As if his anti-union actions weren't enough, Scott Walker has decided that what he really needs to do is make people miserable for no reason.
http://blogs.forbes.com/erikkain/2011/0 ... on-rights/
Quote:Walker is literally going out of his way to prevent two people in a
loving, committed relationship from visiting one another at the
hospital. In other words, at what is quite likely a couple’s darkest
hour, Scott Walker wants to impose legal restrictions barring two people
from being with one another.
I mean, the union stuff was bad, but this is just pointless.
I fully support his anti-union work (unions are the single biggest problem in the American economy right now, the Stock Market being #2).
But yeah, this one I don't support. Go back to union-busting, Walker, we need more of that, not this crud.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make
anything explode.
Same here. This is pointless and undercuts the really good work he's doing elsewhere.
Huh. I've always considered labour unions to be a rather important part of the economy. Then again, Unions in America do have a somewhat different and seedier reputation than they do here (with the odd exception).
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Certain events have led me to be unable to trust unions to act in the interests of their own members, let alone anyone else's. That's not necessarily germane to this particular topic though.
I'm actually a bit boggled at how much of an issue visitation rights seem to be. One would think a person could just say "Mr. X can visit me if I'm in the hospital. So can Mr. Y. And Miss Z too, while I'm at it," have this written down somewhere, and then not have to freaking deal with it until they wanted to change the list, and you certainly wouldn't have to explain why these people should be allowed visitation, because it's no one's damn business but yours. But somehow, it seems to end up being all sorts of people's business except the person who's actually in the hospital.
It's hard to get excited about this in particular when the whole system seems like complete bullshit.
-Morgan.
Certain events have led me to be unable to trust unions to act in the interests of their own members, let alone anyone else's. That's not necessarily germane to this particular topic though.
I'm actually a bit boggled at how much of an issue visitation rights seem to be. One would think a person could just say "Mr. X can visit me if I'm in the hospital. So can Mr. Y. And Miss Z too, while I'm at it," have this written down somewhere, and then not have to freaking deal with it until they wanted to change the list, and you certainly wouldn't have to explain why these people should be allowed visitation, because it's no one's damn business but yours. But somehow, it seems to end up being all sorts of people's business except the person who's actually in the hospital.
It's hard to get excited about this in particular when the whole system seems like complete bullshit.
-Morgan.
The problem with American unions is that they have had to fight too hard, for every little thing. This makes them much less cooperative and makes the company the enemy, which just doesn't work out. This has become ingrained into the culture and is now really hard to fix.
In most European countries the unions will work much closer with management, which leads to better results for everyone. Also in Europe no-one will starve if they lose their job, and in most cases won't even lose their home for years to come. This means that losing your job isn't as horrendous as it is in the USA, which again leads to the unions being able to take a softer stance.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
As if unions are even relevant to the US economy, given their under-9% membership there. Which has done such wonders for the economy and job security in the US, just as certain people would predict!
And Scott Walker is a giant asshole, but it's not as if this isn't a known fact at this point. Too bad this is unlikely to alienate even his remaining base.
Morganni Wrote:I'm actually a bit boggled at how much of an issue visitation rights seem to be. One would think a person could just say "Mr. X can visit me if I'm in the hospital. So can Mr. Y. And Miss Z too, while I'm at it," have this written down somewhere, and then not have to freaking deal with it until they wanted to change the list, and you certainly wouldn't have to explain why these people should be allowed visitation, because it's no one's damn business but yours. But somehow, it seems to end up being all sorts of people's business except the person who's actually in the hospital.
You're assuming the patient is able to state his wishes. If a member of my family ends up in an accident and lands in the hospital in a coma, I don't want to be told "You aren't allowed to visit" just because I'm not that family member's spouse or parent - I want to sit beside my loved one and offer all the moral support I can.
That's part of why it's everyone else's business. Who automatically gets on the "visit" list when the patient can't write it?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Homophobes like Walker believe that they can punish people into no longer being gay and that if they fail to vigourously punish the gay enough that god will consider them soft on gays and punish them for not being anti-gay enough.
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Epsilon
And religion now enters into the picture. (Wonder when Jesus will become the next Godwin's Law. Yes, I am being tongue-in-cheek here.)
But really, I get tired of hearing it myself, and I'm a freakin' Mormon. These people say they're religious, then why do they insist on doing the devil's work by spreading misery? Best way to handle homosexual rights? IMHO, give them civil unions and leave it at that. Ain't hurting anyone that way, now, is it?
Stupid homophobes.
As for Unions... Yeah, we need a paradigm shift badly here in the US. The way things are right now just won't work and we are in desperate need of a little dose of Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.
The problem I see is that unions had gotten a sustained bad rap for the last generation and that the businessman is the new hero. Fair enough. but if you look at the labor history of the U.S for the past century, you'd have seen improvement in working conditions and wages. It seems to me the pendulum has swung to far right now in favor of business..especially big business. Otherwise we'd be back to the beginning of the century. And that means the 20th century.
__________________
Into terror!, Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell
The problem with unions in the US, right now, is that they accomplished their goals about forty years ago, and have since then spent their time on a) justifying their own existence, and b) perpetuating their own political power. (With a hefty dollop of c) being tools of Organized Crime).
I don't think they've become irrelevant - we definitely need something to counterbalance the power of management. They've just become too powerful and too able to easily hobble an industry.
Take the US auto industry, for example. Why do US-made cars suck? Because the manufacturers can decrease costs in two ways: decrease payroll (either by cutting pay per worker, or laying off workers), or decrease production quality. The unions fight tooth and nail to keep them from cutting payroll, even in obsolete jobs, so they have to cut corners on quality in order to match imports for price.
My personal favorite example: Railroads were forced by the unions to keep coal stokers employed - on diesel trains - well into the 1980's.
When unions first became legitimate, a vote to unionize a shop was held by secret ballot because management would hire thugs to try to intimidate workers into voting against the unions. Today there's a union-pushed movement to strip away secret ballots, and a lot of people are afraid that its goal is to let them intimidate workers into voting
for the unions.
What we need is a counterbalance to abuses of power by management. What we have is a guillotine held to management's throat.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make
anything explode.
blackaeronaut Wrote:IMHO, give them civil unions and leave it at that. Ain't hurting anyone that way, now, is it?
The problem with civil unions is stated right in the article;
Quote:Democrats who controlled the Legislature in 2009 changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some – but not all – of the rights afforded married couples.
Part of the problem is that many rules are written referencing marriage, hospital visitation rights are a good example, many of the hospitals have rules written up on how to handle married people, but since civil unions are not marriage they don't fall under those rules. Now just think of all the places where this applies and how much people would have to fight for equal rights... if you don't want to call it marriage then make all such relationship, including those between man and woman into civil unions, and say all rules written to apply to marriage apply to civil unions now instead. Yes that is a lot of hoops to jump through to just change a name, but if it make the nutcases happy...
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Not to mention what about the religions that think marriage between two men or two women is just fine. Doesn't freedom of religion in the states mean that if the Unitarians decide that they want to marry two guys they can damn well do so, or does this freedom only apply to homophobic religions?
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Epsilon
robkelk Wrote:That's part of why it's everyone else's business. Who automatically gets on the "visit" list when the patient can't write it?
That was why I was trying to suggest that one should be able to put a list in place and make edits to it any time they feel like, long before they actually end up in the hospital. '.'
Marriage vs. civil unions: I don't remember where I ran into it, but there was an idea that I really liked - for government to just get out of the marriage business entirely. The government provides civil unions to same-sex and opposite-sex couples alike, which do the things marriage-according-to-government currently does (including hospital visitation, natch), and marriage becomes the domain of churches, who can come up with whatever restrictions they like without it causing any major
issues.
-Morgan.
Morganni, that was likely me that brought up that last point on these boards. That's the position I take. I think of it as being consistent with my position on limited government and getting the government the HELL out of everyone's bedrooms. Just have the JPs issue civil union licenses to
all couples instead of marriage licenses (grandfather in older licenses of course) and get the government out of the business of defining what marriage is and is not entirely. I feel that would take much of the wind out of the sails of the religious nuts. Eventually. I know they'd fight hard tooth and nail to stop that from happening because having government sanction the rules and definition of marriage gives them a power that they otherwise do not have.
Ironically I feel the LGBT movement has played into the hands of those same religious nuts by making the fight explicitly about redefining
marriage. In my opinion they'd gain greater traction in the long run by going the civil union route and making it so that civil unions have all the important rights of a marriage. But nobody on either side of that argument wants to take a middle position anymore. They've dug in and are going to fight it to the bitter end about
marriage now. When what they should be doing is going after specific
rights.
What I fear is that the LGBT marriage issue might win court cases and rights for gay couples in the short term, but that those rights might be lost in some backlash later on. Court decisions can be
overturned by later court decisions. Even the Supreme Court has reversed its own decisions in the past. It doesn't happen often. But it happens often enough that I worry about what's down the road for gay/lesbian marriage using the current tactics. In the long run, I'd like the rights of gay couples to stand on firmer legal ground.
Mind you, I could very well be wrong about the permanence of these various court decisions. A lot of that depends on the culture.
And if these polls are any indication, we might have crossed a turning point in that regard. I hope so.
Logan Darklighter Wrote:Ironically I feel the LGBT movement has played into the hands of those same religious nuts by making the fight explicitly about redefining marriage.
Currently, marriage is a union of the lives of two people who love each other enough to want to spend their lives together.
What the GLBT community wants is for marriage to be a union of the lives of two people who love each other enough to want to spend their lives together.
Quite the radical redefinition, there...
Logan Darklighter Wrote:When what they should be doing is going after specific rights.
Which is
exactly what's happening. The right in question is the right to get married.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Most of the problem is that the religious nuts have made it out to be that LGBT is trying to redefine marriage. Marriage, however, doesn't mean the same as when the Books were written, they just don't acknowledge that.
I'd like to see a court finally tell the nuts, "You can have marriage the way you want it, but no government recognition of it, or you can have the government recognition, but you have to give up the fight to keep it defined as one man and one woman."
Ultimately, equal treatment under the law, and the idea of separation of church and state, means it has to be one or the other.
--
"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
It's kind of like interracial marriage, to be honest.
Something that got the socially conservative all up in arms, but, ultimately, was accepted by the vast majority of people going "Why is it so important that they not get married? I don't see the big deal."
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
Ideally that would be the case, JFerio, but the asshats have anticipated the equal-protection-under-law argument.
Their counter-argument is that every gay man has as much right to marry a woman as any straight man, and vice-versa, and they claim that that satisfies the requirements of the law.
Patently ridiculous unless you're a lawyer or judge looking for an excuse to rule in their favor, but still.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make
anything explode.
robkelk Wrote:Logan Darklighter Wrote:When what they should be doing is going after specific rights.
Which is exactly what's happening. The right in question is the right to get married.
Actually, I thought what the LGBT communities were really up in arms about was not only is it explicitly disallowed in some places, but even where it is allowed they don't get the same rights. For example, Person A in the relationship has insurance through their job that could normally be extended to their spouse... except they're in a same-sex marriage, so the insurance company can legally say, "your spouse is not a spouse under our definitions." Of course, like many things, this varies from state-to-state. Same thing with taxes - as far as I know, same-sex couples are not allowed to file for returns jointly.
robkelk Wrote:Logan Darklighter Wrote:Ironically I feel the LGBT movement has played into the hands of those same religious nuts by making the fight explicitly about redefining marriage.
Currently, marriage is a union of the lives of two people who love each other enough to want to spend their lives together.
What the GLBT community wants is for marriage to be a union of the lives of two people who love each other enough to want to spend their lives together.
Quite the radical redefinition, there...
I know that it shouldn't have to be considered such.
And the "sanctity of marriage" argument is bullshit when marriage itself used to be little more than a
property contract until relatively recently in history. The notion of marriage being defined generally as a commitment of love between a man and a woman is actually a relatively recent cultural invention for a variety of reasons.
To extend that concept to be a commitment of love between two partners regardless of their gender is goal that should be supported.
Quote:[b]robkelk wrote:[/b]
Quote:Logan Darklighter wrote:
When what they should be doing is going after specific rights.
Which is exactly what's happening. The right in question is the right to get married.
I apologize for not being more clear. I meant specific rights that we normally think of as encompassed by marriage, such as - in the case of the above news story, the right of hospital visitation.
In other words, what I'm suggesting is fight for and achieve each specific right until achieving the goal of gay marriage does not seem so much a radical redefinition so much as a
fait accompli. Does that make more sense?
ECSNorway Wrote:Ideally that would be the case, JFerio, but the asshats have anticipated the equal-protection-under-law argument.
Their counter-argument is that every gay man has as much right to marry a woman as any straight man, and vice-versa, and they claim that that satisfies the requirements of the law.
Patently ridiculous unless you're a lawyer or judge looking for an excuse to rule in their favor, but still.
It's made even worse by the idea, I believe in Texas, that it should be further constrained by what your birth certificate has on it, completely excluding transgender individuals from the institution.
As for the fact that they're asshats, well, I'll freely admit to having a personal prejudice against organized religion. The problem being is that I'd like to get past it, but every time I make the personal effort, another one of the asshats does something that they then cloak in it, thumping their Book in the process, ("It is disrespectful," to quote G'kar), and managing to make me to consider that the prejudice is justified.
--
"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
Logan Darklighter Wrote:What I fear is that the LGBT marriage issue might win court cases and rights for gay couples in the short term, but that those rights might be lost in some backlash later on. Court decisions can be overturned by later court decisions. Even the Supreme Court has reversed its own decisions in the past. It doesn't happen often. But it happens often enough that I worry about what's down the road for gay/lesbian marriage using the current tactics. In the long run, I'd like the rights of gay couples to stand on firmer legal ground.
Mind you, I could very well be wrong about the permanence of these various court decisions. A lot of that depends on the culture.
I have similar concerns, I think. There was a court decision here in Iowa on the issue that... maybe I'd describe it as the right thing for the wrong reasons? The basic conclusion of "So you should give same-sex couples marriage licenses," I have no problems with. But it seemed like how they got there didn't entirely make sense, which is a real problem given what happens with court decisions. And I heard about certain parts that seemed to be effectively usurping legislative power, which is even worse.
-Morgan.