We needed to pass the law to see what’s in it, and one of the provisions we’re now finding is the compulsory creation of lactation chambers — a surreal provision that has Staples co-founder Tom Stemberg a bit annoyed:
Stemberg […] is questioning an Obamacare provision that discourages job creation by dictating employers funnel their capital into lactation chambers.
“Do you want [farming retailer] Tractor Supply to open stores or would you rather they take their capital and do what Obamacare and its 2,700 pages dictates – which is to open a lactation chamber at every single store that they have?” he asked.
“I’m big on breastfeeding; my wife breastfed,” Stenberg added. “I’m all for that. I don’t think every retail store in America should have to go to lactation chambers, which is what Obamacare foresees.
Let me just add, too, that I myself am an enormous fan of the breasts — which, while that fact doesn’t have specifically to do with any argument I’m going to make, should at least come to count in my favor as evidence of full disclosure.
Here, what we have it seems to me is a natural legal extension of, eg., compulsory handicap ramps, with the precedent set now that for each new identity bloc inconvenienced by any physical workplace obstacle (the psychological inconvenience industry is already in full PC bloom) an employer must account, often financially, for the satisfaction of the inconvenienced employee.
And the extension of that argument is the institutionalization of the idea that a job is a right — just as it was in the Soviet Constitution.
To be clear, this is not about women, or women’s health, or the dignity of the handicapped, etc. — who are but the pawns in an extended chess game wherein the left is working to supplant the civil society with a state-dominated system. Meaning, what this is about is the State using emotionalist, egalitarian arguments to expand their power and control over private industry and the individual — forcing people into relationships with the State and then demanding that, as a result of that relationship, the individual surrender autonomy to the state and its increasingly unconstitutional dictates.
I’ve pointed out that I worry about the legal expansion of the definition of marriage for precisely the reason that the real battle being waged isn’t about same sex marriage. Instead, it’s about ways to destroy the civil society and replace it with a top-down, monolithic religion of the state, in the case of same sex marriage by providing a legal and judicial opening for ways to later pressure the newly expanded definition, with the goal being to destroy any kind of privileged relationship that doesn’t appeal to the state for its validation.
In this case, the government — by way of suggesting it is promoting equal opportunity in the workplace — is demanding the objective correlative for equality of outcome: if a business is forced to build lactation chambers on the off chance one of their employees is pregnant and is demanding more than conventional closed-door privacy, then what legally is to prevent others with special circumstances from asking that an employer finance, as a condition of operating, accommodations suited to their peculiar needs (eg., cannot the morbidly obese now demand wider doorways or hallways? Cannot the potentiality of a midget applying for a job make it mandatory that factories lower the height of conveyors or operating switches? Where does this begin and end, from a legal perspective?)
Now, I’m aware that the easy rhetorical riposte is to scream “slippery slope fallacy,” dismiss such arguments as faulty extensions, and declare victory. But this was the same defense that those who approved of the tobacco settlements used when people like me noted that, given time, the government would begin to come after soda and salt (or toilets or light bulbs or shower heads) — or only half-jokingly noted that, should we ever been saddled with state-run health care, the government would then have the legal authority, as our benefactors in providing “free” coverage, to dictate what we eat, how much, and perhaps even require morning calisthenics under the watchful eye of a benevolent police force provided for our own good.
This is not about health care. ObamaCare — and RomneyCare — is about a fundamental change to the relationship between the government and the individual. We need to beat it back, then hammer a stake through it’s black socialist heart.
And that is not going to happen with either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama in office, just as it won’t happen without the Republicans taking the Senate, retaining the House, and acting on a clear mandate from the voters.
What’s the point of electability if who you elect doesn’t represent your interests. And Mitt Romney, the architect of this anti-individualist abomination, doesn’t represent ours.
On the plus side, sales of this baby cap will skyrocket!
Recent examples provoke: Liberals and the Constitution
Hey, I could get a screenplay out of this!
“Take him to… The Lactation Chamber!”
“AUUUUGH! Noooooo! Not that!…”
I dunno. Tractor Supply Company could probably get some free advertising if their “lactation chambers” came with automatic milkers. Seems like an appropriate theme, too. Maybe even a rotary table…
(“Dirty Jobs” style blow torch for cleaning the teats can probably be left out.)
I heart TaTas.
…or only half-jokingly noted that, should we ever been saddled with state-run health care, the government would then have the legal authority, as our benefactors in providing “free” coverage, to dictate what we eat, how much, and perhaps even require morning calisthenics under the watchful eye of a benevolent police force provided for our own good.
When putting this in terms understandable to some of my dimmer acquaintances, I usually go with “When you put me on the hook for your health care, then every one of your bad habits becomes my business. You can rest assured that I will devote my life to making sure you never enjoy another unhealthy moment in your life. No fatty foods. No beer, no bourbon, no rum & Coke, or even Coke without rum. No cigarettes (not even a joint). No sitting on your ass all day, but no rock climbing, either. I will make it my life’s mission to assure that you never, ever, EVER put my dollars at risk because of your stupid health-related choices. I will dictate what you eat, what you drink, and how much exercise you do every day. Your only television and only computer will be treadmill-powered. Think very hard about this, son: is ‘free’ health care really worth having my face in your business every hour of every day of the rest of your life?”
The reactions range from stunned silence, to denial, to complete cognitive breakdown. Very seldom does the light bulb come on.
Squid — you’re letting them off the hook for some of the riskiest behaviors. Why should we pay for sports-related injuries? For sexually transmitted diseases? For “extreme sports”?
Huh, I thought that the proper Obamian theory asserted that you, the proletarian, were to be provided the material circumstances of well being, not that you, the simple proletarian, would decide what those material circumstances would consist in? Such decision making demands scientific knowledge, of the sort that only the commanding heights may obtain.
Yea, verily I say unto you: we are all our brothers’ keepers.
Thus is it meet and just that we ride herd on him like our ox and our ass.
—The Gospel According to Obama
For “extreme sports”?
Dude, I said “no rock climbing.” Cut me some friggin’ slack here!
No skateboards. That’s what I’m looking for. And no bungee jumping, skydiving, or skiing.
(But target shooting, including IPSC and related, are 2nd Amendment rights.)
A lactatation chamber? WTF? Honestly, I had a sling, and on occasion even shopped while nursing, while NO one was the wiser.
People need to be saved from themselves.They’re too stupid.
It’s just funny. The most natural thing in the world to do, and women “need” some special room to go do it. Get a fricken blanket. Or nurse in your car.
WTF is wrong with us?
Now, I’m aware that the easy rhetorical riposte is to scream “slippery slope fallacy,” dismiss such arguments as faulty extensions, and declare victory.
Dude. This is America. We see a slippery slope, we strap on the skis.
The only on-site lactation chambers I’d approve of would have to double as nap-time retreats.
Behind a screen, of course. Nobody wants to see someone lying there asleep, even if it is natural.
WTF is wrong with us?
Feminism. And Feminists. And the fact that feminists, being women, can’t make up their minds about what they want.
Feminism is a good thing. Lactation chambers, not so much.
I fed my babes before we left the house or, as Carin said, in the car if need be. I had plenty of blankets and such and was discreet as could be. Maybe these newly minted mothers feel a need to get their exhibitionism on? “Hold on, Mom. I need to take Junior to the LACTATION CHAMBER for a few minutes.”
These people should get out more. I’ve been to Mexico lots of times and there is Mama with her blouse hitched up and junior latched on, right in the middle of the Plaza. Quelle horreur!
Dude I worked with’s dad was in the diplomatic corps, he tells the story where once as a kid of seeing a woman in Indonesia sitting on the steps of her shack with a baby on one tit and a suckling piglet on the other.
We don’t realize we are the strange ones.
That’s hilarious! I’ve heard alot of stories from people much more traveled than me that sound similar.
What a world we live in where things that generally don’t exist are made mandatory. Why don’t we just outlaw hunger?
Like the gasoline additive the refineries got fined for not using this year?
Does anyone else think the word “chamber” is too cold and bare sounding? Shouldn’t it be “lactation lounge”?
And will these “lounges” be open to everyone, or will they be a heteronormative, oppressive, patriarchical thing that assumes only biological females who have recently given birth lactate?
Lounge would imply that cocktails would be served. I like it.
I like that, Crawford. Then the government can sue the businesses they forced to build these chambers for the hate crime of having chambers that reinforce gender stereotypes, thereby creating a hostile work environment, which is kinda like rape.
It’s happening out there: I heard a house painter detail how, to strip and paint houses of a certain age, his crew had to lay outside tarp to prevent the potential leeching of lead into the ground, or else they’d run afoul of some environmental dictate. But to do that and still paint the house, they’d have to place their latters atop the plastic tarps, which put them in violation of some other work safety rule.
So they picked the lower of the two fines.
We’re fucked.
“to strip and paint houses of a certain age”
nice little reg racket
link
Baby got front!
I like big boobs and I cannot lie.
Oh wait. Jeff said he’s “an enormous fan of breasts,” not “a fan of enormous breasts.”
Aw, we know what he meant.
Marlon Brando spliced with Russ Meyers would be an enormous fan of enormous breasts.
Anyone else googling Cynthia Myers right now?
Me neither.
Can’t have that. Some alcohol might show up in the breast milk and lead the child into a life of hard liquor.
Jonah Golberg sits down to talk with Peter Robinson about a heap of different stuff, some past, some current, and some coming.
“Then the government can sue the businesses they forced to build these chambers for the hate crime of having chambers that reinforce gender stereotypes, thereby creating a hostile work environment, which is kinda like rape.”
I think it’s time to protest.NSFW!
To paraphrase Ben Franklin, “Breasts are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
If only breasts output beer, how we would dance God’s praise with King David, eh?
Um, the lactation lounge in the workplace is usually for women to use a breast pump, which is nowhere near as subtle or as cute as nursing a bebe.
At my old workplace, a woman used to hide in the last shower stall of the locker room/bathroom and I could hear the rrRRRrrRRRrRRRrr of the pump as it did its thing.
Where I work it’s called the “quiet room” and is also used by those who feel the need to pray at seemingly random times of the day.