Missing The Point On Hobby Lobby

It is self-evident that women should be free to choose the birth control method they feel works best for their reproductive system and their family circumstances just as men are free to choose the form of boner pill that best suits them. Hobby Lobby is trying to get four specific means of Birth Control off the Obamacare required FDA list of options that the company provided insurance must provide their workers. Hobby Lobby is a privately held company, and its owners believe the requirements are tantamount to abortion, and so forcing their insurance policy to provide them would be like forcing them to fund baby killers. Regardless of the decision, more than a dozen other methods of Birth Control would still be offered by Hobby Lobby to their workers.

That said this case is shaping up as another which enshrines the rights of corporations on the same level or above the actual rights of people. I am less concerned about the specifics of this case, as I am the ramifications, with broader impact, on American citizens. I would be shocked if the SCOTUS opinion said that publicly held corporations would be able to restrict access in any way based on religious ideology. The sheer numbers of shareholders would never fall into a distinctly defined religious grouping. However, I would not be surprised at all to see this decision stretched in new ways to grant ever greater power to entrenched financial interests seeking to exert their political and social influence.

What’s of far greater concern than the Hobby Lobby contraceptive decision is that we seem to be on an Orwellian slide towards a future where Big Brother is defined by corporate wealth, far more than governmental power, with reach beyond that of the state, so entrenched that citizens, even those actively engaged, have no hope of prevailing in either the rigged justice system or at the ballot box. Powerful financial interests, with little restraint beyond a confused and financially mobbed up public opinion, are increasingly running roughshod over both our government and us. Certain entities have grown so large and so powerful, the government is powerless to intercede on the American citizen’s behalf. Far from it, the government exists as a rubber stamp for the meanest, most selfish, most ideologically perverse policies pushed by those interests.

If you think I’m wrong you might ask yourself what happened in West Texas? Who was or will be prosecuted for the West Virginia chemical spill which made the water for 300,000 undrinkable? Did anyone beyond Bernie Madoff ever go to jail for the Big Bank, Wall Street, ponzi scheme, run up to the Market Crash of 2007? Who stands with the citizens of small and medium sized towns across America suffering the medical fallout of fracking in their communities? Why did the farm bill enshrine subsidies for sugar growers, some of them actual members of congress, even as SNAP benefits to the most vulnerable citizens in our communities were cut? Why is it that in the midst of the worst job crisis in American history the political dialogue has been shifted so adroitly to the matter of the debt? Why is it that the NRA has been able to stymie gun control legislation supported by the majority of Republicans, and overwhelming numbers of Democrats and independents? Why are the Koch Brothers investing hundreds of thousands in a County Board Race in Polk County Wisconsin? Why are they Kochs spending heavily to swing a school board race in Colorado? Why are so many of the potential Republican nominees for ’16, including Bush and Christie, lining up for a beauty pageant in Las Vegas? Could it be that the only judge is Shelly Adelson, a billionaire with hard right views on Israel, and little commitment to any other political position other than lax regulation of his Casino interests?

Whether Hobby Lobby wins or loses their case, their workers will still have medical access to some forms of birth control. It is not what it should be, but few things in an America corrupted by religious dogma are. In my view access to proper medical care, including reproductive health, ought to trump religious dogma, but especially in the case of abortion and choice that has never been the reality. Why should this be different? As a consequence I am not that fired up about Hobby Lobby. David Green will pass on eventually, to be replaced by perhaps less dogmatically distorted children and grandchildren, but the real residue of his life will have been striking another blow for the supremacy of financial interests over the rights of American Citizens.

Paul Ryan-1984

I started to do some research this morning on the kerfuffle over Paul Ryan’s C-PAC speech and his hoary tale about soulless school lunches http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/03/06/a-story-too-good-to-check-paul-ryan-and-the-story-of-the-brown-paper-bag/) I was going to look up the cost of Federal subsidies for School Nutrition programs for children in families that have difficulty providing for their kids. I was going to make the obvious arguments about how little school lunches programs cost on a per meal basis, juxtaposed against the costs of some things the government pays for, apparently with no reservation as to the higher moral purpose of the expense. Each FA-18 Hornet military jet, for example, costs $94 million. I was going to look up the seldom mentioned statistics, when Republicans raise their voices on these programs and demonize the poor, that most of the money goes to people that work. I was going to list a handful of wealthy individuals and Fortune-500 companies that have paid little or no taxes for years. Everyone knows that list is quite lengthy, and it goes to the heart of our increasingly heartless society.  

I even researched Laura Schroff and Maurice Mazyck, the two people at the heart of Representative Ryan’s misanthropic vignette.  There has been a fair amount of press on Schroff and Mazyck, and it pre-dates this latest kerfuffle by years. Laura met Maurice on the streets of New York in 1986, when he was an  11 year old boy. He was panhandling for food. She bought him a meal and they became friends. They have been friends since, now almost 30 years. They have been lauded on shows which range from Rachel Ray to Huckabee. Americans see in them the best of what we can be. This is because Ms. Schroff did more than write a check, a charitable donation she could deduct on her taxes. She gave of herself.  Republicans like to pretend that we can cut taxes further because people like Schroff exist, but both Laura Schroff and Maurice Mazyck are advocates for expanded School Lunch Programs and SNAP,  Supplemental Nutrition assistance. Rep. Ryan’s use of their story was an Orwellian distortion of the facts of Laura Schroff’s and Maurice Mazyck’s life.

By some grace my family has been spared the injury of children without enough to eat, or parents making harsh choices between food and medicine or food and rent. As a child my parents did a number of small “c” charitable things that exposed us to the poverty in our community. Thanks to our parents my brother and sister and I knew poverty existed in our hometown of Streamwood, what it looked like, felt like,  even smelled like, and that the circumstances of these people’s lives were barely different than ours. Twenty years later I stumbled into a mentoring program called Big Brothers and Big Sister’s in New York. BBBS is my favorite charity (http://bigsnyc.org/index.php) precisely because it mentors kids for a future path where hopefully they can sustain themselves. While I always consider those who are purely suffering as worthy, the Coalition for the Homeless for example,  (http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/) for years in my own giving I have emphasized programs designed to help young people avoid the pitfalls that lead them to or trap them in poverty, homelessness, and hunger.

When I was a young man and mentoring through BBBS, all my friends knew my “little”,  Calvin. I was proud of what I did and I wore it perhaps a little too proudly. Somehow my friend survived and lives down in the Carolinas now. He has had issues over the years, but like that old Door’s song I like to think that he broke on through to the other side. I seldom speak of that experience now. I think this is partly because that that relationship, no matter my failings in it, was what I, speaking purely for myself, truly consider giving. Everything since then somehow falls short. There is no small shame in that.

So instead of another litany of statistics, let me just say this: Mr. Ryan has his story and I have mine. If sustaining the lives of children with nutritional needs is soulless then I will surrender my soul. It's sort of f***ed up anyway. Just tell me when and where.

We can be outraged over Ryan’s distortion of the truth, but he represents a part of who we are just as Laura Schroff and Maurice Mazyck represent another. When I say part of who we are, I literally mean it. I know it is part of who I am. Most of us are weary at some point or another of the burdens of our society. It’s is easy to feel worn down by the needs of others. Selfishness is a human trait that can only be mitigated by selfless giving.

I make no judgment here on the quality of Ryan’s life, certainly not in comparison to mine. He may be a good and charitable man in his private giving, but the powerful and wealthy forces he represents are another matter entirely.  If Mr. Ryan is a giving man in private, on the public stage he is a scoundrel, selling victimhood to the powerful, and creating villainy out of hunger.  

Finally this, the matter here is not statistics. I have exposed a glimmer of my own journey here precisely because I know that real lives are at stake. I have been in their apartments and homes, felt their struggle, and viscerally internalized their pain. On FB I have read the constant struggle of Colleen and her beautiful, princely, tousle-haired, autistic son, Mathew. Colleen’s whole family endures through this struggle. I am sure many of us who read her regular posts would reach through and extend our hand if we could. Are we to believe that whatever lifeline either the state of Nebraska or the Federal government extends to this family is soulless? I will never accept that. I reject completely Ryan’s Orwellian saga. My soul may be tired but the struggle continues. Mr. Ryan is who he is, but I will never be that cynical.

Blowin' In the Wind

I watched all of MTP today. I have not done that for months. Now I remember why, and it's not just this show. The constant barrage of media talking heads we hear every day distorts our view and cramps our morality. David Gregory did his duty, asking Sec. Kerry essentially the same two questions in slightly different ways. The first is very important: “Will the President consider American Military intervention to resolve the Crisis in Ukraine?”

In fairness, Kerry wanting to seem tough, sort of danced around a direct answer to the questions. We know how that goes and how that can go, but in this case everyone knows American military action is not in the tool case. 

 The second question is more nefarious and it gets to the reason that the question about war needs to be answered. Gregory came at it several ways from different directions, but the gist of it is this: “You know that Putin is a bad mofo, Why is the President such a wimp?” At the moment Americans are anti-war bordering on isolationists, so one may rightly wonder what moral standard must be abridged so that the US feels compelled to roll out the long bombers and fire up the tanks. 

 It is odd even to an anti-war liberal like me to think that American can no longer be the police force for the world. How strange to consider what options are available beyond brute force? The world gets complicated when you have to accept and understand the perspective of every other nation on earth: We cannot deploy our forces and engage every problem. We’re going to have to talk our way out of some of these. We’re left with lesser weapons which require rather more sophisticated leadership.

Weapons of diplomatic isolation and economic pressure can work, but they’re a little like tax evasions charges which send gangsters to prison for 20 years, so much less satisfying. We live in a complicated world with evil forces of rather substantial size and scope, but I think this is a good and challenging dialogue to have. Most of the world has already adapted to this reality. Only the US still thinks we can project a macho big d*** foreign policy and fix all the problems of the world.

Of course these tactics are easily demagogued.

So the only questions Gregory was interested in directed everyone’s attention to what he characterized as Putin’s vigorous leadership as compared to Obama’s weakness. That Gregory did not accept Kerry’s non-denials of war as actual denials of war is what journalists are supposed to do. Kerry waffled and jived to no apparent purpose until Gregory finally asked the question that closed the loop so Kerry had to say no to militarism. But the mano-a-mano bullshit Gregory was spewing completely undermined any environment where an honest answer could be rendered. At the beginning of the panel Gregory went so far as to say this moment is all about the credibility of the President of the United States.

Really? 

 To every slob that followed, everyone who exhausted their book of clichés in reference to what they called a weak president, including Sen. Marco Rubio, I wanted to ask, “What would you have them do?”

Of course with America this is exactly what happens and before long we are sending two carriers in a wild scrum of “My d*** is bigger than your d***.” Up until now Obama has navigated that well. He entered as an anti-war president. With some glaring and disappointing exceptions he has governed that way. This is especially true as it pertains to Iran, where both Repub Romney and Israeli PM have proposed policies that likely would have led to war. It’s hard for me to see how the events in Ukraine could lead to American military involvement, but I still found the exchange interesting. It says so much more about Americans than Obama himself. 

 Beyond the news mongers and the posturing of our politicians it seems to me that Americans are the real reason we find ourselves so easily on the brink of War. Americans protect their macho manhood like a teenage boy on a football field. 

Gregory asked all the questions about the President because people sitting at home go, “Hey, you know, Obama is sort of a wimp.” He bows to kings, apologizes for this and that, and he never seems to stand up for anything.” I get that it’s a part of a narrative now and it resonates. But so is the fact that 13 years after Afghanistan most Americans view it as a mistake. Four years after Bush took us to Iraq most Americans thought that was a mistake. Since Korea once American’s see the price of war they come to the conclusion quickly that the price is not worth it. Yet every time, the jacked up talking heads postulate questions about manhood, or strength, or power soon America’s internal abhorrence of war, is trampled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWwgrjjIMXA