“Mike Pence Still Isn’t Telling The Truth”: Pence’s RFRA Is Not Clinton’s RFRA
Why Indiana?
With the backlash in full effect—with cancellations of gamer conventions, Wilco concerts, office expansions—even Indiana Governor Mike Pence backtracked today, saying that he will accept the kind of legislative “fix” that Republicans had earlier rejected, as Jackie Kucinich reports.
To hear Gov. Pence tell it, his state is being unfairly singled out. In fact, he protested today, his Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) is no different from the ones President Clinton and then-State-Senator Obama supported in the past. He reiterated that today in his press conference, saying it was no different than the federal bill the ACLU applauded “when President Clinton signed it in 1993.”
That is incorrect—and Gov. Pence knows it. Pence either doesn’t know the law—which is unlikely—or he is purposefully not telling the truth about it. And he kept up that lie today.
In fact, Indiana is different, for four specific reasons: Hobby Lobby, the interests supporting this bill, the bill’s focus on antidiscrimination, and the role of business.
1. Hobby Lobby
First and most importantly, Gov. Pence is being knowingly disingenuous when he compares Indiana’s RFRA to others. When Bill Clinton signed the federal RFRA in 1993, it passed Congress nearly unanimously. That’s because it was meant as a shield protecting minority religions from government interference. The typical cases were Native Americans using peyote, or churches seeking zoning variances—religious acts that didn’t really affect anyone else.
Hobby Lobby changed that. Last year, for the first time, the Supreme Court said RFRA was a sword, as well as a shield, enabling a corporation to deny insurance coverage to its employees. Social conservatives cheered.
Since Hobby Lobby, the only states that have passed RFRAs are Mississippi—not exactly a bastion of tolerance, commerce, and industry—and Indiana. Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, you may recall, vetoed her state’s RFRA after the NFL, among others, rebelled. Georgia and Oklahoma have shelved theirs, and Texas is likely to follow.
Pence’s RFRA is not Clinton’s RFRA. Hobby Lobby changed the game.
Now, does Gov. Pence know this? Of course he does. The law’s own supporters have used the same examples for years: the baker who shouldn’t have to bake a cake for a gay wedding, the photographer, the florist. To most of us, that looks like discrimination—putting a “No Gays Allowed” sign up on your storefront window.
And those are the best cases. RFRAs allow hospitals not to honor same-sex visitation rights, and doctors not to treat the children of lesbians. These are actual cases.
Is Pence just lying, then? Well, not quite, because of ….
2. The Right-Wing Echo Chamber
No matter how many times Gov. Pence says this isn’t about gays and isn’t about discrimination, the people standing behind him when he signed it are a who’s-who of anti-gay social conservatives. (This meme makes it pretty clear.)
Within that far-right echo chamber, RFRA really is about religious freedom. When I started working on this issue two years ago, I thought the “religious freedom” line was just rhetoric to disguise the culture war.
Since then, though, I’ve met and debated these people, and I’ve watched their propaganda. They appear to sincerely believe that Christians are being persecuted, and that LGBT people owe them an “olive branch” in the form of religious exemptions.
That echo chamber has been so well-funded, and is so insular, that it’s lost sight of the American mainstream, which sees discrimination as discrimination, even if there’s a religious reason for it. That’s left Republicans across the country exposed. Their base is telling them RFRAs are about religious freedom, and then they’re shocked when the mainstream sees it differently. Several have privately expressed a sense of betrayal.
The fact is, the echo chamber is far from the mainstream. And when RFRAs are out in the open, they’re failing. And the reason for that is—
3. Antidiscrimination
State RFRAs are a backlash to same-sex marriage—but, legally speaking, they’re not about marriage, but discrimination law. Should businesses—florists, pharmacies, hospitals, bakeries—be able to say “No Gays Allowed”? This is the question Gov. Pence refused to answer five times on Sunday morning.
And unlike marriage, it is not a close one, in terms of public opinion. Yes, public approval of same-sex marriage has risen sharply, to around 55% today. But public approval of anti-discrimination laws is much higher, around 75 percent.
This is why the focus on marriage (as in this thoughtful blog post at the Washington Post) is actually somewhat misleading. If this were really about marriage, it would be closer.
Now, will Gov. Pence’s “fix” be the one-sentence amendment that would bar its application in anti-discrimination contexts? The sentence is simple: “This chapter does not establish or eliminate a defense to a claim under any federal, state or local law protecting civil rights or preventing discrimination.” But we’ll see if it actually makes it into law.
If it doesn’t, RFRA will remain a loser in the court of public opinion. And also in the world of—
4. Business
As we also saw in Arizona, the corporate world has almost completely shifted on this issue. RFRAs are bad for business: they make states seem unwelcoming, turn away potential customers, risk costly boycotts, and make it harder to recruit the best employees. These aren’t ideological positions; they’re economic ones, supported by reams of data.
That’s why the Indiana, Texas, and Georgia Chambers of Commerce – dominated by pro-business Republicans have all opposed RFRAs. So have business-oriented Republicans in each of those states—including the mayor of Indianapolis. (Interestingly, Coca Cola, which has long touted itself as pro-LGBT, has remained conspicuously silent in Georgia.)
That realignment is a game changer. RFRAs aren’t being debated between Democrats and Republicans. They’re being debated between pro-business Republicans and social conservative Republicans.
Incidentally, because of GOP primary politics, that latter camp includes all of the party’s likely presidential candidates. We’ll see if the rightward pandering hurts them in the general election.
Indiana isn’t being singled out because of coincidence, or media spin, or just bad timing. Rather it’s because of a very mainstream, apple-pie value: because discrimination is not the American way.
By: Jay Michaelson, The Daily Beast, March 31, 2015
“Americans Are A Bunch Of Slackers”: Carly Fiorina, As Ridiculous As Every Other Businessperson Politician
Yesterday, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that the chances that she’ll run for president are “higher than 90 percent.” And what will Fiorina be offering? Why, hard-nosed business sense, of course! Her political experience may begin and end with one failed run for Senate, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t ready for the job. Let’s see her answer to the inevitable question of why she’s qualified to be president:
Because I have a deep understanding of how the economy actually works, having started as a secretary and become the chief executive of the largest technology company in the world, because I understand how the world works and know many of the world leaders on the stage today, because I understand technology, a transformational tool, because I understand bureaucracies—how they work and how you need to change them and our government is a huge bureaucracy, and because I understand executive decision-making, which is making tough calls in tough times with high stakes for which you’re prepared to be held accountable.
So she knows that decision-making is about making tough calls! And does the substance of those calls matter? Nah. If someone who had success in a field unrelated to business—let’s say a great trial lawyer—said to a corporate board, “Hire me to be your CEO, even though I’ve never worked in business, because I know how to make tough decisions, and that’s what business is about, right?” they’d be laughed out of the room. That’s not even to address Fiorina’s stormy tenure at HP, which wouldn’t put her on anyone’s list of highly successful chief executives.
But there are a couple of other things about this interview I want to point out:
Well, I think we have two fundamental structural problems in our economy. One is that we have tangled people up in a web of dependence from which they can’t escape. We’re leaving lots of talent on the field. Secondly, we’re crushing small businesses now. Elizabeth Warren is right, crony capitalism is alive and well. Big business and big government go hand in hand. But for the first time in U.S. history now, we are destroying more businesses than we are creating.
So the biggest problem with the economy is the “web of dependence” we’ve trapped people in. Americans are a bunch of slackers cashing their government benefits, and if we could just cut those benefits and get them off their lazy duffs, then the economy would be supercharged. OK.
And what is this about “For the first time in U.S. history now, we are destroying more businesses than we are creating”? I have no idea what she’s talking about, but the economy constantly creates and then destroys businesses. You may have heard that idea that 90 percent of businesses fail in their first year; turns out that isn’t actually true, but the majority of businesses don’t last more than five years. Create, destroy, create, destroy—that’s how capitalism works.
And I love her attempt at Republican populism: “Crony capitalism is alive and well. Big business and big government go hand in hand.” And if you think that’s a problem, the person to solve it is the one whose sole quasi-qualification is having been CEO of a huge corporation.
But the best part of the interview is this, where Fiorina drills down to the problem that’s really holding our economy back:
So, if we want mainstream and the middle class going and growing again, we’ve got to get small and family-owned businesses going and growing again. Washington, D.C., has become a vast unaccountable bureaucracy. It’s been growing for 40 years. We have no idea how our money is spent.
I think there are two things that would help tremendously. One, zero base budgeting, so we know where the money is spent. We’re talking about the whole budget and not just the rate of increase.
And two, pay for performance in our civil service. We have—how many inspector general reports do we need to read that say, you know, you can watch porn all day and get paid exactly the same way as somebody who is trying to do their job?
There you have it. If we could only get federal employees to stop watching porn, we could really get this economy going.
I’ve got some shocking news for Ms. Fiorina. You know those tens of thousands of people who worked for you at HP? Plenty of them were watching porn, too. It isn’t just something that federal employees do.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, March 30, 2015
“Georgia Bill Helps Wife Beaters”: “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” Is Among The Worst In The Nation
Georgia is poised to pass the nation’s harshest “religious freedom” law, allowing discrimination, judicial obstruction, and even domestic violence. Yet while the bill is far worse than Arizona’s notorious “Turn the Gays Away” bill, it’s attracted far less attention from national advocacy groups and businesses.
The bill, the “Georgia Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” is one of a raft of similar bills (RFRAs, for short) wending their way through state legislatures across the country. The bills are part of the backlash against same-sex marriage, but they go much farther than that. Like the Hobby Lobby decision, which allows closely-held corporations to opt out of part of Obamacare, these laws carve out exemptions to all kinds of laws if a person (or corporation) offers a religious reason for not obeying them.
For example? Restaurants could refuse to serve gay or interracial couples, city clerks could refuse to marry interfaith couples, hotels could keep out Jews, housing developments could keep out black people (Genesis 9:18-27), pharmacies could refuse to dispense birth control, banquet halls could turn away gay weddings, schools could specifically allow anti-gay bullying, and employers could fire anyone for any “religious” reason.
The national movement to pass these laws is well-funded and well-coordinated; most of the laws are written by the same handful of conservative legal hacks in Washington, working for organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom and Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, both of which have had a hand in the Georgia bill.
Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, said in an interview with The Daily Beast that “in the last two years, there have been 35 bills introduced around the country to establish or expand a RFRA. And there have been over 80 bills filed that specifically allow for discrimination against gay and trans communities.”
As worrisome as these laws are, however, Georgia’s is worse than most.
First, the language is the strictest possible. As with other RFRAs, Georgia’s act says that the government cannot “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” without a “compelling governmental interest” and the “least restrictive means of furthering” that interest. This is the classic three-prong test that was at issue in Hobby Lobby, and is considered extremely difficult to meet.
Georgia’s RFRA also specifies that “exercise of religion” can be just about any “practice or observance of religion, whether or not compelled by or central to a system of religious belief.”
In other words, if I say it’s my religious exercise, it is.
Second, the Senate version of the bill was passed by its sponsor, State Senator Josh McKoon, with all kinds of shenanigans. He rammed it through the judiciary committee, which he chairs, while opposition members were in the bathroom.
Then, on dubious procedural grounds, he refused an amendment by a fellow Republican that would have specified that the “religious freedom” could not be used to discriminate against others.
Ironically, says Graham, Georgia doesn’t have that many protections for LGBT people in the first place.
“This is a preemptive strike against the LGBT community,” he says. “If this bill is not intended to allow discrimination, why were its sponsors so adamant about refusing to say so?”
McKoon’s bill passed the Republican-dominated State Senate on March 5, and now heads to the State House, where Republicans have a 2:1 advantage over Democrats, and where representatives have shelved their own version of the bill to try to pass McKoon’s version.
The combination of these factors has led to a curious result: a law so strict that it will lead to a host of unintended consequences—and has even led some Republicans to oppose it.
Some legal commentators have said that the law would give a pass to spousal and child abusers, as long as the husband (or father) has a religious pretext. Which is easy to provide; the Christian Domestic Discipline Network, for example, offers a host of rationales for “wife spanking.” And let’s not forget Proverbs 13:24: “He who spares his rod hates his son. But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.”
Georgia has numerous laws protecting child welfare, which is arguably a compelling state interest. But are such laws really the “least restrictive means” of protecting it? Not necessarily. At the very least, the laws offer a novel defense against assault and battery.
Or maybe not so novel. Graham says, “We have found cases where people used their religious views as an excuse to impede an investigation into child-endangerment and child-abuse charges. They were not ultimately successful, but they did slow down the investigations.”
With the new law, they would be far better armed. In fact, says Graham, conservative district attorneys in Macon and Marietta have said that the bill would impede investigations and prosecutions of child abuse.
Indeed, Georgia’s RFRA recently gained an unlikely opponent: Mike Bowers, the former attorney general of Bowers v. Hardwick fame. As some may recall, that was the Supreme Court case that upheld Georgia’s anti-sodomy law—and Bowers was the named plaintiff.
In an open letter to Graham (PDF), Bowers said that the law is “unequivocally an excuse to discriminate….[P]ermitting citizens to opt-out of laws because of a so-called burden on the exercise of religion in effect ‘would permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.’”
This perhaps is one reason why conservatives like Bowers and the D.A.s in Macon and Marietta stand opposed to it. As Bowers wrote, “this legislation is not about gay marriage, or contraception, or even so-called ‘religious freedom.’ It is more important than all of these, because it ultimately involves the rule of law.”
What is the future of Georgia’s RFRA?
The Georgia State House ends its session on April 2, and Graham predicts a tight vote. “This will probably go all the way to the final hours” of the session, he said.
Oddly, the most effective forces in killing Arizona’s “Turn The Gays Away” bill—corporations and the Chamber of Commerce—seem to be sitting this battle out. Maybe it’s because Arizona was bidding on a Super Bowl and Georgia isn’t. Or maybe it’s because no one is paying attention. But for whatever reason, the corporate silence is deafening.
This is especially the case for Coca-Cola, which has spent millions to brand itself as pro-gay (remember that Super Bowl ad?) but has been mum on the Georgia bill.
“For now, it appears that Coca-Cola has a relationship of convenience with the gay community,” said Bryan Long, executive director of the progressive organization Better Georgia, in an email to The Daily Beast. “The company promotes equality when it serves the brand but won’t stand up for us when we need it most.”
If big business, national media, and national LGBT organizations continue to sit on the sidelines, the bill’s fate may be a matter of vote-counting. The House bill had 59 cosponsors, out of 180 total members. But Graham pointed out that a pending non-discrimination bill has 78, including 19 Republicans. So it is up for grabs.
On the other hand, maybe those who claim to speak for “equality” will decide to actually do something about it.
By: Jay Michaelson, The Daily Beast, March 13, 2015
“The Right To Discriminate”: What Do The GOP Candidates Think Of State ‘Conscience Clause’ Legislation?
There’s an interesting/horrifying piece in today’s New York Times about a trend across the country, but mostly in the South, to enact “conscience” legislation at the state level that would allow businesses to discriminate against gay people if they can justify it on the basis of their religion. One interesting facet of this issue is that the moneyed interests in the GOP, along with big corporations (not the same thing, but there’s plenty of overlap) are completely spooked by these bills. We’ll get to that in a moment, but here are some colorful details:
“The L.G.B.T. movement is the main thing, the primary thing that’s going to be challenging religious liberties and the freedom to live out religious convictions,” said State Senator Joseph Silk, an Oklahoma Republican and the sponsor of a bill in that state. “And I say that sensitively, because I have homosexual friends.”
Of course he does. He goes on:
“They don’t have a right to be served in every single store,” said Mr. Silk, the Oklahoma state senator, referring to gay people. “People need to have the ability to refuse service if its violates their religious convictions.”
I mean, come on. Gay people want to be able to go into every single store? Who do they think they are?
But this brings up a question for me. When the religious conservatives pushing these bills argue for why they’re needed, they always mention a retailer whose work gets right down into all that gayness. Like the baker who might have to make a cake for a gay couple and live through the horror of placing two female figurines on top of the cake, or the photographer who might have to take their picture, trying to see his camera’s viewfinder through the veil of tears he weeps at the destruction of the American family represented by two people making a commitment to spend their lives together.
But no legislator is going to specify an exhaustive list of who would and wouldn’t be able to refuse service, because doing so would be a very difficult thing to write into a bill’s text. Instead, the right to discriminate is inevitably written broadly. For example, one bill in Oklahoma says: “No business entity shall be required to provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges related to any lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person, group or association.” Which would mean, for instance, that it would be legal for any store or restaurant to put up a sign saying, “We don’t serve gays.” Other bills (here, for example) are written even more broadly, just saying that the state can’t stop you from acting on your sincerely held religious beliefs, which would include discriminating against gay people if that’s your thing.
As the Times story details, some of these bills have died in the face of opposition from business interests; for instance, when Walmart came out against the one in Arkansas, it was pretty much doomed. The company may be conservative in many ways, but it doesn’t want its state to be known as a bastion of hatred and discrimination.
So I’d be interested to hear specifically from some influential Republicans—like, say, the ones running for president—on what they think of these laws. I looked around a bit and didn’t find any of them commenting on it, which isn’t too surprising given that it’s been playing out at the state level. But maybe someone should start asking. Do they think a baker ought to be able to discriminate? And if they say that there ought to be a way for the baker to exercise his “conscience,” then the next question is, what about a restaurant? What about a hardware store?
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, March 6, 2015
“Hold Your Applause”: Walmart’s Wage Hike Still About Greed
With much fanfare and platitudes like “Our people make the difference,” WalMart has achieved a public relations coup by granting quite meager raises to its employees. The headlines make the $277 billion (market cap) company look quite generous as it has raised its starting hourly wage immediately to $9 an hour, which is 19 percent higher than the prevailing federal minimum wage.
It sounds like great news from the world’s largest private employer, but the news is nowhere near as good as headlines suggest.
The New York Times estimates that there are only about 6,000 retail workers among WalMart’s 1.4 million employees that are paid the federal minimum wage. This shouldn’t be too surprising, since 28 states already mandate higher minimum wages than the federal standard and, says the law, the highest required wage wins. Only seven states have minimum wages set at $9 or higher. So WalMart workers in 43 states are getting some sort of raise.
But in the vast majority of cases, it’s nothing like the 19 percent number you’re seeing thrown around.
For those getting the largest bump from the federal minimum wage to $9, it’s important to put this all in perspective. The federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009. It would take a wage of $8.55 an hour to equal the purchasing power of $7.25 six years ago.
So, in a real sense, WalMart’s lowest paid employees are getting a 45-cent-per-hour raise—a 6.2 percent increase. Meanwhile, workers in California, Massachusetts and Rhode Island will see no increase (the state hourly minimum is already $9) while minimum wage workers in Washington, Oregon, Connecticut and Washington, D.C., already make more than $9 an hour.
In its release to workers and the public, WalMart says that the wage increase scheduled to go into effect in April will raise the average part-time worker’s wage to $10 an hour across the company. Back in 2010, IBISWorld, a market research firm, estimated that WalMart cashiers made about $8.81 an hour. That 2010 wage inflations adjusts to a $9.56 wage in today’s dollars. According to WalMart’s release, part-time workers will see their wages rise from $9.48.
That means, until now, WalMart’s part-time workers were losing ground against inflation. While nice, this isn’t the saintly endeavor WalMart is making it out to be. The current bumps gets those employees just a few coins ahead of the rise in the cost of living since the end of the Financial Crisis.
For its full-time workers, WalMart says that the average wage is rising from $12.85 an hour to $13. In 2013, WalMart said that its average full-time wage was $12.83. So WalMart’s full-time associates got a 2-cent raise between 2013 and 2014 and now get a 17-cent bump. Adjusted for inflation, you’d need $13.04 cents today to buy what you could with $12.83 in 2013. WalMart’s full-time employees are coming out of this 4 cents short of inflation.
WalMart’s workforce is split about evenly between full- and part-timers. Part-timers will make $17,500 a year if they work 35 hours a week for 50 weeks a year. Full-timers will make $26,000 working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks.
For a two-person household, the federal poverty line is $15,930. For a four-person household it is $24,250.
Even after the raises, WalMart will continue to employ people who will be living below, at or barely above our various, imperfect measures of poverty.
These workers will continue to depend on public subsidies to get by, whether they need help with health care, buying food, or lunches for their school-aged children. It’s hard to see, even, how these wage increases will do enough so that WalMart employees don’t have to hold holiday food drives for each other.
WalMart has wanted to open a store in New York City for years and has been rebuffed at every turn by coalitions of labor and local retailers. The chain most recently failed to infiltrate East Brooklyn. It faces community opposition in cities and towns around the country.
The retailer is clearly tired of being seen as an unwelcome neighbor—and that’s likely a big consideration for why they’re upping their wages just enough.
The company would also like to buy itself a new labor history. For years, WalMart used contractors to clean and maintain its stores, putting a buffer between the companies and the often abused workers—especially when those workers were very often not authorized to work in the U.S. Since the middle of the last decade the company has also been hit with scores of class action lawsuits, some relating to the treatment of women workers and some alleging wage theft through various means.
In 1914, Henry Ford paid his workers $5 a day. It was a move that truly helped create the middle class. Five dollars in 1914 is $118 today, although that would only add up to a $35,000-a-year salary for a six-day workweek, which is well below our current medium income.
What some forget about Ford is that he had ulterior motives: He wanted to mold his workers into what he considered model Americans. WalMart has ulterior motives as well: It wants to mold your perception of it until you see a model American corporation.
If WalMart is a model corporation, the model is broken.
By: Michael Maiello, The Daily Beast, February 20, 2015
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