This is one that has sat, nearly finished, in my posts for a while, and it says things I think need to be said, so I'm polishing it off and sending it out the door. How long I've sat on it, you can determine by the age of the links at the bottom.
One of my pet peeves about conservatives in general and the tea party in particular is the inconsistency with which they fuss about the national deficit. President Bush inherited a government budget that was actually recording surpluses and proceeded to drive it straight into the ground, not only by cutting taxes on all and sundry but by starting two wars and making expensive changes to Medicare. Did conservatives utter a peep about deficit spending and passing our debt on to our children and all that jazz? Not so much. They may not have liked it all that much, but so long as their guy was in charge, they sucked it up and pretended not to notice, or that a little fiscal irresponsibility was a worthy price for all the other good stuff he was doing. It was only when President Obama took office, and started spending money on things that they weren't happy about, that the federal deficit became a big issue to conservatives.
The unfortunate thing, if we're operating under Keynsian economics here, is that right now - during and immediately after a crippling recession, when the economy is depressed and taxable revenues are low - is exactly when we should be using deficit spending to keep our heads above water. The flip side, of course, is that during times of prosperity - like, I don't know, the early 2000's - is when you're supposed to pay off your debts, balance your books and establish a position of strength so that you can go into debt during times of need. We, of course, bombed that, so now instead of spending the surpluses of plenty in our time of want, we're piling debt upon debt. And I definitely agree that this is bad. But the proper time to raise a ruckus about this was during the Bush years. And yet, because the people who worry about deficit spending tended to agree with him on most other things, they held their peace.
All of this is very sad and cranky-making, of course, but this isn't a blog post to rant about the failings of conservative punditry. That was just background and context. What I need to say is that I think I, and the rest of the confirmed liberals who make up Obama's base, are guilty of the same double standard when it comes to the handling of civil liberties in the war on terror.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Blogger being a pain
As much as I like my tasteful black background with white text, it makes things a pain when Blogger decides to make the background for half of my text white and doesn't give me an option to set the background to transparent. This has happened on the last two posts I have worked on. C'mon, Google. Stop wallowing in freakishly large piles of money and make the UI make sense.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Political blogging and the proper scrutiny of police
I think my problem with blogging is the same as my problem
with writing in general: it's not that I don't have great ideas (or at least,
ideas that I think are great), but that I have difficulty making the transition
from 'diversion' to 'habit' that is necessary to produce writing on a
consistent basis. Weeks will go by in which I either don't think of blogging,
or think, 'oh yeah, I should do that sometime' and then do something else. And
yet I want to stick with it. I finally figured out how to delete an old blog,
and removed the class blog I had to produce sophomore year, and might yet
delete this one, but only after backing up my posts, and only if I am confident
that I will be more successful at sticking to my next one. In the meantime, I
have posts from April and May in various states of completion (and that's
another problem; starting ideas and then trailing off and leaving them in
stasis for months), so hopefully I'll get to those shortly; I'm also mulling
over a future post on the gradual dehipsterization of my taste in music.
In the meantime, more and more often when I think about political topics, I find myself framing it in terms of what I would say were I an elected official dealing with such a thing. Which is an interesting train of thought my mind has been following these last few months, I think. I'm not sure it's a realistic ambition, or even an actual ambition; while I might be ok at the actual law-making part of the job, I'm not sure how someone as introverted as I would fare on the campaign trail, especial when just starting out, when meet-n-greet takes precedence over out-of-state attack ads. But it's a fun thought experiment, and who knows? Maybe if teaching jobs continue not to be found, I can start over with a law or poli-sci degree? In any case, I've already written one such post, and I rather expect I'll be writing more, and leaving them up here for future political foes to dig up and use against me. Good times.
So.
As a diligent reader of the internets, I was of course aware of the recent and hilarious legal kerfluffle involving The Oatmeal, in which a scrubby joke-compiler website hired a scrubby lawyer to make scrubby and unsubstantiated threats to extort money from the writer of the Oatmeal. Who promptly and amusingly retaliated with massive and public scorn, backed by the full force of his large and loyal fanbase and the not-inconsiderable legions among the wider internet community who enjoy making fun of scrubs. Things got much, much funnier when the scrubby lawyer in question, one Charles Carreon, got his undies in a wad and decided to take on Oatmeal, IndieGoGo, The National Wildlife Federation, The American Cancer Society, and pretty much everyone who made fun of him. He later backed down, although not without finding a few new ways to wallow in fail on the way out the door; the matter might or might not rest at that.
But this isn't the topic of this post; this is just background.
In the meantime, more and more often when I think about political topics, I find myself framing it in terms of what I would say were I an elected official dealing with such a thing. Which is an interesting train of thought my mind has been following these last few months, I think. I'm not sure it's a realistic ambition, or even an actual ambition; while I might be ok at the actual law-making part of the job, I'm not sure how someone as introverted as I would fare on the campaign trail, especial when just starting out, when meet-n-greet takes precedence over out-of-state attack ads. But it's a fun thought experiment, and who knows? Maybe if teaching jobs continue not to be found, I can start over with a law or poli-sci degree? In any case, I've already written one such post, and I rather expect I'll be writing more, and leaving them up here for future political foes to dig up and use against me. Good times.
So.
As a diligent reader of the internets, I was of course aware of the recent and hilarious legal kerfluffle involving The Oatmeal, in which a scrubby joke-compiler website hired a scrubby lawyer to make scrubby and unsubstantiated threats to extort money from the writer of the Oatmeal. Who promptly and amusingly retaliated with massive and public scorn, backed by the full force of his large and loyal fanbase and the not-inconsiderable legions among the wider internet community who enjoy making fun of scrubs. Things got much, much funnier when the scrubby lawyer in question, one Charles Carreon, got his undies in a wad and decided to take on Oatmeal, IndieGoGo, The National Wildlife Federation, The American Cancer Society, and pretty much everyone who made fun of him. He later backed down, although not without finding a few new ways to wallow in fail on the way out the door; the matter might or might not rest at that.
But this isn't the topic of this post; this is just background.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
The E-word
I am currently applying for jobs as a teacher. I am I hold Secondary English/Language Arts licensure (at least provisionally) in three states and am applying to every position I can find in at least a substantial portion of each. I started searching in early February, shortly after finishing student teaching and graduating in January.
I have submitted 82 applications to date. I have only missed 8 application deadlines that I know of, half of which were in the last week; between the increased number of positions, and my need to take time away from applications for interviews and (starting next week) working full-time at my summer job, it's now more or less unfeasible to apply to every application that comes along. That also doesn't count job postings that have no deadline; I'm usually so busy trying to keep ahead of deadlines that those without get pushed to the back of the line, and I'm sure many of the open-deadline positions on my list have been filled for weeks. Until the rate of postings starts to slow down (and it may have, although I haven't checked my job boards for close to a week), there's only so much I can do.
I have had 7 interviews. One of those was for a position that I actually had not applied for; my resume came into consideration because the district had it from a job fair. Another district scheduled me for an interview, but then unscheduled me in favor of someone else. Yeah. Classy, I know. Of the 7 interviews I have had, 4 have notified me of having selected another candidate, one has not contacted me but can be safely assumed to be a bust, and one is still a possibility but is several days past their intended timeframe of reply, from which I deduce that they have offered to another candidate and are waiting to see if he/she accepts and is approved by their board; the only way they will offer it to me is if every more favored candidate turns them down. Not holding my breath. The seventh interview was this afternoon; they expect to be contacting candidates with their decision on Wednesday.
I have received confirmed rejections for 31 of the applications I have sent, counting the unsuccessful interviews.
I am so, so very sick of job applications.
I have submitted 82 applications to date. I have only missed 8 application deadlines that I know of, half of which were in the last week; between the increased number of positions, and my need to take time away from applications for interviews and (starting next week) working full-time at my summer job, it's now more or less unfeasible to apply to every application that comes along. That also doesn't count job postings that have no deadline; I'm usually so busy trying to keep ahead of deadlines that those without get pushed to the back of the line, and I'm sure many of the open-deadline positions on my list have been filled for weeks. Until the rate of postings starts to slow down (and it may have, although I haven't checked my job boards for close to a week), there's only so much I can do.
I have had 7 interviews. One of those was for a position that I actually had not applied for; my resume came into consideration because the district had it from a job fair. Another district scheduled me for an interview, but then unscheduled me in favor of someone else. Yeah. Classy, I know. Of the 7 interviews I have had, 4 have notified me of having selected another candidate, one has not contacted me but can be safely assumed to be a bust, and one is still a possibility but is several days past their intended timeframe of reply, from which I deduce that they have offered to another candidate and are waiting to see if he/she accepts and is approved by their board; the only way they will offer it to me is if every more favored candidate turns them down. Not holding my breath. The seventh interview was this afternoon; they expect to be contacting candidates with their decision on Wednesday.
I have received confirmed rejections for 31 of the applications I have sent, counting the unsuccessful interviews.
I am so, so very sick of job applications.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Notes on Wisconsin Politics
In case I haven't previously mentioned it, I am a Wisconsinite, at least for the time being. Today we interrupt your scheduled programming to bring you some musings on the current state of the charlie-foxtrot that is our state government.
The latest news: No sooner does the Government Accountability Board certify the recall petitions against a handful of state senators, but one of them (Pam Galloway, who represents my district), resigns. She cites multiple family health crises as her reason, and insists that she isn't quitting because of the recalls and that she would have won anyway. Maybe, maybe not, but the timing is certainly fortuitous, and I could easily see how for an enthusiastic, dedicated public servant (which I think Galloway probably was, although I'm sure her detractors would immediately question to whom she was dedicated), already faced with highly stressful personal circumstances, news that your district has decided to force you into a recall election might be the straw that breaks the camel's back and/or determination. I wish her the best, but I can't say I'm sorry to see her go, especially since her absence gridlocks the senate and makes it all the more likely that local Democratic representative Donna Seidel will bag the seat.
So that was exciting, and today's news was even better: apparently jealous of being left out of the party, WI conservatives are launching some recalls of their own ... against themselves. That's right; in addition to collecting signatures against Sen. Bob Jauch, D-Poplar, northwoods conservatives are trying to recall Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center. Every liberal activist in the state is giggling, I'm sure.
The reason for the recall is a bit piddly, although God knows enough fuss has been made over it. To summarize for non-Wisconsinite readers: a Florida company wanted to open an iron mine in northern WI, but first they wanted a timetable set for the currently open-ended approval process by the WI DNR. Which I think is perfectly reasonable; they're not going to invest time or money until they at least know how long they're going to be waiting. State Republicans whipped up a bill to simplify the appeals process and touted it as a big job-creator; Democrats and conservationists complained it went to far. The key vote came down to Schultz, who was not appeased by the concessions Republican leaders made for his support and scuttled the bill; the company has since given up on the plan. I've not been paying much attention to the nuts and bolts of this story (because, regardless of the stakes, arguing the minutae of mining approval regulations sounds like no kind of interesting that I know of), so I can't say who, if anyone, I think is in the right. I just don't care enough.
But apparently some people do, leading to this recall effort. I think it's silly, and I think that - even in districts that lost potential jobs because of this - nobody is going to rile up enough fuss over mining regulations to overthrow an incumbent official.
What was interesting to me is something my dad said while discussing this with me and Granddad this afternoon. He said that this is what he was afraid of when the recall hullabaloo got started: that every vote would be grounds for a recall, and we'd be forced into a constant election season. The only solution he saw was to change the recall mechanic to make it harder for frivolous crap like this to get off the ground, and if we can't manage to do redistricting in a non-partisan manner, I don't think there's much chance of doing something about this; the only solution I see is for Wisconsinites to grow up, which won't be happening any time this election cycle, methinks.
In the mean time, I can't wait to see what turns up next.
For the record (and here's the part where I'm actually testing out an opinion): while I'm all for recalling Walker, and signed the petition accordingly (although my signature will probably be disqualified since I wasn't registered to vote at the address I was living at the time), I think the rest of the recalls, Republican and Democrat alike, are essentially frivolous. Walker has shown an ongoing pattern of running roughshod over opposition points of view in pursuit of an agenda that doesn't even pretend to be about the best interests of the state, of which the collective bargaining law is only the most blatant example. He is a disaster and needs to go.
But the others? Even those who supported the collective bargaining hackjob, with which I vehemently disagree? Not really. Single-issue voters are bad enough; single-issue elections are a joke. While I have no love for the Fitzgeralds and their ilk, they are merely the henchmen who enact the leader's will. If an issue needs to be determined by a public vote, we have a mechanic for that. It's called a referendum. That, and the next scheduled general election, is the appropriate venue for rage about collective bargain, mining regulations, and who-the-devil-knows what else. If I'd resided in a district that mounted a recall election last summer, I would have voted against it no matter who was being recalled.
--
P.S. A couple of the posts that I never got around to posting, and have now shelved probably for good, were about the collective bargaining law, the fooferaw around it, and why it made me unexcited to teach in Wisconsin. I decided to scratch them partly because they're no longer even remotely timely; partly because it's probably not wise, even with my full name removed from this profile, to complain about teaching in a state while applying for jobs in that state; but mostly because it really doesn't matter: I need a job, and the chances that I'll be in a situation where I get to pick between otherwise comparable job offers in WI and another state is vanishingly small. If I HAD posted on that topic, however, I would have another point to add: Wisconsin teaching licensure is absolute crap. It requires more steps and demands jumping through more hoops than any of the other applications I've filled out, and it gives you less in return: a one-year non-renewable license that requires me to take another test, possibly further coursework, AND go through the application process again before they make it even pretend-official. By contrast, Minnesota's licensure application was so simple that I was embarrassed to have taken as long as I did to get around to it. The more I think about it, the more MN seems like the best-case scenario for job hunting. We'll see how that goes.
P.P.S. How bout this? Two posts in quick succession, and only a day or two out of date at that? Not too shabby. Let's see if this keeps up.
The latest news: No sooner does the Government Accountability Board certify the recall petitions against a handful of state senators, but one of them (Pam Galloway, who represents my district), resigns. She cites multiple family health crises as her reason, and insists that she isn't quitting because of the recalls and that she would have won anyway. Maybe, maybe not, but the timing is certainly fortuitous, and I could easily see how for an enthusiastic, dedicated public servant (which I think Galloway probably was, although I'm sure her detractors would immediately question to whom she was dedicated), already faced with highly stressful personal circumstances, news that your district has decided to force you into a recall election might be the straw that breaks the camel's back and/or determination. I wish her the best, but I can't say I'm sorry to see her go, especially since her absence gridlocks the senate and makes it all the more likely that local Democratic representative Donna Seidel will bag the seat.
So that was exciting, and today's news was even better: apparently jealous of being left out of the party, WI conservatives are launching some recalls of their own ... against themselves. That's right; in addition to collecting signatures against Sen. Bob Jauch, D-Poplar, northwoods conservatives are trying to recall Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center. Every liberal activist in the state is giggling, I'm sure.
The reason for the recall is a bit piddly, although God knows enough fuss has been made over it. To summarize for non-Wisconsinite readers: a Florida company wanted to open an iron mine in northern WI, but first they wanted a timetable set for the currently open-ended approval process by the WI DNR. Which I think is perfectly reasonable; they're not going to invest time or money until they at least know how long they're going to be waiting. State Republicans whipped up a bill to simplify the appeals process and touted it as a big job-creator; Democrats and conservationists complained it went to far. The key vote came down to Schultz, who was not appeased by the concessions Republican leaders made for his support and scuttled the bill; the company has since given up on the plan. I've not been paying much attention to the nuts and bolts of this story (because, regardless of the stakes, arguing the minutae of mining approval regulations sounds like no kind of interesting that I know of), so I can't say who, if anyone, I think is in the right. I just don't care enough.
But apparently some people do, leading to this recall effort. I think it's silly, and I think that - even in districts that lost potential jobs because of this - nobody is going to rile up enough fuss over mining regulations to overthrow an incumbent official.
What was interesting to me is something my dad said while discussing this with me and Granddad this afternoon. He said that this is what he was afraid of when the recall hullabaloo got started: that every vote would be grounds for a recall, and we'd be forced into a constant election season. The only solution he saw was to change the recall mechanic to make it harder for frivolous crap like this to get off the ground, and if we can't manage to do redistricting in a non-partisan manner, I don't think there's much chance of doing something about this; the only solution I see is for Wisconsinites to grow up, which won't be happening any time this election cycle, methinks.
In the mean time, I can't wait to see what turns up next.
For the record (and here's the part where I'm actually testing out an opinion): while I'm all for recalling Walker, and signed the petition accordingly (although my signature will probably be disqualified since I wasn't registered to vote at the address I was living at the time), I think the rest of the recalls, Republican and Democrat alike, are essentially frivolous. Walker has shown an ongoing pattern of running roughshod over opposition points of view in pursuit of an agenda that doesn't even pretend to be about the best interests of the state, of which the collective bargaining law is only the most blatant example. He is a disaster and needs to go.
But the others? Even those who supported the collective bargaining hackjob, with which I vehemently disagree? Not really. Single-issue voters are bad enough; single-issue elections are a joke. While I have no love for the Fitzgeralds and their ilk, they are merely the henchmen who enact the leader's will. If an issue needs to be determined by a public vote, we have a mechanic for that. It's called a referendum. That, and the next scheduled general election, is the appropriate venue for rage about collective bargain, mining regulations, and who-the-devil-knows what else. If I'd resided in a district that mounted a recall election last summer, I would have voted against it no matter who was being recalled.
--
P.S. A couple of the posts that I never got around to posting, and have now shelved probably for good, were about the collective bargaining law, the fooferaw around it, and why it made me unexcited to teach in Wisconsin. I decided to scratch them partly because they're no longer even remotely timely; partly because it's probably not wise, even with my full name removed from this profile, to complain about teaching in a state while applying for jobs in that state; but mostly because it really doesn't matter: I need a job, and the chances that I'll be in a situation where I get to pick between otherwise comparable job offers in WI and another state is vanishingly small. If I HAD posted on that topic, however, I would have another point to add: Wisconsin teaching licensure is absolute crap. It requires more steps and demands jumping through more hoops than any of the other applications I've filled out, and it gives you less in return: a one-year non-renewable license that requires me to take another test, possibly further coursework, AND go through the application process again before they make it even pretend-official. By contrast, Minnesota's licensure application was so simple that I was embarrassed to have taken as long as I did to get around to it. The more I think about it, the more MN seems like the best-case scenario for job hunting. We'll see how that goes.
P.P.S. How bout this? Two posts in quick succession, and only a day or two out of date at that? Not too shabby. Let's see if this keeps up.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Democrats, take note
<mounts soapbox>
You know what I would say if I were in Congress and I heard talk about how we shouldn't tax 'job creators' because 'their investments drive the economy,' etc. etc.?
(I'm not bothering to find or post specific examples; if you aren't aware of the line of reasoning of which I speak, you clearly need to watch http://www.thedailyshow.com/ more often.)
There appears to be a false dichotomy in the minds of many people between investment and the government. They say that we cannot tax the wealthy at even the same rate as their blue-collar employees because doing so will 'discourage' investment. Since when was paying taxes not an investment? When a citizen or corporation pays taxes, they are absolutely making an investment. They are investing in roads, bridges and airports to help them bring their products to market quickly, cheaply and safely. They are investing in an education program that will produce a more capable, flexible and competitive workforce to create said products. They are investing in a military capable of safeguarding American assets, public, private or corporate, in any market around the world. They are investing in law enforcement, retirement benefits, and social programs that will keep their workforce and their customer base healthy and happy. They are investing in scientific research in everything from biotechnology to aerospace engineering that will produce breakthroughs to drive our economy through the next century and beyond. They are investing in the responsible and sustainable development of our natural resources. Their investment will create jobs in education, construction, research and development, manufacturing, and beyond, all of which will drive economic growth and direct commerce back at them and their companies. If someone came up to me and offered me shares in that investment, I'd say it was a darned fine deal.
Of course, the people who are opposed to this might have another meaning of the word 'investment' in mind, so let me tell you what investing in America will not do. It will not buy out smaller companies, strip them of their assets and leave them for dead. It will not bundle junk mortgages into booby-trapped credit swaps and sell them to retirement funds or pension plans. It will not drive massive bonuses into the pockets of executives whose businesses are going under. If that's the kind of investment people want to make, that's their decision, but I wouldn't expect the American people to slash their taxes to cover it. Because America has tried that. America has tried giving corporations and Wall Street free reign, and it led us into the worst depression since the great one. So if you want to invest, fine. But invest in America first.
<dismounts soapbox>
You know what I would say if I were in Congress and I heard talk about how we shouldn't tax 'job creators' because 'their investments drive the economy,' etc. etc.?
(I'm not bothering to find or post specific examples; if you aren't aware of the line of reasoning of which I speak, you clearly need to watch http://www.thedailyshow.com/ more often.)
There appears to be a false dichotomy in the minds of many people between investment and the government. They say that we cannot tax the wealthy at even the same rate as their blue-collar employees because doing so will 'discourage' investment. Since when was paying taxes not an investment? When a citizen or corporation pays taxes, they are absolutely making an investment. They are investing in roads, bridges and airports to help them bring their products to market quickly, cheaply and safely. They are investing in an education program that will produce a more capable, flexible and competitive workforce to create said products. They are investing in a military capable of safeguarding American assets, public, private or corporate, in any market around the world. They are investing in law enforcement, retirement benefits, and social programs that will keep their workforce and their customer base healthy and happy. They are investing in scientific research in everything from biotechnology to aerospace engineering that will produce breakthroughs to drive our economy through the next century and beyond. They are investing in the responsible and sustainable development of our natural resources. Their investment will create jobs in education, construction, research and development, manufacturing, and beyond, all of which will drive economic growth and direct commerce back at them and their companies. If someone came up to me and offered me shares in that investment, I'd say it was a darned fine deal.
Of course, the people who are opposed to this might have another meaning of the word 'investment' in mind, so let me tell you what investing in America will not do. It will not buy out smaller companies, strip them of their assets and leave them for dead. It will not bundle junk mortgages into booby-trapped credit swaps and sell them to retirement funds or pension plans. It will not drive massive bonuses into the pockets of executives whose businesses are going under. If that's the kind of investment people want to make, that's their decision, but I wouldn't expect the American people to slash their taxes to cover it. Because America has tried that. America has tried giving corporations and Wall Street free reign, and it led us into the worst depression since the great one. So if you want to invest, fine. But invest in America first.
<dismounts soapbox>
Saturday, February 25, 2012
I'm back! Time for a rant!
'Sup. Long time no see.
It certainly was not my intent when I started this blog to leave it untouched for six months. Life got busy, I guess, and arguing the hypothetical and theoretical took backseat to accomplishing/surviving the concrete and tangible. In other words, student teaching was hard work. And in truth, I have a couple of draft posts that I started in the interim that never got to a point of publishing. This post is not one of them. I do hope to get back to those posts soonerish, but this is something else.
I read an article on Reuters here, and it has me simmering. The topic, if you don't want to read it, is the right of health care providers, or their employees, to cherry-pick the services and procedures they will or will not provide or even talk about based on whether those procedures align with their religious beliefs. There's a pharmacy in Washington state that is resisting a state mandate requiring pharmacies to stock all time-sensitive medications in demand in their community. Why? Because they don't want to stock emergency contraception. Other examples given include ambulance drivers who refuse to take patients to abortion clinics, infertility specialists who refuse to conduct in vitro fertilization on a lesbian, and a group of nurses in New Jersey who refused to provide ANY health care - even checking blood pressure - to women who are in the hospital for pre- or post-op care for abortions. And then there are the doctors who refuse to conduct certain treatments, OR to provide referrals to other doctors who will.
The article also provides an overview of the current legal treatment of this right of conscience, which is fairly mixed. The infertility specialists were smacked down for discrimination, the New Jersey nurses settled with their hospital and do not have to deal with morally objectionable patients unless it's an emergency, and certain states have rules allowing everyone from the doctor to the operating room janitor opt out of working on, around or in connection to healthcare procedures they are not comfortable with.
You know what? Just read the article.
So how do I feel about this? Well, let me put it like this. If I were to go to an interview for a teaching position (of which I will hopefully have some soon, fingers crossed) and inform the administrators that I would be happy to accept their job offer, but only if I didn't have to teach students whose parents are divorced, because I don't agree with divorce, do you think I will get the job?
I sure hope not.
In short, I have no sympathy with these people and think that they should do their jobs or lose them. Freedom of religion is a wonderful thing, but when one's religious beliefs dictate that you cannot fulfill the basic responsibilities of your job, then you are not qualified for that job and need to find another career.
Since this is being framed as a question of the employees' freedom of conscience, let's look at another career choice that people frequently take moral stands against: the military. The right of conscientious objectors to refuse military service has been kinda-sorta recognized by the United Nations and is legally protected in America. Persons having strong and sincere moral objections to warfare and military service - not just a specific war - are exempt from service, even if drafted, and persons with specific objections to violence and bearing arms are permitted to serve on condition of being assigned non-combat roles. A couple have even won Medals of Honor.
When comparing this to the case of healthcare conscientious objectors, I think the key point is that COs cannot bow out of military service just because they oppose a specific war or conflict; it has to be all or nothing. Despite my very strong objections to the Iraq conflict, I would not have claimed CO status, because I agree in general principals with the war in Afghanistan (although I think it's time for it to be ended ... yeah, some other time). And, while other COs can agree to serve in non-combat roles, once they're in, the have to fulfill the responsibilities of their rank and duties, just like every other soldier. There is no pick-and-choose; if you can't do part of the job, you don't take the job.
Earlier, I mentioned a hypothetical conscientious objector teacher. Let's look at that a little more closely. For those of you who aren't aware, freedom of religion essentially does not exist for public school teachers inside the classroom. The courts have established that overtly religious speech, behavior, or dress by public school teachers is incompatible with the establishment clause of the first amendment. The thinking goes that even if the teacher does not overtly proselytize to students, by wearing their faith on their sleeve, as it were, they are using their position of authority to exert a coercive or repressive power against students who do not share that faith. You can wear a small cross or Star of David, but that's about it.
Although I tend to agree with this position, my initial reaction when I was told about it in my History of U.S. Schools class was of concern. "What about orthodox Jews who have to wear a yarmulke for religious reasons, or a Muslim woman with a head scarf? Shouldn't they have the right to religious exercise as well?" I asked. To which the teacher replied, "In that case, I think you're going to have to consider whether or not that candidate is capable, for religious reasons, of fulfilling the basic requirements of the position."
Huh. I wonder if that might at all be applicable to the argument at hand?
"But, William!" you will say, "teachers are agents of the government, which is why they are held to such strict standards! Surely the same does not apply to a pharmacist working for Mayo Clinic or John Hopkins School of Medicine or Granny Jo's Hillbilly Healthcare!" And to a point, you are correct; nobody is going to get on a doctor or nurse's case for praying aloud or wearing religious attire (so long as it meets the uniform and sanitation rules of the organization, which goes back to meeting the basic requirements of a position). But I'm pretty sure a teacher at a hypothetical secular private school would get in hot water if he tried to pull the stunt I mentioned before of declining to teach certain students because of their family circumstances, from his employers if not from the government. An integral part of the teaching profession is to be impartial and accepting of all students; if you can't do that, you are a bad teacher.
Take the example of the nurses in New Jersey, who sued their hospital over a requirement that they provide nursing care to abortion patients. "One of those nurses, Fe Esperanza Racpan-Vinoya, said even a routine blood pressure check would be abhorrent to her if the patient was in for an abortion. "Absolutely," she said, "there's a big difference" between a patient in for an abortion and one in for an appendectomy." Let's set aside for another day the question of whether she is right to feel this way about abortions and people who have them. Here is the question I want to ask. Since she feels that her religion prevents her from provide service to these patients, is she capable of fulfilling the basic requirements of her position? And looking back at our previous examples, I think it's pretty clear that she isn't. Remember the expectation for conscientious objectors: if you're opposed to all wars, that's fine, but you can't bow out just because you disagree with a particular conflict. Based on this principle, I would argue that when she accepts a position as a nurse, she is obligated to provide that care to all patients, regardless of how she feels about them. If she feels that she cannot do so, she should resign and find another, less morally repugnant career choice.
The profession of a physician in particular and a healthcare worker in general is a position of public trust, even more so than the trust accorded to teachers. The right of patient-physician confidence has been sacred ever since the Hippocratic Oath was formulated. Remember what I said about teachers needing to be impartial and accepting of all students? The same applies to physicians, except more so. While healthcare providers are free to think whatever they want to about homosexuality, abortion, or God knows what else, professionalism demands that those feelings be held separate from their practice of healthcare. Because if a patient cannot trust their doctor, the doctor has failed. When a nurse refuses to take a woman's blood pressure because she had an abortion, that doesn't just hurt the patient's feelings; it establishes clearly for her that the people to whom she has entrusted her well-being do not think that she deserves to be healthy, which is unacceptable. Not only does this have real ramifications for her safe recovery, but it means that in the future, she will be less willing to seek medical counsel, or less willing to divulge potentially compromising information to her physicians, for fear of being judged and rejected, all of which could have potentially damaging implications for her health. We're coming back to the argument of whether or not a candidate is capable of fulfilling the basic requirements of his or her position; if a healthcare worker is unable for religious reasons to care for all patients without judgment or discrimination, then they have no right to care for any patients at all.
In the (classic, beloved and much-lamented) TV show Firefly, one of the characters is a doctor who is on the run from the law with his sister, and at one point, one of the crew members on board his ship sells them out to the authorities. The doctor and sister escape, and he later discovers who sold them out. In that same episode, the traitorous crewman is knocked out and needs to be restrained because of a potential spinal injury. Then he is left in the infirmary, immobilized, just him and the doctor, who knows exactly what this man has done. And after confronting the traitor with this knowledge, this is what Dr. Tam says: "No matter what you do, or say or plot, no matter how you come down on us… I will never, ever harm you. You're on this table, you're safe. 'Cause I'm your medic, and however little we may like or trust each other, we're on the same crew."
If I may wax philosophical for a moment, this is what medicine is supposed to be about. It's about putting the well-being of your patient above ALL other considerations, personal, public or political. If Dr. Tam in Firefly is committed to caring for Jayne, who has been an ass to him since the start of the show and has now betrayed him, how much less justification does a nurse have for refusing care to a patient just because the woman does not share some of her political and religious convictions? How petty. What if she was on duty in the cancer ward and had to care for a former convict who had killed a police officer? Would taking his blood pressure also be too abhorrent for her to handle? Can she also refuse service to married gays or lesbians? Or, in an example given by my mother, what happens when a doctor decides that diabetes is a punishment for sin and refuses to care for patients accordingly? Hell, what happens if a doctor refuses to treat AIDs patients because he disagrees with their morality? Would you trust a doctor who makes those kinds of decisions with your health care? I sure as hell would not.
In summation: I'm not opposed to freedom of conscience. Everyone has to answer to their own conscience (or God, if they prefer to use an external metric to measure their own morality) for their own actions. However, if a person has moral or religious strictures that prevent them from fulfilling the basic duties of a profession, they need to pick a different profession. Every employer has to make reasonable accommodations for their employees, but just as you don't hire a blind man to pilot airplanes or someone with severe vertigo to assemble skyscrapers, you don't hire someone for a healthcare position who believes that certain people are not worthy of healthcare. It just doesn't add up.
<whew>
Ok, I think that's out of my system. I can't promise when the next post will come, but hopefully I'll be a little faster this time around. I hope you've enjoyed my reasoning, whether you agree with it or not, and I'd love to hear what you have to (respectfully) say in the comments. Till next time, farewell, and think deep thoughts.
- William
P.S. A separate but related issue is whether or not the government has jurisdiction over the availability of medical care. In the case of the Washington pharmacy mentioned in the original article, "the state argues that it has a compelling interest in protecting the right of patients to legal medication." I don't know if there is a legal basis for that argument, so we'll have to see how the courts handle that, but I'm hoping the state wins. Because if healthcare providers have complete right of conscience, then rural and underserved populations with only one provider in their area are stuck with whatever meets the local doctor's and pharmacist's seal of moral approval; in effect, the providers are then not only restrict the freedom of choice available to patients, but, in the case of women for whom a pregnancy is not just inconvenient but medically inadvisable, potentially putting patient safety at risk because of their moral stand. Which is, you know, not cool.
EDIT 10/15/13
P.P.S. I notice, rereading this a year later, that I failed to carve out an exception to this, which is for doctors who choose not to perform abortions. This is legit. If you believe that aborting a fetus is murder, you should not do it; this is a valid interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath. However, if a patient wishes to have this done and a doctor don't want to do it, he/she needs to refer them to someone who will. Not only does this respect the right of the patient to make decisions about her own body and health care (not to mention probably making things easier for her in terms of insurance coverage), but it ensures the quality of her care; after all, a substantial percentage of women who choose to get abortions will get them whether their primary care physician approves or not; the only difference is that they might do something drastic and possibly highly unsafe to induce miscarriage on their own without professional assistance. It is her doctor's job to prevent this. If that doctor believes that because of this choice, this patient is not worthy of quality care in this situation, then we're back at the conclusion up above: you don't hire someone for a healthcare position who believes that certain people are not worthy of healthcare. The reason I separate this case from that of the nurses above is that the nurses had nothing to do with the actual abortion; they were just performing routine medical monitoring, from which there should be no opt-out for conscience.
Sources:
The original article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/21/us-usa-contraceptives-court-idUSTRE81K24W20120221
My material on conscientious objectors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objector
A guide to religion in public schools: http://www.freedomforum.org/publications/first/findingcommonground/B06.TeachersGuide.pdf
The Firefly Quote: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Firefly_(TV_series)
It certainly was not my intent when I started this blog to leave it untouched for six months. Life got busy, I guess, and arguing the hypothetical and theoretical took backseat to accomplishing/surviving the concrete and tangible. In other words, student teaching was hard work. And in truth, I have a couple of draft posts that I started in the interim that never got to a point of publishing. This post is not one of them. I do hope to get back to those posts soonerish, but this is something else.
I read an article on Reuters here, and it has me simmering. The topic, if you don't want to read it, is the right of health care providers, or their employees, to cherry-pick the services and procedures they will or will not provide or even talk about based on whether those procedures align with their religious beliefs. There's a pharmacy in Washington state that is resisting a state mandate requiring pharmacies to stock all time-sensitive medications in demand in their community. Why? Because they don't want to stock emergency contraception. Other examples given include ambulance drivers who refuse to take patients to abortion clinics, infertility specialists who refuse to conduct in vitro fertilization on a lesbian, and a group of nurses in New Jersey who refused to provide ANY health care - even checking blood pressure - to women who are in the hospital for pre- or post-op care for abortions. And then there are the doctors who refuse to conduct certain treatments, OR to provide referrals to other doctors who will.
The article also provides an overview of the current legal treatment of this right of conscience, which is fairly mixed. The infertility specialists were smacked down for discrimination, the New Jersey nurses settled with their hospital and do not have to deal with morally objectionable patients unless it's an emergency, and certain states have rules allowing everyone from the doctor to the operating room janitor opt out of working on, around or in connection to healthcare procedures they are not comfortable with.
You know what? Just read the article.
So how do I feel about this? Well, let me put it like this. If I were to go to an interview for a teaching position (of which I will hopefully have some soon, fingers crossed) and inform the administrators that I would be happy to accept their job offer, but only if I didn't have to teach students whose parents are divorced, because I don't agree with divorce, do you think I will get the job?
I sure hope not.
In short, I have no sympathy with these people and think that they should do their jobs or lose them. Freedom of religion is a wonderful thing, but when one's religious beliefs dictate that you cannot fulfill the basic responsibilities of your job, then you are not qualified for that job and need to find another career.
Since this is being framed as a question of the employees' freedom of conscience, let's look at another career choice that people frequently take moral stands against: the military. The right of conscientious objectors to refuse military service has been kinda-sorta recognized by the United Nations and is legally protected in America. Persons having strong and sincere moral objections to warfare and military service - not just a specific war - are exempt from service, even if drafted, and persons with specific objections to violence and bearing arms are permitted to serve on condition of being assigned non-combat roles. A couple have even won Medals of Honor.
When comparing this to the case of healthcare conscientious objectors, I think the key point is that COs cannot bow out of military service just because they oppose a specific war or conflict; it has to be all or nothing. Despite my very strong objections to the Iraq conflict, I would not have claimed CO status, because I agree in general principals with the war in Afghanistan (although I think it's time for it to be ended ... yeah, some other time). And, while other COs can agree to serve in non-combat roles, once they're in, the have to fulfill the responsibilities of their rank and duties, just like every other soldier. There is no pick-and-choose; if you can't do part of the job, you don't take the job.
Earlier, I mentioned a hypothetical conscientious objector teacher. Let's look at that a little more closely. For those of you who aren't aware, freedom of religion essentially does not exist for public school teachers inside the classroom. The courts have established that overtly religious speech, behavior, or dress by public school teachers is incompatible with the establishment clause of the first amendment. The thinking goes that even if the teacher does not overtly proselytize to students, by wearing their faith on their sleeve, as it were, they are using their position of authority to exert a coercive or repressive power against students who do not share that faith. You can wear a small cross or Star of David, but that's about it.
Although I tend to agree with this position, my initial reaction when I was told about it in my History of U.S. Schools class was of concern. "What about orthodox Jews who have to wear a yarmulke for religious reasons, or a Muslim woman with a head scarf? Shouldn't they have the right to religious exercise as well?" I asked. To which the teacher replied, "In that case, I think you're going to have to consider whether or not that candidate is capable, for religious reasons, of fulfilling the basic requirements of the position."
Huh. I wonder if that might at all be applicable to the argument at hand?
"But, William!" you will say, "teachers are agents of the government, which is why they are held to such strict standards! Surely the same does not apply to a pharmacist working for Mayo Clinic or John Hopkins School of Medicine or Granny Jo's Hillbilly Healthcare!" And to a point, you are correct; nobody is going to get on a doctor or nurse's case for praying aloud or wearing religious attire (so long as it meets the uniform and sanitation rules of the organization, which goes back to meeting the basic requirements of a position). But I'm pretty sure a teacher at a hypothetical secular private school would get in hot water if he tried to pull the stunt I mentioned before of declining to teach certain students because of their family circumstances, from his employers if not from the government. An integral part of the teaching profession is to be impartial and accepting of all students; if you can't do that, you are a bad teacher.
Take the example of the nurses in New Jersey, who sued their hospital over a requirement that they provide nursing care to abortion patients. "One of those nurses, Fe Esperanza Racpan-Vinoya, said even a routine blood pressure check would be abhorrent to her if the patient was in for an abortion. "Absolutely," she said, "there's a big difference" between a patient in for an abortion and one in for an appendectomy." Let's set aside for another day the question of whether she is right to feel this way about abortions and people who have them. Here is the question I want to ask. Since she feels that her religion prevents her from provide service to these patients, is she capable of fulfilling the basic requirements of her position? And looking back at our previous examples, I think it's pretty clear that she isn't. Remember the expectation for conscientious objectors: if you're opposed to all wars, that's fine, but you can't bow out just because you disagree with a particular conflict. Based on this principle, I would argue that when she accepts a position as a nurse, she is obligated to provide that care to all patients, regardless of how she feels about them. If she feels that she cannot do so, she should resign and find another, less morally repugnant career choice.
The profession of a physician in particular and a healthcare worker in general is a position of public trust, even more so than the trust accorded to teachers. The right of patient-physician confidence has been sacred ever since the Hippocratic Oath was formulated. Remember what I said about teachers needing to be impartial and accepting of all students? The same applies to physicians, except more so. While healthcare providers are free to think whatever they want to about homosexuality, abortion, or God knows what else, professionalism demands that those feelings be held separate from their practice of healthcare. Because if a patient cannot trust their doctor, the doctor has failed. When a nurse refuses to take a woman's blood pressure because she had an abortion, that doesn't just hurt the patient's feelings; it establishes clearly for her that the people to whom she has entrusted her well-being do not think that she deserves to be healthy, which is unacceptable. Not only does this have real ramifications for her safe recovery, but it means that in the future, she will be less willing to seek medical counsel, or less willing to divulge potentially compromising information to her physicians, for fear of being judged and rejected, all of which could have potentially damaging implications for her health. We're coming back to the argument of whether or not a candidate is capable of fulfilling the basic requirements of his or her position; if a healthcare worker is unable for religious reasons to care for all patients without judgment or discrimination, then they have no right to care for any patients at all.
In the (classic, beloved and much-lamented) TV show Firefly, one of the characters is a doctor who is on the run from the law with his sister, and at one point, one of the crew members on board his ship sells them out to the authorities. The doctor and sister escape, and he later discovers who sold them out. In that same episode, the traitorous crewman is knocked out and needs to be restrained because of a potential spinal injury. Then he is left in the infirmary, immobilized, just him and the doctor, who knows exactly what this man has done. And after confronting the traitor with this knowledge, this is what Dr. Tam says: "No matter what you do, or say or plot, no matter how you come down on us… I will never, ever harm you. You're on this table, you're safe. 'Cause I'm your medic, and however little we may like or trust each other, we're on the same crew."
If I may wax philosophical for a moment, this is what medicine is supposed to be about. It's about putting the well-being of your patient above ALL other considerations, personal, public or political. If Dr. Tam in Firefly is committed to caring for Jayne, who has been an ass to him since the start of the show and has now betrayed him, how much less justification does a nurse have for refusing care to a patient just because the woman does not share some of her political and religious convictions? How petty. What if she was on duty in the cancer ward and had to care for a former convict who had killed a police officer? Would taking his blood pressure also be too abhorrent for her to handle? Can she also refuse service to married gays or lesbians? Or, in an example given by my mother, what happens when a doctor decides that diabetes is a punishment for sin and refuses to care for patients accordingly? Hell, what happens if a doctor refuses to treat AIDs patients because he disagrees with their morality? Would you trust a doctor who makes those kinds of decisions with your health care? I sure as hell would not.
In summation: I'm not opposed to freedom of conscience. Everyone has to answer to their own conscience (or God, if they prefer to use an external metric to measure their own morality) for their own actions. However, if a person has moral or religious strictures that prevent them from fulfilling the basic duties of a profession, they need to pick a different profession. Every employer has to make reasonable accommodations for their employees, but just as you don't hire a blind man to pilot airplanes or someone with severe vertigo to assemble skyscrapers, you don't hire someone for a healthcare position who believes that certain people are not worthy of healthcare. It just doesn't add up.
<whew>
Ok, I think that's out of my system. I can't promise when the next post will come, but hopefully I'll be a little faster this time around. I hope you've enjoyed my reasoning, whether you agree with it or not, and I'd love to hear what you have to (respectfully) say in the comments. Till next time, farewell, and think deep thoughts.
- William
P.S. A separate but related issue is whether or not the government has jurisdiction over the availability of medical care. In the case of the Washington pharmacy mentioned in the original article, "the state argues that it has a compelling interest in protecting the right of patients to legal medication." I don't know if there is a legal basis for that argument, so we'll have to see how the courts handle that, but I'm hoping the state wins. Because if healthcare providers have complete right of conscience, then rural and underserved populations with only one provider in their area are stuck with whatever meets the local doctor's and pharmacist's seal of moral approval; in effect, the providers are then not only restrict the freedom of choice available to patients, but, in the case of women for whom a pregnancy is not just inconvenient but medically inadvisable, potentially putting patient safety at risk because of their moral stand. Which is, you know, not cool.
EDIT 10/15/13
P.P.S. I notice, rereading this a year later, that I failed to carve out an exception to this, which is for doctors who choose not to perform abortions. This is legit. If you believe that aborting a fetus is murder, you should not do it; this is a valid interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath. However, if a patient wishes to have this done and a doctor don't want to do it, he/she needs to refer them to someone who will. Not only does this respect the right of the patient to make decisions about her own body and health care (not to mention probably making things easier for her in terms of insurance coverage), but it ensures the quality of her care; after all, a substantial percentage of women who choose to get abortions will get them whether their primary care physician approves or not; the only difference is that they might do something drastic and possibly highly unsafe to induce miscarriage on their own without professional assistance. It is her doctor's job to prevent this. If that doctor believes that because of this choice, this patient is not worthy of quality care in this situation, then we're back at the conclusion up above: you don't hire someone for a healthcare position who believes that certain people are not worthy of healthcare. The reason I separate this case from that of the nurses above is that the nurses had nothing to do with the actual abortion; they were just performing routine medical monitoring, from which there should be no opt-out for conscience.
Sources:
The original article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/21/us-usa-contraceptives-court-idUSTRE81K24W20120221
My material on conscientious objectors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objector
A guide to religion in public schools: http://www.freedomforum.org/publications/first/findingcommonground/B06.TeachersGuide.pdf
The Firefly Quote: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Firefly_(TV_series)
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