The newest Dakota Free Press Podcast is ready for your earbuds!
In this week’s show…:
- Co-host Spencer Dobson and I express our love for snowplow drivers.
- [3:30] Spencer follows up on questions from Episode 001 on marijuana finance and science.
- [7:00] I explain how the GOP health care plan could damage South Dakota’s budget and economy.
- [12:45] Spencer and I talk about protesting bad laws with online petitions and actually repealing bad laws with referendum petitions.
- [19:05] We go deeper on Senate Bill 149, South Dakota’s attempt to stop same-sex couples from adopting children.
- [32:25] Finally, I get Spencer to tell us about his career as a stand-up comic.
Podcast Links:
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- Spencer on marijuana:
- Banks/credit unions dealing with legal marijuana money
- Sobriety tests and marijuana
- Impact of marijuana and alcohol on developing brains
- Petitions:
- Senate Bill 149—Religious Discrimination in Adoption:
- Read the bill itself and see which legislators voted for it
- Read my coverage of ACLU-SD policy director Libby Skarin’s intelligent testimony against SB 149.
- Witches. Yes, witches.
- Columbia Law School: 75 studies find children of gay/lesbian couples come out no worse that children of heterosexual couples; 4 studies find children of gay/lesbian couples face added disadvantages.
- Quartz: No disadvantages for children of same-sex couples.
- Newsweek: SB 149 is part of a broader nationwide effort to chip away at marriage equality.
Agree that the current gop health plan is worthless. It retains the flaws, just diminishing the numbers. They claimed they wanted to end the ACA, it’s time to put up or shut up.
Religious freedom should probably actually extend to allowing people to behave and believe in things you find ridiculous or immoral. Otherwise it wouldn’t be THEIR beliefs, it would be YOUR beliefs. Having that freedom codified does more than protect funding, it establishes important precedent. Especially when it’s clear those freedoms are being encroached upon.
Spencer does a good job describing what being a leftist means: there is no distinction between society and government, government is merely another facet of collective action. It protects who it considers to be the little guy, playing favorites with who is deserving, and misconstrues civil liberties so badly it fails to recognize how it supports violating rights in the name of protecting them.
I agree that the GOP plan is worthless. I even agree that we should end the ACA. I just want to replace it with the ECA—Everybody Care Act, Medicare for Everyone.
I agree that religious freedom is important. However, should my religious freedom prevent you from being a parent?
The important precedent that SB 149 seeks to establish is that people can deprive same-sex couples of their equal status under the law.
Roger puts a lot fo words in Spencer’s mouth about the definition of “Left”. Yes, Spencer and I do agree that government is a tool through which the community can work to achieve its goals. Government necessarily protects the little guy; we form social contracts because, in the state of nature, the big guy has all the advantages.
Balancing rights always means restricting the freedom of action of some to protect the freedom of action of others. That’s no easy task, but it doesn’t have to be the grim oppression that Roger imagines any form of government to be. That’s why it’s important that we elect decent public servants dedicated to the general welfare and not jerks like Donald Trump whose only interest is self-gain (the classic big bully from whom we form the social contract to protect ourselves).
“…restricting the freedom…of some to protect the freedom…of others. ”
This is the primary foundation for a Just government. It is also in direct opposition to the governing philosophy of the social contract, which is an expression of functional utilitarianism. Individual Rights do not matter to these philosophies, only the greater good.
Leaving aside this basic contradiction, finding agreement is still dependant on a common understanding of what a Right is, which we clearly do not. If I stand alone on an island, I have every right god have me. If there is something missing, than that’s your first sign it was never a Right in the first place.
I would rather have the absolutely terrible idea of Medicare for all, than continue to defile the health care system with over regulated hybridized crony capitalistic mini monopolies. It is the worse of both worlds.It is basically like striving to make our health care work like our cable providers. The free market would be light years better than single payer. But the Republicans seem to have no real interest in doing that.
Does one really have rights in solitude, outside the social contract? My impression is that rights exist only when there is someone other than oneself to protect them. Absent social agreement and government, I have only wants, kept by luck or force until someone with larger wants and larger force comes along and takes what I have.
I share Roger’s wish that the free market would provide affordable health care. I share Roger’s recognition that we do not have a free market in American health care. It’s nice when things just happen on their own, but they often don’t. That’s why we work together.
Hi Roger
Before we go any further, I would like you to give me a specific example of : It protects who it considers to be the little guy, playing favorites with who is deserving, and misconstrues civil liberties so badly it fails to recognize how it supports violating rights in the name of protecting them.
Please Clarify.