Tag Archives: morality

Independence Day

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I posted this last year; it bears repeating.

On this day 236 years ago, a group of Americans got together and, pledging their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor to each other while relying on the protection of divine Providence, took our country free from tyranny and set us on a new, wholly experimental course.

These men openly acknowledged both our right and our duty to throw off any government that too badly violates its moral obligations to us sovereign citizens, that for too long abuses our liberties and our individual responsibilities.  At the same time, though, they acknowledged that routinely rebelling at every small offense was equally wrong: Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.  Yet those light and transient offenses want correction along with those abuses and moral failures.

And so, while fighting (and some dying) for our newly born nation and during the immediately ensuing years of a troubled peace, these men, with others from the newly independent and united States joining them, in a second phase of our experiment invented a wholly new form of government.  They created a government that would recognize the essential sovereignty of the members of a voluntarily formed social compact over our compact’s government, and they gave that government a structure and a strictly limited set of authorities designed to maximize our control of government and our ability to maintain that control.

They also invented a wholly new mechanism for throwing off an abusive government and replacing it with one more suited to our needs and to our control: a set of elections that would let us turn all the rascals out of one house of our legislative body every two years, that would let us depose the whole of the other house of our legislative body in sequential one-third increments every two years, and that would let us fire the chief executive of this government every four years— any and all whom we found wanting during their time in office.  This invention was accompanied by another invention of these men: a judiciary that sat, neither above nor below our executive and legislative, but equal to and separate from them—a third powerful check that granted stability to the whole.

We are here today arguing amongst ourselves, usually with great passion, over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, climate change, and a host of other things, too, both momentous and trivial.  And we could not be without the genius and the sacrifice of those men those 236 years ago.

As you sit around by your barbecue, or at the beach, or wherever you may be, hamburgers and hotdogs in hand, beer nearby, children screaming and yelling in their own happinesses, take a moment to think about that.

What He Said

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The following, via The Weekly Standard, is excerpted from Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in US v Windsor.

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Let the People Decide

By ANTONIN SCALIA, FOR THE EDITORS

This case is about power in several respects. It is about the power of our people to govern themselves, and the power of this Court to pronounce the law. Today’s opinion aggrandizes the latter, with the predictable consequence of diminishing the former….

[In its holding, the Court] accuses the Congress that enacted this law and the President who signed it of something much worse than, for example, having acted in excess of enumerated federal powers—or even having drawn distinctions that prove to be irrational. Those legal errors may be made in good faith, errors though they are. But the majority says that the supporters of this Act acted with malice—with the “purpose” “to disparage and to injure” same-sex couples. It says that the motivation for DOMA was to “demean,” to “impose inequality,” to “impose…a stigma,” to deny people “equal dignity,” to brand gay people as “unworthy,” and to “humiliat[e]” their children.

I am sure these accusations are quite untrue. To be sure (as the majority points out), the legislation is called the Defense of Marriage Act. But to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to “disparage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence—indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race….

By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition. Henceforth those challengers will lead with this Court’s declaration that there is “no legitimate purpose” served by such a law, and will claim that the traditional definition has “the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure” the “personhood and dignity” of same-sex couples. The majority’s limiting assurance will be meaningless in the face of language like that, as the majority well knows. That is why the language is there. The result will be a judicial distortion of our society’s debate over marriage—a debate that can seem in need of our clumsy “help” only to a member of this institution.

As to that debate: Few public controversies touch an institution so central to the lives of so many, and few inspire such attendant passion by good people on all sides. Few public controversies will ever demonstrate so vividly the beauty of what our Framers gave us, a gift the Court pawns today to buy its stolen moment in the spotlight: a system of government that permits us to rule ourselves. Since DOMA’s passage, citizens on all sides of the question have seen victories and they have seen defeats. There have been plebiscites, legislation, persuasion, and loud voices—in other words, democracy.

Victories in one place for some, see North Carolina Const., Amdt. 1 (providing that “[m]arriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State,” approved by a popular vote, 61% to 39% on May 8, 2012, are offset by victories in other places for others, see Maryland Question 6 (establishing “that Maryland’s civil marriage laws allow gay and lesbian couples to obtain a civil marriage license,” approved by a popular vote, 52% to 48%, on November 6, 2012). Even in a single State, the question has come out differently on different occasions. Compare Maine Question 1 (permitting “the State of Maine to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples,” approved by a popular vote, 53% to 47%, on November 6, 2012) with Maine Question 1 (rejecting “the new law that lets same-sex couples marry,” approved by a popular vote, 53% to 47%, on November 3, 2009).

In the majority’s telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us. The truth is more complicated. It is hard to admit that one’s political opponents are not monsters, especially in a struggle like this one, and the challenge in the end proves more than today’s Court can handle. Too bad. A reminder that disagreement over something so fundamental as marriage can still be politically legitimate would have been a fit task for what in earlier times was called the judicial temperament. We might have covered ourselves with honor today, by promising all sides of this debate that it was theirs to settle and that we would respect their resolution. We might have let the People decide.

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What he said.

Mandates and Freedom

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Recall that HHS’ original rule regarding contraceptive coverage by “insurance” companies

exempted churches and other houses of worship, but required faith-affiliated charities, universities and other nonprofits to provide the coverage for their employees.

HHS’ finalized rule, which they claim is an outstanding compromise,

simplified the definition of religious organizations that are fully exempt from the requirement.  The change means a church that also ran a soup kitchen would not have to comply.

But “faith-affiliated charities, universities and other nonprofits” still are required to provide the contraceptive coverage.  Moreover,

religious nonprofits must notify their insurance company that they object to birth control coverage.  The insurer or administrator of the plan will then notify affected employees separately that coverage will be provided at no cost.  The insurers would be reimbursed by a credit against fees owed the government.

Of course, HHS omits to say to whom there is no cost.  It’s also unclear what happens in the event there are more credits than fees.  Who pays the difference?  In either event, it seems clear to me, it’s the taxpayers—and the “insurers’ ” customers—who pay.

Eric Rassbach, of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, has pointed out

As we said when the proposed rule was issued, this doesn’t solve the religious conscience problem because it still makes our non-profit clients the gatekeepers to abortion and provides no protection to religious businesses[.]

Michael Hash, Director of the HHS Office of Health Reform, demurs from that description.  Faith-based groups, says he, were given another reprieve, until 1 Jan, to comply.

But they still have to comply—screw ’em.

Here is an impact of capricious Federal regulation (apologies for the redundancy) on individual liberty.

Democrats in the Way, Again

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Interest rates on student loans are set to double on Monday after lawmakers failed to find a bipartisan solution to keep the federally subsidized borrowing costs down.
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[T]he current, 3.4% interest rate on Stafford loans—the most popular funding for college students—set to expire on July 1….
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The higher rates would add about $3,000 to the total interest on a $23,000 student loan repaid over 10 years.

In fact, the rates will double to nearly 7%.  However, those $3k are mostly partisan hype: they work out to an extra $12.50 per month on the loan payment for graduates with jobs.  Oh, wait….

On the other hand,

In May, House Republicans passed a bill that would index rates on new loans to the rate on 10-year Treasurys (currently about 2.6%), plus 2.5 per centage points, with an 8.5% cap.  But with little Democratic support in the Senate, that bill is dead in the water.

Thus, the Senate Progressives are perfectly willing to burn students and their loans because these self-important Democrats couldn’t get their way.

Then there’s this minor set of details, courtesy of Glenn Harlan Reynolds, law professor at the University of Tennessee, in that same Wall Street Journal op-ed:

According to an extensive 2012 analysis by the Associated Press of college graduates 25 and younger, 50% are either unemployed or in jobs that don’t require a college degree.  Then there are the large numbers who don’t graduate at all.  According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, more than 40% of full-time students at four-year institutions fail to graduate within six years.  The National Center for Education Statistics reports that almost 75% of community-college students fail to graduate within three years.  Those students don’t have degrees, but they often still have debt.

And

Now here’s where the real immorality kicks in.  The skyrocketing cost of a college education is a classic unintended consequence of government intervention.  Colleges have responded to the availability of easy federal money by doing what subsidized industries generally do: Raising prices to capture the subsidy.  Sold as a tool to help students cope with rising college costs, student loans have instead been a major contributor to the problem.

In the end, the way to work the student debt problem is to reduce the need for the borrowing: get school costs down to saner levels.  Reynolds suggested a way:

Remove the incentives for universities to accept government-subsidized student-loan money regardless of a student’s prospects of graduation or gainful employment.

To which I add the following:

  • the schools shouldn’t receive the subsidized loan monies—i.e., the schools would have to be reimbursed after the fact—until the borrowing student has actually graduated and begun working
  • subsidized loan monies—taxpayer funds—should not be available at all except to students in majors that have serious prospects of bettering our nation’s strength and prosperity (stated differently, making better off the taxpayers on the hook for those monies).  STEM majors would qualify; Gender, Women’s, and Sexual Studies majors or majors in General Literary Studies need not apply.

Naturally, Progressives will have a herd of cattle over such criteria; money grows on the trees of the rich, after all.  Too bad.

Obamacare Hub and Privacy

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Courtesy of Senator Max Baucus (D, MT)—President Barack Obama isn’t the only politician appreciating the joys of greater flexibility after a last election—we get the following concerning Obamacare’s ability to pry into the private affairs of American citizens.

Baucus had asked HHS to provide “a complete list of agencies that will interact with the Federal Data Services Hub,” the agency of Obamacare that is responsible for determining eligibility, exemptions, grant sizes, and so on related to the delivery of Obamacare…services.

The Hub will, it turns out, draw from the Social Security Administration, the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Veterans Administration, Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Defense, and the Peace Corps and it will suck data from the states’ Medicaid databases.

That’s a broad reach of information feed to support determining who’s buying insurance and who needs to be finedtaxed or subsidized.

Here’s a subset of the personal, private information being collected by the Federal government on every individual American:

Social Security numbers, income, family size, citizenship and immigration status, incarceration status, and enrollment status in other health plans….

Of course, the Feds aren’t going to actually store those data, or so they claim.  They’ll only “securely transmit” those data.

Sure.  Never mind that the Feds’ regulatory notice filed last winter was for

a new “system of records” that will store names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, taxpayer status, gender, ethnicity, email addresses, telephone numbers on the millions of people expected to apply for coverage at the ObamaCare exchanges, as well as “tax return information from the IRS, income information from the Social Security Administration, and financial information from other third-party sources.”

They will also store data from businesses buying coverage through an exchange, including a “list of qualified employees and their tax ID numbers,” and keep it all on file for 10 years.

All of those data listed above, plus a potful more, will be collected by the Hub.  And retained, apparently under the fiction that 10 years is just temporary storage solely for “secure transmission.”

And all of that temporarily stored information can be bruited about at will without so much as a fare-thee-well to the information’s owners—us private citizens.  The following can have our data without notice:

agency contractors, consultants, or grantees…need[ing] to have access to the records…as well as law enforcement officials….

Of course, it’s the Feds’ definition of “need,” not ours; it’s against the Feds’ evident lack of interest in safeguarding this information of ours that they’re collecting:

  • A [GAO] report found that weaknesses in IRS security systems “continue to jeopardize the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the financial and sensitive taxpayer information.”
  • A separate Inspector General audit found that the IRS inadvertently disclosed information on thousands of taxpayers between 2009 and 2010.
  • In 2011, the Social Security Administration accidentally released names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of tens of thousands of Americans.

Where’s the NSA when we need it?  Oh, wait….