Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor, which ultimately leads to civil disorder.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive.
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American law relies heavily on precedent. Later decisions are linked to earlier decisions by a chain of logic that can extend through many decades, all the way back to the Constitution and even earlier.
Early decisions are the ingredients for later cakes.
No law or legal decision is an island unto itself. A wise judge takes that fact into consideration.
Sadly, our current Supreme Court has become ultra, right-wing political, not wise, so its decisions reflect the wishes of the upper .1% income/power group. Prime example: The Court’s Citizens United decision, that corporations have the same free speech rights as people, which favoring the rich, ranks among the more regressive decisions in the Court’s history.
Could Citizens United and a semi-colon undo Obamacare?
National Constitution Center By Scott Bomboy
March 21, 2014 6:24 AMNext Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear two cases related to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and the stakes are high for both sides. In fact, the interpretation of a semi-colon in the context of the First Amendment could play a critical role.
“Appellants also argue that Citizens United is applicable to the Free Exercise [of religion] Clause because ―the authors of the First Amendment only separated the Free Exercise Clause and the Free Speech Clause by a semi-colon, thus showing the continuation of intent between the two,” said circuit judge Robert Cowen in the Conestoga Wood appeals court decision.
The semi-colon argument holds that the free exercise of religion and free exercise of speech are linked. Since the Citizens United case gave corporations the same free speech rights as people, the argument states that corporations should have the same free religious exercise rights as people, too, and they should be able to opt out of Obamacare.
The argument is ridiculous — or would be, were it not for the equally ridiculous Citizens United decision, which creates precedent for all sorts of mischief. Not only did that decision provide additional rationale for billionaires to use tax avoiding corporations as secret cover for controlling elections, but it sets the stage for other arguments taking the Constitution far afield.
Citizens United, under the guise of “free speech,” allows rich people more free speech than poor people. Lots more. Further, it arguably allows corporations all the rights of people.
For instance, being born in the U.S., you have all the rights of a citizen. Does a corporation, “born” in the U.S., have all the rights of an American citizen?
Does it also have voting rights? Can corporations adopt children? Can a corporation go to jail if it breaks a law? Can a corporation receive a marriage license and thereby receive the tax benefits of marriage? And what if some shareholders, officers, etc. are foreigners. What then are the rights of the corporation? Does a corporation need a visa or passport?
And so we come to the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood cases:
In Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the national hobby and crafts chain store asked the Court to take on the birth control mandate that applies to for-profit companies.
The issue in the Hobby Lobby case is if the company is protected under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which says the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless that burden satisfies strict scrutiny. Hobby Lobby claims as a family-owned company, its religious rights are violated by Obamacare.
In the Conestoga Wood case, a Mennonite family-owned, profit-making business claims that the ACA’s birth control mandate violates the company’s rights under the First Amendment free exercise clause and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
If a corporation has the free speech rights of an American citizen, who determines what that speech shall be? Is a corporation merely a surrogate for its president? Or its chairman? Or its board of directors? Or its shareholders? Or its employees? Or the employees’ union? Whose free speech are we talking about?
The Supreme Court, in its unseemly haste to favor the rich over the rest, has opened the door to all sorts of related questions.
What is the religion of a corporation? Is it the religion of the above-mentioned president? Or of the chairman? Or of the directors or shareholders? Or of the employees or union?
What shall we make of a corporation owned mostly by Christians, but which hires Jews and Muslims and even promotes Jews and Muslims to executive positions? When is it a Christian corporation and when is it not? Does it lose its “Christianity,” if some of its stock is sold to non-Christians?
And what if some of those Christian owners, executives, etc. are Catholic and some Protestant of various denominaions? What makes this corporation Catholic or Protestant? Does a “Muslim corporation” have legal redress if a Christian corporation refuses to hire it for a job, because of anti-Muslim bigotry?
Yes, bad law tends to extend its tentacles:
The Hobby Lobby-Conestoga Wood case is the first of more than 90 related cases filed by other religious-oriented plaintiffs, including hospitals, social service agencies, universities, schools, and companies.
Kaiser Health News estimates that more than 1,000 religious institutions and other employers with millions of employees have objections.
Here it comes. Every religion has its priorities. And if we assume corporations have the same rights as people, who has the right to decide a corporation’s religion, even when most of the employees and customers are of a different religion?
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive” the American public, and to please our wealthy benefactors! Yes, the whole thing is ridiculous, but when you begin with ridiculous incredients, you aren’t going to get a sensible cake.
Interesting times ahead for what arguably will be remembered as one of our less admired Courts. Let’s see how they try to wriggle out of the complex maze they have built. Will they cook up an even more pro-right wing (rich), anti-left wing (poor) complexity. Soon the Court will attempt to bake a cake using the bad ingredients of its own making.
Note to Supreme Court justices: No matter what you do now, you will look like fools.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
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Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
8. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here)
—–
10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt
No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.
Two key equations in economics:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports
THE RECESSION CLOCK
As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the lines rise. Federal deficit growth is absolutely, positively necessary for economic growth. Period.
#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
cut debt, cut deficits, cut medicaid, cut medicare, cut social security, cut spending, cut taxes, cut the budget, eliminate FICA, filibuster, income gap, MMT, modern monetary theory, monetarily non-sovereign, monetarily sovereign, monetary non-sovereignty, monetary sovereignty
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
[1] Rodger says, “Citizens United…allows corporations all the rights of people.”
Yes, but not the responsibilities of people. The bigger the corporation, the smaller its constraint by laws and by social responsibility.
Most nations are ruled by corporations and rich people. Government is their protector and enforcer. Their goon.
As for the Citizens United ruling that corporations are “people,” how can a group be a “person”? And if the group is a “person,” then why does this “person” never go to jail when it commits a crime?
The only clear thing in this madness is that the US Supreme Court serves the 1% at the expense of the 99%. Some of the justices may dissent (four of the nine did not agree with the Citizens United ruling), but overall the Court serves the rich.
[2] OFF TOPIC…
Today I thought of Mitchell’s law #6 (“The penalty for ignorance is slavery”) as I watched a video of a huge demonstration in Spain. Hundreds of thousands converged on Madrid to protest against austerity, the government, the banks, housing rights policies, high unemployment, mass privatization, and so on. The protest was a big one.
As I watched the multitude, I imagined telling them the facts that we discuss here in Rodger’s blog. Would any of them believe me? Would any of them listen at all?
No, probably not. Their ignorance is voluntary.
This brings up the reason, I think, why all societies have a wealth gap between the 1% and the 99%. All societies consist of laws and lies. Most people are subject to the laws, and most people share a nexus of lies — e.g. the Big Lie about federal government finances.
(Actually Western societies share several more Big Lies not connected with Monetary Sovereignty that I have never mentioned here.)
What maintains the wealth gap is not just widespread hate and selfishness, but the 99 percent’s VOLUNTARILY defense of lies. How else to explain their slavery under the 1%? How else to explain why one person can mentally and physically dominate a hundred, or a hundred thousand? How else to explain why nothing changes?
The masses defend what they protest against.
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Of course corporations are not people. For one thing they’re HEARTLESS! and want people off the payroll as much as possible. And as Roger points out, among other things, they don’t require a passport to enter another sovereignty. So, Mitt Romney’s famous quote “Corporations are people, my friend” is as wrong as can be. And the person he was speaking to, with his phony smile, was most certainly not his friend.
As I’ve stated in the case of money itself, it’s not the metal or paper, it’s the legal, weightless abstraction that is ‘money.’ Exactly the same goes for the physical plant, people and structure of a corporation. Material can move between nations without passports, not workers or the managers and executives. Ironically, passports don’t exist either. They’re an abstract legal entity. Only the paper and your pic are real.
The word corporation comes from the Latin “corp” (corpse) meaning body and has been conflated with a living ‘human.’ Without a pulse, you are no longer human. Not one iota of any money, physical plant, or machine tool, has a pulse, or autonomous reproducibility, or blood flow or the capacity to love or generalize or tie my shoelaces….you can make ’em, but you can’t tie ’em.
I’ll finish with this quote from R. Buckminster Fuller, page 1 of his book Cosmography published posthumously in 1993:
“The Dark Ages still reign over all humanity, and the depth and persistence of this domination are only now becoming clear. This Dark Ages has no bars, chains or locks. Instead it is locked by misorientation and built of misinformation….We are powerfully imprisoned by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think.”
Money and corporation are just a few of the many terms that confuse and confound us; like sunrise and sunset, they are misleading illusions. And to continue briefly, we have Janet Yellin talking like her predecessors, putting everyone to sleep with Fed-speak to give the appearance of knowing what its all about when it’s only designed to confound, i.e., con (against) found (discovery). We need a translation, but then that would only wake us up and heaven forbid people should wake up which may be why colleges everywhere still encourage specialization and status quo thinking, i.e. mind your own business and don’t make waves.
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“(Actually Western societies share several more Big Lies not connected with Monetary Sovereignty that I have never mentioned here.)”
What are the other Big Lies?
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I do not mention them because are outside the scope of this blog, and they are polarizing. To challenge those other Big Lies would be to offend some readers here, just as people are offended when you explain to them the facts of Monetary Sovereignty. I would probably be banned from this blog.
RMM has repeated some of the lies several times, and I STRONGLY disagreed with him, but I never said anything — although I did disagree regarding Zimbabwe, since that topic involves government finances.
With Zimbabwe the Big Lie among average Americans is that Zimbabwe had high inflation because, “Those blacks don’t know how to run their own country.” The people at the NEP blog believe this lie.
The truth is that Zimbabwe is the target of a financial attack coordnated by the USA. The hyper-inflation ended on 12 April 2009 when Zimbabwe stopped pegging its dollar to the US dollar — but the US-led blockade of Zimbabwe continues, along with all the usual imperialist propaganda, e.g. “Mugabe is a dictator!”
Any government leader who is genuinely populist and a humanitarian is a “brutal dictator.” Any autocrat who savagely crushes his people to please the global One Percent is an “enightened leader.”
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@quatloosx: Please mention the other blogs if they exist that discuss these other Big Lies so that others can learn about them so people can be better informed. I’ve come to the conclusion that I cannot trust American media. I’m trying to find other media web sites that provide more information on what is really going on in the world that is not due to ignorance, manipulation and deceit. Thanks for your help in advance.
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quatloosx
You are right that several factors were involved in Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation. The point was not to explore those factors, which would have taken us far afield, but to provide readers with enough information to show that the hyperinflation was not due to excessive deficit spending.
The whole Wiemar/Zimbabwe/Argentina mantra is based on the popular notion that deficits cause hyperinflation.
Complexity also exists for the German and Argentina hyperinflations, each of which I attributed to simple causes. but indeed all hyperinflations have multiple parents.
We all are interested in hearing about any “Big Lies” being spread on this blog, so feel free to mention them.
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while i agree that the 1%ers attack any and all populist leaders, you shouldnt include mugabe in that category. he hasnt been “for the people” in decades.
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@RMM: Can the fed. government just admit it has Monetary Sovereignty, stop federal taxation entirely, and just spend (or issue, or add deposits) dollars as necessary to accounts for its funding? I’m trying to use the right descriptive terms to accurately describe these operations – i.e., spend, issue, deposit, etc., when I explain MMT and MS to layman so as not to confuse – and just to make clear. Economics today is still filled with anachronistic terms (“borrow”, “debt” instead of “assets”) that should not be used in my opinion that don’t accurately reflect reality and leads to misconceptions by people.
Are there any documented examples that I can use in the budgeting process that shows how these funding deposits are made? This would be helpful in explaining these concepts – “proof” if you will as to the reality of what is going on with federal government funding. For example, if there is new legislation for a program, or increased spending, and the Congress or whoever requests that the Fed. credit or add deposits (“top off an account” so to speak) to a federal gov. departments account – without issuing Treasuries. This would clearly show to people that taxes are not being used to fund government operations.
Also, how does one show the “paper trail” from when the IRS collects taxes and transfers this money to accounts used by the fed. government in supporting itself? If this “paper trail” is shown to be nonexistent, and dollars are just deleted from taxpayers accounts, the dollars no longer exist and are not really transferee anywhere – this would be helpful in explaining government funding operations.
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The answer to your first question is, “Yes.”
Re. the “paper trail,” the problem is that a paper trail actually does exist, in that the government keeps records of all dollars sent to it and all dollars it spends into existence, and also keeps a record of the difference between the two. That apparent connection is called the “deficit.”
So the appearance is that the dollars sent to the government are the same dollars the government spends.
I believe any explanatory effort begins with a discussion about the difference between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty.
A monetary non-sovereignty government works exactly as the populace believes. Tax dollars sent to a state are saved in bank accounts, later to be spent.
After describing that process, explain that the federal government is different, and uses a different process. While the states are the users of dollars, the federal government is the creator of dollars.
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@ Beaker: When speaking to others, remember also to emphasize that money is not physical. Money is simply a points system.
A dollar is an abstract concept like the number “one,” or like points on a sports scoreboard.
Hence, the US government has no need or use for tax revenue, just as a sports scoreboard has no need to collect points. Money, like points, is not physical.
Monetary Sovereignty is an “emperor’s new clothes” thing. It is beyond the grasp of “brilliant” people, but is easily understood by economically illiterate people.
Here’s an experiment for you. Find someone who has no knowledge of federal government finances, and explain the facts to him or her. You will be amazed at how quickly and effortlessly they “get it.”
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@quatloosx: Young people tend to get the MMT/MS explanation easily. The problem is older people, they have a mental block on comprehending reality which is frustrating – people have to want to learn and be educated about these issues. The misconception of equating the fed. gov. finances with typical household finances is frustratingly persistent. I fear that if the republicans win control of the fed. gov. in the next few years, they will impose more austerity measures – that’s not saying that the democrats aren’t guilty of doing the same thing, but I consider the right-wing and republicans more of a problem in how they manage and deal with these things – The economy will get worse, and the public will wrongly think that the problem is not enough austerity, and more of the wrong steps will be taken making things even worse than before.
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@RMM: Regarding the “paper trail” that I was referring to, where is it shown explicitly that dollars collected by the IRS and Treasury are transferred to other federal government accounts for spending purposes? – this is what is not clear to me. You mention the “appearance” that the collected dollars are the same dollars spent, but are there records of the specific transfer operations between accounts? (I do understand the difference with non-MS local and state governments – can these governments show processed checks or wire transfer orders, etc., showing the dollars transferred between accounts?)
If it’s shown that dollars at the IRS and treasury containing collected dollars are transferred to other government accounts, such as at NASA, EPA, Social Security admin., etc., then MMT/MS has a serious problem in explaining in a convincing manner what is going on regarding funding.
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RMM has stated: “While the states are the users of dollars, the federal government is the creator of dollars.’
Beaker, I go along with you as far as an explicit paper trail.
But instead of “… the federal government is the creator of dollars…” I think it would be very helpful to say Mr. John Felix at computer station 12 is creating/destroying dollars. There must be a lot of people with names who work for the government who through the years must have thought “wow, there really is no debt or affordability problem.” You would think a whistle blower would pop out and pull a Snowden or Pentagon Papers. Are these people that fearful for their jobs or their life that no one blows a whistle or writes a book? Or are they just bystanders watching everything happen automatically by means of algorithms in the government computers and have no idea that what they’re part of is beyond recognition?? Do “they” only perform steps in their jobs that don’t allow them to get the big picture of MS?
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@tetra: I remember hearing Warren Mosler in some youtube video comment about how there are about 50-100 career government people at the Fed., Treasury, etc., who completely understand what is really going on and how things really work (MMT/MS) – Thank God, all hope is not lost. I suppose these people just aren’t inclined to talk about it for some reason. I don’t work in, or formally educated in finance, and I was able to find out about MMT/MS just through some basic research (on the internet, finding RMM, Mike Norman, Stephanie Kelton, Randall Wray, etc.). If I was able to find this out, why cannot other people understand MMT/MS?, especially the politicians, bureaucrats, etc.? The idiocy about the national “debt”, unnecessary federal taxation, not being able to fully fund necessary things very beneficial to society (NIH, NASA, EPA, higher education, Medicare, Soc. Sec., etc.) is so damn frustrating. It’s so annoying every year when I do my federal taxes that the money that I owe is just going to be deleted and just disappear – It is so wasteful and pointless.
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look up McCutcheon v. FEC, it’s even worse than Citizens United….
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Yes, see: Supreme Court Watch: Campaign Spending, Union Busting and the Subversion of the First Amendment
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The issue: Two men were fired from their jobs for taking peyote. They sued Oregon for not giving them unemployment compensation. benefits. The men, both Native Americans, had taken the peyote because of their religious beliefs.
Which Supreme Court justice wrote the following when voting against the men?
The answer: None other than the (self)-esteemed Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith.
Of course, it is much easier for a conservative to vote against a red man’s religious beliefs or a black man’s religious beliefs than against a white man’s religious beliefs, so we shall see what uber-religious Scalia says about the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood cases.
See: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/antonin-scalia-past-haunt-him-on-birth-control
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Off topic
A radio station in Canada burned $5,000 in cash. There was a huge outcry that the money could have gone to charity. But when Canadians pay their billions of dollars in taxes, and the money is destroyed, there is no outcry. Shouldn’t that be the critical debate?
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/radio-station-burns–5-000-cash-in-publicity-stunt-182319410.html
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OFF TOPIC
In eight days, Japan’s national sales tax will increase to eight percent from its current five percent.
Just what Japan’s depressed economy needs, aye?
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is as pro-austerity (i.e. pro-widening of the wealth gap) as are the prime ministers of England, Canada, and Australia. Everything they do is designed to widen the gap between the rich and the rest, and to increase the supremacy of the financial economy over the real economy.
For rich speculators it’s great. For everyone else it’s Kamikazenomics.
Thus, unemployment continues to rise in Japan, England, Canada, and Australia, but “the markets” continue to set records.
Austerity is not only about widening the wealth gap, but about financial capitalism eclipsing industrial capitalism. With austerity, everything and everyone exists only to widen the gap and juice the markets.
Medical advances? Scientific innovation? Space exploration? Green technology? Jobs? All that stuff is gone. It’s in the past. It was for an age when societies were still societies. Today there is only the casino maintained by the 99% for the pleasure of the 1%.
Shinzo Abe says he’s juicing the casino to “fight deflation.” This is a fraud wrapped in a lie buried in a pile of bullshyte. In Japan, 35 percent of the workforce (and climbing) is part-time, with no pension, no benefits, and no job security.
You’d think the Japanese masses would finally wake up, but no.
Like the masses everywhere else, they will defend the Big Lie unto their deaths.
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The.1% loves sales taxes, as they are among the more regressive of tax plans.
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The US is monetarily sovereign. It spends all of our dollars into the economy. It should not tax corporations because that removes dollars. We should not cut defense spending or corporate welfare because it removes dollars from the economy. No matter where the dollars go doesn’t matter. Removing dollars just inhibits growth. Have a read:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/sanctions-how-about-sanctions-against-the-united-states/5374854
Our monetarily sovereign government’s dollars support it all. God forbid we take any away. All dollars are good for the economy. And blah, blah, woof, woof.
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How does the article dispute the facts of Monetary Sovereignty?
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you continually present this childlike argument ignoring decisions regarding where the money spent by the federal govt goes. what is your point?
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Good question.
The point is: When the federal government spends, the money goes to all sorts of places.
For instance, when the government provides Social Security and Medicare benefits (among the largest of all spending categories), where does the money go?
Yes, it first goes to older people and to sick people and to doctors, hospitals, nurses, pharmaceutical companies, etc.
Then after that, where does the money go? What do the older people, sick people, doctors, hospitals, nurses, pharmaceutical companies, etc. do with those dollars?
Then, after that? And after that? And after that? Federal spending adds to the money supply, but then, where does the money go?
Some federal spending is more immediately productive or beneficial. But then it begins to diffuse all over the economy.
I prefer that more be spent on social benefits for the poor and middle classes.
If you look at the “Nine Steps to Prosperity,” which are highlighted in yellow at the end of each post, you will see my “childlike” preferences for federal spending.
Perhaps, you have better suggestions. If so, send them in.
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my question was to chasfa, i know where you stand and we are in agreement.
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My wife says I’m childlike, so it was only natural that I assumed is was for me. 🙂
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In recent constitutional law cases, however, the justices seem to have forgotten this basic principle of corporate law. In Citizens United, the court effectively held that corporations as ordinary individuals. Contrary to popular belief, however, the court did not base that holding on the idea that corporations are people. Instead, the justices said that corporations are “associations of citizens”—and those citizens who make up the corporation have constitutional rights.
In the the case of both corporations “Hobby&Conestoga, the owners make the same mistake. The owners claim that their personal religious beliefs would be offended if they have to provide certain forms of birth control coverage to employees. Yet Hobby Lobby’s owners aren’t required by the law to do anything. The legal duty falls on Hobby Lobby, the company, not its owners. If Hobby Lobby fails to provide the required insurance, the company, not the owners, is responsible.
What the owners want is for the Supreme Court to “pierce the corporate veil”—legalese for looking behind the corporation’s legal identity and basing a ruling on the interests and desires of the owners of the firm. But Hobby Lobby’s owners only want to pierce the veil for this one issue. They want the court to vindicate their personal beliefs on birth control, yet they still keep the protections of the corporate form for everything else, including limited liability.
Both should only have the rights of legal personhood that are essential for its operations. As legendary Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall wrote nearly 200 years ago, “Being the mere creature of law,” the corporation “possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it either expressly or as incidental to its very existence.” Perhaps that includes some limited speech rights, as we ordinarily expect firms to advertise and communicate with employees and customers. Yet religious liberty is not one of those rights. Hobby Lobby is a for-profit corporation whose business doesn’t require it to have religious freedom. In fact, granting Hobby Lobby an exemption from providing contraception coverage, a requirement that applies to other companies, would make the firm less attractive to potential employees.
They say the burden they face is clear in the $100.00 a day-fine for each employee they would have to pay for not complying with the contraception provision. By contrast business that chooses not to offer health insurance at all can pay a tax of $2,000 a year for each employee-
I think the best argument in this entire article is that, as a distinct legal entity, the contraception’s provided to its employees are provided by the corporation, and not its owners. Therefore, legally speaking, since the owners are technically not being forced to provide the contraception, they have no standing to bring this lawsuit in the first place. This might be using a legal loophole, but this kind of legal loophole is precisely the same kind of technicality that shields owners of a corporation from being sued for the actions of the corporation.
Both of these corporations however, formed a business corporation. By asking the Supreme Court to let them enjoy all the protections of this corporate form, but not all of its duties, the owners want to have their cake and eat it too.
I have been in one of the Hobby Lobby Craft stores some years ago. I did not see any sign saying “made in America” all of their
Merchandise came from Asia-they are interconnected with abortions in Chinese factories, and through an entire global culture of dependent on sterile women. I’m interested in their sincerity.
I f these corporations owners really believe that contraception coverage amounts to a moral endorsement of is use by employess, and then I challenge them to publicly and financially support a campaign for single-payer health care. That way that way employer-sponsored coverage would be unnecessary. Problem solved.
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Good comment re. “piercing the corporate veil,” although I expect that similar issues would pertain to partnerships as well.
It will be amusing to see how Scalia & Friends squirms out of this one (See comment #5., above)
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