A smoke screen
Catholic bishops and other members of the Republican religious right are framing the Obama administration's requirement that religious institutions provide contraception in their health-insurance plans as an attack on religious liberty. This is a phony argument in an attempt to fire up the GOP base in an election year.
Twenty-eight states presently require that any organization that provides health insurance must include contraception coverage in the plan. And as recently as 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court refused a request by Catholic Charities of New York to review a state court decision requiring insurance companies to include contraception coverage. Catholic Charities challenged a similar law in California in 2004 and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear it.
If Catholic employers can deny their employees (many of them not Catholic) birth-control coverage, can Jehovah's Witness employers deny their employees blood-transfusion coverage? Can Jewish employers only require that kosher medications be covered in insurance plans? If religious beliefs are off limits to governmental intervention, why did the federal government outlaw the 19th-century Mormon practice of polygamy?
Just as in the Forsyth County prayer case, the right wing is using religious liberty as a smoke screen for political gain. Only this time, women see through the smoke. They know that contraception is a necessary medication not only for birth control but for myriad health conditions. The GOP attack on women explains why in the latest polls, 53 percent of women have a favorable approval of President Obama.
RUDY DIAMOND
Lewisville
Discipline needed
After reading "Teacher faces assault charges" (March 1), I have to shake my head in total disgust. The teacher in question, who has a fine reputation, pushed a desk and "pinned" a student who was disrupting class. The student in question, a 17-year-old sophomore, was already serving in-school suspension and, while disrupting the class, told the teacher to "get out of her face." And the teacher is in trouble? Twenty years ago, if I had pulled something like that as a student, I would have got my tail busted by the principal, been suspended and then faced the real punishment when I got home.
Parents need to discipline their children when they need it, and if they don't, they should keep their mouths shut when their children are so unruly that the teachers can't control them. If children have no respect for authority at a young age, they won't have any as adults.
I give the highest praise possible to teachers today — they don't get the respect or pay that they so truly deserve. I ask all parents and the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school board to stand up and help these teachers put the much-needed discipline back in our schools.
STEVE SHORE
Pfafftown
Obama's accomplishments
The March 8 responses to your "Finish the Thought" fragment, "President Barack Obama continues to be widely criticized because he …" were both instructive and embarrassing. It's obvious that there's been a conservative campaign of misinformation about our president. Anyone who at this point calls him a "socialist" doesn't know the meaning of the word. Anyone who says he's "the worst president that this country has ever seen" doesn't know the first thing about history.
The most astute comment on the whole page was, "If Obama were a Republican and accomplished everything he has, in exactly the same way, Republicans would be heralding him as the greatest president in memory."
He's right: Obama has loosened restrictions on gun laws, aggressively killed terrorists and saved the American auto industry. Are conservatives opposed to those things? Only when Obama does them. Mitt Romney not only instituted a health-care mandate when he was governor of Massachusetts, he's one of many Republicans who recommended the same thing for the nation. Yet that doesn't stop conservatives from complaining about health care "being forced down our throats."
"Wake up, America" indeed.
BEVERLY M. BURTON
Winston-Salem
No to tax increase
I was astounded to read that the Winston-Salem City Council members were considering raising property taxes during this recession.
They should take into consideration that many people are struggling just to keep their homes and make ends meet. Also, many people are without jobs, and everyone is facing higher gas prices that will cause other prices to rise.
It is my understanding that the city and Forsyth County governments will be getting taxes based on property-tax values that exceed the real value of homes, which declined due to the recession and housing-market problems. That, in my opinion, is enough of a property-tax hike.
MARY LOUISE LAUFFER
Winston-Salem
Obama's been the best Eisenhower Republican we've had since Eisenhower. And I mean that in a good way.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall Ike handing the Executive Branch over to union chieftains.
DeleteStab...someone could complain about being constipated, and you'd find a way to blame unions somehow.
Delete"Workers have a right to organize into unions and to bargain collectively with their employers. And a strong, free labor movement is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society."
Delete"Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice."
"Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things, but their number is negligible and they are stupid."
Dwight D. Eisenhower. President of the United States
My, my, how your party has changed, Ike.
Arthur, that doesn't change the fact that unions have the run of this administration.
DeleteOT, Ike supported the right of employees to FREELY join unions, not to be coerced into dues paying, which is this adminisration's policy, not to mention punishing workers who freely decertify a union.
You gotta love Democrats. Just when you think you've got your back-side covered, they slip one in on you. And this one doesn't feel good at all. Just coming to surface is the fact that the 'Health Care Law' includes a tax on your home if you sell it. Of course, it's only for 'rich' people they say. But what the 'heck' has selling your home got to do with healthcare. Only Nancy Pelosi is a big enough bimbo to explain this one.
ReplyDeleteHey Nancy! We've found out what's in it, and we don't like it!
I don't know why dumb liberal Democrats don't know that a tax on one's home has nothing to do with health care. Any imbecilic moron voting democratic in the next election would have an idea that the tax is not germane to health care. However, most of you know how Democrats are. It just never stops.
DeleteGod does indeed love dumb people, and he's making more of them every day. Their poor little minds work so slowly that they are always several years behind the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteTake for instance, the so-called "tax" on home sales, which was thoroughly discussed in all of the media over two years ago. Apparently, some of those slow little minds are just now getting to 2010.
And of course, they will never understand the new law because it is far too complex, as I show below:
1. If your income is $200,000 ($250,000 married couples) per year..
2. And if you make more than $250,000 ($500,000 married couples) profit on the sale of your home...
3. You will pay a 3.8% capital gains tax on the excess profit over $250,000/$500,000.
See how complicated it is??? Your dog might not understand it, but your cat will.
Speaking of cats. Could we please have a Roscoe update?
ReplyDeleteHi Wordly!
DeleteRoscoe is still receiving decreasing steroid doses, but has otherwise returned to full form, eating, playing, "attacking" us, and being very clingy. I think his NDE scared him.
On a sadder note, I was compelled to have my longtime friend Amy, whose medical history has been discussed here and elsewhere, put to sleep. That was a few weeks ago. Respiratory distress due to lung cancer.
From Ryan McDougle's Facebook page as posted by Jim Pittit:
ReplyDeleteSenator, I accidentally slept with my wife, only to discover that she had begun her p....d. I've put her in a special place to be separate from me for seven days until she's no longer unclean; I've washedeth all everything that she
touchedeth--our blankets, our pillows, our Crisco-slathered plastic sheet; I've washedeth mine own clothes, and bathedeth myself in water. I've even purchased two turtles from the pet store at the mall to give to a priest for a combination sin/burnt offering. My question is; when do I stone her? Or was that for something else? I'm confused.
The USS Enterprise began its final voyage on Sunday.
ReplyDeleteMs Lauffer: Surprised that a predominately Democrat City Council wants to raise taxes? Pulazeeeeze!
ReplyDeleteThey knew this day was coming. What did they do? They continued throwing money into the baseball pit.
They could care less about the average city citizen, and how they pay in taxes.
They need to sell Bowman Gray Stadium now, Joines' Baseball Folly won't be far behind. How many millions will the city (citizens) lose on those 'investments'?
Heart disease is the number one killer of men. Why isn't Obama paying for my gym membership?
ReplyDelete