Thursday, May 9, 2013

Jeb Bush: Denying Undocumented Immigrants Citizenship Is ‘Absolutely Vital’

In “Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution,” former Florida Governor Jeb Bush (R) argues that undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be eligible for American citizenship, breaking from the growing bipartisan consensus surrounding reform and contradicting his own position on the issue earlier this year. The book, written with attorney Clint Bolick, will be published on Tuesday.

According to an advanced copy obtained by the Huffington Post’s Elise Foley, Bush writes, “It is absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences — in this case, that those who violated the law can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship.” “To do otherwise would signal once again that people who circumvent the system can still obtain the full benefits of American citizenship,” Bush adds. He opens a crack in the door for the unauthorized population, however, noting that those who wish to become citizens, must first return to their home country:

“A grant of citizenship is an undeserving reward for conduct that we cannot afford to encourage,” they write. “However, illegal immigrants who wish to become citizens should have the choice of returning to their native countries and applying through normal immigration processes that now would be much more open than before.”

Asking 11 millions undocumented immigrants to leave the country — “three-fifths of whom have lived in the United States for more than a decade” — isn’t only impractical, but could disrupt businesses and economies and create a permanent underclass of Americans.

Unauthorized immigrants would face the choice of remaining in the country without all of the rights and privileges of citizenship or abandoning their jobs, families, and communities to travel back to a native country that they haven’t seen in years. At least 4.5 million native-born U.S.-citizen children who “have at least one unauthorized parent” could be separated from their mother or father.

Bush would allow young DREAM-eligible immigrants to apply for citizenship while remaining in the country, but his stance on the wider population positions the former Florida governor to right of Republicans like Marco Rubio (R-FL), John McCain (R-AZ), and brother George W. Bush — all of whom support a path to earned citizenship. And for good reason: under the bipartisan immigration principles advanced by the Senate and President Obama, undocumented immigrants would have to learn English, pay taxes, and undergo numerous background checks before qualifying for permanent status. As Rubio explains, immigrants who register with the government and receive probationary status “will not be allowed to apply for a green card for a substantial period of time,” waiting “in line behind everyone who has applied before them.”

They would truly have to earn the status and once they did, the economic benefits of naturalization for the nation will be substantial. A naturalized immigrant will earn “between 5.6 percent and 7.2 percent more within two years of becoming a citizen,” boosting consumer spending and overall economic growth. Researchers “found that even if only half of those eligible to become citizens do so, it would add $21 billion to $45 billion to the U.S. economy over 10 years.”

Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick seemed to agree with this idea as recently as January, writing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “A practicable system of work-based immigration for both high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants—a system that will include a path to citizenship—will help us meet workforce needs, prevent exportation of jobs to foreign countries and protect against the exploitation of workers.”


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Student Murdered By Stalker Inspires Colorado Bill To Keep Guns Away From Domestic Abusers

Inspired by a student who was murdered by her stalker, a Colorado lawmaker has introduced a bill banning gun possession by anyone who has been convicted of domestic violence or has been the subject of a restraining order.

Senate Bill 197 is the first of four gun violence prevention measures being considered in Colorado’s Senate Judiciary Committee today. The bill would also require an individual with a restraining order against them to relinquish any guns in their possession within 24 hours. State Sen. Evie Hudak (D-CO), the legislation’s sponsor, was a teacher at the school where the student was shot after filing a restraining order against her killer:

Hudak said the student who was killed at the private business college where she was teaching had taken out a restraining order against her stalker, and “we were all told to keep an eye on her.”

“She appeared to have dropped out of school,” Hudak said. “A few weeks later they found her body.”

This unnamed student is hardly an unusual case. American women are at a higher risk to be homicide victims than women in any other high-income country. Over 90 percent of female homicide victims are killed by someone they know, and 76 percent of these victims were stalked before their deaths. Guns are the most common weapon used in these murders.

Pro-gun advocates have tried to frame gun rights as an issue of women’s safety, claiming that gun-free zones disarm women who need to protect themselves from sexual assault. Since an estimated two-thirds of sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone the victim knows, a gun would probably not help a woman defend herself.

In reality, women are much more likely to be on the other end of the barrel. Nearly 6 times more women were shot by a husband, boyfriend or ex than by a male stranger in 2010. Purchasing a handgun, according to some analyses, provides no protection against homicide and actually increases the risk of being murdered by a partner. Abusers who have access to firearms are over 7 times more likely to kill their partners. Even women who simply live in states with higher gun ownership are 4.9 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than women who live in lower gun ownership rates.

According to SB 197, Colorado is home to 41,244 domestic violence victims. The number of victims in the state rose dramatically by 11.6 percent between 2011 and 2012, compared to the 3.6 percent the year before.


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President Clinton: Some Disenfranchisement Efforts Today Are ‘Even More Determined’ Than 48 Years Ago

In the wake of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia’s claim that a key provision of the Voting Rights Act amounts to a “perpetuation of racial entitlement,” former President Bill Clinton offered a very different vision of the law in an exclusive statement emailed to ThinkProgress today:

The Voting Rights Act is one of the most powerful tools Americans have to fight injustice, and its protection is fundamental to our democracy. Since the Act’s enactment in 1965, disciplined, systematic efforts to undermine its safeguards by disenfranchising younger, poorer, minority, and disabled voters—some even more determined today than they were 48 years ago—are reminding us of the fragility of this very precious right. As America becomes younger, more diverse, and more vibrant, our response must be to embrace our common humanity, to widen the circle of opportunity, and to build a country where every American has a voice in the future—a voice that our vote provides and our government must protect. This is not the time to weaken those protections, but rather an opportunity to redouble our efforts to affirm them.

President Clinton previously described efforts by Republican governors and lawmakers to undermine voting rights the most determined effort to restrict the franchise ” since we got rid of the poll tax and all the other Jim Crow burdens on voting.”


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White House Policy for Countering Improvised Explosive Devices

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For Immediate Release February 26, 2013 White House Policy for Countering Improvised Explosive Devices

The President signed the White House Policy for Countering Improvised Explosive Devices today. The policy can be found here.

 

 

Extending Middle Class Tax Cuts

Blog posts on this issue February 27, 2013 3:23 PM ESTRosa Parks has a Permanent Place in the U.S. CapitolRosa Parks has a Permanent Place in the U.S. Capitol

President Obama is on hand for the unveiling of the new Rosa Parks statue in the U.S. Capitol

February 27, 2013 12:00 PM ESTCatching Up with the Curator: Watch Meeting--Dec. 31st 1862--Waiting for the Hour

To mark African American History Month, as well as the 150th anniversary of the year the Emancipation Proclamation, we talked with White House Curator Bill Allman about a painting called Watch Meeting--Dec. 31st 1862--Waiting for the Hour that hangs near the Oval Office in the West Wing.

February 26, 2013 3:00 PM ESTPresident Obama Calls for a Responsible Approach to Deficit ReductionPresident Obama Calls for a Responsible Approach to Deficit Reduction

President Obama strongly believes we need to replace the arbitrary cuts known as the sequester with balanced deficit reduction, and today he was at a shipyard in Newport News, VA to talk about what failing to do so will mean for middle class families.

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Supreme Court justices hint at striking Voting Rights Act provision

The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared likely to strike down a key part of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights law designed to protect minority voters from discrimination.

The court’s conservative justices were at times hostile to the law’s requirement that states with a history of discrimination gain “preclearance” from the federal government before changing their voting procedures.

Justice Antonin Scalia called the policy an example of “racial entitlement” — a comment that seemed to strike a nerve with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, underscoring the delicate racial politics at play in the case.

Democratic lawmakers, civil rights leaders and hundreds of activists rallied outside the court Wednesday, arguing that the Voting Rights Act is still a necessary tool to fight discrimination. Some lawmakers had to duck out of the arguments halfway through in order to help unveil a statue of Rosa Parks across the street in the Capitol.

“I am proud to stand with my colleagues today to send a clear message to the public and to the court that the right to vote is not a matter of race, entitlement or partisanship,” said Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

But inside the court’s chambers, lawyers arguing in favor of the Voting Rights Act clearly struggled to convince skeptical conservatives that the preclearance requirements are still needed.

Congress has reauthorized the Voting Rights Act several times, most recently in 2006, but it has not changed the criteria for determining which states and municipalities must get clearance before changing their voting procedures. States bound by the preclearance rules say the outdated rules intrude on their right to set their own election laws.

Scalia suggested that Congress could not be trusted to scrap preclearance requirements when they become outdated. He noted that each time the Voting Rights Act has been reauthorized, it has passed by a wider margin in the Senate. Lawmakers might simply be too timid to vote against it, he said.

“I think it is very likely attributable to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement,” Scalia said. “It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.”

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who attended part of the oral arguments, said Scalia’s comment was “unfortunate.” Equal voting rights are indeed an entitlement, he said — and have been since 1870, when Congress passed the 15th Amendment to the Constitution.

Sotomayor also seized on Scalia’s comments, asking a lawyer arguing against the Voting Rights Act, “Do you think Section 5 was voted for because it was a racial entitlement” and “Do you think racial discrimination has ended?”

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court’s traditional swing vote, compared the preclearance requirement to previous acts of Congress that worked well in their time but are no longer relevant.

“The Marshall Plan was very good, too — the Northwest Ordinance, the Morrill Act — but times change,” Kennedy said.

Chief Justice John Roberts pursued the same point, pressing Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr., who represented the Obama administration, to explain why the preclearance requirements are still necessary.

Verrilli defended the 2006 reauthorization as a “cautious choice” supported by a rigorous set of congressional findings. Some specific forms of discrimination that existed in 1965 are extinct, such as literacy tests, he said, but the point of preclearance is to prevent states from devising new methods of voter suppression.

States and municipalities subject to the Voting Rights Act had to file 3,700 preclearance requests in 2005, but the Justice Department only objected to one proposed change, Roberts said.

He also said the biggest discrepancies in voter turnout and registration are in states that do not have to file preclearance requests.

“Is it the government’s submission that the citizens in the South are more racist than citizens in the North?” Roberts asked Verrilli.

The court’s more liberal members questioned lawyers challenging the preclearance requirements about the lingering specter of racial discrimination, and also questioned whether Shelby County, Ala., which brought the lawsuit, should be able to get itself out of the preclearance requirements by citing improvements in other states.

“Why would we vote in favor of a county whose record is the epitome of what caused the passage of this law to start with?” Sotomayor asked.

Alabama’s voting practices have been successfully challenged more than almost any state in the country, Justice Elana Kagan said, making the state a bad messenger for scrapping the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirements.

“I mean, you’re objecting to a formula, but under any formula that Congress could devise, it would capture Alabama,” she said to Bert Rein, the attorney representing Shelby County.

Even before Wednesday’s oral arguments, there were signs that Section 5 might be in trouble. The Supreme Court expressed “serious misgivings” about the provision in a 2009 case, saying the requirements intruded into an area that has traditionally belonged to state and local governments.

The court avoided a broad ruling on constitutional grounds in that case, but its decision to take up the issue again four years later was seen as a strong indication that those misgivings had grown.

President Obama also seemed to signal last week that a loss at the Supreme Court was possible, if not likely. Obama said in a local television interview last week that losing Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act would not cause people to lose their right to vote.

“People will still have the same rights not to be discriminated against when it comes to voting,” Obama said. “You just won’t have this mechanism, this tool, that allows you to kind of stay ahead of certain practices.”

A ruling is expected in late June or early July.

— Updated at 8:23 p.m.

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The Complexities of Providing Health Insurance

Private health insurance increasingly entails moral and ethical issues of consequence to both employers and workers. Recent federal health care legislation has exacerbated the situation by implicitly asserting the supremacy of government’s moral judgments over those of employers and workers who finance private health plans. The Heritage Foundation’s Edmund F. Haislmaier, Senior Research Fellow in Health Policy Studies, examined these issues in a presentation to Catholic bishops attending the National Catholic Bioethics Center’s Twenty-Fourth Workshop for Bishops—“Bioethics Through the Eyes of Faith: Serving Christ in the Sick and Vulnerable”—in Dallas, Texas. He concluded that respect for freedom of conscience in addressing the moral dimensions of medical care should lead to a preference for health policy solutions built around the primacy of patients.

Discussions of the ethics of health care financing typically focus on issues of equity and social justice. Yet such discussions are more often about means than ends. Contrary to the impression given by occasionally heated political rhetoric, there, in fact, exists a broad consensus across the political spectrum that modern societies have an obligation to ensure that all of their members have access to needed medical care.

Of course, there are still disagreements over what should be considered necessary or appropriate care, or where to draw the line between personal and collective financial responsibilities, but those are mainly disputes at the margins.

Somewhat more consequential are the debates over how the system should be structured. They involve not only disagreements over the proper roles of the government and the private sector, but also practical considerations with respect to the efficacy of different approaches for organizing the financing and delivery of medical care.

The same can also be found in other social policy areas, such as education. For instance, the existence of broad societal support for the proposition that all children should be educated to a minimum level, does not, in and of itself, resolve questions over how best to achieve that end, the appropriate level of resources to devote to the effort, how the system should be structured, or the proper roles of the various participants.

Rather, in health care financing, the truly contentious issues today are those that center on the morality of specific therapies or actions. Indeed, recent scientific advances are spawning new ethical issues in medicine—and by extension, in health care financing as well. To the issues that have long been present, such as abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide, must now be added others, such as artificial contraception, assisted reproduction, sex-change treatments, genetic therapies, therapeutic cloning, and potential therapies derived from embryonic stem cells.

While these issues typically attract attention in the context of debates over the use of public funds, such as the issue of paying for abortion in public programs, they also exist, though less visibly, in private health care financing. That is particularly the case in the United States, where half of all medical care is still privately financed, mainly through employer-provided health insurance.

Private, employer-sponsored health insurance has been the dominant form of medical coverage in the United States for over half a century. Even though the share of the population covered by employer health plans has declined from its peak in the 1970s, 58.4 percent of the non-elderly U.S. population is still covered by employment-based health insurance.[1] This arrangement is the product of social policies since the 1940s that have favored it, mainly by treating employer-provided health benefits as tax-free income to workers. In the intervening years, government also imposed regulations on these arrangements, but until now those regulations were almost exclusively limited to addressing the contractual and financial aspects of private coverage.

However, this coverage arrangement presents its own set of ethical considerations, and while the latest federal health care legislation has pushed those issues to the forefront, they have long been present in the system in latent form.

Employer-sponsored health insurance is a form of compensation paid by an employer to its workers. As such, the ethics of how those funds are spent is of consequence to both the employer and the workers. Moral obligations attach not only to the employer’s decisions with respect to selecting or designing the plan, but also to the employee’s participation in the plan, since such plans are collective arrangements funded with monies that would otherwise be part of the worker’s cash wages.

Yet, most workers probably do not know if their employer’s health plan uses their money to pay for items or services that they consider immoral. They might be surprised to learn, for example, that a 2003 health care coverage survey found that 46 percent of workers with employer-sponsored health insurance were covered by plans that paid for abortion services.[2] Indeed, there have been instances in which even conscientious employers, including some Catholic institutions, discovered that they had been, unintentionally, providing their workers with health plans that include coverage for morally objectionable items or procedures.

These situations occur because changing social norms and developments in medical science have steadily altered what is considered “standard” or “typical” in employer health plan coverage. Unless an employer is diligent in excluding morally objectionable services from its health plan coverage, one or more of those services are increasingly likely to be in the plan by default.

To this equation has now been added another dimension by the most recent federal health care legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010.[3] While that legislation does expand existing public programs somewhat, its more consequential feature is that it takes the novel approach of attempting to achieve social policy objectives by compelling individuals to engage in government-specified transactions with other private parties. In effect, rather than increasing taxation to the level necessary to achieve its objectives through public programs, Congress instead decided to commandeer existing private resources to achieve those objectives through closely regulated private arrangements.

That this approach is novel in terms of secular law can be seen from the challenges to the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that individuals purchase health insurance. However, it is also novel with respect to the ethics of health care financing, in that it shifts the locus of authority over private medical treatment and private financing decisions, including those that entail ethical or moral considerations, from employers and individuals to government.

The legislation expands federal government regulation of private health care coverage in a number of significant ways, three of which embody this significant shift in authority:

First, it grants the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sweeping new powers to impose a wide range of benefit requirements on policies sold by health insurers and, in some cases, on employer-sponsored health plans as well.

Second, for the first time, it requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide their employees with health insurance coverage that the federal government deems to be adequate and affordable, or pay annual fines for failing to comply.

Third, and also for the first time, it requires individuals to obtain the minimum health insurance coverage specified by the government, or pay annual fines for failing to comply.

Underlying these measures is a corresponding shift in the rationale for government regulation that has profound implications for the ethics of private health care financing.

In October 2010, a major medical journal published a paper by a leading supporter of the legislation arguing for the constitutionality of its requirement on individuals to obtain health insurance. Setting aside the merits of the legal reasoning, it is the author’s exposition of the law’s underlying philosophical rationale that is most clarifying for our purposes. The principal justification offered for the requirement on individuals to obtain health insurance is that it is part of “a broader regulatory scheme” embodied in the new law:

First, and perhaps most fundamentally, in a remarkable shift whose precedent lies in the watershed Civil Rights Act of 1964, the [PPACA] transforms health insurance into a public accommodation.… This basic reconceptualization of health insurance as a good whose availability is a matter of national public interest essentially frames health insurance the way the Civil Rights Act framed other business interests.[4]

It is under this “public accommodation” rationale that the government now asserts the power to: (1) require employers to fund and manage health plans for their workers; (2) compel individuals to purchase health coverage; and (3) determine the scope and benefits of the coverage that must be provided and purchased. Because some of those decisions will involve ethical or moral considerations, the government is also implicitly asserting the supremacy of its own moral judgments over those of the employers and workers whose resources pay for the medical care in question.

The first conflict to arise out of the government’s exercise of these new powers centers on the requirement that employers and individuals pay for and facilitate contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs. However, it is not hard to envision more such conflicts arising in the future, should this new arrogation of power by the government be permitted to stand. That is because the legislation’s two separate benefit-setting provisions are drafted as broad grants of discretionary authority to the executive branch.

First, Congress empowered HHS to define and “periodically update,” a package of “essential health benefits” within at least 10 broad categories.[5] Starting in 2014, insurers will be required to include the essential health benefits in all individual and small-group policies.[6]

Second, the law requires both insurers and employers, including those that “self-insure,” to cover specified “preventive services” with no enrollee cost-sharing.[7] The requirement that employers and insurers provide coverage for contraception (including abortion-inducing drugs) and sterilization, is a subset of this second set of benefit mandates.

With these provisions now in federal law, there will likely be interest group pressure to expand the list of mandated benefits, and some of those proposed additions are likely to also be morally objectionable.[8] Indeed, that has been the experience with benefit mandates imposed by state governments on insurers, though employers can avoid state government mandates by not purchasing coverage from an insurance company and instead designing and funding their own “self-insured” plans. However, that solution will not work for the subset of new federal benefit mandates that are imposed not only on insurers but also directly on employers.

Thus, both employers and individuals attempting to act in accordance with Catholic moral teaching are placed in an unsatisfactory position.

One option for a Catholic or other conscientious employer, would be to simply discontinue the employee health plan and convert plan contributions back into cash wages paid to the workers. However, under the new law, if the employer has 50 or more workers, it would then be fined $2,000 each year, per worker, for not providing the required coverage. Furthermore, its workers would also be fined if they did not, then, obtain the required coverage on their own. Yet, all of the alternative plans available to them in either the individual insurance market, or through the employer of another worker in the family, would be required to include the morally objectionable items or services. Thus, this option is not a satisfactory solution for either the employer or the employees.

Another option would be for employers who are conscientious objectors to redesign their employee health benefit plans in ways that:

exclude coverage of morally objectionable items and services, and thus do not violate their consciences; avoid exposing their organizations to the ruinous fines imposed on non-compliant plans, yet; and still enable them to offer their workers employer-sponsored health benefits on a pre-tax basis.

I have been working with others who also have expertise in this area to develop a template for such benefit plan redesigns that Catholic and other objecting employers could use. However, under this approach, the employer would still be fined the same as if he provided no coverage, and his employees would also be fined if they did not otherwise obtain the required coverage. Thus, while creatively redesigning employer plans could significantly reduce the risks and costs associated with non-compliance—relieving some of the pressure on employers as they await the eventual disposition of their legal challenges—this option also does not resolve the underlying conflict.

Of course, pursuing court challenges to the infringement on rights of conscience posed by morally objectionable government benefit mandates is important, but it, too, will not produce a definitive resolution. Even if the plaintiffs challenging the imposition of the contraceptive coverage mandate eventually prevail in court, the government would still retain the power to later impose one or more other morally objectionable coverage requirements. Each future infringement would have to be litigated all over again.[9]

A more definitive solution would be to add a “conscience exemption” to the law.[10] Yet, to be truly satisfactory, a conscience exemption would need to meet at least the following four tests:

It would need to be explicit and unambiguous. It would need to broadly protect conscience rights with respect to decisions not only involving existing items, services, and treatments, but future ones as well. It would need to be available, on equal terms and as a matter of right, to any individual or entity, and could not be otherwise conditional or dependent on government deciding the validity of conscience claims. It would need to be functionally meaningful by also permitting health insurers to offer plans that exclude from coverage specific items or services if their customers have moral objections to funding or facilitating those items or services.

Yet, the very need for such an amendment indicates that the basic structure of the underlying law is seriously flawed. A law crafted such that it can be applied justly only if significant exceptions are permitted, is inherently defective in either its basic premise or its basic design, or both. In such circumstances, it is best for lawmakers to simply repeal the defective law. Assuming that the original objectives are legitimate, lawmakers may then adopt other, less problematic, means to achieving the same ends.

It is possible to ensure that all members of society have access to needed medical care, accompanied by just and equitable financing arrangements, without resorting to laws that infringe on freedom of religion and conscience.

While designing such an alternative approach involves practical considerations that are outside the scope of the Church’s moral and teaching authority, it is possible, and indeed helpful, for the Church to offer additional guidance derived from other principles beyond those of equity and social justice.

To return to the earlier analogy, if there are multiple ways to structure a system of universal primary education, then, in order to assess the relative merits of those competing approaches, one must look for guidance to some other principle beyond that of social justice. In the case of education, that principle should be the Church’s teaching that parents are the ones who have the primary responsibility and authority in educating their children. Judged in light of that principle, an educational system that operates with more deference to the rights and authority of parents would be preferable to one that gives less deference.

In the same fashion, the Church’s teaching on the inherent dignity and worth of every human life should be the guiding principle for assessing the relative merits of differing approaches to constructing a comprehensive and equitable system for financing and delivering medical care.

The system will function best and most effectively if it is structured such that patients and consumers—not governments or employers—are empowered to be the ultimate decision-makers. It is possible to construct a comprehensive, just, and equitable health care system without subordinating the needs and authority of patients to those of government, employers, insurers, or medical providers. My colleagues and I have spent years working on the details of how that can, in fact, be accomplished.[11]

We also argued several years ago that greater patient and consumer control over health care financing was also the best way to ultimately, and more satisfactorily, address the growing number of issues in biomedical ethics.[12]

While the Church rightly does not pronounce on prudential matters that do not have direct moral implications, it does point to the relevant, basic principles that should guide our assessments of the total effects of social structures and public policies.

To adapt a formulation sometimes used in other contexts, I submit that, just as the totality of Catholic teaching should lead us in education policy to a preferential option for solutions built around the primacy of parents, so, too, it should lead us in health care policy to a preferential option for solutions built around the primacy of patients. That primacy is not just a primacy of their needs, or even a primacy of their authority. It is also a primacy of their consciences.

—Edmund F. Haislmaier is Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Health Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. This lecture will also be published in a forthcoming issue of The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly (www.ncbcenter.org).

[1] Paul Fronstin, “Sources of Health Insurance and Characteristics of the Uninsured: Analysis of the March 2012 Current Population Survey,” Employee Benefit Research Institute, Issue Brief No. 376, September, 2012, http://www.ebri.org/pdf/briefspdf/EBRI_IB_09-2012_No376_Sources1.pdf (accessed February 15, 2013).

[2] Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust, “Employer Health Benefits: 2003 Annual Survey,” p. 109, Exhibit 8.2, www.kff.org/insurance/upload/Kaiser-Family-Foundation-2003-Employer-Health-Benefits-Survey-Full-Report.pdf (accessed February 15, 2013).

[3] The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), Public Law 111-148.

[4] Sara Rosenbaum, “A ‘Broader Regulatory Scheme’—The Constitutionality of Health Care Reform,” The New England Journal of Medicine, October 27, 2010, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1010850 (accessed February 15, 2013).

[5] PPACA, Public Law 111-148, § 1302. The statue stipulates that the essential health benefits, “shall include at least the following general categories and the items and services covered within the categories: ambulatory patient services; emergency services; hospitalization; maternity and newborn care; mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management, and; pediatric services, including oral and vision care.”

[6] New § 2707 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S. Code § 300gg-6), as added by PL 111–148 § 1201(4).

[7] New § 2713 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S. Code § 300gg-13) as added by PL 111–148 § 1001(5).

[8] See, for example, Kellan Baker and Andrew Cray, “Ensuring Benefits Parity and Gender Identity Nondiscrimination in Essential Health Benefits,” Center for American Progress, November 15, 2012, http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/BakerHealthBenefits-2.pdf (accessed February 15, 2013).

[9] For a discussion of the limits of judicial remedies in this case, and the more general problems with creating exemptions to unjust laws, particularly when such exemptions are the product of court decisions rather than legislative amendments, see Vincent Phillip Muñoz, “The Religious Liberty Case Against Religious Liberty Litigation: Non-Universal Exemptions and Judicial Overreach,” The Witherspoon Institute, October 11, 2012, http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/10/6562/ (accessed February 15, 2013), and Muñoz, “The Religious Liberty Case Against Religious Liberty Litigation: Renewed Focus on Reasonable, Not Sectarian, Arguments,” The Witherspoon Institute, October 12, 2013, http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/10/6565/ (accessed February 15, 2013).

[10] See, for example, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011, H.R. 1179 and S. 1467, 112th Congress, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1179ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr1179ih.pdf (accessed February 15, 2013).

[11] For further elaboration of the patient- and consumer-oriented approach to systematic health reform, see Robert E. Moffit, “Expanding Choice through Defined Contributions: Overcoming a Non-Participatory Health Care Economy,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Fall 2012), pp. 558–573, and Edmund F. Haislmaier, “Health Care Reform: Design Principles for a Patient-Centered, Consumer-Based Market,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2128, April 23, 2008, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/04/health-care-reform-design-principles-for-a-patient-centered-consumer-based-market.

[12] Robert E. Moffit, Jennifer A. Marshall, and Grace V. Smith, “Patients’ Freedom of Conscience: The Case for Values-Driven Health Plans,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1933, May 12, 2006, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2006/05/patients-freedom-of-conscience-the-case-for-values-driven-health-plans.


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Breaking: Shell Oil Announces It Will Not Drill In The Arctic Ocean In 2013

By Kiley Kroh

After a year full of mishaps and failures in its quest to drill for oil off the coast of Alaska, Royal Dutch Shell announced today that it would not pursue exploratory drilling activity in the Arctic Ocean this year.  The decision comes as the Obama administration nears the end of its high-level, 60-day review of Shell’s troubled Arctic drilling program, which was announced on January 8.

Last year was fraught with problems for Shell as the company attempted the first Arctic offshore exploratory drilling activity in decades. Technical failures, permit violations, struggles with the harsh and unpredictable Arctic conditions, and warnings from a wide range of voices all combined to discredit the company’s claims that such operations could be carried out safely and responsibly.

Shell made clear it sees this announcement as a hiatus, not a cancellation of its plans to tap the Arctic reserves. Marvin Odum, Shell’s Director of Upstream Americas said, “Our decision to pause in 2013 will give us time to ensure the readiness of all our equipment and people following the drilling season in 2012.”

Following mishaps this year, both of the company’s Arctic drilling rigs, the Kulluk and Noble Discoverer, require substantial repairs and will be towed to Asia.  The Kulluk was damaged when it was grounded near Kodiak, Alaska on New Year’s Eve and the Noble Discoverer was recently cited for multiple safety and environmental violations – now the subject of an investigation that was handed over to the Department of Justice this week.

As articulated in the recent op-ed co-authored by John Podesta and Carol Browner, the Center for American Progress was open to the possibility of offshore drilling in this remote region provided the Administration took significant steps to strengthen safeguards and improve response capacity, and the industry could demonstrate it was prepared for the extreme risk. Instead, Shell proved precisely the opposite – the oil and gas industry is not prepared for the enormous challenge of drilling in the Arctic Ocean.

As we’ve detailed numerous times, there is a tremendous and incalculable risk associated with any offshore operations in the Arctic. First, the region lacks even the basic infrastructure that would be necessary to mount a large-scale response to an oil spill or other major incident – roads, major airports, ports, a permanent Coast Guard facility, adequate facilities to house and feed responders. These obstacles, coupled with the extreme and volatile conditions in which companies would be operating, led the insurance giant Lloyd’s of London to warn companies that responding to an oil spill in a region “highly sensitive to damage” would present “multiple obstacles, which together constitute a unique and hard-to-manage risk.” And Total SA, the fifth largest oil and gas company in the world, announced it wouldn’t seek to drill in the Arctic because an accident there would be a “disaster.”

Rushing into Arctic offshore drilling is not an imperative and thus should not be attempted unless and until independent auditors determine the industry and the government are capable of acting responsibly and responding to a true worst-case scenario. No operation is foolproof, but when even the most carefully watched drilling operations repeatedly fail to attain safety certification, then are hit with routine air pollution violations, and marred by twice letting major pieces of equipment be cast adrift, the American people have no reason to continue taking oil companies at their word when they tell us they can operate safely and responsibly in this remote and dangerous region.

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– Kiley Kroh is the Associate Director for Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress

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What SNL’s ‘Djesus Uncrossed’ Skit Got Right About Violent Trends In Christianity

Jack Jenkins is a writer and researcher for the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress.

Saturday Night Live is known for its topical humor, but the weekend before last, it sparked debate by wading into theological controversy. In what Hero Complex suggested was the “most blasphemous skit in ‘SNL’ history,” the show drew fire for airing a skit that satirized Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained by using a premise that is possibly even more controversial than Tarantino’s original: What if Jesus Christ rose from the dead…To exact revenge? As a thumping big-budget soundtrack rocks in the background, a voiceover touts the film as “A less violent ‘Passion of the Christ’” and quips “He’s risen from the dead … and he’s preaching anything but forgiveness.”

The studio audience seemed to love the skit, but, as happens with many of SNL’s forays into religious satire, the skit sparked a firestorm of criticism from conservative Christians. Twitter and SNL’s website immediately lit up with complaints about the segment, with commenters decrying it as “blasphemous,” “offensive,” and “just wrong.” The Catholic League was also quick to weigh in, calling the skit “vicious” and “uncharacteristically bloody”. Conservative televangelist Pat Robertson, for his part, reviled the whole thing “anti-Christian bigotry that is just disgusting.”

But there is something peculiar about the outcry over the “DJesus Uncrossed”: Most of the complaints aren’t emanating from the progressive Christian pacifists. Instead, much of the criticism is coming from hyper-conservative Christian circles, a world that, oddly enough, includes voices that preach a vision of Jesus eerily similar to SNL’s gun-toting Messiah.

Though the image of Jesus mowing down victims with a machine gun horrifies many Christians—and rightfully so)—others, like Patheos blogger David R. Henson, have pointed out that hidden in SNL’s bloody humor is a powerful satire of an overly-violent, hyper-masculine subculture that has begun to influence not just our popular culture, also multiple strains of Christian theology. Influential mega-pastor Mark Driscoll, for example, has become famous for saying that he believes in a Jesus who has a “commitment to make someone bleed.” He reportedly refuses to believe in a “hippie, diaper, halo Christ” because, as he puts it, “I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” Meanwhile, churches across America have started creating “Fight Club” groups for men, and several Christian communities are even basing services around Mixed Martial Arts fighting.

But this vengeful, hyper-violent theology isn’t confined to church walls. It’s also showing up in our national discourse, especially in the current debate over gun violence prevention. In the wake of the tragic shooting in Newton, for instance, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, essentially argued that the massacre of children in Connecticut as a response to an increasingly secular culture. “Believe me, [secularism] is going to have consequences,” he said. “I think we have turned our back on the scripture and on God almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.” Not to be outdone, talk show host and conservative Christian Mike Huckabee also argued that the Newtown killings were the result of God’s righteous vengeance, because lawmakers have “removed God from our schools.” Meanwhile, several conservative writers continue to insist that Jesus of Nazareth would have been an avid supporter of conceal and carry.

It seems a little odd, then, that conservative Christians – when confronted with an image of Jesus forged within their own ranks – would be the first to cry foul. But perhaps their defensiveness makes sense: maybe it’s easier to defame SNL and NBC as blasphemers than engage in the painful process of looking inward. Ultimately, perhaps conservative and progressive Christians alike – and, for that matter, Americans at large – should look at the controversy surrounding this skit as an opportunity. By examining this painful reflection of one form of American Christianity, perhaps we could respond by doing more than just complaining about glorifications of violence and vengeance when they show up on TV. Rather, perhaps we could look at this as a call to do the hard work of resisting these ideologies — these theologies — before they catch fire. This means exposing them when they appear in our Bible studies, our prayers circles, and especially our pulpits.


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Woodward claims White House threatened him

Bob Woodward said Wednesday that a “very senior person” at the White House told the veteran journalist and author “you will regret” faulting the Obama administration for the present fight over sequestration.

“It was said very clearly: 'you will regret doing this,'” Woodward said on CNN’s "The Situation Room." “I’m not going to say [who], a very senior person. It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters you’re going to regret doing something you believe in.”

In an op-ed published over the weekend, Woodward accused the Obama administration first of inventing the sequester, and then of “moving the goal posts” by saying any deal had to include new revenue along with the agreed upon cuts.

Democrats argue that the sequester was an last-ditch effort out from the 2011 debt-ceiling fight instigated by Republicans, and that since it was never meant to be implemented, it’s not moving the goal posts to try and replace it with spending cuts and additional revenue.

“I think if Barack Obama knew that was part of the communications strategy, let’s hope it’s not a strategy, but just a tactic he’s employing, he’d say, ‘look, we don’t go around trying to say to reporters if you in an honest way present something that we don’t like, you’re going to regret this,'” Woodward continued. “It’s Mickey Mouse.”

It’s the latest turn in the souring relationship between the White House and the former liberal hero.

Earlier in the day, on MSNBC, Woodward called the president’s sequester strategy “madness,” saying a stronger leader would merely circumvent the Budget Control Act.

And at the height of the 2012 election, the White House was on the defensive after Republicans seized on Woodward’s book, "The Price of Politics," as evidence President Obama was in over his head on the economy.

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Statement from the President on the Confirmation of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense

Statement from the President on the Confirmation of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense | The White House Skip to main content | Skip to footer site map The White House. President Barack Obama The White House Emblem Get Email UpdatesContact Us Go to homepage. The White House Blog Photos & Videos Photo Galleries Video Performances Live Streams Podcasts 2012: A Year in Photos

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For Immediate Release February 26, 2013 Statement from the President on the Confirmation of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense

 

With the bipartisan confirmation of Chuck Hagel as our next Secretary of Defense, we will have the defense secretary our nation needs and the leader our troops deserve.  From the moment he volunteered for military service in Vietnam, Chuck has devoted his life to keeping America secure and our armed forces strong.  An American patriot who fought and bled for our country, he understands our sacred obligations to our service members, military families and veterans.  

I will be counting on Chuck’s judgment and counsel as we end the war in Afghanistan, bring our troops home, stay ready to meet the threats of our time and keep our military the finest fighting force in the world.  Most of all, I am grateful to Chuck for reminding us that when it comes to our national defense, we are not Democrats or Republicans, we are Americans, and our greatest responsibility is the security of the American people.

 

Extending Middle Class Tax Cuts

Blog posts on this issue February 27, 2013 3:23 PM ESTRosa Parks has a Permanent Place in the U.S. CapitolRosa Parks has a Permanent Place in the U.S. Capitol

President Obama is on hand for the unveiling of the new Rosa Parks statue in the U.S. Capitol

February 27, 2013 12:00 PM ESTCatching Up with the Curator: Watch Meeting--Dec. 31st 1862--Waiting for the Hour

To mark African American History Month, as well as the 150th anniversary of the year the Emancipation Proclamation, we talked with White House Curator Bill Allman about a painting called Watch Meeting--Dec. 31st 1862--Waiting for the Hour that hangs near the Oval Office in the West Wing.

February 26, 2013 3:00 PM ESTPresident Obama Calls for a Responsible Approach to Deficit ReductionPresident Obama Calls for a Responsible Approach to Deficit Reduction

President Obama strongly believes we need to replace the arbitrary cuts known as the sequester with balanced deficit reduction, and today he was at a shipyard in Newport News, VA to talk about what failing to do so will mean for middle class families.

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