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.
