Senate The US Politics discussion

There's a somewhat "implied criticism" there though, isn't there? As in "that's why I stepped down?"

But also, realistically the nut graf of this piece was the part on Israel -- and she pretty roundly apparently doesn't like what Kerry's doing.

 

yeah, I suppose that's true. I was referring to the near complete "either with me or against me" tone that's risky since she hasn't even declared that she is running. It certainly highlights her as an alternative to the current administration, but it may alienate all the wrong people. Talking about how Jihadists are out to get the West and have to be stopped is something I'd expect out of Karl Rove, not Hillary Clinton. It definitely narrows down a potential targeted US policy.

 

You absolutely, positively don't recall the Right's favorite attack line on her husband then.

She's just heading that off at the pass (though her record as Senator was already pretty spotless in this regard).

 

Save the next cigar for me?

I guess I don't.

 

Since the Republicans could not -- except in the instance of healthcare, which he had offloaded to Hillary -- make really valid criticisms on his domestic policy, they attacked his foreign policy specifically relating to projecting US military strength and questioned his ability to be able to be Commander in Chief, mostly centered around his protests against the Vietnam War (which, reasonably, was stupid since by that point most of the US had come around on that) and "potential attempts at draft dodging."

Once in office they criticized basically all of the well-publicized failures (Blackhawk Down, bin Laden, Embassy Bombings [recall now, why Benghazi was such a big deal]) as well as -- wait for it -- his complete failure at brokering peace in with Israel/PLO.

If you look at what Hillary's been doing / saying for the last however many years in her record as Senator, SecState and above -- it all makes perfect sense. She essentially has no record to criticize there, now that Benghazi is a non-issue and she abjectly blames Hamas (like her husband did too late after the fact with Arafat) for many things.

 

That argument is entirely unpersuasive, for two primary reasons:

1) If you really thought that was a real possibility*, we wouldn't be having this discussion, because there wouldn't be any debate. Pharmacists simply won't be carrying that product and none of them would have their licenses or employment threatened for it. (After all, most licensing boards are run by members of the profession that they license.)

2) In your example, you neglect the numerous reputable mail-order and online pharmacies that are available, and would have the same prescription to you (often in a larger supply, such as 3 months instead of 1 month) in about as long as it would take your local pharmacist to special order something he doesn't normally carry.

* Many years ago in a similar discussion, I put out the challenge to provide the example of one geographical location in the entire continental United States where there was only one pharmacy available within a reasonable travel distance. A few people tried valiantly to provide locations, but a quick Google search showed multiple pharmacies (including several national chains) that were available within a fairly short radius. Does anyone want to try again now?

Please note that I have excluded places like Alaska, because by its remote nature the pharmacies there likely have far more limited supplies on hand and would have to special order almost anything.

 

The impasse developed because everyone seems to carry the conclusions out to the extreme, while at the same time, jumping over regular situations.

The specific problem with your library example is that the books aren't yours. You just can't take school property, no different than someone who works at Walgreen's can take company property no matter how they feel. Yes, a librarian who collected up a bunch of library books and disposed of them should get into trouble. But what should happen to a librarian who simply chooses to order books on horses instead of Bible stories or vice versa? Would there be a problem? Should there be? (again, assuming the curriculum requirements were met)

Or really, the perfect scenario that would apply to this discussion is that you owned your own private bookstore and choose not to sell Bibles. In that case, you can't go to other bookstores and destroy their books, but you can certainly control what you carry in your own store. What is the problem? If someone came into your shop, all you would have to say is "I'm sorry, I don't carry that, but the public library down the street has different ones.."

Here's the question: "Why can't a pharmacist just choose not to sell something, especially if they just tell the customer where to go to get it?"

So far, the disconnect has happened because no one has answered the basic question, preferring to jump to extreme examples right off the bat. But the extreme examples don't apply to how a majority of people would really act, and the exceptions would be dealt with case by case like anything else.

 

But why shouldn't they have that right? Why shouldn't a business owner have the right to be racist or sexist? Normal people have, and exercise that right every day. Why do you need the coercive arm of the government to compel businesses to act in a way that we find acceptable? Taking this attitude to an extreme, would it be ok for the government to compel a business to provide goods and services to people who cannot afford themin the interests of social justice?

I just don't agree that's your position at all. As I mentioned above, being racist or sexist or choosing not to associate with people you consider objectionable is very much an individual right. The argument is that people who own businesses don't give up their individual rights just because they have a business. Your position, and the position of many who agree with you, seems to be more that because society has allowed (or enabled or whatever) you to have started a business (you didn't build that), you owe it to the rest of society to run your business in a way that society finds acceptable. And that the government (as opposed to social pressure) is the appropriate arbiter to define that acceptability.

And I that's where the impasse is.

 

Human empathy is kinda a requirement for any job in that field.

 

Is this true though? Should there be laws which mandate this? Should there be laws which force the bookstore owner to carry Bibles over their own objections, as opposed to the customer simply choosing to no longer shop there? That's the crux, and was one of the original points which started this entire discussion.

Would it matter if the hypothetical bookstore owner's association code of ethics said "it is perfectly ethical for a bookstore owner to choose which books to sell or choose which focus to give their store." Maybe a bookstore owner wants to promote peace, and has decided not to carry books on war. Just because a customer has an expectation to buy the latest Executioner/Mac Bolan book, does the owner have to carry it without input or choice?

When you say "wrong to refuse" what do you mean? Some people have strong personal codes which dictate how they live their life. A vegetarian may choose not to sell meat, even if they aren't eating it themselves. Someone else may choose not to sell books on guns, even if they aren't reading about guns themselves. Someone may choose not to handle beef, or pork, or alcohol for personal or religious reasons. None of that matters if a customer has a demand?

 

Why would the vegetarian not sell......WHAT?

 

Eh, I do get what you're trying to get at, Brian -- but I don't think it works. And the reason that it doesn't work is because a business is usually selling something -- and, as such, it has certain rules (because every transaction, I believe, is at least an "implied contract"). The reason this generally exists is because the currency involved is backed by the Federal government ("Legal tender for all debts private and public") and, as such, is almost certainly exempt from the "private business" statement.

So once money is involved, I believe it's game over.

The reason it doesn't apply to your Swiftian conclusion of "supplying them to people who can't afford them" is because if a person can't afford them, no contract can be enacted. And, to be fair, food stamps are essentially providing for that -- with, again, the government backing that money.

 

But whether or not the person should be disciplined for it or not shouldn't be a matter of law. It should be between the employee and the employer.

At every employer that I've had, if I had called my boss up in the morning and simply said "I'm not feeling well", he or she would have let me take the day off, as long as all of my deliverables are met. Per company policy, the only time they cared about why I was taking off was if it was for more than 3 consecutive days without a doctor's note.

But who gets to decide what a business's scope should be? To continue the bookstore analogy, should every bookstore be required to sell all books, regardless of topic? What about a Christian bookstore? Should they be required to sell Islamic reference books, too? Should a comic book store be required to sell textbooks? Similarly, should all restaurants be required to serve all food dishes on demand?

In each of those cases, it's the owners of the businesses that get to decide what products they will carry. The input that the customers can ultimately give is whether or not they purchase the products that are offered. You might argue that a business owner who refuses to provide a heavily-desired product is being foolish, but ultimately that's not your concern. It's not your business, it's his. If he can still make enough money to keep his business running without selling that product, then he is satisfying customer demands sufficient for his needs.

Wow. Do you not see the significant First Amendment issues with compelling speech on a subject that a person wishes not to speak about? That is at least as worrisome as censorship (compelling someone to remain silent when they wish to speak).

If you don't like CNN covering MH317 24/7 for weeks, then don't watch CNN. If you think MSNBC/Fox News is ignoring stories because they reflect poorly on liberals/conservatives, then don't watch MSNBC/Fox News. It's not your place to tell them what they have to say or report on.

Here is the real problem. What type or rights are you talking about here? You seem to be confusing positive rights and negative rights.

A positive right requires that someone provide you with a good or service. A negative right, on the other hand, only requires that someone else not interfere with your actions. All of the fundamental rights outlined in the Constitution are negative rights - freedom from government interference in speech, belief, assembly, personal effects, life, liberty, property, etc. The philosophy you complain about doesn't grant greater rights to those with more money. It is simply the view that however much a person has should not be interfered with by the government, whether he has $1 or $1 billion.

Positive rights inherently conflict with negative rights. By requiring (through legal force) that a pharmacist provide you with birth control, you are interfering in that pharmacist's actions, and therefore fundamentally violating his negative rights to be free to direct his own affairs. You might argue that you have the right to control your own reproductive organs, but that doesn't mean that you have the right to force others to help you in that. Fundamentally, the only way to enforce positive rights without violating negative rights is through consensual agreements, freely entered into by both parties.

 

To be fair, I wasn't necessarily advocating a particular position so much as clarifying what the actual impasse really is.

That said, you are right to conclude that I would be more inclined to support market forces to achieve social aims than using the government to coerce individuals and/or businesses to behave a particular way. Now this is a fundamental difference in opinion, I've found so we're not really going to convince each other, in general. I would agree that there is a fair argument to be made that because the government supplies the mechanism by which trade occurs (money), it has an interest in establishing the rules by which such trade occurs. That was never the issue at hand.

What is at hand is whether it's appropriate for the government to use its power to force businesses (run by individuals, after all) to conduct trades even if they don't want to. Should the government force businesses to hire minorities or sell to minorities even if they don't want to? A majority of Americans seem to think that's ok. But once you accept that principle, what limits, if any, do you put on trades that the government can and should force? In this case, we're arguing about whether the government should force pharmacies to sell birth control, even against the company's moral objection. Again, you'll probably find wide acceptance of that principle. But where do you draw the line? Can the government force Atheist Books to sell Bibles (to borrow from anakinfansince1983 's example)? Can the government force Black Pride Inc to service Klansmen? The Jewish Community Center to provide service to swastika-wearing skinheads? You get my drift.

Personally, I prefer when we let market forces manage these problems because they have a way of working over time, albeit more slowly than many would like--especially for larger companies. Moreover, with communication becoming easier and more powerful, and social media being so pervasive, we have never lived in a better age for market forces to truly achieve their full potential.

But...I get where people who disagree are coming from. I just disagree.

 

Personal life is absolutely separate from professional life.

I'm not going to repeat arguments that have already been made, but two examples are:

1) An airline pilot crashing a plane because of a fight with his or her spouse

2) A surgeon making a major mistake because he was distracted by a personal issue.

In both circumstances, professionalism demands that they put their personal problems aside. This is not some abstract concept that involves individual rights, it is a matter of law, and a settled one at that. You do not have a legal right to be a racist, homophobe, anti-Semite, or anti-anything. If you own a business, you must treat everyone the same. You do have the right to refuse service if someone refuses to behave or, for example, dresses improperly for an eating establishment, but you don't get to say "Hey, I don't like [insert favorite group here], so I'm not going to serve you."

This was litigated during the Civil Rights era, and with respect to gay rights, is being so now. And the supporters of discrimination are losing, just like they did before. Those who run on the platform of turning back the clock will continue to lose national elections, until this mode of thinking dies out. It probably won't happen anytime soon.

Peace,

V-03

 

mmmmmeeeeddddddiiiiiiiccccciiiiiiinnnnneeeeeee isssssssss ddddiiiifffffeeerrrreeeennnnnttttttt

 

Who is advocating for a business owner to have a greater number of rights?

We all have the same negative rights - freedom from interference. The difference is that you are arguing that some people should get compulsory positive rights, which come at the expense of someone else's negative rights. You aren't differentiating between the two types of rights, and that severely undercuts your arguments.

Pretty much all of your other examples (the pilot, the surgeon, the teacher, etc) are things that need to be resolved between the employer/customer and the employee/business. If someone else harms you through their actions, that is why there is the entire field of tort law - to gain recompense for injury.

Yes, let's take it to its logical conclusion. It's called compelled speech, and it would essentially allow the government to dictate what news agencies had to say on the air. It could require them to express opinions, and possibly even require them to express certain "approved" opinions. It's not a free press if they are required to report on anything.

Contrast that with the system we actually have, called free speech. The government can neither punish you for your speech, nor can they force you to speak. Does that mean that some people can manipulate the news? Yes. But it also means that anyone else is also free to speak up and express themselves however they want, too.

 

How would you deal with them? That's the question you never answered, in the huge tract of my posts you never responded to. If it's not against any rules, how can it be "dealt with?"

Next time women is a risk of an unwanted pregnancy, she can know to avoid that one specific pharmacist and instead try her luck with one of the many others at the same store or in other stores, any of whom might give her the exact same reaction? And any time she's wrong, she may end up paying for her "mistake" of not being intimately familiar with the personal beliefs of every single pharmacist in town by either footing the bill for an abortion or having the full investment in time and money necessary to raise a child for 18 years? That's a real free market success story you have going there.

This is such transparently specious logic. It's like saying that because there was net growth in the US job market last month, it is impossible that any state, county, or town experienced any net job losses. What's true of an aggregate does not have to be (and often is not) true of each constituent part. Just because the product wouldn't disappear on a national scale doesn't mean that local supply problems could not emerge.

For instance, what of a person living in a model town built by a religious group that objects to contraception? They could find themselves in a situation where the pharmacists in town all subscribe to that faith and decline to fill prescriptions for contraceptions, but the patient herself does not and requires the medication. This would represent a substantial barrier to her continued care.

 

paging Ramza to lol with me at the idea of treating "positive" and "negative" rights as a meaningful distinction and not a matter of arbitrary emphasis

 

It's a human construct, and as such, inherently subjective.

Because some find it important doesn't mean that all will.