Props To Jerry Bowyer!

His rhetoric's landed him on MediaMatters again!

Take a look:

Forbes contributor Jerry Bowyer relied on shoddy logic and baseless assertions to attempt to debunk the well-supported claim that marriage equality has a variety of economic benefits.

In his July 4 blog post - touted by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) - Bowyer claimed that the Supreme Court's recent marriage equality decisions would hurt businesses by adding to "paperwork" for same-sex couples.

It's a silly argument Jerry's making but I'll let this commenter sum things up:

Yeah, because excess paperwork is always an awesome reason to deny people their civil rights.

Awesome.

Ruth Ann Dailey On DOMA

Ruth Ann Dailey's wrote her own dissent of US v Windsor a few days ago in the Post-Gazette.

I gotta say that I've met Ruth Ann a few times (we shared the table on "Night Talk: Get To The Point" a few months ago) and she's a very nice person.  She's not stupid or hateful at all - and as a person I'd like to say that I like her very much.

But she's completely wrong about her dissent in the P-G where she seems to be saying that it's just so darned unfair to "religious traditionalists" for the big bad guv'ment to treat everyone fairly.  But don't take my word on it.  Here's what she says:

The only matter settled by the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions on gay marriage last week is that our nation faces many more years of litigation and legislation. And that was already a certainty before the decision was handed down.

Had the court established a sweeping constitutional right to same-sex marriage -- a decree that, like Roe v. Wade, would have overturned the varying laws of many states -- the political climate ahead would be far more bitter and divided.

For those of us still hoping for a win-win, this bit of judicial restraint constitutes some good news.

The bad news is that while the majority decisions were restrained, their rhetoric was not. The prevailing justices' lack of historical knowledge and philosophical depth underscores the significant drawback to our society's health in appointing to the bench mere specialists in the law. These are very smart people with alarmingly narrow vision.

And in their narrow vision, they have set the stage for a new persecuted minority: religious traditionalists.

See?  By making things more fair, The Supremes are persecuting the faithful - well some faithful, as Dailey dutifully points out that:

...several Christian denominations recognize same-sex relationships and ordain openly gay clergy.

But let's get back to her rhetorical rumba.  A line or two after the intro above, she gets a simple fact embarrassingly wrong.  Here's what she wrote:

Justice Anthony Kennedy's language in the decision overturning part of the Defense of Marriage Act is, as others have already pointed out, contemptuous of tradition and those who value it. Being able to see into other people's hearts and minds, he asserts that DOMA was motivated by a "bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group."

Note that the paragraph is about Justice Kennedy's language in which he asserts something about the motivations (the "bare...desire to harm") of Congress - something she's sarcastically implying he has no reason or evidence to hold true.  It's almost as if she can see into Justice Kennedy's heart and mind and that she can simply "know" that he's making it up.

Too bad the facts get in the way of that.

Let's go and see how Justice Kennedy actually used that phrase.  He uses it twice in the Windsor decision and each time (though one summarizes the other) he's quoting a previous Supreme Court decision from 1973.  His first usage:

By seeking to injure the very class New York seeks to protect, DOMA violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the Federal Government. The Constitution's guarantee of equality "must at the very least mean that a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot" justify disparate treatment of that group. Department of Agriculture v. Moreno...[Italics in Original]

The fact that he was quoting from a 4 decade old decision is lost on her - what she's quoting from Kennedy was not actually his language, his assertion, is it?  He was using it to make a larger point.  A writer usually as careful as Ruth Ann Dailey should not be making such a simple mistake.  But lets get back to the larger point Kennedy was making.  Here's the passage he quotes from in the Moreno decision:

For if the constitutional conception of "equal protection of the laws" means anything, it must at the very least mean that a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest.

But of course, the question remains, does DOMA reach that standard?  Dailey's asserting that Kennedy just made it up by imposing some sort of vague imagery into the hearts and minds of Congress.  However when you look at what he actually wrote, you can see that Kennedy actually does make the case (something else lost on Dailey):

In determining whether a law is motived by an improper animus or purpose, "[d]iscriminations of an unusual character'" especially require careful consideration. DOMA cannot survive under these principles. The responsibility of the States for the regulation of domestic relations is an important indicator of the substantial societal impact the State's classifications have in the daily lives and customs of its people. DOMA's unusual deviation from the usual tradition of recognizing and accepting state definitions of marriage here operates to deprive same-sex couples of the benefits and responsibilities that come with the federal recognition of their marriages. This is strong evidence of a law having the purpose and effect of disapproval of that class. The avowed purpose and practical effect of the law here in question are to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the States.

It's all there, Ruth Ann.  Your sarcasm is misplaced.  You either knew it was there or you didn't.  If you knew, then you were omitting it from your column dishonestly OR if you didn't then you didn't do your homework well enough.

Which one is it?

In effect, Kennedy's saying that some states recognized that same-sex couples had the same rights as heterosexual couples but that under DOMA, the former were denied Federal rights because of who they were - if equal protection under the laws means anything it means that no law so singling out a group or class of people for harm can survive constitutional scrutiny.

But to Ruth Ann Dailey, the religious traditionalists should be free to be unfair, to treat some of their fellow citizens unequally, as second class citizens.  But then she writes this:

Quite a few of us who identify as heterosexual, Evangelical and traditionalist nonetheless wish to extend to our fellow citizens all the relationship rights we enjoy in our straight marriages. We simply wish to do so in a way that preserves our constitutional right to disagree about the theology of marriage without being persecuted by the state.

Huh?  But if same sex couples were extended all the same rights then there would not be a need for any of this would there?  And doesn't the First Amendment already protect the constitutional right to disagree on theology?  What's not protected is acting on such a disagreement so as to deny another citizen his or her basic constitutional rights.

Equal protection under the law - it's only fair.  If religion gets in the way it's the religion that's wrong not the law.

The Braintrust Gets It Wrong. Again.

I hope everyone had a good fourth.

But there's still work to be done, still misinformation to be corrected, still Tribune-Review op-eds to be debunked.

Like this one, today:

The Obama administration just jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire with its abrupt Tuesday decision to delay a signature provision of ObamaCare.

Not only is the move to delay, until 2015, implementation of a mandate that larger employers (of 50 or more workers) provide health care insurance for their employees or face a $2,000 fine for each nakedly political — it postpones an onerous diktat with backdraft political implications until after the 2014 midterm elections — the administration's arbitrary decision to flout the law is patently illegal. [Emphases added.]

Arbitrary?  Well, let's see about that.  Here's how the Treasury Department explains the "abrupt" and "arbitrary" decision:

Over the past several months, the Administration has been engaging in a dialogue with businesses - many of which already provide health coverage for their workers - about the new employer and insurer reporting requirements under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively. We recognize that the vast majority of businesses that will need to do this reporting already provide health insurance to their workers, and we want to make sure it is easy for others to do so. We have listened to your feedback. And we are taking action.

The Administration is announcing that it will provide an additional year before the ACA mandatory employer and insurer reporting requirements begin. This is designed to meet two goals. First, it will allow us to consider ways to simplify the new reporting requirements consistent with the law. Second, it will provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers are moving toward making health coverage affordable and accessible for their employees. Within the next week, we will publish formal guidance describing this transition. Just like the Administration’s effort to turn the initial 21-page application for health insurance into a three-page application, we are working hard to adapt and to be flexible about reporting requirements as we implement the law.

So not so abrupt or arbitrary, huh?  But take a look at the why of the delay: to give businesses more time to meet the requirements of the law.

And what does business have to say about this delay?  From the New York Times:

Employer groups were quick to applaud the delay. At the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has strongly opposed the law, Randy Johnson, senior vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits, said in a statement, “The administration has finally recognized the obvious — employers need more time and clarification of the rules of the road before implementing the employer mandate.”

E. Neil Trautwein, a vice president of the National Retail Federation, said the delay “will provide employers and businesses more time to update their health care coverage without threat of arbitrary punishment.”

And why is there a need for a delay?  This from the Washington Post:

The decision comes as a result of years of bumps and setbacks for the overhaul, including legal challenges and political opposition that have hampered its implementation. Last summer, the Supreme Court upheld the law but struck down a mandatory expansion of Medicaid. State officials and businesses held off changing their policies through the 2012 presidential campaign because Obama’s GOP opponent, Mitt Romney, had promised to repeal the law.

Basically, business has been delaying implementing the policies hoping that either the Supreme Court overturns the law or Romney killed it.  In case you missed it, neither happened.

And so now they're running short of time and the Administration just gave them another year.

And yet to Scaife's braintrust, it's an "abrupt" and "arbitrary" decision designed to help out in the 2014 midterms.

But will it have much of an effect?  According to Brian Beutler at Talkingpointsmemo, not so much:

The provision in question — the so-called “employer mandate” — is intended to entice large employers to provide insurance to their full-time employees, and create a disincentive for large employers who might be tempted to unload their health care costs on to taxpayers by nudging their employees into Obamacare’s subsidized insurance exchanges.

Crucially, though, experts note that these incentives are fairly trivial in the grand scheme of employer sponsored insurance, and they don’t expect that the temporary delay of this particular penalty will have major consequences for the insurance market under Obamacare.

“[T]here is very little in the ACA that changes the incentives facing employers that already offer coverage to their workers, and fully 96 percent of employers with 50 or more workers already offer today,” write Linda J. Blumberg, John Holahan, and Judy Feder of the Urban Institute. “Competition for labor, the fact that most employees get greater value from the tax exclusion for employer sponsored insurance than they would from exchange-based subsidies, and the introduction of a requirement for individuals to obtain coverage or pay a penalty themselves, are the major factors that will keep the lion’s share of employers continuing to do just what they do today with no requirements in place to do so.”

In other words, even in absence of Obamacare’s $2000-a-head penalty, employers still have very real incentives to offer their employees health benefits. And if the delay will only have a modest impact on the insurance market, then it should also have a modest impact on the law’s fiscal consequences.

Funny how much real reality differs from the false reality projected by the Tribune-Review editorial board - you know, once someone bothers to introduce facts to the discussion.

Some Thoughts On Freedom...

Is there a greater example of freedom than an argument about what freedom means?

Liberty will reign

 Maybe someday even in Homewood (Standing While Black).

Go Read What Sue And Maria Wrote

My friends Maria, the OPJ, and Sue Kerr, who blogs over at Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents, have posted something in honor of Pam Spaulding, who's shuttering down her own (and very important) blog, Pam's House Blend.

This is Amazing (A Quick Non-Political Post)

Found this at Crooks And Liars:


What I find (and continue to find) amazing is how deeply embedded The Beatles are in our culture.  Think of it - Mumford and Sons is performing a Joe Cocker cover of a Beatles song from 1967.

Cocker sang this arrangement at Woodstock in 1969.  Take a look:


Amazing when you think that that music was already 2 decades old when Marcus Mumford was born in 1987.

Amazing.