If the Susan G. Komen foundation board can reverse its tone-deaf decision to pull grant funding from Planned Parenthood, then the Obama administration can say “oops, we goofed” and rethink its decision mandating religious organizations include contraception in their employee insurance plans.
I think health insurance plans — public and private — should cover contraception. They didn’t “back in my day.” I am uneasy with this government vs. religion mandate.
You wanted “the pill,” you scrimped on the grocery money to buy it. Ditto with surgeries, though there was that oddity in which vasectomies were covered, but not tubal ligation. (Always, always, the guys ….) These days, most plans pick up the tab, minus, of course, the obligatory co-pays and deductibles.
I think we walk a First Amendment tightrope, though, when the government tells religious organizations historically and theologically opposed to contraception that they have to include contraception (what’s next? Abortion?) in their insurance plans.
So, when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius rolled out only a very narrow exception — Catholic organizations that employ mostly Catholics can skip the contraception mandate — the battle was engaged. Because, that teensy exception meant Catholic universities, for instance, had to provide contraception in their insurance plans.
No one is mandating employees avail themselves of contraception, simply that it be included for those who choose to use. Understandably, the Catholic Church is on the pulpit against the mandate and reactions nationally have been — perhaps — surprising, as the mainstream media does two things: disagrees with the mandate or calls for a “re-think.”
The Kaiser Foundation is collating information and reactions at its website.
I started this post counting myself as a “disagree with the mandate,” but I’m going to conclude it as a “re-think” that includes far broader access to exemptions.
I find the mandate distasteful because it is heavy-handed. And, yet I can’t bring myself to say do away with it. Because, where does the line get drawn? Exemptions for any Catholic organization — including the ones that get state and federal funding? Exemptions for any Catholic hospital?
Although religious organizations may discriminate in favor of hiring those of their own faith, these days, doing so isn’t going to fill all those jobs on school and college campuses or in health care. So, church-affiliated businesses reach into wider workforce and customer bases and as they do, the faith-based employee and customer pool no longer shares similar religious values.
The Obama administration narrowly defined the exemptions to make it easier to implement the mandate nationwide. That makes sense; it reduces the “if this, then this” slippery slope of who qualifies for which sliver of what slice of which exception. Angels dancing on pinheads would be simple in contrast.
But, in drawing such a fine line distinction, the administration cut it too close. Time to say “oops, we goofed” and more broadly define those exemptions.
A final Midwest Winter: The view from our deck is beautiful in every season.
More on the ad rep in just a minute…
I bet half of my friends and acquaintances think we’re already in Key West. Wish we were, but we’re spending one more snow-and-wind-chill winter in Rockford, IL, though there’s been (thankfully) precious little of both this season.
We’re winding up two decades of “stuff,” from getting the house sold to disentangling from jobs and projects. I’ve been working on the back-end of the business plans, ensuring Key West Watch has the architecture it needs.
I’m also looking for an advertising/marketing sales rep to join me for the start-up. The successful candidate for this contract position will (1) embrace the possibilities of the web world and its digital offspring and still believe that print works; (2) be a news and information junkie; (3) be able to close the deal; and (4) believe that credibility in news, advertising, marketing and services is the foundation of a profitable operation.
If that be you or someone you know, email your cover letter, resume and contact info (keywestwatch@cunningnet.com). If you’re the right candidate, you’ll know how to tell the tale.
We’ll make a quick trip to Key West in March, come back here to pack it up — and assuming we get this house sold, we’ll arrive with the moving van this summer. Key West Watch goes soft launch in third quarter and will be live with the arrival of season.
If your annual household income is $150,000 and you’re living in most of Florida, you’re in the top 4 percent of those who live here, and in the top 9 percent nationally.
You’d need an annual household income of $289,657 to wear the Florida 1-percenter badge and $383,001 to match the national 1 percent ranks. Still, look how close to that top spot a household income of $150,000 can get you.
Who earns that much money here in the Rock River Valley? A two-some household of veteran teachers, cops or firefighters easily make it. Many of the executive director types will do it, especially if they’ve got a paycheck spouse. Ditto the CEO-sorts of the various public bodies and private companies.
Worker bees? Not so much, of course. Two veteran journalists under one roof might make it into the top 13 percent, if they stretch really tall.
The New York Times today posted this fascinating interactive tool for figuring out where your household income falls against the local metropolitan areas, the state and the nation. Try it. Good learning experience.
It doesn’t take much more than a couple making middle-income paychecks to push them into the top percentage income brackets. They might not make it to the 1 percent, but they’re sure going to be low single digits.
I think sometimes we get so caught up in the 1 percent versus the 99 percent rhetoric that we stop realizing the real conversation ought to be less about hard lines and who wins and far more about doing what’s best for the most of us and for the least among us.
Americans are Bell Curve people. We live happily along that 80 percent bulge in the middle of things, and we’re open to learning new things from the strident fan-folks farther down the curve and out to its edges.
For a while. Not forever. Just about the time fan-folks think the rest of us have become their true believers, we say “that’s far enough; time for a deep breath.”
The middle needs fan-folks to get us moving, to introduce us to new ideas and concepts, to keep us from staying too long in one place. We need those extreme points of view to make us sit up and take notice.
Whether it’s the whacked-out Carrie Nation with her anti-alcohol, women’s and families’ rights messages, or the deranged John Brown with his anti-slavery screeds, the far left and far right of the Bell Curve are the ones who make things change.
Those revered “founding fathers” were terrorists bent on overthrowing the legitimate government. The idea that society (read that government) ought to take care of children and old people came from the fringes, resulting in the now-sacrosanct Social Security and Medicare entitlements.
So, we need the Tea Party, far-right Republicans, flaming liberal Democrats and, yes, the Jello-like Occupy Wall Street. We also need Barack Obama’s sense of hope and call for change. And, we need the predictable confrontational clash that has been the United States’ dissonant symphony for the past three years.
If Tuesday’s election results are any indicator, and I think they are, then Middle America has gotten the messages, absorbed them, and is sending a message of its own: Enough. Enough of the fan-folks, hardline, confrontational, I-win-you-lose. Back to the middle where we can get something constructive done.
Douglas Schoen, a political strategist and Fox News commentator, was nowhere near as accommodating, positioning himself on Tuesday ahead of voting, to warn that these kinds of results did not, in fact, mean collaborative heads would prevail. But this paragraph is worth noting because it makes my point that the middle is reasserting its power:
“In fact, that will almost certainly be something of a misreading of the results, as voters in Ohio are strongly supportive of efforts to curb excessive state spending and high levels of taxation, but they are equally skeptical of efforts to reign in unions– particularly through the elimination of collective bargaining rights.”
Yes, the middle can hold both those positions at the same time and search for a middle ground solution. It’s that middle ground on which the fan-folks on all sides can’t walk.
We’re not going to miraculously join hands this afternoon and sing “We are the World.” It will take another decade to pick and choose from among the “extreme” ideas of the past 10 years and adapt them to something quintessentially American.
But, for those who wondered if we’d ever return to less strident, less destructive, less polarizing discussion, the answer was in Tuesday’s ballot box. Yes, we will. Middle America is back in charge.
Friday Five: Odds and ends from the week’s world of news.
* That Super Committee that’s supposed to fix America’s fiscal house by Thanksgiving? Well, it’s not going to happen. Not because there are no solutions, but because its hardline Republican and Democratic members have no intention of collaborating. Raise taxes; cut expenses. That simple. A pox on them all.
* The Gang of Six, Simpson-Bowles and the Grand Bargain. That Super Committee doesn’t even have to do the work. They can copy off the kids sitting next to them. There are two perfectly good blueprints ready for the picking, and there’s always the Obama-Boehner Grand Bargain that could be resurrected. I’m OK with copying off the smart guys.
* Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. And, while I’m on my compromise and collaborate rant, might as well toss in this one. Obama wants an infrastructure jobs bill to build roads and bridges. The GOP opposition doesn’t want to fund construction with a tax on 345,000 millionaires. The result? No jobs.
* President Herman Cain? Oh, please. As goofy as Donald Trump or (can’t resist) Sarah Palin. Though I might prefer President Palin to either of those guys. I know Cain’s not going to be on the top of the GOP ticket. No way the party’s controllers, even the Tea peeps, are going to let that happen no matter what the polls say. Incumbent Obama would flatten the pizza guy and there’s no way the elephants will risk that. I’m practicing writing Hillary Clinton as my write-in candidate.
* And, because all that political news can make me crazy, let’s just end with Friday Four. No reason to ruin a perfectly beautiful fall day by obsessing over D.C. dumb clucks.
