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.