Depending on which side of the issue you’re on, it’s very simple. Unfortunately, both sides can’t be correct on this one. And to be clear, it isn’t a conversation at all about birth control pills. It very much is an issue of religious freedom and how that factors into our society.

The issue on the table, to be as simple as possible, is whether or not the employees of a religious organization should have any access to birth control pills via their company sponsored insurance plan. Doesn’t matter who pays for them (the employer or the insurer), which is a valid point because costs are distributed regardless of who is actually writing a check for a stated list of services – if you work, say, for a Catholic hospital, coverage  (total or partial) of birth control options either will or will not be available by the end of this debacle debate.

Let’s say the bishops win this one. And let’s set aside the FACT that Catholic hospitals benefit from federal funds in various ways, regardless of whether they receive them directly and that they are perfectly content to take that money. Let’s also set aside the FACT that Catholic hospitals (rightly, in my opinion) treat millions of patients who are not Catholic, or who are Catholic but are very sinny Catholics, or who did things that would be considered sin to get into the state that required treatment in the first place. Let’s also ignore the potential increases in costs to the hospitals for more expensive coverage of pregnancies and more dependents, since they shouldn’t actually have an issue with that.

Setting aside those peripheral debates, let’s just assume the bishops (and those representing other faiths) win this one.

Birth control is not available on the insurance menu for employees of a Catholic institution. No pills, IUDs, diaphragms (do those exist anymore?). I assume this would also mean no vasectomies. If you work for a Catholic hospital, you will either have to pay for contraception out of pocket yourself at full cost or find an alternative subsidized way to get it. Planned Parenthood, for example.

Now let’s say that some folks are so inspired by this victory that they decide to take it up a notch. Or let’s not even wait and look at what’s already happening. Marc Rubio (R-FL) has introduced the ‘‘Religious Freedom 5 Restoration Act of 2012.’’ It’s a pretty short bill, here’s most of it:

(1) IN GENERAL.—No guideline or regulation issued pursuant to subsection (a)(4), or any other provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, or the amendments made by that Act (Public Law 110-148), shall—

(A) require any individual or entity to offer, provide, or purchase coverage for a contraceptive or sterilization service, or related or counseling, to which that individual or entity is opposed on the basis of religious belief;

(B) require any individual or entity opposed by reason of religious belief to provide coverage of a contraceptive or sterilization service or to engage in government-mandated speech regarding such a service.

(2) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, or the amendments made by that Act (Public Law 110-148), and no regulations or guidelines issued 4 BAI12019 S.L.C. under such Act (or amendments) shall be construed to authorize the imposition of a fine, penalty, or other sanction, or to otherwise disadvantage an individual or entity on the basis of a religiously-based decision made by that individual or entity to not offer, provide, or purchase coverage for a contraceptive or sterilization service, or to engage in government-mandated speech regarding such services.’’

Pretty straightforward, really, which is nice. If you work for an individual or company that opposes birth control, sterilization, or counseling regarding family planning, your insurance plan won’t include coverage for those services if they don’t want it to. You’re on your own.

Some next steps, or rather, next potential steps that could be taken in the name of religious freedom, which shouldn’t be selective, and really shouldn’t apply only to health coverage.

First off, any same sex domestic partnership coverage is nixed for a boss who believes homosexuality is a sin. That one’s easy.

If your boss is Christian Scientist, you have no medical insurance coverage at all.

Is drinking a sin? If your boss thinks so, don’t expect any coverage options in your insurance to include counseling for alcoholism or rehabilitation. Certainly not for any treatment that derives from an activity that happened while you were drinking or as the result of years of drinking. Actually – start thinking about how this would apply if your boss has any strictures on consumption of certain products – tobacco, for example.

Are you fat? Glutton? No weight loss coverage – pills, surgery, or counseling – for you.

What about attire? If your boss’s beliefs are that women should be covered head to toe at all times in public, your wardrobe while at work – regardless of your own personal beliefs, which are being subsumed at this point – will conform with your boss’s beliefs.

Will you be expected to participate in company prayer at work? Is bacon allowed in the building? Can you say “Thank God it’s Friday?”

We all have the freedom to work wherever we want, theoretically, so none of these things should be any problem whatsoever for any American who wants to work. It’s just a matter of finding a boss whose beliefs align with yours and only working for that company. You can’t in good conscience do otherwise, really – you can’t be Christian and take money from a Muslim boss, or be Christian and take money from an atheist boss. We’ll all start to align, over time, in groupings that reflect our beliefs, both work wise and geographically. There will be areas that are known to be Muslim owned, Christian owned, atheist owned, etc. It’ll be easy to tell them apart after a while, as more and more “religious freedom” is allowed to manifest itself legislatively. Consumers will have that transparency as well and can pick and choose from whom they purchase goods and services based on the moral codes of each company. The flip side works as well – we’ll be able to actively avoid and speak out against those who clearly work for a company that is evil and damned, and we each personally will be able to be judged based on our company. It’ll be very efficient in that way, and it’ll make the bombings and protests oh so much easier to justify.

The economic and demographic inefficiencies are staggering to even consider, so I won’t go into them here, but all of that is OK because what America needs is “religious freedom,” and that’s what the bishops are after here.

Unfortunately, I don’t know that I see the freedom. Maybe some of the paths my ponderings have wandered down seem ridiculous – I don’t think so. Maybe they’d never happen – I sincerely hope so, and that is why it’s a simple issue for me. This isn’t about birth control, it absolutely is about religious freedom. Mine. And yours.

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That should be enough, but no, I always end up thinking about silly things, and this time around I got to thinking about how every dollar we spend on anything besides the mortgage means we’re actually willing to finance that item for 30 years.

I thought this one morning while I was out running errands. I was so thirsty … so, so thirsty … but didn’t have a water bottle with me. This is unusual, I think a lot of folks who live in Colorado probably carry water pretty regularly because it’s so dry here, and I was suffering mightily. I stopped for gas ($3.49/gallon, holy crap) and thought I would run inside and get a Gatorade or something, just this once.

Or not.

$2.00 for Gatorade? $3.oo for a Monster? $2.50 for Arizona Iced Tea? And pretty much the same prices for actual plain water?

That was when I thought, “I could get this, or I could send that $3 to my mortgage company instead. It’s just a teeny amount really, but in essence what I’m saying if I buy this drink is that I’m willing to put off paying off a 30 mortgage and pay the interest on that amount instead because I can’t possibly wait an hour to get back to my house and get some water.”

Then of course I got to wondering exactly how much that interest would be, and then I got to wondering if an online amortization calculator would even pop out a result if I tried to put in $2 for my principal amount over 30 years.

Guess what!? It does! No error, no problem, and it turns out that it about doubles it.

So now, my punishment for having that thought is that every time I look at the price of something, all I can think is “would I pay double for that?”

Would you?

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With that said …

Most of my friends know I have the attention span of a gnat on crack so we’re going to call this the end of the experiment.

After one month (well, five weeks), I think I’ve demonstrated that if you are otherwise financially stable, live in a great neighborhood with access to several grocery stores, have plenty of room to store items you purchased while they were doing their loss leader rotation, know how to cook, don’t have any particular health issues in your family that require special consideration, and ultimately … don’t really have any actual PRESSURE on you … feeding a family of five on $92/week really is not that difficult.  Pretty lame experiment, really.

Since the experiment tied nicely into some spending/saving goals we have in our family, I’ll continue to do it anyway. We’ve had a few minutes of fun here and there with it, like last night when I was craving jello but didn’t have any – but we did have unflavored gelatin, a can of mandarin oranges, and a few oranges that needed to be used quickly. For the record, there are some truly disturbing recipes out there that call for unflavored gelatin. Jellied potato salad. Jellied macaroni and cheese. Jello cottage cheese and pineapple salad.

Gag.

(Yes, I know I’m drifting off topic here… see above re: attention span … )

But for sheer gross-out, I just googled jello and fish – I love jello, hate fish – and found this recipe. Please someone make it, please please please:

Green Grotto Salad

Pour boiling water on Jello. Add salt, vinegar, chopped celery and chopped olives. Pour half into mold. Chill until firm. To remaining Jello, stir in cucumber, tuna fish, and mayonnaise. Pour onto firm Jello mold. Chill until firm. Unmold on salad greens, tuna fish side up.

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I could …

• Drop the budget to another completely arbitrary figure, say, $75/week.
• Leave it at $92, but make us include stuff like toilet paper and toothpaste in that figure.
• Make some dietary parameters, like no processed foods at all (this would be the best way to create a mutiny, but maybe if I was really sneaky …).
• Target a percentage, say 10%, of every week’s purchases to give to the food bank.

I’ll have to think on it.

Last week we had one stop for stuff mid-week – tortillas and peanuts, $4.31 total.  That left $1.05 for the week, so we could spend $93.05. We went over this week by $2.22 so we’ll have to cut short next week, but damn … Safeway had a rockin’ deal on rice this week – rice and pasta, actually. Bring on the carbs. Ben will be a happy little dude, that boy would live on noodles if he could. I’ll bet lots of doctors treating diabetic patients love that cheap foods are full of processed sugars, pays all of those pesky student loans.

Frankly, I’m thinking that besides eggs and produce, I may skip shopping next week entirely. We have way too much food in the house.

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Here’s what this site says your government is up to in Washington:

In December, the government issued a new regulation that will create price controls on what merchants pay to accept debit cards.  As a result, community banks and credit unions may be forced to raise fees, decrease rewards, and put more restrictions on debit card users.

What the site is referring to is the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Three Democrats in that sentence, so it must be some commie crap, right? Here’s the Wiki summary of the Amendment:

The law applies to card issuers with over $10 billion in assets, and these issuers would have to charge debit card swipe fees that are “reasonable and proportional to the actual cost” of processing the transaction. The bill aimed to restrict anti-competitive practices and encourage competition, and included provisions which allow retailers to refuse to use cards for small purchases and offer incentives for using cash or another type of card.

Doesn’t affect debit cards issued by small banks, but allows merchants to offer discounts to customers paying with cash, and takes away minimum purchase amounts (any time you see a place saying they have a minimum purchase for credit card transactions, they’re probably actually breaking their merchant agreement with Visa/Mastercard).

According to Senator Durbin’s site:

An estimated $48 billion in swipe fees were charged by credit and debit card networks in 2008 – this money came out of the bottom line of small businesses and merchants across America, and 80 percent of this money went to just ten large banks.

Let’s say 1% of a transaction is what a debit card fee is.  In that case, when you go to Target and spent $50 on stuff you don’t need, $.50 of that is going to fees. No big deal, right? But when you go to Best Buy and spend $1,000 on a new MacBook, $10 goes to fees. But do you think it really costs $10 to run a debit card transaction? Do you figure it really even takes fifty cents? Sure, there’s infrastructure and other costs, but really?

Continuing …

Here’s the issue according to this consumer site:

Debit card interchange fees help pay for consumers and merchants to access one of the most convenient payment systems in the world.

But giant retailers don’t want to pay their fair share for this system – one that brings them higher sales and guaranteed payment.  They want consumers to foot the bill instead. In fact, they’ve been lobbying Congress for years to shift their costs to their customers.

In 2010, giant retailers got their wish. Without any hearings and barely any debate, Congress added an amendment to the financial reform bill that directed the Federal Reserve to put price controls on debit interchange.

In December, the Fed issued a draconian regulation that reduces fees paid by retailers by 70 to 90 percent. As a result, the nation’s largest 2 percent of retailers will receive a $12 billion windfall – and debit card users like you will have to pay the tab.

Debit charge fees provide access. True.

Giant retailers don’t want to pay their fair share, they want consumers to foot the bill instead. …………. True, kinda. Of course retailers don’t want to pay as much for a service, and consumers already do foot the bill because those expenses are included in prices for goods.

Congress added an amendment blah blah blah … true. That stuff happens all of the time, but the site makes it sound all sinister and unusual.

Fed issued a draconian measure … well, maybe that’s true. The whole point of the amendment was to rein in what was seen as a bloated profit center that was hurting small businesses and benefiting huge banks. But as for the largest retailers getting a windfall, that also should flow through to the consumer.

So who would support such a bill? Apparently, small businesses who have thin margins and for whom fees of 1-2% on every transaction is a huge burden are very much in favor of it.

Who is against this bill? Big banks, of course. Visa and Mastercard. Very Big Corporations. Oh, and this “Don’t Make Us Pay” group … so who are they?

Unfortunately, none of the great Americans who put together this site are listed directly, but through their contact page, you can find an email address to the Electronic Payments Coalition. And in the event that you’d like to send any of the members of that coalition a thank you note for watching your back, here’s a contact list:

Your Grassroots Heroes

So let’s hear from the TeaTards out there … in whom should we place our trust? The small businesses, the backbone of America who are always trotted out when we hear about the greatness of the American entrepreneurial spirit, who support this amendment? Or should we listen to Chase, Citi, Mastercard, and Visa?

Hmmmm …

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