20 attack, according to court records released Friday.

James Holmes was seeing Lynne Fenton, the director of student mental health services at the University of Colorado and a medical school professor. Holmes was a first-year graduate student in a neuroscience Ph.D. program.

Fenton is the person to whom Holmes sent a notebook containing drawings supposedly related to Aurora, Colorado theater massacre. Fenton’s university home page is password protected, but the WaPo says she “has written numerous papers and launched research in the area of schizophrenia.”

The judge in the case, William Sylvester, has ordered that all documents in the case, including the notebook and the defendant’s university records are “off-limits” to the media. Colorado is an open records state, but the prosecution asked the judge to hold off on any release of information to the public.

“The People have not had access to the defendant’s records from the University of Colorado, but are of the belief that disclosure of such records to the media would be contrary to the public interest,” the motion asserts.

In his response, Sylvester, the 18th Judicial District’s chief judge, agrees. He writes: “This court orders that the University of Colorado shall not disclose information about the defendant…”

The order goes on to stress that the DA’s office and the legal team representing Holmes will be able to see all this stuff, but that’s it won’t be made available to the wider public until the court vacates this decision or the final judgement of the case is rendered, whichever comes first.

According to the New York Daily News, Holmes is now claiming he doesn’t remember anything about the night of the shooting and doesn’t understand why he’s in jail.

Feel free to use this as an open thread. I’ll update if I can find any more information on Fenton. Her university home page is password protected, but they spell her first name “Lynn.” The media is calling her “Lynne.” I’m not sure which is correct yet.

UPDATE: CNN has a little more information on Fenton:

Fenton is the director of student mental health services at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, and an assistant professor, according to a resume posted on the school’s website.

As director, a position she’s held since 2009, Fenton sees between 15 and 20 graduate students per week for medication and psychotherapy, coordinates a team of four mental health clinicians, supervises some residents who treat students, and lectures. She also serves as a psychiatrist for between five and 10 patients, the resume states.

She’s held many jobs over the years. Fenton worked as a physician in private practice in Denver from 1994 to 2005, and was chief of physical medicine with the U.S. Air Force in San Antonio, Texas, in the early 1990s, according to the resume. Since 2008, she has won various grants and contracts to study schizophrenia.

Fenton did her undergraduate work at the University of California, Davis and earned her medical degree from Chicago Medical School in 1986.

Friday Reads: Buffoon and Boycott addition

Posted: July 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 28 Comments

Good Morning!

Today’s post is brought to you by the letter B.  Here’s some great letter B words.  There’s a BUFFOON lose in London and he has some friends we should be BOYCOTTING.

Well, I’m waking up thinking I should check the TV and make sure Romney hasn’t created such an international stir that the British have declared war on us!  I’m sure Hillary will have to head there to patch things up a bit.  I certainly hope that they look at his likeability ratings and realize that NO one likes him over here either.  He’s considered an oaf on both sides of the pond.

Upon winning an Oscar for her performance in the 1984 film “Places in the Heart,” Field famously declared: “I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!”

Romney’s problem is that right now, some key voters don’t, as underscored in the polling co-sponsored by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal.

The NBC News blog “First Read” dug deep into recent results concerning “undecided” voters — the very ones who could tilt the election. Unimpressed with the president’s performance, “these should be people willing to fire Obama and vote for Romney — EXCEPT that they don’t like him very much at all,” First Read noted (complete with the capital letters).

Focusing on undecided voters unearthed in surveys over the last three months, the pollsters found Obama’s unfavorable/favorable rating stands at a poor 42 percent/29 percent. The figures for Romney, though, are worse — 44 percent turn thumbs down on him, with just 16 percent viewing him favorably.

And in a separate look at a voter segment much prized in such key states as Florida, Colorado and Virginia, the same pollsters found that twice as many Hispanics view Romney negatively as positively, 44 percent to 22 percent.

So, how bad is he in the eyes of the Brits?  Why, he’s worse than Princess Dumbass of the North (with due credit to Charles Pierce for the name). They’ve declared him “in shambles”.

The British reaction to Mitt Romney has gone from openness, to skepticism, to mocking, to concluding that Mitt Romney is worse than Sarah Palin.

Daily Mail Political Editor James Chapman has been providing the world a play by play of Romney’s British implosion via his Twitter account. Romney started things off by criticizing London’s preparedness for the Olympics. He then forgot the name of British Labour Leader Ed Miliband, and then he admitted that he had been given a secret briefing by MI6. This led the British to ask aloud if they have another George W. Bush on their hands, “Romney blunders again by revealing he’s had (supposedly) top secret briefing by John Sawers, MI6 boss. Do we have a new Dubya on our hands?”

After his visit to Whitehall, Chapman offered two of the kinder reviews of Mitt Romney, “Serious dismay in Whitehall at Romney debut. ‘Worse than Sarah Palin.’ ‘Total car crash’. Two of the kinder verdicts.” Chapman also reported another verdict from British meet and greet with Mitt, “Another verdict from one Romney meeting: ‘Apparently devoid of charm, warmth, humour or sincerity’”

 Getting compared to Sarah Palin is one thing, but being called worse than Palin is an indication of the epic display of fail that Romney is putting on in London.

If you thought things couldn’t possibly get worse for Mitt Romney, you were wrong. How does one top being unfavorably compared to Sarah Palin? If you’re Mitt Romney, you get mocked in front of 60,000 people.

The Telegraph is reporting that London Mayor Boris Johnson mocked Romney’s readiness comment, “Quite a moment from the Mayor of London Boris Johnson. Shortly after Rix had lit the flame he really went for it in Hyde Park. He referenced Mitt Romney’s ‘London isn’t ready’ quip and shot back in style. “Are we ready?” he called and the crowd went wild. There may even have been a hint of the Obama-friendly “Yes we can!” in there – he may have jumped into a winning scenario but I’ve not heard a politician get that reaction before.”

This is a “charm offensive”?  ROFLMAO!

The Guardian has a running and updated list of all of his gaffes to date.  Go grab the popcorn my friends!!!

There are two things you should know before you “look out of the backside of 10 Downing Street”, as Mitt Romney did on Thursday.

Firstly, in Britain, “backside” means “ass”. As in the part of the body. Secondly, “10 Downing Street” is often used in political reporting as a synonym for a press spokesman for the prime minister, in the same way as “the White House” can say things or have opinions.

We haven’t looked quite this bad since Dubya was caught trying to massage Merkel.  We know Obama was a lousy gift giver his first time over there and FLOTUS hugged Her Majesty.  But, all of that looks mildly folksy compare to the Romney mishaps!  I bet they’re glad they’re rid of us!

I’m not sure you’ve been watching the Chick-Fil-A dust up but it’s getting rather interesting.  Chick-Fil-A has an over the top born again evangelical, bible thumping approach to business.   They’re real fussy about who they sell franchises to and like other corporations that are either hyper Mormon-based or Opus-Dei Catholic-based, they’ve been sending tons of money to tank civil rights movements.  The Mormon Church church and related Mormon businesses funded tons of anti-ERA propaganda and groups in the 1970s and 1980s along with plenty of anti-black civil rights in the 1960s.  Many were aligned with the right wing hate group The John Birch Society.  It’s one of the reasons I refuse to stay at a Marriott.  A huge portion of that money funds basic hate group movements against the ERA and abortion rights but it’s been upped to include GLBT civil rights too.  Same goes with Domino’s Pizza whose owner practices an extremist brand of Catholicism.  We’ve know around here that Country Kitchen and Chick-Fil-A are associated with evangelicals and have been known to fire any openly gay employees.  Believe me, I’ve had plenty of run ins with a lot of these religious extremists. They are hateful and they embrace the role of the martyr eagerly. So, don’t groan on this, but Chick-Fil-A has a “biblically based” mission statement.

Here’s some basic facts on Chick-Fil-A’s corporate citizenship profile.  It’s pretty awful!

Here are the basic facts about Chick-fil-A in regards to LGBT issues:

  • Chick-fil-A has given at least $5 million to anti-gay organizations, including known hate groups and proponents of ex-gay therapy, since 2003, including almost $2 million in both 2009 and 2010.
  • Chick-fil-A has a 0 rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which signifies that the company does not offer one protection, one benefit, or even one diversity training for its LGBT employees.
  • Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy openly admitted that he would probably fire any employee who “has been sinful or done something harmful to their family members.”
  • It has recently come to light (thanks to Jeremy Hooper) that current Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy has used the following language to describe supporters of same-sex marriage:
    • “We are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say ‘we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.”
    • “I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.”
    • “We see all the twisted up kind of stuff that’s going on. Washington trying to redefine the definition of marriage and all the other kinds of things.”
    • “We are suffering the consequences of a society and culture who has not acknowledged God or not thanked God—he’s left us to a deprived mind. It’s tragic and we live in a culture of that today.”

That is outright condemnation. That is open discrimination. Now, Chick-fil-A said last week that it will “treat every person with honor, dignity and respect – regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender,” which sounds nice, but as the HRC score indicates, there is nothing to substantiate such a claim. There is no policy on the company’s books that actually protects LGBT people from discrimination, and funding hate groups cannot be justified as “honor, dignity, and respect.”

With all of the facts at hand, there is no accurate way to portray Chick-fil-A as any kind of “victim.”  There is also no accurate way to reduce Chick-fil-A’s words and actions to merely defending “biblical principles.” This is — in every way, shape, and form — a company proactively engaging against the interests of LGBT people, and that is the quite justified reason for outcry.

Many politicians are now working locally to ensure Chick-fil-A’s over the top hatred and discrimination does not show up in a neighborhood near them. Local politicians in places like Boston and Chicago are trying to block expansion of the company in their neighborhood.  It’s not likely legal, but it’s calling attention to corporate donors that fund anti-civil rights movements.  Protestors disrupted a grand opening of a storefront in San Diego.  Quite a few businesses–including the Muppets–are refusing to partner with Chick-fil-A.  Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has been very vocal about the
company’s policy and statements.

“Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values,” Emanuel said Wednesday.

“What the CEO has said as it relates to gay marriage and gay couples is not what I believe, but more importantly, it’s not what the people of Chicago believe. We just passed legislation as it relates to civil union and my goal and my hope … is that we now move on recognizing gay marriage. I do not believe that the CEO’s comments … reflects who we are as a city.”

Ald. Joe Moreno (1st) is using the same argument to block Chick-fil-A from opening its first free-standing restaurant in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood.

Chick-fil-A already has one Chicago store — at 30 E. Chicago near Loyola University’s downtown campus.

“Same sex marriage, same-sex couples — that’s the civil rights fight of our time. To have those discriminatory policies from the top down is just not something that we’re open to. …We want responsible businesses,” Moreno said.

If you support marriage equality and basic civil rights, here are 10 companies to boycott. Domino’s Pizza is on their list too.   I told my Department Chair at UNO that I wouldn’t come to staff meetings until he started buying pizza some place else.

Another case of CEOs and management using their prominent position and hefty salary to put down gays and lesbians, Domino’s founder Tom Monaghan is a co-founder of the Thomas More Law Center, which recently defended the San Diego Fire Fighters who won a lawsuit claiming they were sexually harassed by being forced to March in a gay pride parade. Monaghan also financed a 2001 ballot initiative to remove sexual orientation from Ypsilanti, Michigan’s, non-discrimination ordinance. David Brandon, the current CEO, opposes gay marriage and brushed off questions about Domino’s decision not to extend health benefits to spouses of gay employees when asked about in 2006 saying when he ran for Regent of the University of Michigan, explaining why he doesn’t support non-discrimination by saying,

“I don’t understand why we continually have to have discussions about who should and who shouldn’t be included, in terms of our nondiscrimination policy, because I think identifying specific, special-interest groups or specific entities within the institution almost implies that unless you’re on that list, then somehow we think you should be treated differently than people who are on that list. It should not be about lists.”

How They’re Faring: So so. Domino’s lost about half of its stock value in the crash, but has been steadily gaining traction since and now trades at $6.49/ share, down from a 52-week high of $15.33.

What You Can Do: Weirdly, just about everyone from all sides of the political spectrum have called for a boycott on Domino’s. Conservatives decry their decision to open a halal-only branch of the pizzeria in the UK and the National Organization of Women boycott the store for the company’s decision last year to donate $50,000 to a pro-life group.

The more daylight that gets shown on these horrible companies, the better.  Alternet reports that more big companies have left ALEC which has been one of the biggest right wing groups that have actively worked against all civil rights movements. Turning up the heat is working.

Two more large American companies, headquartered in the Midwest, have responded to their customers and cut ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC): General Motors (GM) and Walgreens. This brings the total to 30 corporations and four non-profits — 34 total private sector members — that have cut ties to the right-wing corporate bill mill.

General Motors “In Motion” Away from ALEC

General Motors Headquarters (Source: AP)GM is the $149 billion-a-year maker of Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC brand name cars, among others. About 26 percent of the company is owned by the United States government, which backed its Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2009. It was founded in 1908 in Detroit and remains headquartered there. It employs 209,000 people, as of May 2012. Chevrolet alone sold more than 763,000 passenger cars in 2011.

Although the full extent of GM’s ALEC membership is not known, it was a member in 1992. In 2011, it paid for a seat on both ALEC’s Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force and its Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force. The commerce task force is the primary source of anti-worker and anti-consumer legislation such as the “Paycheck Protection” and “Right to Work” Acts and other “model” bills that limit workers’ rights and drain labor unions of resources for protecting employees, undermine consumer protections, favor the Wall Street financial agenda, and limit the ability to cap exorbitant interest rates on credit cards and big bank fees.

Here’s a list of FIVE food chains to avoid if you want to put your money and mouth where you values are.  Waffle House is one to avoid.

The breakfast joint has given $100,000 this election cycle to the Karl Rove super PAC American Crossroads. Mother Jones ’ Tim Murphy reported on the donation:

This is surprising because one doesn’t normally associate Big Waffle with big scary super-PACs, but also not that surprising: CEO Jim Rogers Jr. is a longtime supporter of Republican causes, and the company’s political action committee has given exclusively to Republicans (in considerably more modest quantities). His ties to Romney date back to 2006, when he joined the finance team of Romney’s political action committee, Commonwealth PAC.

Now a word from our sponsor … the Beetles sing all about the Letter B.


Ah, there’s just one more letter B word that I’d love to embrace!!!  Yes, this post just brought out my inner BITCH.   I’d shout the word vagina a few times but it’s not the letter V’s turn today.  Join me in not wasting money or votes on the folks that pay to take away our civil rights and liberties.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Latest Stats on the Republican attempt to Disenfranchise Voters

Posted: July 26, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections | Tags: , , , , | 19 Comments

Studies of the impact of the new Voter ID Laws uncover the worse attempt at voter disenfranchisement since the Jim Crow Law Days. A Philadelphia Newspaper finds that 43 percent of Philly voters may not have the proper ID for voting.  You know, of course, that this would be the part of Pennsylvania most likely to vote Democrat or Green.

The number of Pennsylvanians who might not have the photo identification necessary to vote this November has more than doubled: at least 1,636,168 registered voters, or 20 percent of Pennsylvania voters, may not have valid PennDOT-issued ID, according to new data obtained by City Paper. In Philadelphia, an enormous 437,237 people, or 43 percent of city voters, may not possess the valid PennDOT ID necessary to vote under the state’s controversial new law.

“Those are the numbers we sent,” says Nick Winkler, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, when asked to confirm the data. “If you want to add them together, I think it’s misleading.”

The new data, received and processed by the AFL-CIO, for the first time includes voters who had PennDOT licenses that have (as of Monday) been expired since Nov. 6, 2011 or an earlier date. If those people do not renew their licenses, the licenses will be expired by at least one year on election day and thus invalid under the new law. And because the AFL-CIO’s voter file (which shows the already-publicized large number of voters with no PennDOT record) is seven months old, it could actually represent an undercount since it does not address whether those who have registered as voters since January have valid ID.

Pennsylvania’s voter ID law is facing increasing scrutiny. Today, Commonwealth Court hearings begin on a lawsuit brought by civil rights groups, including the Pennsylvania ACLU, which allege that the law violates the state constitution’s guarantee of the right to vote.

And on Monday, the U.S. Attorney General announced that it was investigating whether the law violated the federal Voting Rights Act. In particular, the Department of Justice wants to know upon what basis Republican Gov. Tom Corbett‘s administration declared that just 1 percent of residents lacked valid identification during the legislative debate over the law.

The number of voters who will lack proper ID is indeed indeed impossible to determine: Some voters without PennDOT ID may be inactive, or have a valid form of federal or student identification, while others without proper ID may not have yet registered to vote.

“The database was never meant to say ‘this is how many people don’t have IDs,’” says Winkler, emphasizing that this office is focused on ensuring that all Pennsylvanians have the proper ID in November. “You guys want specific numbers that don’t exist, and those numbers change on a daily basis.”

While the right wing blog harp on about ‘vote integrity’, Republican politicians continue to let it slip that the law is to try to get Romney to the White House by whatever means possible.

Pennsylvania Republicans, including Gov. Tom Corbett, insist that the new laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud. However, recent developments would seem to contradict that assertion.

In June, Republican House Leader Mike Turzai told a group of voters the real reason Republicans are so anxious to pass the voter ID law is because the statute “is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania” because it disenfranchises two traditionally Democratic constituencies, the poor and ethnic minorities. Also, the state has admitted in court filings that it has not investigated or prosecuted a single vote fraud case.

In response to widespread outcry over the obviousness of the Republicans’ efforts to suppress Democratic voter turnout, the state government has created a backup ID program. Sadly, the individuals tasked with running the outreach and education effort are all Republican operatives with ties to Gov. Corbett and the Romney campaign.

The Pennsylvania law is similar in concept to laws passed by Republicans in other states like Texas, South Carolina, Georgia and Missouri, many of which are also tied up in court. Former President Clinton said the Republican efforts at vote suppression are unlike anything he has ever seen.

“There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” he said.

There are next to no problems with voter fraud, yet Republican interests continue to push the meme.  If this strategy succeeds, it could establish a worsening situation. Republican policy increasingly appeal to a very narrow and extreme group of people in a very limited and shrinking demographic.  This is a systematic way of suppressing the votes of the poor, the young, minorities, and disabled Americans.

Instances of voter fraud are almost nonexistent, but the right-wing media’s harping on the issue has given Republican politicians cover to push these laws through statehouse after statehouse. The laws’ intent, however, is entirely political: By creating restrictions that disproportionately impact minorities, they’re supposed to bolster Republican prospects. Ticking off Republican achievements in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives, their legislative leader, Mike Turzai, extolled in a talk last month that “voter ID . . . is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”

How could Turzai be so sure? The Pennsylvania Department of State acknowledges that as many as 759,000 residents lack the proper ID. That’s 9.2 percent of registered voters, but the figure rises to 18 percent in heavily black Philadelphia. The law also requires that the photo IDs have expiration dates, which many student IDs do not.

The pattern is similar in every state that has enacted these restrictions. Attorney General Eric Holder has said that 8 percent of whites in Texas lack the kind of identification required by that state’s law; the percentage among blacks is three times that. The Justice Department has filed suit against Southern states whose election procedures are covered by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It is also investigating Pennsylvania’s law, though that state is not subject to some provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

If voter suppression goes forward and Romney narrowly prevails, consider the consequences. An overwhelmingly and increasingly white Republican Party, based in the South, will owe its power to discrimination against black and Latino voters, much like the old segregationist Dixiecrats. It’s not that Republicans haven’t run voter suppression operations before, but they’ve been under-the-table dirty tricks, such as calling minority voters with misinformation about polling-place locations and hours. By contrast, this year’s suppression would be the intended outcome of laws that Republicans publicly supported, just as the denial of the franchise to Southern blacks before 1965 was the intended result of laws such as poll taxes. More ominous still, by further estranging minority voters, even as minorities constitute a steadily larger share of the electorate, Republicans will be putting themselves in a position where they increasingly rely on only white voters and where their only path to victory will be the continued suppression of minority votes. A cycle more vicious is hard to imagine.

The only way to stop these kinds of assaults on American Civil rights and liberties is to send the Republican party to obscurity.

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