Tag Archives: affordable health care act

October 27, 2020 · 01:57

The Trump Administration and COVID-19: The Ultimate Death Panel


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On Sunday President Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows made the comment that we could not defeat the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic. It was an open admission of defeat, the moral equivalent of surrender, to a virus that President knew was coming and knew would be worse than anything we have faced. He knew that it would be incredibly deadly, and knowing that ignored warnings from multiple American intelligence agencies, and withdrew the CDC’s investigators from China. He began a very porous shutdown of air travel from China to the United States, but took no other actions.

He talked about invoked invoking the Wartime Production Act to produce ventilators, and personal protective equipment He refused to do anything until the Stock Markets crashed at the end of March. Then he announced a shutdown of the country. Businesses were closed, as were schools for 30 days. The CDC announced a reasonable evidenced based plan for states to begin reopening, but as soon as the 30 days were up the President effectively ended the lockdown and pressured governors to re-open before they were ready, and far too many complied resulting in massive numbers of new infections and deaths.

In spite of that, many states enacted measures to mandate the wearing of masks, social distancing and hand washing, and some despite the President’s pressure as well as pressure from armed White Nationalist terrorist groups who assaulted their state houses, and threatened legislators, governors, public health, and law enforcement officials.

One relief bill passed by Congress and signed by the President in April. In May, realizing the crisis to the health and safety of Americans, and the economy, the House of Representatives passed another, but the Senate refused to pass it, and the President did nothing to twist the arms of his own defiant party members in the Senate to get anything done. Instead he bragged of his success during a second spike during the summer, and despite his Treasury Secretary’s negotiation with the House to pass another relief bill to help Americans, help the states, and bolster the economy. Instead he did nothing brag about his fake successes; massive unemployment, Nearly nine million infections, over 230,000 deaths, and even more economic disaster and weakening of our national security. With the infections spiking to record levels the President claimed that we were turning the corner, unfortunately that corner is a nation aside pandemic with no reserves to fight it.

Sarah Palin was the first nutcase liar and conspiracy theorist to say that The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare had Death Panels which wold choose who would live or die. Of course that was a bold faced lie because there was nothing in the legislation to allow it, or was simply the spiteful rantings of a deranged theocratic Christian who believed so called prophecies that she would lead the nation.

But her ranting were believed by the increasingly Christian Nationalist ans White Supremacist GOP. When Mitt Romney, whose Heritage Foundation healthcare plan for Massachusetts was adopted by Obama to ensure that everyone paid something for their medical care, including those with President-existing medical conditions got care was attempting to defend it at a campaign rally he was shouted down by attendees who cried out “Let them die!” 

That my friends was the death of the Center-Right Republican Party that only existed before 1964 when Barry Goldwater followed by Richard Nixon in 1968 who gave the most radical White Racist and Neo-Confederates of the Democratic Party, Senator Strom Thurmond’s “Dixiecrats” a home in the GOP after passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1964, and the Civil Rights Act of 1965  bi-partisan majorities led by a Southern Democrat President, Lyndon Baines Johnson in the House and Senate, became the party of White Supremacy, though few realized it at the time. But ever since Richard Nixon swept the South in 1968, with the powerful assistance of the Dixiecrats, have become increasingly radicalized over the issues of race and religion. Now the GOP is for all practical reasons the embodiment of all the Dixiecrats could have ever hoped for, as it is no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln but that of Jefferson Davis.

And now in a time of crisis it falls back on a theories expounded on by the Southern Slave Owners, the Confederate States, the Jim Crow South and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party, that some races are subhuman, and other individuals because of age, pre-existing medical conditions, birth defects, or physical and mental disabilities are “Life Unworthy of Life.”

Now with an uncontrolled virus raging infecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, the President and the GOP Senate majority do nothing to help Americans infected with or who have lost their jobs, and now are losing their homes because of their indifference for life.

President Trump and his Senate majority have become the party of death, and the ultimate Death Panel, ignoring ignoring the advice of well respected and world renowned virologists, contagious disease specialists, and public health experts at home and abroad.

Because it is late I will end with that.

Until whenever,

Peace,

Padre Stube+1

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October 15, 2013 · 23:12

To the Brink…An Unnecessary Condition of Affairs

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I have resisted writing much about the shutdown that has beset our nation the past two weeks and the looming debt default. Truthfully I don’t know what to say. I am amazed that we have reached this point, but then at the same time I am not. I saw it coming in 2011 when the I wrote a couple of articles while nursing a broken leg. One The Deal is Done and are We? There are Always Results was written the day the deal was done, the other Be Careful…there is a point of no return and we may have crossed it was written the day prior to the deal.

Both articles lamented the state of the body politic of the nation and recognized that the actions of our political leaders, men and women elected by us were much less about the budget than a cultural war elicited by the unbridled hatred of our fellow citizens.

Back then I wrote:

“The attitudes that we have formed and angry words which we now use so ubiquitously are reflective of a deep hatred that now is becoming what defines us as a people.  In fact the deep and abiding hatred which now permeates our society is now threatening the international standing and I would say the national security of the United States.  We have only ourselves to blame because through our actions and inactions of the past decade we have made our choice to be what we have become and there is no one group especially in our political, media and business elites that have served us well.  In fact we have as voters chosen this toxic mix of elected officials often more influenced by hate spewing pundits and our own self interests rather than that of the nation and future generations much as we would like to claim that we are looking out for the future.”

I am an American. I serve my country regardless of who the President is. I have served under five Presidents now. In each case there have been things that I have liked and disliked about each of them as well as policies with which I have disagreed. But for me the fundamental principle was always the good of the country. That is something that I cannot say exists, especially in the Jacobins of the Tea Party who have driven the country to the point of default for no good reason.

People can say that their opposition to the Affordable Health Care Act is a matter of principle. But it is law and has been deemed Constitutional by the Supreme Court. Shutting down the government and bringing about default is not the means to change a law, even one that some despise.

The government shutdown, the default and the Sequester brought about by the Budget  Control Act of 2011 are dangerous. I see them from a national security point of view. In national security parlance our national power is not merely based on military power. It is what we call the DIME. The Diplomatic, Informational, Military and Economic power of the nation. These factors all have been weakened by the shutdown, the threatened default and the sequester. Our status as a world power is directly affected by these actions, and like it or not in our globalized interconnected world all these factors matter. The actions of Congress, particularly the members of the House precipitating these actions are dangerous, irresponsible and stupid.

It doesn’t take much to figure out that the Chinese in particular are attempting to use this to their advantage. The are lobbying for a new world economic order which would replace the Dollar as the world wide reserve currency. The loss of this would harm us immeasurably as many of our advantages in trade, finance and other economic matters are directly related to our economic and political stability and trust of other nations believing that we will act in a responsible matter.

Likewise there are people that have become unhinged. Today I had a comment on the site which I did not allow from a man in Louisiana (IP address lookup is a cool tool) who was more extreme than many of the more extreme Tea Party extremists I have encountered. By labeling these particular people extreme I am not making a blanket statement about people in the Tea Party because I know many good people who I count as friends in the Tea Party movement who are rational, reasonable and non-violent.

That being said I have gotten past the point of needing to engage unhinged internet trolls or giving them room to spout their hatred on this site. The man was spouting the most insane babble, a mixture of Alex Jones paranoia and simple hate devoid of any real real arguments. I went to his site and saw that this was his normal writing style. It was scary because his answer was violence.

I am reminded of what Robert E Lee testified before a Senate hearing after the defeat of the Confederacy.

“I may have said and I may have believed that the position of the two sections which they held to each other was brought about by the politicians of the country; that if the great mass of the people, if they had understood the real questions would have avoided it. I did believe at the time that it (the war) was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forbearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.”

That is what we face today. There is a hard core of idealist who will not compromise, who see compromise as weakness and defeat. They lack the understanding that the very narrow latitude prescribed in our governmental structure and Constitution prescribed by our founders demands compromise. Otherwise the system cannot work. It is not perfect by a long shot. There will always be things about the country that one faction or another does not like and attempts to change through the normal legislative process. That is what is supposed to happen in order to form “a more perfect union.” However that is not what is happening in this case. The radicals appear to want to destroy the country allegedly to save it.

I know not what tomorrow holds. I hope and pray that the shutdown will be ended, a continuing resolution passed and default averted. However I do not know if it will happen, and that should cause all of us regardless of our political views to ask just what the hell are we doing?

Peace

Padre Steve+

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October 2, 2013 · 23:50

Christian Dominionism and the Shutdown: Barry Goldwater and Robert Jackson Warned Us

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“[I]n our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds — that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.” — Justice Robert H Jackson, American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 US 382, 438; 70 SCt. 674, 704 (1950)

Well we are in day two of the government shutdown of 2013 with no end in sight. Sadly I have to say that the groups most responsible for this on the Tea Party and Republican Party side of the house are Evangelical Christians and ultra-conservative Catholics. The Evangelical are held in the thrall of Christian Dominionism, or Recontructionism while the conservative Catholics long for the days when their church owned the governments of Europe.

If the shutdown was about pragmatic budgetary considerations I might give the authors of the shutdown some consideration. However, it is not and their leaders have either said it openly or all but said this to be the case.

I am a Christian and a Priest in a small Old Catholic denomination. I am a graduate of a premier Evangelical Protestant Seminary where I came to appreciate and revere religious liberty. What I am going to write today may offend some but it has to be said. I believe that the cause of religious liberty, and for that matter the liberty of the Christian Church to be faithful to its call and unencumbered by unseemly political alliances is in danger due to the actions of people that in many cases honestly believe that they are defending religious liberty. Justice Robert Jackson prosecuted the major Nazi War criminals at Nuremberg and was able to view the results of what happened when churches that entered into such alliances.

I back in my days as a more “conservative” Evangelical Christian I attended and unlike conservative Christian TV icon and former governor of Arkansas actually graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth Texas. This was in the days just prior to the Fundamentalist takeover of the seminary and the denomination. It was at Southwestern that I gained a distinct appreciation of and love for the concept of the separation of church and state and the importance of the rights, both civil and religious of non-believers, members of minority religions and others not in the religious majority, or those without power, be it religious, social or economic.

I look at what is going on today, just two days after the shutdown and it appears to me that the most vitriolic bunch pushing the Republican Party and their hapless, soulless and clueless Speaker of the House John Boehner into this are the Tea-vangelicals led by the like of SenatorTed Cruz, whose father Rafael Cruz is a prominent Dominionist pastor who has long been part of the movement to establish what amounts to a Christian Theocracy in the United States.

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However, whether people realize it or not we were warned by no less than conservative icon Barry Goldwater about such people.

Yes, I said it. Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was not a fan of the influence of preachers and religious zealots. In fact he warned us about them in very clear words.

My liberal and conservative friends both might be dismayed by this but Barry Goldwater, the man who inspired Ronald Reagan to run for President and who was the conservative bulwark for many years in Washington DC warned us of what would happen when the Religious Right took over the Republican Party. Goldwater said of the types of people that currently dominate the conservative movement, if it can be still called that:

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.” November, 1994, in John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience.

Billy Graham, a saint if there ever was one and a man who used his faith to build bridges even while being unabashedly evangelical warned back in 1981 about the current crop of religious conservatives and stand in sharp contrast to the words and actions of Franklin:

 “I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.” Parade Magazine February 1, 1981, from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

What we are seeing today is the expressed manifestation of religious bigotry operating under the guise of defending religious freedom. Likewise it is little different (except in the religion involved) to the Wahhabi Taliban or the the Saudi Arabian state, the Shi’te Hezbollah government in Lebanon or the Mullah’s of Iran.

This ultra-religious intransigence of the Tea-vangelicals is being shown in its ugliness by the brazen acts of Evangelical political and religious leaders during this shutdown. And they wonder why more and more people want nothing to do with the faith that they espouse. If there is any way to lose religious freedom it is to follow this attempt to marry the Christian faith with the American government is not only short sighted but does great damage to the faith and our American liberties.

A host of influential of Evangelical leaders, politicians and even Roman Catholic Bishops have said what they believe religious liberty means to them and it has little in common with the understanding of our founders. It has nothing to do with limited government nor religious liberty. It is the imperial religion of Constantine, dressed up a bit to keep up with the times.  It is simply an attempt by these leaders to use the apparatus of the government to support themselves and to establish their specific religion as a state religion with the full legal means to subjugate non-believers or others who do not agree with them.

The whole debate over the Affordable Health Care Act in the shutdown is a red herring. The actual goal is to achieve a merger of church and state with the Dominionists leading it and dominating what they call the “Seven Mountains” of culture and society. Attempting to delegitimatize President Obama through the shutdown and the debt limit is only a tactic in a larger strategy to achieve “dominion” over the United States and the world.

George Truett, the great Southern Baptist Pastor who served as President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote in his book Baptists and Religious Liberty in 1920 about the decidedly negative effect of when the Church became the State religion:

“Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ’s people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the Emperor’s palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world…. When … Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars…. The long blighting record of the medieval ages is simply the working out of that idea.”

The late Senator Mark Hatfield a strongly committed Evangelical Christian before it became popular in Washington made this comment concerning those that are now driving this spurious debate:

“As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith. What is at stake here is the very integrity of biblical truth. The New Right, in many cases, is doing nothing less than placing a heretical claim on Christian faith that distorts, confuses, and destroys the opportunity for a biblical understanding of Jesus Christ and of his gospel for millions of people.”  quoted in the pamphlet “Christian Reconstruction: God’s Glorious Millennium?” by Paul Thibodeau

The core of the current campaign in the shutdown is the imposition of Christian Dominionism onto the rest of the country. It may reference the Gospel and even certain Christian moral understandings even as it mocks other just as “Biblical” Christian teachings.

Back in 1981 Barry Goldwater said on the Senate Floor “The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent.” 

The leaders of this shutdown movement and their supporters are almost all self-proclaimed Evangelical Christians who represent gerrymandered congressional districts in which they only have to worry about being considered not extreme enough.

Like it or not Goldwater was right about this crowd. They will drive their churches and their political party into the abyss. The fractures in my former party, the Republican Party are becoming more and apparent and neither the Dominionist Preachers, or their allied politicians and pundits can see the end state of their party and for what they think they are fighting.

But then none are so blind as those who will not see. Please do not say that you were not warned.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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September 30, 2013 · 23:53

Shutdown Dead Ahead

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“Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance.” Eric Hoffer “The True Believer 

It looks like tomorrow I will go to work and get to hear how the Republican and Tea Party Shutdown of the government will impact my senior military schooling. I do know that at least some classmates will be sent home to their parent commands approximately 3 1/2 weeks into a 10 week course required by law for them to serve in either their current or projected assignments. Likewise much of our civilian faculty and staff will be sent home leaving those of us working to complete the course without their knowledge and experience as well as what we will lose when our fellow students are sent home. I will remain because unlike most I am being assigned as faculty to the school that I am attending.

It seems strange for me, a man who spent almost his whole life in the military as well as a member of the Republican Party until my return from Iraq in 2008 to watch this debacle occur and to understand that those in the GOP leadership pushing hardest for the shutdown really don’t care.

Listen, I get the fact that a lot of people on the political right do not like the Affordable Health Care Act (aka Obamacare.) However it was passed in both houses of Congress, signed into law and been ruled Constitutional by the Supreme Court. However throwing a tantrum and shutting down the government is not how our founders envisioned the repeal of laws. Their remedy was to win elections, repeal unpopular laws, even Constitutional amendments  through the legislative process even if it took a while. In fact there are numerous examples of this including my favorite the repeal of Prohibition.

However it appears now that the members of the radical minority of the Tea Party and GOP House of Representatives caucus and freshman Senator Ted “Green Eggs and Ham” Cruz want to make the entire government shut down to try to win their point. Unfortunately for everyone their irresponsible actions will cost the country billions of taxpayer dollars, not to mention the economic impact in the private sector, something that Wall Street and the American Chamber of Commerce are warning are dangerous to our economy. But then let us not forget that we are supposedly, if you believe in American Exceptionalism “a city set on a hill” then you have to realize that what is happening tonight is resonating with people around the world.

Those who looked to American democracy as a model or example are looking elsewhere and who would blame them? The Chinese Communists are completely amoral but their system seems to be working. Now I don’t think it to be superior and they too have problems but that is not what the world sees. Likewise nearly every advanced nation on the planet, almost all of which are Western democracies have some form of Government funded health care. I have many friends around the world and most, even military men wonder what the hell is going on with our politicians.

Why is this happening? The real fact of the matter is that this has nothing to do with the budget. It has nothing even to do with the Constitutionality of the AHCA. It is a power play to try to humiliate a sitting President who won not one, but two elections by convincing margins. Some of the grand standing by those in the GOP has been more than crass. One House Representative compared their action to the brave passengers of Flight 93 on 9-11 quoting Todd Beamer “Let’s roll.” When I heard that I was both saddened and angered, having been on active duty before and after 9-11 and having served multiple tours in the Arabian Gulf or Iraq I found the entire display offensive and almost Talibanesque.

The fact of the matter is that this isn’t about economic policy or even health care. It is about power and it is about the unremitting hatred of a minority of people who loathe the fact that an African American President passed a health care law that was originally drafted by the Conservative Heritage Foundation. A law that if a Republican had passed it would be hailed as a law that made everyone pay for their health insurance. But such is the zero sum politics of this faction.

This shutdown going to hurt a lot of people. It will hurt our economy. It will also hurt national security. However those forcing the issue do not care, because the ultimate goal has nothing to do with the AHCA or the budget, but rather a minority, many (but certainly not all) motivated by racism (yes I said it) attempting to put the Black man in the White House in his proper place. If you don’t believe me just go out and read their columns, internet posts and social media entries. If you have any sense you will see this.

There is a way to change laws and there is a way to make corrections in our system, but this is not the venue for it. Too much is at stake. However it seems that much of the leadership of my former part seem hell bent on devastating the country and destroying their party. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater must be spinning in their graves. Neither of those conservative icons would have tolerated this behavior. But then, even if you didn’t agree with them all the time you had to admit that they could work with others and understood both the Constitution and our legislative system. John Boehner, Ted Cruz and the other leaders of this insanity seem neither to understand or care.

God help us.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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