The General US Politics Thread

@Fighteer

How'd you jump to that conclusion?

I was merely pointing out that its not the employers job to pay for something the employee can buy for themselves.

So by that logic employers shouldn't provide any health insurance?

Generally speaking, laws that say you can't hire/fire someone based on X make exceptions for cases where X affects their ability to perform their job. For example, if you're making a movie about Martin Luther King Jr., it's perfectly acceptable to only audition black men for the lead role.

Skycobra51: Because the whole basis of our health insurance system is that it's a social benefit, not just an individual one. Why would you single out contraception among all the other things that insurance pays for? Surely, you could get routine physical examinations out of pocket, right? Immunizations, too?

But what happens is that people who have to pay out of pocket end up not getting those things (never mind those who are poor enough that they genuinely cannot afford them), and the social ills that result have a very real cumulative impact. Ask any young woman entering the labor force if the monthly cost of contraception isn't a big hit to her pocketbook, sapping her purchasing power solely because of her biological sex.

And if you would parrot the oft-bandied claim that the answer is "not to have sex", then we must note the disproportionate burden this places on women, since men are not the ones who bear the majority of the costs of childbearing (or contraception, for that matter), and yet men are not told, "Don't have sex if you want to hold down a job." The result, with abundant historical evidence, is a bunch of randy guys running around taking advantage of any willing women they can find. The women get pregnant and abandon the workforce, resulting in higher social costs in the long term.

Obviously, fully nationalized healthcare would be a superior solution, but even in nations that have such, there is a disturbing trend of social conservatives trying to cut benefits for things that they consider "immoral".

edited 30th Jul '15 11:52:30 AM by Fighteer

Relevant discussion. Yes, this is a real bill proposed by people in our government. Be afraid, be very afraid.

EDIT: Changed the link because the other one wasn't working.

edited 30th Jul '15 11:39:06 AM by speedyboris

Frankly put, the way the insurance system is structured, employees are subject to significant hurdles forgetting things covered if they're not covered by their employer insurance.

Of course, this is in large part a result of the idiocy of having employer focused insurance in the first place, but that's sort of a historical artifact.

404.

You have to look for the hyphen in the address. Slate urls are too long for the forums.

Who the hell would come up with a bill like that? That's insane. What gives them the right to fire someone if there LGBT or pregnant out of wedlock.

To think people actually support this.

Even though I'm a Christian (Baptist) this bill is a bridge too far. Its these kind of "Christains" that give the religion a bad name.

Then again the bill originates from Utah. Mormons, go figure.

Welcome to the world of deregulated markets and small government.

Yay America.

America, a country founded by religious exstreamists who rage quit Britain because we wouldn't let them burn people who didn't share their exact form of Christianity.

The extremists weren't the ones who wrote the constitution though.

Nor were the Puritans the first English settlers.

edited 30th Jul '15 2:41:25 PM by Deadbeatloser22

True. The first groups of British settlers mostly died in wholesale numbers, so they didn't have much long term impact.

No but they had a massive cultural impact and spread the idea that one is being persecuted if they're being prevented from hurting people because they don't conform to ones exact religious beliefs.

edited 30th Jul '15 3:25:18 PM by Silasw

Pretty sure the talk about the 1st British colonists dying wholesale is a reference to places like the first Jamestown settlement, and others like it, not the Puritans.

edited 30th Jul '15 3:14:57 PM by TheWanderer

Bingo. The moral of the story: corporations can't design or run towns for toffee.

Stupid immigrants always need free food stamp programs from the government to survive...

edited 30th Jul '15 3:32:53 PM by Aszur

Well Jamestown did eventually succeed, by growing tobacco with slaves, so their is that unsettling moral.

The Puritans settled in what is today New England, companies settle the decidedly un-Puritan South for profit, except Georgia, if I'm remembering right, because the British use that as a penal colony. The Mid-Atlantic was a jumble of everyone else. Off the top of my head Pennsylvania was a Quaker colony, also not on the best of terms with Puritans, and was a bit of an oddball for not treating the Indians like dirt until the Scots/Irish started coming in waves and overwhelmed the Quakers. And old New York was once New Amsterdam until the British gave the Dutch one of their regular beat downs and took it from them.

It is funny to note that the "Puritan areas" are some of the most liberal in the country.

If I remember correctly the mid-Atlantic was a toss up between Catholics and Protestants. Just look at the Maryland flag.

Wasn't always that way, take Boston for example.

Like that's gonna stop gang and cartel members from getting ahold of them.

Do they really think that will solve anything?

Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws, yet the crime rate is through the roof.

edited 30th Jul '15 4:48:41 PM by Skycobra51

The city council of Los Angeles unanimously voted to prohibit possession of gun magazines that can contain more than 10 rounds of ammunition on Tuesday.

Right, and laws against murder, rape and robbery don't stop criminals either, so what's the point of having those on the book too, right?

Well even then they did take up social justice causes, like ending slavery,or prohibition.

Obama signs an executive order ordering the US to build the world's fastest super computer by 2020. Thanks Obama It's just the kind of thing I would do if I was president, and would help America to achieve dominance in an important field. Just one problem, you announced it publicly so now the Chinese are going to try to build an even faster computer,and they will probably build it before we finish ours. This should have been kept classified until a year before it's completion or something like that.

Ok I didn't see anyone mention it yet during the whole Trump/breast pump thing: The employee in question went in MSNBC last night and said she was previously handling it on her break time, a break time that was for everyone and I think was a lunch break. Trump then took that break away one day without warning during a deposition, which is what necessitated her having to ask to take a break and state the reason. This wasn't something she did out the blue, or something she was unable to handle. It was her having to work around a sudden change in the schedule that affected all the employees, and Trump apparently threw a damn fit over her reason for asking.

Which just makes him look very immature and like a bad boss.

Not every important thing we do needs to be kept secret. Especially if one of the hopes for it is to aid NASA! Seriously, just because China will compete with us just doesn't seem like enough reason to keep this secret.

edited 30th Jul '15 5:28:16 PM by AceofSpades