Just because you claim it not as evidence doesn't mean that it isn't evidence.
No, it's really not evidence. It doesn't mention CM. It cites to a worker survey from a decade ago. And it defines terms. That's not evidence of favoritism in dealings with CM.
The fact that favoritism is "always a complaint in government service" is not evidence of favoritism in dealings with CM. The study you cite is about employees who think that government departments play favorites in their promotion practices, not that the Dept. of Energy plays favorites in its dealings with outside businesses. It's a huge leap for you to say that one survey citing worker complaints of favoritism means that all of government is acting out of favoritism. That would be like me saying that because I know a conservative who once made a racist joke, all conservatives must be racists. Logic doesn't support that kind of an argument.
You did not show a pattern. One instance is not a pattern. You pointed to one instance where a campaign contributor got funding. How many loan applications were there, how many were granted, and how many of those were campaign contributors? Show a pattern.
Now, you have cited a news investigation that questions whether there is favoritism in government lending practices. So there's a question as to whether there is favoritism. But a question that there has been favoritism is not proof of favoritism, and it's certainly not proof of favoritism in dealings with CM. You've got evidence to raise the question, but it doesn't prove your point.
Your SCU stuff wasn't evidence of favoritism, it was just a definition of various kinds of favoritism (and a pretty good one) and an assertion that favoritism is always a problem in governments. That doesn't provide any evidence for whether the CM loan is an instance of favoritism.
Really - show me a pattern here, and I'll agree that maybe it smells like a rat. You clearly try to stay informed on the topic of government lending. You've got one example where a contributor got funding and a non-contributor didn't, but absent the hard evidence of favoritism (like there's some big news expose with government documents and I just don't know about it), you're going to have to provide enough evidence that I can infer that this is an instance of favoritism. So can you show a pattern?
Actually, I don't think that the comment about the quality of debate is elitism. It's not elitism to say that a sophisticated level of debate involves people who are educated on the issues presenting well-reasoned arguments supported by evidence, which is what I am used to in debating, and which sadly is not something I see much of 'round here. Unless it is "elitism" to say wow, you guys can't present a well-reasoned argument worth a sh!t, nor can you even be bothered to read one. I guess that does give me some insight into why conservatives are so easily led around like sheeple, though. (Was that elitist of me?)
Right, but what I'm saying is that you haven't presented any evidence that this particular instance is an example of government favoritism. All you've presented is evidence that the folks who aren't getting $310 mil are complaining of favoritism.
I'm not asking you to produce impossible evidence, just to present some evidence. Is it out there? Point me at it.
You say that favoritism is always something of a problem in government, ok, but again that's neither here nor there when it comes to this particular example of the CM loan.
You say it's favoritism; I'm just saying ok, show me evidence of that.
No, I think it's just that I'm used to a much more sophisticated level of debate, where the debaters are highly educated individuals who research the topics of debate and present well-reasoned arguments supported by evidence; whereas a large percentage of the people here just like to rant.
Not at all. I welcome you to read it. I have given the subject serious consideration and responded to it in the hopes that others would do likewise because that it what makes debate interesting. Please, by all means give a well-reasoned rebuttal.
You did. And I have presented evidence that your point is debatable. You are welcome to read it and to argue against it. Until that point, since you have asserted that you have no intention of doing so, you have conceded the debate. Sorry, but that's how debating works.
No, you conceded, which means you lost. You said, in effect, "I am not going to rebut any of your arguments." That means you conceded, you lose.
I find it very immature that you would get on a debate site and then refuse to read the arguments made by other debaters. Why would you even be here if you are not interested in participating in debate? I have made an argument, and you have conceded; but if you would like to re-join the debate, the burden is now on you to rebut my arguments.
then the definition of government is beyond your understanding
That would be sort of surprising, because I have a law degree from a top-tier school.
You did proceed to state your point about government budgets much more clearly, though, so now your assertion is much more comprehensible. I will agree that government budgets are "political" in the sense of "pertaining to the body politic." That's neither here nor there on the issue of government favoritism, though.
You have also presented a bit of evidence, which is that Solyandra contributed to the Obama campaign whereas CM didn't. That's potentially relevant, but it's not enough to show me that the government acted with favoritism. Can you show a pattern of loan approval to campaign donors, or evidence of conversations about a secret "deal" between Solyandra and any government official? One incident where a campaign donor got a loan, plus one incident where a non-donor didn't, isn't enough to show that there's government favoritism at work.
OK. What you've really got there is one source, because they all cite to this new Arthur Brooks book as the basis of the assertion that conservatives give more to charity. Still, ok, seems to be a valid enough source. (Not that I necessarily agree with Brooks' conclusions, mind you.) It supports your assertion that "conservatives give more to charity." It does not support your assertion that "liberals want freebies," so you still need to present evidence on that point.
But let's look at the point you have presented evidence to support, which is that conservatives give more to charities. There are a number of relevant talking points about Brooks' conclusions, like (a) what charities are these folks giving to, (b) what exactly constitutes "charitable giving," and (c) what's the motive for it.
Notably, the judge who reviewed the book observes that "The single biggest predictor of someone's altruism . . . is religion." So I think it is very relevant to inquire what percentage of charitable giving was attached to a religiously-sponsored charity, and most especially which of those charities also has a political agenda. It would appear from your sources and mine (cited below) that a substantial amount -- although by no means all -- of conservative charitable giving is attached to religious causes. (I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing -- only that it speaks to both the motives for charitable giving, and the likely recipients of conservative largesse.)
"Consider a typical family living in Searcy, Arkansas . . . The kids go to camp run by the Church, and they play basketball every day after school on the courts behind the Church. The mom is a member of a Church book club. The dad goes there to hear lectures on one or another topic. Part of family entertainment includes Church fairs, Church-sponsored trips to Little Rock to watch the Arkansas Travelers minor league ball team or up to Fayetteville to watch of the U of Arkansas Hogs play football, the occasional Church play, and of course, Sunday services. From what I can tell, when they pony up money to the Church for each of these activities, they’re engaging in tax deductible charity. Now, consider a family of Godless heathens in pagan Los Angeles. The kids play soccer in some league… league fees are not tax deductible, and not charity. The mom is a member of a book club… none of those costs are considered charity. The dad shows up at the occasional lecture series for one or another local university… nothing charity related here. And going to Disneyland, watching the Galaxy or the Dodgers or the Lakers, or going to the beach are not considered to be Charity." (Angry Bear blog, http://www.angrybearblog.com/2006/12/
So, it bears considering just where those "charitable donations" are going and what they're going for. In the example above, what Brooks considers "charitable giving" could be just as aptly be described as "family entertainment."
"When liberals see the data on giving, they tend to protest that conservatives look good only because they shower dollars on churches — that a fair amount of that money isn’t helping the poor, but simply constructing lavish spires . . . if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do. But Mr. Brooks says that if measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes." (N. Kristof, New York Times op-ed, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/
Okay. So Brooks argues that even when religious giving is excluded, liberals give more in total dollars than conservatives, but conservatives give a higher percentage of their income than liberals do. (If that's true, then the average income of a liberal household would have to be higher than that of a conservative household, or else the math wouldn't work. I'm not entirely certain that census data would back that up, and I've seen a few sources that criticize Brooks' statistical data -- particularly on this point.)
It might also be relevant here to consider how giving relates to wealth, rather than percentage of income. For example, we might assume that most charitable giving comes out of the higher income brackets, because they've got more cash. And no doubt if we're talking about forking over a few million to set up some sort of foundation, that's true. But 20/20 suggests that the stronger correlation with giving isn't party politics, it's poverty. The 20/20 report says that poorer Americans give more because they have a personal understanding of what it's like to be in need. (J. Stossel and K. Kendall for ABC's 20/20, http://abcnews.go.com/2020/
When we think about this correlation, it's probably not surprising. The rich can afford to give. The lower income classes know what it's like to be really in need, and many of them don't have what we would think of as middle-class aspirations. (For example, a large number of poorer Americans don't expect to ever buy a house, so that goal isn't part of their budgeting. ) The middle class is also trying to budget for the future, which means devoting income to future needs (like planning for mortgage payments, maintaining a credit rating, getting a retirement plan, putting aside money for the kids' college and orthodontics and whatnot, etc.) The poor don't have the option of budgeting for the future because there's just no money for that sort of thing, and for people who have been in the lower-income brackets for their whole lives, that type of future budgeting might not even be a part of how they think about money because that's just not something that the people they know ever do. So we are likely talking about a middle class that -- especially in the current economy -- doesn't perceive itself as having "leftover" money for charitable giving. (I'm not saying that's a correct analysis or that it's a morally "right" position, just that it's probably what's going on.) So with that in mind, it's also worth asking how conservative and liberal views correlate to income class. If the answer is that conservatives tend to be mostly in the top and bottom classes, and liberals in the middle class, then it's likely that the factors relevant to charitable giving have a lot less to do with party politics than with perceived economic pressures on the different income classes, particularly in the current crummy economy.
It's also relevant to ask if there is an urban/rural correlation with charitable giving, especially on the issue of volunteering. As a general rule, urban areas tend to be more liberal and rural areas tend to be more conservative. But what Brooks has not told us is how those two environments differ in terms of motives and opportunities for charitable giving and volunteering. Take, for example, a town of 700 people where the annual Fireman's Fund drive is a huge community deal. That's not because these are 700 people who are unusually charitable and civic-minded. It's because these are 700 people who are bored. Also, there may be a stronger incentive to donate time or money because there is a stronger sense of community belonging and participation. If everybody shows up for the Fireman's Fund carnival, and everybody has a friend or a relative who works for the Fire Department, then there's a strong personal incentive to give your time and money. People are aware of volunteer activities because there's a lot of local attention on the event and a lot of community participation. So much like the folks in Searcy, Arkansas whose main entertainments are church-related, in this case the main entertainments are civic-related. Again, that's not at all a bad thing, but it is definitely relevant to the questions of why people give to charities and what charities they give to.
Psychology Today also expounds on the point that charitable giving does not necessarily correlate directly to "altruism."
"Individuals can normally choose and select the beneficiaries of their charity donations. For example, they can choose to give money to the victims of the earthquake in Haiti, because they want to help them, but not to give money to the victims of the earthquake in Chile, because they don’t want to help them. In contrast, citizens do not have any control over whom the money they pay in taxes benefit. They cannot individually choose to pay taxes to fund Medicare, because they want to help elderly white people, but not AFDC, because they don’t want to help poor black single mothers. This may precisely be why conservatives choose to give more money to individual charities of their choice while opposing higher taxes." (S. Kanazawa, Psychology Today - The Scientific Fundamentalist, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/
It is also worth considering that many altrusitic activities fall, as one writer puts it, "below the radar":
"[M]any forms of charity fall below the radar, especially when they are the types of activities more likely to be engaged in by city dwellers. I am kind of reluctant to discuss myself in this context, but here goes… every morning, I spend 30 minutes doing some rounds feeding a few colonies of feral cats. It doesn’t make me Mother Teresa, but I feel good doing it . . . I mention this [because] As far as the government is concerned, most people who feed stray animals are not engaging in charity… there is no write-off occurring." (Angry Bear blog, http://www.angrybearblog.com/2006/12/
This brings up another point worth addressing -- write-offs. If you give to a recognized 501(c)(3) charity, you can get a tax write-off. If you buy breakfast for the homeless guy on the corner -- no write-off. Now, I am not going to point a finger at either party here, but I am confident that a significant amount of high-dollar charitable donations by individuals and businesses -- regardless of the party they back -- is done on the advice of a tax analyst. So this is also a significant issue to consider in looking at why people are giving to charities and what charities they're giving to.
Brooks' ultimate analysis is this: the religious right gives more, but the reason for this revolves around religion, not political ideology. The relatively large religious right and fairly small religious left are both far more "charitable" than secularists from either political side. The most "uncharitable" group is conservatives who are also secularists.
With these things in mind, while you do have one source that argues that conservatives give more to charities, I am not at all certain that it speaks either way to the question of whether either party is willing to "share" or refusing to "admit" to such a refusal. It seems to me that your evidence is more demonstrative of a difference in conservative and liberal lifestyles than it is of a difference in willingness to "share."
Or maybe it simply begs the question: share with whom?
Government is an political entity, so it stands as proof of an political agenda.
That doesn't make any sense. The existence of government is not proof of a political "agenda" per se -- it's just proof of the existence of government. If what you mean to say is "government exists, and therefore it must be doing something" -- again, well duh.
Loans to Solyandra are not the issue you posted for debate here, and yelling "Solyandra" is not proof of government favoritism. You will now have to show that the Department of Energy did act out of favoritism (and not just plain poor judgment) in its loans to Solyandra, as well as in the loans it denied to Carbon Motors, in order to support your arguments. Thus far you have done neither.
And of course the CEO is "outraged." That's not evidence of favoritism either. That's the CEO making accusations of favoritism because he doesn't get $310 million in government money. So that is not evidence of anything other than a P.O.ed CEO.
You still have no evidence. But, at least you did apparently read a minimum of one sentence out of the article you pointed to.
You really didn't read it, did you?
Read the things you cite to before you post. You just look like an idiot otherwise.
"The government decides who wins and who loses"? We're talking about a loan from the Department of Energy, so yeah, I'd imagine that the Department of Energy does decide who can and can't have the Department's money. Um -- duh.
You must actually provide some evidence that the government acted out of favoritism to prove your point. So far, the only source you have says that the government refused the loan because they don't think it's likely to get paid back. Find some evidence to support your argument. So far you have presented no evidence -- you're just ranting.
I'm not sure you even read the article you're complaining about.
This is a private auto manufacturer that wants a $310 million government loan to build a police car that, according to one authority quoted in the Fox News article linked to the one you cited up-top, "makes no sense" and probably isn't a good use of taxpayer money in the first place. What's more, according to the source you cited, the big reason they didn't get the loan is that the government doesn't think there's a "reasonable chance" that the auto manufacturer would ever pay back the loan.
From the article you referred us all to:
"When Energy Secretary Steven Chu visited Indianapolis on Monday, he told reporters that the department wanted to go forward with the loan but that it has 'a responsibility to the taxpayers and they need to make sure it’s written in the statute that there's a reasonable chance of repayment.'"
So how is it "crony capitalism" when the government decides not to approve a $310 million dollar loan to a private auto manufacturer, in the middle of the worst recession in decades, because the government thinks there should be at least a "reasonable chance" that the loan will get repaid?
Left-wingers want to force everyone to pay for stuff that they believe is right. right wingers do too, but not as much.
I guess that explains the overwhelming public support for the last administration's enormous military expenditures. Oh, wait...
Hinduism is polytheistic. I suppose that one could argue that, with the Trinity, Christianity is also polytheistic, but as far as I am concerned your point is invalidated by that fact.
Okay. It is fair to require a greater similarity between the faiths. It does seem as though that argument would at least have the effect of collapsing individual faiths into broader categories, though, like "all monotheisms are the same" or "all polytheisms are the same."
aliens worshiping what is comparable to a specific apparently earth-based religion could conceivably add credence in the minds of some.
Okay, I'll go with that. So let's say we encounter these hypothetical aliens, and we translate their holy book, and it is a very recognizable Bible -- not just in its broad outlines, but like chapter-and-verse type of recognizable. It does involve events that take place on another planet (Earth), and has the exact same stories and parables that we would recognize from the Bible. Would I convert?
Well, no, but then I am a big ol' pagan, so I would probably just accept this as possible evidence that the Christian trinity-god is among the many gods that exist. I would still not be convinced that it's is the only god or that it's a god I'm interested in worshiping. Granted, the original question was specifically posed to atheists, so I'm really not of much help on that point.
If providing contraceptives helps insurers lower costs, why would the government need to tell the insurance company to provide it?
First, because some businesses do dumb stuff. Surely you must realize that.
Next, because insurers don't all bear those costs equally. If the consequence of not providing contraceptives is a covered medical cost, the insurer is gonna eat it. If it's something else, somebody else is gonna eat it -- most likely either another insurer or the taxpayers.
Third, because government has an interest in correcting the problem now. While the overall trend among insurance companies has been towards providing contraceptive coverage, and while "market forces" might eventually act on all insurers to induce them to provide more comprehensive contraceptive coverage, the economic and social costs of waiting for the market to self-correct are enormous. If the house is on fire, you don't wait for water to go on sale.
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We have taken Darwinism out of society
"Darwinism" has never had a proper place in social science theory. To the extent that "Social Darwinism" has been used as a label for different social philosophies, some of its most common applications have included the ideologies of the 19th and 20th century fascists, that of the eugenics movement, and the ethos of racial and cultural imperialism.
Really, man, if you don't know what something is, please review the Wikipedia entry on it before you post about it. You will find the Wikipedia entry on "Social Darwinism" here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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People feel entitled to other people's money. They think the world owes them.
First and foremost, I'd like you to explain how that statement relates at all to the topic of contraception coverage.
Next, since you object so strenuously to "entitlements," I would like you to itemize each and every instance in which you or your family have availed yourself of an "entitlement" to "other people's money" and I would like you to justify each occurrence.
Please begin by justifying each and every occurrence in which you or your family has used a government program to avail yourselves of "other people's money." This would include the purchase of any food or other good containing any subsidized agricultural products (corn, soy, wheat, rice, meat); the use of any subsidized commercial or industrial product (gas and oil); the use of any government-underwritten service (student loans, home loans, subsidized housing, student housing); the use of any government-funded service (roads, public schools and state universities, libraries, police and fire, post office, public transportation, trash pick-up); any commerce you have transacted with any business or other entity that has received government funds or special legal treatment in order to sustain itself in the market (non-exhaustive list includes any purchase of automobiles or automobile components, any use of airlines or railroads, and any transaction with any of the following: Citigroup/Citicorp, Bank of America, Merrill-Lynch, Chase-Manhattan/Bear-Sterns, AIG/Farmer's Insurance/21st Century Insurance, and any home or business utility provider such as electric, gas, and water/sewage); the receipt of any government benefit (social security, Medicare/Medicaid, unemployment, food stamps, VA benefits); and any and all claims you have ever made to a tax credit that is part of an entitlement program (earned income tax credit, child tax credit, education tax credit).
Next, I would like you to justify each and every occurrence in which you or your family has used a private company such as an insurer to in order to take "other people's money" for yourself. Please justify the use of monies collected from other people's premiums to provide pay-outs on each of your claims, and also justify the risk you created of a raise to other people's premiums by filing insurance claims. This would include any and all instances in which you have made use of health insurance, car insurance, homeowner's or renter's insurance, fire insurance, and any other insurance or risk-management pool in which you have participated.
Now, I would like you to present your strategy for providing for the needs of yourself and your family absent any such entitlements to other people's money. Please identify, by specific percentage amount or dollar range, the estimated cost increase that you would incur in each of the following categories were it not for your use of "other people's money," and explain how you will pay for these increases: food, gasoline, housing, utility services, transportation/travel, education, health care. Be sure to also explain how your family will pay for the health care and retirement living needs of aging parents or grandparents.
I'm not being facetious. I really want you to do this stuff -- even if you don't post it in full. I want you to explain exactly how your personal budget is impacted by "entitlements" and exactly how it would change if those "entitlements" were gone, and how that change is an improvement.
In other words, I'd like you to make argument and back it up. Because frankly, if you can't do that, you're just talking out of your keister.
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Look, no offense here, but so far you haven't given me any indication that you have any idea at all what you're talking about. You've just spouted a bunch of buzzwords that you heard on TV, and I don't think you even know what most of them mean. This is supposed to be a debate forum. Why don't you try making an argument -- like one with major premises and supporting evidence leading to a conclusion? Better yet, why not try making an argument for or against the issue you presented in this forum -- the contraception coverage requirement?
If you think that utilizing health insurance coverage is a failure to stand "on your own two feet," then the answer for you is very simple -- don't buy health insurance.
So is that really what you believe -- that you are failing to stand on your own two feet every time your insurance pays for a percentage of your pap smear, your mammogram, your antibiotics, your annual physical, your blood culture, your emergency medical procedure, etc.? Because "you can't have it both ways, honey."
1. My primary "goal" in posting on this thread has been to participate in debate about the TOPIC, which is the contraception coverage requirement. My secondary goal has been to provide some discussion of how Constitutional law applies to the issue of contraception coverage requirements whenever you respond to one of my posts with an incorrect assertion on that subject. I didn't really expect to change your mind, especially given that you led off by noting that you hadn't actually bothered to read my argument and that you didn't really give a crap about the arguments for and against contraception coverage anyway.
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2. As for the whole rest of your first paragraph, that's all ducky for you, but none of those things are the debate topic that you posted here. If you'd like to debate any or all of those issues, you are entirely welcome to create new debate threads for each of them (and frankly I'd be interested to see if you even know what "Obamacare" does), but those things aren't the topic of this debate. The topic (and you should know it; you posted it) is the contraception coverage requirement.
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3. Your second paragraph is a rather remarkable combination of the straw man fallacy, the appeal to popularity, and plain old brute force. The topic isn't whether government should "get in the business of telling insurance companies how to run their business." The topic is the much more narrow issue of whether insurance companies should be required to provide contraception coverage, and even more specifically whether they should be required to provide it to individuals insured under a plan offered by a school or hospital that is affiliated with a religion.
Also, claiming that your friends agree with you (on a straw man position) has nothing at all to do with whether or not your arguments are logically sound or rhetorically persuasive.
As for the bit about "I have the power" . . . c'mon, seriously? What are you, She-Ra? I thought this was a site for debate. Please show me that you're better and more intelligent than that. Besides, the ability to delete a debate that you posted from this site does not mean that you "own" it or that you have any particular power. It merely means that the site administrators have set up the site so that whoever creates a given debate page can also delete it. You have the exact same amount of "power" as any other site user. Also, the site TOS says that all posted user content is under a Creative Commons license that entitles them (and anyone else) to use and/or reproduce user content for any lawful purpose. So no, you actually don't "own" this thread.
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4. "Faith-based institution" is neither legally nor factually the same as "church." Hospitals aren't churches. Schools aren't churches. Soup kitchens aren't churches. Thrift stores aren't churches. Churches are churches. That's really not hard to understand. As my original post explains, there is a difference between an organization with a religious affiliation and one with a religious mission. Organizations with a religious mission, like churches and synagogues, are exempt from a number of provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including those that deal with contraception. Organizations with a religious affiliation, like Catholic or Jewish hospitals, are not exempt. This is because they aren't "churches," they're businesses. Their primary mission isn't to spread a religion or celebrate religious rituals; their primary mission is to provide patient care. You don't get special treatment under the law for being affiliated with a church, or agreeing with a church, or being a member of a church, or going to church, or having the same name as a church. You get special treatment for being a church.
Okay -- what's interesting to me is that I think you just accidentally disemboweled the whole topic.
Try this word game:
You are assuming that, if Hindus who worship the "Christian" God exist, the Hindus who worship the "Christian" God are completely without any form of cultural exchange granted them by whatever may pose as their Bible. Also, you assume that . . . Jesus mayn't have lived in other countries as well.
Would this line of logic not be every bit as valid in arguing that Krishna is Jesus and the Bhagavad-Gita is a valid alternative "Bible," or that Buddha is Jesus and the teachings of the Buddha are a valid alternative "Bible"? Because now it seems like the argument has been boiled down to "assuming all gods are the same God, if we discovered God-fearing aliens, would you be persuaded to believe in a god?"
Hmmm . . . let's refine the hypothetical a bit. Let's assume that the alien holy book has a whole lot of very definite parallels to the Bible. Let's assume it's monotheistic; it has a creation-and-fall story like Genesis; it's got a bad-tempered god who spends a lot of early alien history doing stuff like ordering his followers about from behind a flaming shrubbery and raining small alien amphibians down on folks he doesn't like; it's got a redeemer-child-of-the-god who sacrifices him/her/it self for the redemption of alien-kind and then rises from the dead; it's got an apocalypse story where believers are rewarded and nonbelievers are cast into a fiery torment. Would that convince me to convert to Christianity?
Nope.
It would suggest that this alien civilization might have once had a lot of interesting cultural parallels with ancient Mesopotamia and/or middle-ages Europe that led to the development and spread of a similar mythology. It might suggest that certain broadly-defined mental strategies for assigning "meaning" to experiences through myth-making are universal and necessary to the evolution of sentience, or at least to some "stage" in the evolution of sentience. It would certainly suggest that these hypothetical aliens are surprisingly un-alien in their thinking and their way of life if they conceptualize the universe in a way that would enable them to develop a religious mythology that parallels one from Earth. But no, it wouldn't persuade me to convert.
(And in the interest of full disclosure, I'm not an atheist. I just thought the discussion was interesting.)
It is most assuredly empowered to regulate commerce among the states
YES!!! But a religious organization that is solely based in one state does NOT fall under that clause.
1) Health care providers and insurers are not "religious organizations"; and
2) A business does not have to operate in multiple states to affect commerce "among the states" in such a way that Congress can successfully invoke the Commerce Clause to regulate it. As an example, Congress has successfully invoked the Commerce Clause as its authority for prohibiting people from growing dope in their homes for 100% personal use -- because that affects local dope prices, which affects state dope prices, which affects interstate dope prices, which affects commerce among the states. (Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005).) The Commerce Clause is that far-reaching.
You will also find plenty of decisional law that says Congress can set nearly any conditions it pleases on the receipt of federal funding.
YES!!! Which is why those religious organizations should get off federal funding.
1) Health care providers and insurers are not "religious organizations"; and
2) That's not the topic of debate in this forum, but by all means feel free to create another debate concerning the question of whether health care providers should refuse to take Medicare and Medicaid. (I can tell you right now that most health care providers would answer "good God no; we'd go belly-up if we didn't take it.")
And it's really not "YOUR" debate per se
Oh really? ;) Would you like to put that to the test? How about I delete it? That ought to prove who's debate it is ;)
That actually wouldn't prove anything -- except, perhaps, that your position is too weak to withstand debate. ;)
I agree, but it sounds like both birth mom and bio mom were prepared and planned to do that, and perhaps would have done that, except that birth mom effectively "kidnapped" the kid and hightailed it off to Australia. As a practical matter, birth mom did do more parenting than bio mom, but again that's because birth mom ran off with the kid and bio mom didn't have the opportunity to act as a parent. There's no indication that bio mom would not have also loved and nurtured the child if she'd had the chance to do so. So while I agree with your principle, I don't think it answers the question of who should have parental rights in this situation.
Okay. The issues that I spot here are as follows:
1. Is bio mom a "donor," like a sperm donor? (And if so, does that equal no parental rights?)
2. Is birth mom a "surrogate"? (And if so, does that equal no parental rights?)
3. Does it matter that Florida doesn't recognize same-sex marriages or civil unions?
4. Can't they both be mommies anyway?
5. What's best for the kid?
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So, in order:
1. Is bio mom a "donor"? Probably not. I didn't find a clear definition of the term under Florida law -- and I'm guessing the trial judge didn't either, or the inquiry would have ended there, and there wouldn't be any news controversy. The relevant law is at Florida Statutes 742.13 and 742.14, which states that absent a preplanned adoption agreement, a donor other than a member of a "commissioning couple" gives up all parental rights; and defines a "commissioning couple" as "the intended mother and father of a child who will be conceived by means of assisted reproductive technology using the eggs or sperm of at least one of the intended parents." Since the definition of a "commissioning couple" refers to mother and father, and "donor" is not defined, it's really not clear how (if at all) this statute would apply, and it's not at all clear that bio mom should be ruled to have given up any possible "parental rights." Nor is it clear that she hasn't given up parental rights -- or that she ever had any parental rights at all. So, not much guidance from the statutory language.
But . . . since it appears from the news articles I scanned that these two women intended to conceive and bear a child using the egg of Woman 1 and the womb of Woman 2, with the intent to raise this child together as co-parents, and then the two women had a break-up -- the thing they look most like is a "commissioning couple" (even though they don't quite meet the legal definition, 'cause they're both ladies), so I'm going to agree with the trial judge and say nope, bio mom is not a donor. So, no real help from Florida law there.
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2. Is birth mom a "surrogate"? Probably not, because Florida surrogacy law has a lot of lengthy provisions that require a pre-existing surrogacy contract that can only be entered into if a bunch of other conditions are met, and there's no evidence of that. So no help from Florida's surrogacy law on this one.
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3. Does it matter that Florida doesn't recognize same-sex marriages? The trial dissent seemed to think so, but I think not. If the two women are not donor or surrogate, but are instead two women who intended to co-parent, and their relationship isn't recognized under Florida law, then the situation is most like a child born out-of-wedlock. That doesn't really inform a "baby has two mommies" decision either way. So no help from Florida's marriage laws.
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4. Can't they both be mommies anyway? Under current Florida law, it looks like the answer is no. Florida Statute 63.032 says that "'Parent' means a woman who gives birth to a child or a man whose consent to the adoption of the child would be required under [other relevant statute] . . . If a child has been legally adopted, the term 'parent' means the adoptive mother or father of the child." (emphasis added). These two ladies don't appear to have completed a legal adoption that would identify them both as mommies, so current law in Florida favors the position that birth mom is a "parent" while bio mom is not.
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5. What's best for the kid? This is always supposed to be a major concern (if not the major concern) of the court in a custody decision. Like most states, Florida has a whole bunch of criteria that the court is supposed to consider in determining what's best for the kid and who should be awarded custody in the more common mom-vs.-dad scenario. There's a presumption that joint custody is best for the kid, but it refers to "both parents," which leads back into the question of whether both birth mom and bio mom can be "parents." It seems like it would be in the best interests of the child to apply the usual custody criteria in this situation, just as would be done in a mom-vs.-dad situation. First, though, bio mom is going to have to establish that she should be acknowledged as a "parent," and she's not getting much help there from Florida law.
Ya vo, and I know the Constitution. Please do Google the Commerce Clause, and/or go to Google Scholar and read some Supreme Court opinions concerning Congress' power to regulate commerce. It is most assuredly empowered to regulate commerce among the states by the Constitution, and Supreme Court decisions will affirm that yes, this is a very far-reaching power. In fact, whether the Commerce Clause provides proper authority for the Affordable Care Act has been a major theme of the court cases addressing the Act's legality. There's no doubt at all, however, that the Commerce Clause is in fact part of the Constitution. Again, it's at Art. 1 Sec. 8 Cl. 3.
You will also find plenty of decisional law that says Congress can set nearly any conditions it pleases on the receipt of federal funding. In other words, if you want government money, government gets a whole lot of freedom to tell you what you can and can't do. Most health care providers get government money (most commonly by accepting Medicare and Medicaid, but often via other funding avenues as well). This power to set conditions on the receipt of federal funds falls under the Taxing and Spending Clause, which is in the Constitution at Art. 1 Sec. 8 Cl. 1.
And it's really not "YOUR" debate per se -- this is a public forum. You are the debate creator, though, so I'm sort of surprised at your inability to stick to the topic you posted. This is not a debate about whether the federal government can or should regulate business, it's not a debate about whether government is a good or bad thing, and it's not a list of examples of issues where you think the government is overstepping its bounds. The debate topic you posted is about the contraception coverage requirement. You are of course totally welcome to make new debate topics for these other issues, but what you posted, and what I responded to, is the issue of contraception coverage.
Well first of all, yes it is, because government has established all sorts of interests in how businesses conduct their affairs -- including anti-discrimination law, health and safety law, securities and anti-trust law, RICO and anti-conspiracy law, tax law, wage law, foreign worker employment law, patent and copyright law, child labor law, environmental law, and heaven alone knows what else. Congress also has an express constitutional (and extremely far-reaching) authority to regulate commerce among the states under Art. 1 Sec. 8 Cl. 3 (conventionally called the Commerce Clause). So yeah, in a lot of ways it actually is government's job to tell people how to run their businesses; that's the law.
Second, whether government should "interfere" in business at all is not really the topic. The topic is the contraception coverage requirement. So your "point" is a bit far-reaching given the scope of this topic; in fact, it seems less like an argument for or against contraception coverage, and more like a wholly different debate topic.
I think your response misses the argument. This has nothing to do with civil liberties or the separation of church and state. Health care providers aren't churches.
As noted in my main argument, this is more like an employment situation or a service-providing situation. Restaurants can't refuse to hire or serve blacks, Catholic hospitals can't make employees or patients go to mass, etc. These are businesses, not religious institutions, so all the normal rules of anti-discrimination law apply. In the case of health care providers like hospitals, most of 'em also get government money, which gives government even greater freedom to tell them what they can and cannot do.
Moreover, the constitutional protections on religious freedom are designed to protect individual liberties to believe or not believe -- they don't necessarily provide organizations with a right to act (or not to act). Protection of religious freedom really doesn't have anything to do with either health care or insurance coverage.
Leaving aside the clearly biased way in which the debate-creator has framed the question . . .
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SUMMARY ('cause this post is long)
Yes, contraception coverage should be required because:
1. It's cheaper for everybody in the long run;
2. Most insurers already provide it -- they're just doing a lousy job and need to be doing it better;
3. Health care authorities identify it as an important health care need;
4. The issue of "religious liberty" is a red herring; and
5. Unplanned pregnancy is a social problem of concern to everyone, in which both sexes are involved, and thus it is sensible that everyone should contribute to carrying the costs.
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Point one: requiring contraception coverage saves us all money. That's right, SAVES. It saves us all money because it costs a heck of a lot less to provide contraception coverage than it does to absorb the costs of all the various coverages and benefits involved in unplanned pregnancies. (Whether or not one agrees that one's insurance premiums or tax monies should go towards providing for such various unplanned-pregnancy-related coverages and benefits is not the topic of this debate. For this topic, it is relevant only that as a factual matter, they do. If you want to debate prenatal care coverage or welfare availability or some other topic, kindly create another debate for it.)
The accepted estimated averages for per-woman cost of contraception range between $360 and $600 a year (not $3000, as somebody else has suggested; while Sandra Fluke suggested an average of $3000 incurred in contraceptive costs during the course of law school, that's a three-to-four-year program, and hers would still be a high estimate compared to the most commonly-advanced numbers). Most analysis I've seen predicts that mandating comprehensive contraception coverage might impact individual premiums by up to $16. That is a negligible amount when compared with the absorbing the cost increase for prenatal care, pediatric care, social welfare benefits, etc. etc. that could be predictably expected to result from unplanned pregnancy (whether yours or someone else's).
"Each year, publicly funded family planning in the United States allows women to avoid 1.94 million unintended pregnancies. Without these services, levels of unintended pregnancy and abortion in the United States each year would be about two-thirds higher among women overall and among teens, and almost twice as high among poor women . . . Absent publicly supported services, the U.S. abortion rate— currently one-third below its peak in 1980— would be higher than it has ever been . . . [Additionally,] More than nine in 10 women receiving publicly funded family planning services would be eligible for Medicaid-funded prenatal, delivery and postpartum care services if they became pregnant. As a result, every dollar invested in helping women avoid pregnancies they do not want to have saves $4.02 in federal and state Medicaid expenditures." (Guttmacher Policy Review vol. 12 no. 1 (Winter 2009), accessible at: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/12/1/
Moreover, unintended pregnancy -- particularly unintended teen pregnancy -- significantly impacts women's participation in the labor market. In other words, women who become unintentionally pregnant -- especially at a young age -- are less likely to pursue further education, less likely to work in lucrative careers, less likely to work steadily or at all, and more likely to collect government benefits. Requiring insurers to provide contraceptive coverage makes sense for the same reasons that requiring parents to provide their children with education makes sense -- it's an investment in the nation's future earning potential. It makes us a wealthier and more productive country down the line. It ultimately means more Americans at work, and more Americans at work doing things that create additional jobs. We gain real benefits by insisting on contraception coverage, and we incur real costs if we don't. Putting government money towards the objective of providing access to contraception also makes sense, for the exact same reasons.
Additionally, the whole notion of "I'm not paying for somebody else's health care costs" is silly, because you do that every time you buy health insurance or go to see any medical provider. Your insurance premiums are basically what it costs you to buy into a "pool" that hedges each purchaser against the costs of an expensive illness or injury on the principle that not many members of the "pool" will actually have an expensive illness or injury. In other words, it spreads out the costs of paying for the people who do have expensive illness or injury (plus the insurance company's profit margin) among the group of purchasers as a whole. It is totally irrelevant to your premium amount that you personally don't end up getting ill or injured during the coverage period -- in fact that's the whole point of "insurance," at least from the insurance company's perspective. Some other people who have the same insurer did get ill or injured during the time period that was used in calculating your base premiums, and the insurer paid for it, and those costs got passed on to you. So, if you really want to pay for your health care costs and only your health care costs, don't buy insurance at all -- stick your money in a bank account and pay for all personal health needs out-of-pocket as they come up. Even then, you're still going to be paying medical bills designed to absorb the provider's costs not only from your own care, but also for the care of everybody who stiffs the provider on the bill (which is a standard factor in how medical providers decide how much to charge for services, and which also would presumably happen a lot less if the non-paying patients had insurance that covered the services).
The upshot is that any time you pay money to any health provider or insurer, part of that money is going to the anticipated costs of providing for other people's care. The only real question left is how to best minimize that expense and maximize the benefit from it, and an obvious answer is: use it on stuff that will prevent me from having to pay even more money for other people's needs in the future. Contraception falls into that category.
Whatever your personal moral opinions on sexual expression may be, the plain fact is that a whole lot of people who don't want to be parents in nine months are going to screw nonetheless. That's going to have consequences. Absent affordable, available, safe, and user-friendly birth control, those consequences will include things like a big increase in the use of abortion services, prenatal services, and pediatric services, all of which will ultimately have an impact on your insurance premiums and/or your tax burden. Notably, unplanned pregnancies are also more likely to result in poor infant and maternal health (for all kinds of reasons including inadequate access to or use of prenatal care, poor self-care, and the health impact of too many pregnancies or pregnancy at too young an age), which means more and higher long-term costs incurred in providing additional health care. Those increased costs to the insurer would also be passed on to purchasers via some level of increase in everybody's premiums, and ditto for distributing the increase in Medicare/Medicaid costs among taxpayers.
Also, absent birth control coverage, the consequences of other-people-screwing-whether-you-approve-of-it-or-not will further include things that state and federal governments agree are social needs, like childhood nutrition and education. We taxpayers essentially pay for that stuff too. Since women who become unintentionally pregnant are more likely to be low wage-earners, this means fewer of us paying more for that stuff.
It therefore makes sense for insurance to cover contraception for the same reason it makes sense for insurance to cover routine checkups and procedures -- it's cheaper than paying for the future consequences of you not getting those things. Likewise, it makes sense for government to mandate contraceptive coverage for much the same reason -- because it cuts their costs in the long run. It also makes sense for us as individuals to support requiring such coverage, again for the same reason -- it ends up costing us all a lot less than the alternative.
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Second point: contraceptive coverage is increasingly the norm in this country already. Just over half the states require it. Most private insurers in any state provide at least some coverage because (a) it's what people want, and (b) most insurance plans are standardized as much as possible-- it's simpler for the insurer if they can use pretty much the same contract whether the purchaser is in Georgia or Wisconsin or California. Providing contraceptive coverage has been the going trend among insurers in the U.S. for a couple of decades now. It's really not as though it's some radical change that's being contemplated. Check your own policy or those of your female relatives -- you're probably already paying for contraception coverage.
What you are probably not getting in exchange for your money is adequate coverage, because your plan may or may not cover the type of birth control that, for reasons of health or availability or choice, you or your covered female family member would prefer to use. Here, promoting more comprehensive coverage provides a particular benefit to women whose coverage is through an employer (whether their own or a family member's) on an essentially "take-it-or-leave-it" deal. The economic reality for many such individuals is that they cannot afford additional or independent health care coverage; they get what the boss-man gives them. The real change that's being contemplated by the legislation is that it would require insurers to cover all FDA-approved contraception. So instead of the current situation where nearly everybody is already paying for inadequate contraceptive coverage, pretty much everybody would be paying for substantially better contraceptive coverage. Again here, it's in everybody's best economic interest to do this both because it prevents the future tax and insurance burdens of unplanned pregnancies, and because it frees up the disposable income of other contraceptive-users so they can plug that cash back into useful vectors of the economy (e.g., by spending it on stuff other than contraceptives manufactured in offshore facilities by multinational conglomerates who can charge whatever they darn well please because the lack of a government health-care mandate minimizes the pressure on them to do otherwise).
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Third point: insofar as the argument that "recreational sex is not a health need" is concerned, then why in the hell am I "paying" for your Viagra? Because that is covered by almost all insurance plans.
More centrally, medical authorities do identify contraception as a "health care need." The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) Statement on Contraceptive Equity observes that "[c]ontraception is medically necessary to a woman for more than 30 years of her life. To ignore the health benefits of contraception is to say that the alternative of 12 to 15 pregnancies during a woman's lifetime is medically acceptable." (Accessible at: http://www.acog.org/About_ACOG/
Moreover, as someone else has pointed out, the same drugs that are used as contraceptives are also used to treat other health needs, some of which can be quite serious (polycystic ovaries, uterine fibroids and some other types of tumors, and various menstrual disorders including uterine hemorrhaging, just to name a few). One statistic I've seen estimates that 1.5 million American women use "contraceptive" medications exclusively as treatment for a serious health condition, and all women need coverage that provides for effective health treatment in these circumstances.
(As an aside to the issue of "health needs," there really is a glaring inconsistency in that erectile dysfunction drugs are covered whereas contraceptives are not necessarily covered. I would very much like someone to explain in a rational manner how it is that getting an erection is a "health care need," whereas using an erection is not. I honestly can't think of any health care need that would be served by getting an erection you can't use.)
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Next, in addition to all the good economic and health care arguments in favor of mandating coverage, the notion that an insurance requirement infringes on religious liberty is just pure bollocks. "Religious liberty" does not grant an unlimited freedom to act or refrain from action. For example, Catholic hospitals can't refuse to hire non-Catholics, they can't require their patients or employees to attend mass, and they can't refuse to treat drag queens. They aren't churches, and most if not all of them get public money. That means government gets a fair amount of say in what they can and can't do.
As one writer for the AMA Journal of Ethics points out, not only is there a legally important distinction between an organization with a religious affiliation (like a Catholic or Jewish hospital) and one with a religious mission (like a church or synagogue), there is also no clear reason that the religious beliefs of an insurer or employer should trump those of the insured or the employee. (See A. Sonfield, " The Religious Exemption to Mandated Insurance Coverage of Contraception," Virtual Mentor - The American Medical Association Journal of Ethics vol. 14 no. 2 (Feb. 2012), accessible online at: http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/2012/
Further, as a practical matter, polls of Catholics also indicate that most support contraception accessibility and an insurance mandate, so it's difficult to see how a "religious conscience" argument even applies. (See, e.g., "Catholics support White House contraception mandate," The Washington Post (Feb. 7, 2012), online at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/
It also makes sense to be very cautious about allowing health care providers to refuse to provide treatment on purely "moral" grounds. The job of a health care provider is not to enforce a particular individual moral stance; it's to provide appropriate health care to each of the patients in accordance with accepted medical guidelines. If we really want to talk about a provider's "choice," we should also talk about his or her choice to assume responsibility for providing the best possible patient care. If the provider can't do that, for whatever "moral" reason, maybe he or she ought to find some other line of work.
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Finally, the notion that contraception is exclusively "about women" or is a "woman's concern" is just ridiculous on its face. Women do not impregnate themselves. Access to contraception is not just a "woman's concern," it is everybody's concern. So yes, once again, it does make perfect sense that everybody should contribute to paying for it.
No, retard, until that point it's an open question. Your argument is like saying, "until you can prove that God is not an intestinal parasite, God is an intestinal parasite" or "until you can prove there's no life on other planets, there is." A lack of evidence does not prove anything at all. I mean, duh!
And no, I have no interest in posting pics of myself or anyone else. I am not your masturbation aid. Yuck. Get a life.
I don't look at females as a lesser kind
Then why do you keep verbally abusing us, insulting us, and describing us as ugly, gay, and/or "nazi"-esque?
I said that THIS site attracted lesbians and feminazis.
And you based that on what (other than your anal interior)?
Forum sites, on the other hand, usually attracts unattractive girls.
See above query.
Old age? How's that work? No "human being" is going to be dependent on the womb of another for more than about 10 months. Once it's out of the womb, it is by definition no longer dependent on said womb for survival.
The standard is flexible, not arbitrary. It is flexible to a certain defined degree (as it should be) and that degree should, to my thinking, correspond to the level of prenatal physiological development. In other words, rights vest as the being grows and matures.
Seriously. If this had been just one more stupid "where's all the hot chix lulz" posts I would have just ignored it and let it go.
But in case y'all hadn't noticed, the slurs against intelligent women (if you're smart you must be ugly, a lesbian, and/or a "feminazi") are not funny and lulzy -- they're just sexist and dumb, and reflect very very poorly on all the guys who posted here.
Is it that these girls are unnattractive and so spend their time on the internet showing the world their rage through their so called intelligence?
No, it's probably just that you're pathetic and girls generally ignore you, which is why you have to post such an asinine and sexist "debate" to show the world your rage and your lack of intelligence ... although why you'd want to advertise your total ineptitude with women and your inability to get a date is a bit beyond me!
Good Christ. Pyg, oh so aptly named, you prove again that you remain among the most sexist, retarded asshats I have ever encountered on this entire planet. No, you aren't being funny. As with pretty much every other occassion where you've ever mentioned women, you're just being a douche and looking for an excuse to accuse any and all thinking women of being lesbians or "feminazis."
It's a basic fact that you talk out your ass with no evidence whatsoever to support your notions and for no purpose other than to bash on women, and it's also a basic fact that you will probably never ever have sex that you don't have to pay for ... because it's a basic fact that the only men on forum sites (and especially debate sites) are 350-lb. pasty-faced pimple-ridden morons with no jobs and barely-functional-level educations who live with mommy until they turn 45. (And just like you, I don't need any proof because these are "basic facts." Right?)
Nah. Everyone in showbiz has joined up with those wacky Scientologists (who will probably now sue me, you, CD, the entirety of teh Intrawebs, and the Free Speech Clause of the U.S. Constitution for contributing to my ability to call them "wacky").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www.cracked.com/
http://www.topsocialite.com/
We actually don't know how fast a T. Rex could move. Various palentologists have suggested speeds ranging from as low as 11 mph up to 30 mph. Horner thinks they were slow movers, based on both the Rex's leg proportions and the fact that if it toppled over while running (not unlikely given its high center of gravity) it would break a bunch of bones and probably die.
The running speed of T. Rex has been mathematically modeled and, based on the assumption that Rex weighed 6-8 tons, it could not have physically moved faster than 18 mph. Other palentologists argue, based on the femur length, that T. Rex had a walking speed of 12-15 mph. The debate now is on the Rex's weight, as if it was (as some palentologists think) more like a 4-ton animal than a 6- or 8-ton animal, it could have moved a bit faster. Current estimates of its running speed range from about 12 mph to 25 mph.
And, it wasn't really very agile, either. Its center of gravity was six feet off the ground, its arms puny, its weight considerable by any estimation, and its legs bulky. This was not an animal that jumped or made quick turns because again, (1) its body wasn't capable of doing that, and (2) if it fell over it would quite possibly die due to shattered bones and internal injuries.
The shape of T. Rex's teeth don't go to show anything other than that it was a carnivore, and that is not in any dispute. Sharp teeth are useful to meat-eaters, whether the meat is alive or dead. That's why we have steak-knives instead of butter-knives for cutting meat.
Big head size is good for eating great big mouthfuls of flesh, also generally helpful if you are a large carnivore no matter whether you scavenge or you hunt. Again, that shows nothing other than that Rex was a carnivore, and we knew that.
Given that T. Rex had both traits that would assist a predator (e.g., binocular vision) and traits that would assist a scavenger (e.g., a terrific sense of smell), it seems logical to think that T. Rex was probably an opportunistic feeder -- it hunted if it had to or if prey was readily available, and scavenged when it found a fairly fresh carcass. But we can't tell for sure, based only on its bones, exactly how it fed.
First off, J-Park's consulting palentologist Jack Horner said that T. Rex's vision might have been based on movement. Not that it definetely was so, but that it was possible and consistent with what we know of like animals. We don't know for sure how a Rex's eyes worked, because the eyes, brain, and optic nerves are all soft tissues that don't fossilize, and so we have no Rex eyes to study.
But the issue of vision is not decisive, because we do know for certain from the size and shape of the Rex skull that the Rex had a far better sense of smell than it did vision. (Remember also from J-Park that the only animal in all of history with a proportionately larger and more developed olfactory center than the Rex is the turkey vulture.)
And while dead things don't move, they do stink.
Horner himself went on to say in Discovery's Walking With (and this is not quite verbatim but close): "Here we have an animal whose center of gravity is six feet off the ground, who can't run particularly fast and can't grab with its arms, and who has one of the best senses of smell in the fossil record. What would be the most likely way for it to get its food? I would say, being a scavenger."
You're still giving specious examples here, man. Even the historic "messiah" would not qualify for a Nobel Peace Prize given your criteria of enacting or perfecting a process for enacting peace. That's because (1) there is no "perfect" peace process, and therefore (2) that's not what the Nobel is given for, and ergo (3) the award wasn't given for what Obama had done with the first 11 days of his office. It was given in recognition of the election of an American leader commited to withdrawal from West Asia, to unilateral nuclear disarmament, and to international cooperation. That doesn't make him a "messiah," just a competent president.
And since the U.S. hasn't had anybody competent in the big chair for the last several years, yeah, it actually is globally significant that one of the world's major superpowers is no longer under the direction of a coke-addled egomaniacal warmonger. ;)
Your examples are not relevant to this context. Sporting events are competitions with defined winners. Diplomas are awarded for credits earned by completing course requirements. Paychecks are collected for hours worked at a series of given tasks. But world peace is a process. It's not like all it takes to achieve world peace is the right team, or the right training, or the right number of manpower hours -- because creating peace is not really an issue of talent, training, might, or manpower. It's an issue of inspiring large groups of people to dedicate their continued efforts to peace. If you are waiting for world peace to break out because of the acts of a single individual before you award anybody the Nobel Peace Prize, you are going to be waiting a very long time.
So of course it's appropriate to award the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of efforts.
You are wrong, and I am correcting you.
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The Grand Old Spending Party
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa543.pdf
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Presidents and the Federal Debt
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"Obama Is Spending More Than All the Other Presidents" Debunked
http://www.crotchshotradio.com/2009/06/
in order for him to really deserve this prize, I'm pretty sure he has to actually ACHIEVE peace first.
Actually, no. Madden points out how often the award is given in recognition of effort rather than accomplishment. Aung San Suu Kyi has not toppled the Burmese military junta; she got the prize for her efforts. Desmond Tutu didn't end apartheid, which was still going strong when he got the prize; he got it for efforts. Carter didn't create a lasting peace in the Middle East; he got the prize for efforts. And so forth.
:)
Like most people, I was surprised by the Nobel award.
Then I recalled that the Nobel Peace Prize is often given in recognition of efforts, not accomplishments, and that the Nobel Committee often favors individuals who symbolically stand in place of a larger cause and larger group (e.g., Desmond Tutu on behalf of those who fought against apartheid).
In that sense, the conservative pundits are right to a point in saying that Obama got the award for not being GW Bush. What they have left out of that analysis is that it is perfectly normal and justifiable for the Nobel Committee to award the prize as an endorsement or a spur-to-momentum for a particular political cause or position.
Meaning, in other words, that the international community and the Nobel Commission in particular thinks that the recent shift in American politics is such a momentous change in favor of peace when compared to the policies of the former administration that America -- or at least, American liberals -- deserve a Nobel Peace Prize in acknowledgement of this shift.
(Which says what, precisely, about how conservative American politics are perceived by the larger global community? Hmmm . . . nothing very favorable, I'd venture.)
Rachel Maddow gives perhaps the best analysis of the award that I've seen yet, and explains more eloquently than I could, so I have included a link to her video clip -- which I feel is very much worth watching in order to put the award into an appropriate context.
But here's the kicker: unlike Christianity, my faith teaches that it is absolutely good and proper for there to be many systems of religious-mythical belief. How could a man living in India in the 6th century B.C. possibly understand "god" in the same way that a woman living in 16th-century Italy would, or the same way a person living in modern-day Haiti would? Their worldviews and life experiences are completely different. It would make complete sense for "god" to present himself / herself / themselves in many names and guises if "god" wanted to be understood. On the other hand, it would make no sense for "god" to stay silent for tens of thousands of years and then appear in a very limited fashion to a couple hundred desert-dwellers on the West Asian penninsula in the first millenium B.C., looking exactly the way that said desert-dwellers would want and expect their god to look, and not communicate at all to the rest of the people who lived throughout the course of human history.
