A Clash of Zealots

So the national chain "Hobby Lobby" has filed a lawsuit against part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which is more often referred to as "Obamacare."   The retail chain, owned by the Green family, believes the ACA requirement for employers to provide health insurance which includes birth control is unconstitutional.   Specifically, they object to being required to cover the morning after pill and similar drugs.  Hobby Lobby describes itself as a "biblically founded business," whatever that means.

It was perhaps inevitable that a group would start an online petition demanding that Hobby Lobby back off this lawsuit.   After all, online petitions seem to be the weapon of choice lately for a wide range of political issues, especially in cases of corporate right-wing, political activism (such as Chick-fil-A).   Ultraviolet, an organization devoted to promoting women's rights, is promoting a petition which states:

"All women deserve affordable access to birth control and it's a woman's personal, medical decision on which form to use. I won’t be shopping at your store until you drop this suit, and I’ll be telling my friends to do the same."

Now, I have never shopped at Hobby Lobby, mostly because I object to their incessant, strident proselytizing.   I just don't get why some people feel it's necessary to be everyone else's face 24/7 about their religious views.  This retail chain's penchant for full-page newspaper religious treatises is too "in my face."  So, I concur that this company needs to join the rest of our society and follow the law passed by our elected representatives.

On the other hand, I think the petition against the Green family's lawsuit has a couple of problems.   First, it's a waste of time because I don't believe the company really cares what people think of the company.   That is, these people are so convinced that their religious views are the only correct views that no petition will change their collective minds.  

Second, there's no back up plan.  As might be expected, Ultraviolet has now reported that 

Hobby Lobby isn't backing down.

After 80,000 petition signatures, thousands of posts on Facebook, and hundreds of calls to their customer service center, Hobby Lobby is still holding firm in its lawsuit against covering certain forms of birth control.

And now the right wing is rallying around the lawsuit. Conservative media outlets are covering the story, while others are drowning Hobby Lobby's Facebook page in positive comments.

It's pretty much exactly what happened a couple months ago with Chick-Fil-A and the anti-gay marriage statements of its founder.  The right circled the wagons and promoted "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Days."  

So what's the plan?   Ultraviolet is now emailing people to post "reviews" on Yelp, reviews which are not really reviews but political rants:

Can you post a review of Hobby Lobby on Yelp today, and make sure all of its customers know about their anti-woman lawsuit? There are Hobby Lobby stores in 41 states, so there is probably one in your state. 

Suggested language for the "review?"

"I'm very disturbed by Hobby Lobby's lawsuit attempting to deny women access to some forms of birth control. I'm not shopping at Hobby Lobby until they drop this lawsuit, and I hope no one else will either. What kind of birth control a woman uses is definitely not her employer's business. No more Hobby Lobby for me!"

So when Hobby Lobby continues to ignore the outrage, we'll be left with a bunch of faux reviews on a food and entertainment website, and what?   Nothing.

I'm not inclined to post a faux review on Yelp, and while I signed the petition, I don't agree with the last part: "until you drop this suit."   Whether or not Hobby Lobby drops the lawsuit, I won't shop there, for the same reason I haven't shopped there up to now.   I prefer to not patronize a company that has incessant, strident, right-wing proselytizing as part of its business plan.

Follow The Money Again

So United Airlines has decided to do away with "family boarding" before regular boarding begins.   This has been used in order to get families with young kids onto a flight before everyone else, so that aisles are less clogged up and families can easily sit together.

Why on earth would United pursue such a change?   There must be money involved.   Oh right, if they ditch family boarding, they can sell families seats together for an extra charge.  Or simply tell families they have to upgrade from Coach.  For more money.

Nice consumer-friendly, customer service, United.   It's getting harder to decide which airline is worse, lately.

Riverboat Gambler On The Fed?

It's clear that investment banking is nothing more than riverboat gambling with suits.  We shouldn't have riverboat gamblers on the Fed.  

Here's a petition to demand Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase either resign or be removed from the New York Federal Reserve Board of Directors.

 

Filibuster Reform - Again

Reform of the US Senate's filibuster is back on the "to-do" list for the Senate (see my 10/5/10 post on this topic). While still holding a majority in that House of Congress, Democrats need to do something strong to reduce the Party of No's (PON) frequent use of this technique to stall debate and action in the Senate.  See my list of filibuster votes near the bottom of this page.

Some Democrats are attempting to change the rules to more closely follow the original filibuster procedure, which required the person blocking some action to hold the floor of the Senate and talk, for hours or days if needed. Under current rules, the filibuster can be invoked by merely threatening to block action. The Credo Action lobbying group provides examples of how this technique was used in recent years:

The filibuster is why health care reform didn't contain a public health care option similar to Medicare; it's why no meaningful climate legislation was passed; why even non-controversial judges were denied confirmation despite a crisis in the judiciary; and why even the bipartisan DREAM Act wasn't even brought to the floor.

The proposed changes are not perfect, but they're a step in the right direction.

Sens. Udall, Merkley and Harkin have proposed a number of provisions to limit the ability of the Republicans to game the rules and bring the Senate to a grinding halt. Their proposal includes:

1. Making those who filibuster actually stay on the floor and talk, like Jimmy Stewart in the famous scene of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
2. Reducing the opportunities to filibuster
3. Expediting the nominations process for relatively uncontroversial nominees
4. Eliminating secret holds

For whatever good online petitions do, this one is worthwhile. Anyone who believes in the democratic process should support this effort.

A Million Petitions

It seems like as Americans become more and more estranged from their governments at all levels (municipal, State, Federal), an awful lot of them spend a lot of time petitioning for one thing or another.   I'm not talking about people going around knocking on doors to invite me to join them in their effort to get some level of government to either stop doing something or start doing something else.  I'm talking about online petitions and they're all over the place these days.  These email invitations are different than the ones that result in sending an email or fax to my specific elected representatives.   Rather, these are efforts to accumulate thousands of "signatures" on a petition to be delivered to decision makers on a particular topic.


A sampling:  

• "End Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DemocracyForAmerica)
• "Send a Video Message to the President to "say no to a millionaire bailout" (MoveOn.org) (not strictly a petition, but similar enough)
• "Extend Emergency Unemployment Insurance" (AFL/CIO) 
• "Fully Fund NPR (Stand Up To Sarah Palin)" (Credoaction.com)
• "Join the fight against the Republican repeal hypocrisy" (healthcareforamericanow.org)

I have to wonder if most of these petition efforts are more about collecting email and street addresses of people that can be solicited for donations later, than about really effecting change.   

I mean, did Target Corporation really care about the petitions protesting the company's political contributions to right-wing candidates in Minnesota?   I doubt it, and I certainly didn't hear any company reaction to the protests.  The effort to boycott Target didn't seem to have any noticeable effect at my local Target; the parking lot is always filled just as it was before the political donation.  I'm afraid most Americans just don't care if corporations are funneling money into political campaigns, even if the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates to such corporate intrusion into the political system.  Most Americans have been successfully indoctrinated in consumerism, and tend to focus on "Expect More, Spend Less" rather than on how their democracy is being stolen from them.

Is President Obama really going to sit down and watch a few thousand video messages asking him to oppose extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy?   I hope he has a lot more important things to do than waste a week or so doing something like that.  Is this MoveOn.org effort just to make people feel like they're doing something productive, when in reality, they are anything but?

I think that's the core of the issue: making people feel like they are empowered, when in reality, they are definitely not.   I can't believe that anyone in Congress is impressed when presented with electronic petitions bearing tens of thousands of names, especially when there seems to be an epidemic of petitions.   As a decision maker, if you see one or two during the course of a year, you've got to be more impressed than if you're presented with dozens, or hundreds, of petitions.  

As someone who has been elected to our school board several times, I know what is involved in getting actual signatures on an actual nominating petition.   And how difficult it can be to actually get people to sign their name to a piece of paper.  Electronic petitions take no effort and carry corresponding impact.   Little or none.