Tag: hit&run

Listen to any group of business
leaders for more than a minute and you’ll get an earful about how
there simply are not enough students “emerging from our public
education system” with the necessary know-how. It’s odd that
the business community, which likes to think of itself as
innovative and solution-oriented, is looking to the decades-old
public education system to solve its worker-training problem. If
there is such tremendous demand for technically literate employees,
asks A. Barton Hinkle, why hasn’t the business sector tried to meet
it?

View this article.

Listen to any group of business
leaders for more than a minute and you’ll get an earful about how
there simply are not enough students “emerging from our public
education system” with the necessary know-how. It’s odd that
the business community, which likes to think of itself as
innovative and solution-oriented, is looking to the decades-old
public education system to solve its worker-training problem. If
there is such tremendous demand for technically literate employees,
asks A. Barton Hinkle, why hasn’t the business sector tried to meet
it?

View this article.

Feminists were up in arms last week when the Supreme Court
agreed to hear a challenge against the Obamacare mandate requiring
employers to provide contraceptive coverage as part of a standard
insurance package (along with pediatric dental coverage to
childless couples; fertility treatment to 60-year-olds and drug
rehab to teetotalers). But explains Shikha Dalmia in TIME today, by
forcing employers against their religious beliefs, feminists are
using unsympathetic means to promote a sympathetic cause. She
says:

Men everywhere can walk into a store and buy as many condoms as
they want, no questions asked. Likewise, women in Mexico, India and
44 other countries can buy oral contraceptives when they wish. Not
so in the United States, even though
99 percent of all sexually experienced American women — and

98 percent of Catholic American women — use some form of birth
control. This seems downright bizarre.

Despite such overwhelming demand, a Rasmussen
poll released Monday found that only 38 percent of Americans
support forcing employers to cover contraceptives— and 51 percent
oppose it.

Feminists claim that such attitudes stem from “sexism,”
“misogyny” and a “fear of women’s sexuality.” But if that were the
case,
90 percent of Americans wouldn’t say that birth control is
“morally acceptable.” What feminists don’t seem to get is that
there is something problematic about making one person’s access to
contraception contingent on trampling on another person’s
religion…

The only reason American women need insurance coverage for
contraception is because they can’t buy birth control pills without
a prescription—which doctors won’t hand them without an annual
exam.

Doctors don’t require the exam because the pill is unsafe or
requires medical supervision. No. It is a way to keep their clinics
busy and their bank balances flush — and use women’s own biology
against them to make them do the medical establishment’s bidding
because, you know, women are too stupid to be trusted with their
own health. That’s the real sexism.

So if feminists were smart, they wouldn’t cast this issue in
terms women’s rights versus religious rights.

That’ll turn it into a lose-lose proposition. Medical
paternalism is a far bigger threat to women’s reproductive choices
than religious zealotry. Focusing on the first will do more to give
women control over their bodies— including the female employees of
Hobby Lobby — than a pitched battle against the second.

Go
here to read the whole thing.

Feminists were up in arms last week when the Supreme Court
agreed to hear a challenge against the Obamacare mandate requiring
employers to provide contraceptive coverage as part of a standard
insurance package (along with pediatric dental coverage to
childless couples; fertility treatment to 60-year-olds and drug
rehab to teetotalers). But explains Shikha Dalmia in TIME today, by
forcing employers against their religious beliefs, feminists are
using unsympathetic means to promote a sympathetic cause. She
says:

Men everywhere can walk into a store and buy as many condoms as
they want, no questions asked. Likewise, women in Mexico, India and
44 other countries can buy oral contraceptives when they wish. Not
so in the United States, even though
99 percent of all sexually experienced American women — and

98 percent of Catholic American women — use some form of birth
control. This seems downright bizarre.

Despite such overwhelming demand, a Rasmussen
poll released Monday found that only 38 percent of Americans
support forcing employers to cover contraceptives— and 51 percent
oppose it.

Feminists claim that such attitudes stem from “sexism,”
“misogyny” and a “fear of women’s sexuality.” But if that were the
case,
90 percent of Americans wouldn’t say that birth control is
“morally acceptable.” What feminists don’t seem to get is that
there is something problematic about making one person’s access to
contraception contingent on trampling on another person’s
religion…

The only reason American women need insurance coverage for
contraception is because they can’t buy birth control pills without
a prescription—which doctors won’t hand them without an annual
exam.

Doctors don’t require the exam because the pill is unsafe or
requires medical supervision. No. It is a way to keep their clinics
busy and their bank balances flush — and use women’s own biology
against them to make them do the medical establishment’s bidding
because, you know, women are too stupid to be trusted with their
own health. That’s the real sexism.

So if feminists were smart, they wouldn’t cast this issue in
terms women’s rights versus religious rights.

That’ll turn it into a lose-lose proposition. Medical
paternalism is a far bigger threat to women’s reproductive choices
than religious zealotry. Focusing on the first will do more to give
women control over their bodies— including the female employees of
Hobby Lobby — than a pitched battle against the second.

Go
here to read the whole thing.

It’s that time of year
again – time for Reason’s annual webathon! This year, we’re hoping
to raise $100,000 over the next eight days from readers who dig
what we do at the country’s (and planet’s) only website devoted to
exploring, analyzing, and promoting “Free Minds and Free
Markets.”

Reason.com – along with Reason magazine and Reason TV – are
published by the nonprofit Reason Foundation, a 501(c)3 outfit,
which means your contributions are tax-deductible to the fullest
extent of the law.

This year’s swag levels
include the following:

• If you give $100, you’ll get a subscription to Reason (11
  action-packed issues, in dead-tree or digital format) and a classic
  black Reason T-shirt.
• For $250, you get all that, plus a subscription you can gift to
  your bestest friend or worstest enemy, plus a copy of Paul Feine
  and Alex Manning’s award-winning documentary about drug
  prohibition, America’s Longest War.
• For $500, you get all that, plus a chance to ask Matt Welch and
  me a question in our “Ask a Libertarian” video series.
• For $1,000, you get all that, plus a private lunch with Matt
  and me in Washington, D.C.
• For $2,500, you get all that, plus two VIP tickets to Reason’s
  annual media awards, held in the fall in New York City (includes
  pre-event reception)

Go here now
to make your donation of whatever amount you’d like. At
any giving level, you’ll have the option of streaming your name in
our “thanks banner” up top of the site.

And yes WE ACCEPT BITCOIN!

Your (TAX-DEDUCTIBLE!) contributions help us do what we do –

such as breaking the story that Obamacare poster boy Chad
Henderson hadn’t actually signed up for anything,
duking it out with Rachel Maddow on the Bill Maher show, and
chronicling
The Libertarian Era that bubbling up all around us.

We thank you for support – in the past and in the future.

And while you’re looking around for your credit card, PayPal
password, or Bitcoin key, check out last year’s Ask a Libertarian
playlist:

It’s that time of year
again – time for Reason’s annual webathon! This year, we’re hoping
to raise $100,000 over the next eight days from readers who dig
what we do at the country’s (and planet’s) only website devoted to
exploring, analyzing, and promoting “Free Minds and Free
Markets.”

Reason.com – along with Reason magazine and Reason TV – are
published by the nonprofit Reason Foundation, a 501(c)3 outfit,
which means your contributions are tax-deductible to the fullest
extent of the law.

This year’s swag levels
include the following:

• If you give $100, you’ll get a subscription to Reason (11
  action-packed issues, in dead-tree or digital format) and a classic
  black Reason T-shirt.
• For $250, you get all that, plus a subscription you can gift to
  your bestest friend or worstest enemy, plus a copy of Paul Feine
  and Alex Manning’s award-winning documentary about drug
  prohibition, America’s Longest War.
• For $500, you get all that, plus a chance to ask Matt Welch and
  me a question in our “Ask a Libertarian” video series.
• For $1,000, you get all that, plus a private lunch with Matt
  and me in Washington, D.C.
• For $2,500, you get all that, plus two VIP tickets to Reason’s
  annual media awards, held in the fall in New York City (includes
  pre-event reception)

Go here now
to make your donation of whatever amount you’d like. At
any giving level, you’ll have the option of streaming your name in
our “thanks banner” up top of the site.

And yes WE ACCEPT BITCOIN!

Your (TAX-DEDUCTIBLE!) contributions help us do what we do –

such as breaking the story that Obamacare poster boy Chad
Henderson hadn’t actually signed up for anything,
duking it out with Rachel Maddow on the Bill Maher show, and
chronicling
The Libertarian Era that bubbling up all around us.

We thank you for support – in the past and in the future.

And while you’re looking around for your credit card, PayPal
password, or Bitcoin key, check out last year’s Ask a Libertarian
playlist:

• Vice President
  Joe Biden has urged Chinese students to challenge government,
  teachers, and religious leaders. Does he have the same message for
  American students?
• 
  SpaceX has launched its first commercial satellite.
• Hezbollah is blaming Israel for the
  recent assassination of one of its senior commanders.
• Wall Street is worried about the
  future of the Fed’s stimulus program.
• The House has passed a bill that would require that the
  
  TSA put all of the unclaimed money collected at security
  checkpoints towards nonprofit military groups.
• American automakers have reported strong November sale
  numbers.

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Union power in the Golden State helps the few and
harms the many. In schools, the interests of unionized teachers
trump the needs of students. In local government, the compensation
given to unionized workers often reflects their political clout,
not the pay and benefits necessary to keep them on the job. In the
Legislature, public employees are so powerful that union lobbyists
have been known to openly browbeat lawmakers who don’t do their
bidding. So how can Californians loosen this union chokehold? Chris
Reed says by adopting a reform that’s both better for governance
and fairer to union workers than the status quo.

View this article.

For many Americans,
says Senior Editor Jacob Sullum, religion is something you do on
weekends and holidays. For others, it is the central organizing
principle of life. That split, Sullum argues, helps explain the
dispute over Obamacare’s requirement that businesses pay for their
employees’ contraceptives, which is the focus of two cases the
Supreme Court agreed to hear last week.

View this article.

For many Americans,
says Senior Editor Jacob Sullum, religion is something you do on
weekends and holidays. For others, it is the central organizing
principle of life. That split, Sullum argues, helps explain the
dispute over Obamacare’s requirement that businesses pay for their
employees’ contraceptives, which is the focus of two cases the
Supreme Court agreed to hear last week.

View this article.