Notes on the American Health Care Act of 2017

Definition of terms.

Democrats: people who are progressives, young and old, wealthy and poor, male and female, white and other shades, religious and non-religious, straight and of other sexual orientations.

Republicans: people who are conservatives, young and old, wealthy and poor, male and female, white and other shades, religious and non-religious, straight and of other sexual orientations.

Repugnicans: people who are white, rich, radical christian supremacists who consider themselves better and more American than anybody else.

Congratulations Repugnicans!  You've made "American" a dirty word. 

 

The "repeal and replace Obamacare" bill is legislation built on moral depravity.  Six weeks ago a less egregious bill failed to even come to a vote, largely because the Freedom Caucus of far-right Repugnicans refused to vote for it.  So.... the House leadership got busy and made the bill more deplorable to please those white radical christian supremacist representatives.  And the bill passed with just ONE VOTE over the 216 needed... 217 to 213.  Only 22 Republicans broke ranks.  All the Democrats opposed it.

What would have changed if the House had waited for the Congressional Budget Office to make its report on what the bill would cost?  What would have changed if there'd been time for those representatives to read the bill?  Isn't that what they blamed Democrats for doing when Obamacare passed?  Willful ignorance... the hallmark of Repugnican governance.  

Features of the AHCA:

1. It slashes funding for Medicaid. 
2. Premiums and deductibles will rise.
3. States can opt out of pre-existing conditions coverage at the same price.
4. States can opt out of "essential services" requirements coverage at the same price.
5. It includes a $600 BILLION tax cut for those making $200,000/year, $250,000/year for married couples.  The "individual mandate" has been removed.  No tax credits if you make more than $75K ($150K for families).
6. Hospitals that have been getting more paying customers due to the ACA, and took reduced medicare payments as a trade-off, now will still have those reduced medicare payments but with fewer customers who can afford to pay their bills.  More hospitals will close down, especially those that have been struggling in poor and rural areas.

Call the Senate switchboard operator at (202) 224-3121 and tell your Senator that you strongly oppose this bill. We have to flood Congress with calls in the coming days to ensure this legislation is defeated. Calls are the single most effective way to make a difference.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/4/15538596/house-republicans-pass-repeal-obamacare-ahca 

 

Critical Thinking and the Religious Right

"Critical thinking" is the objective analysis and evaluation of a statement or issue in order to form a judgment of its verity.

Franklin Graham is telling his flock that God showed up on Election Day and that is why Donald Trump won.  God wanted him to be His man, His "Cyrus", to lead this country.  (See Isaiah 45.5)  His flock believes that and praises God with joyful song... and vitriolic condemnation of those godless, atheistic progressives who voted against him.  Objective analysis?  That's liberal egghead talk meant to divert one's attention from the real issue of God making America a great Christian nation again.  Judgment of its verity?  Well, Franklin Graham said it and he has the mind and heart of God.  And if you doubt it, well, you're a doubting Thomas and unless you fall on your knees and intone "My Lord and my God!" you will languish in unbelief.  That's in John 20.28.

But the next verse is where we have the Biblical condemnation of thinking critically: John 20.29: "Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

Believing without seeing is a blessing.  Believing it when you see it, that's critical thinking.  So if you're a critical thinker, you're at best a backslidden Christian and at worst a godless atheist.  So critical thinking has no place in Christianity.

But wait!  There is a long, long history of critically thinking Christian apologists dating from Paul himself, through Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to C S Lewis, Alister McGrath, and others still alive today.  Are these guys "godless atheists"?  Apologetics is a systematic set of reasoned arguments in justification of a religious doctrine or a scientific theory.  Read the Epistles of St Paul, St Augustine's City of God, St Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, C S Lewis's Mere Christianity, and/or Alister McGrath's trilogy A Scientific Theology.  Critical thinking itself is really not godless or even progressive.  But listening to evangelicals today, you'd think it is.

There is a video of Gina Rodriguez's interview with President Obama that was taped November 3, 2016 in which she says, "Many of the millennials, dreamers, undocumented, citizens -- I call them "citizens" because they contribute to this country -- are fearful of voting.  So if I vote, will Immigration know where I live?  Will they come for my family and deport us?"

Obama answers, "Not true.  And the reason is, first of all, when you vote, you are a citizen yourself.  And there is not a situation where the voting rolls are somehow transferred over and people start investigating..."

It was clumsily worded, but critical thinking will let you know that the President of the United States would not on television encourage "illegals" to vote.  What he was saying was, first of all, if you are voting, then that is proof you are a citizen, and citizens will not be deported.  Then he went on to say that your voting record is totally confidential and no one is going to give all the addresses of all the Latina and Latino citizens to Immigration to come and hunt down your possibly undocumented friends and family.

Critical thinking will let you realize that if you're undocumented, you can't even register to vote, let alone actually vote.  You need proof of citizenship to register.  You need to be registered to vote.

On the other hand, if you want to smear President Obama and rile up your conservative Christian followers, you'll skip the critical thinking part, hope your audience doesn't know how to use it, and claim that the President made this shocking statement that illegals can safely vote without being followed up on and deported.

Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.  Blessed are they who just take Franklin Graham's word for it and don't analyze or evaluate.

Body Autonomy

Body autonomy.  The idea that the inhabitor of a body has the final say over what uses are made of their body.  You can't even touch someone who doesn't want you to touch them.  If you do, you can be charged with assault.

So what if my kidneys fail and I need a kidney transplant to live.  But the only compatible donors refuse to donate a kidney to me.  I cannot make them.  I have no right to something that is part of their body.  But I'm going to die if I don't get their kidney.

The Pro-Life stance would be they must give me a kidney so that I may live.  But the Pro-Life stance would lose in a court of law.

So an unborn child will die if the mother doesn't continue to provide life support until the fetus is viable.  But, according to the principle of body autonomy, no one can tell that mother that she has to continue to provide life support.

The Pro-Life stance is that she must provide life support until the child is born.  But today, the Pro-Life stance lost in the Supreme Court.

North Carolina's New "Bathroom Law"

North Carolina's new "Bathroom Law", passed in a hurry, blocks cities and local governments from passing antidiscrimination measures that could protect gay and transgender people.  In late February, Charlotte NC passed an ordinance expanding state antidiscrimination laws so that LGBT people would also be granted protection in places of "public accommodation".  The new state law repealed that ordinance, saying no city or local government could amend or expand state law.  It also bans cities and local governments from increasing the minimum wage beyond the state minimum wage.

Now, most conservatives are upset with the federal sex-same marriage law because they consider it "overreach" by higher government.  They say the definition of marriage should be left to state and local governments.  Yet, they don't see North Carolina's state law as overreaching and nullifying city and local government laws.  This seems like hypocrisy at first, until you realize that state Republicans' purpose was not to reserve their own political power, but rather just to hurt LGBT people. 

The new law solves no problem.  There was never a problem with transgender people using the bathroom designed for the sex they identify as.  No one has been raped in a women's rest room by a transgender person who identifies as a woman.  No one's little girl ever shared a bathroom with a "grown adult man" who would like to molest a little girl.

On the other hand, plenty of little boys have been molested in men's bathrooms by "grown adult men" who like to molest little boys.  The law does nothing to stop that.  But that's beside the point.

I think the bottom line is this.  Most North Carolina Republicans think of themselves as Christians, and therefore think that homosexuality is a sin.  And that's fine.  They are perfectly free to think that.  But not all Christians think that.  And for that matter, more than a quarter of Americans are not even Christians.  I'm one of those followers of Jesus that thinks if we're going to ignore the Levitical laws against eating shrimp (Leviticus 11.9-12) or wearing a shirt made of a cotton-polyester blend (Leviticus 19.19), then we can ignore the Levitical law that says a man lying with a man is an abomination (Leviticus 18.22).

The Christians who believe homosexuality is a sin are believing the Bible, but they have no right to punish people who don't believe that way.  In fact, the same Bible that these Christians believe to be the inerrant Word of God says, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord" (Romans 12.19).  Romans is one of the books that really makes a big point about homosexuality being worthy of death.  But humans need to keep their hands off each other because "vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord".

Fantasy Politics

Walk with me, if you will for a moment, into an imaginary world.  The play world of Fantasy Politics.  The year is 2008.  George W Bush is our lame duck President, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suddenly and unexpectedly walks on.  This gives the conservatives a rare opportunity to ensure a staunchly conservative Supreme Court, a guarantee of right-wing victory in every court decision despite Justice Kennedy's stubbornly moderate swing vote.  Now even if he were to vote with Souter, Stevens, and Breyer, the conservatives would still win.

Now in real life, President Bush appointed 325 federal judges during his 8 years as President, including 2 Supreme Court justices.  Those were John G Roberts and Samuel Alito.  Of the 28 judges appointed in his last year in office, an election year, only one was approved by less than a unanimous vote.  Even though Democrats hated Dubya, they still did their Constitutional duty and, offering "advice and consent", approved his appointees.  The one judge that didn't get unanimously approved was Helene White.  The vote was 63-32 to appoint her to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.  It was not along party lines, but due to purported anomalies in her nomination process.  Bush had made a deal with Democrats to get some of his other nominations approved.

Democrats held a small majority in the Senate in 2008 -- 51 to 49.  Since Supreme Court Justices only need a majority vote to be confirmed, the Democrats, if they voted together, could withhold confirmation of any of Dubya's nominees.  But they did not.  John Roberts was confirmed by a vote of 78-22 and Samuel Alito was confirmed by a vote of 58-42.  In Alito's case, at least 9 Democrats voted to confirm him.  Clearly, Democrats, for the most part, can't be accused of being radical, or of "making Bush a one-term President" or of blocking anything and everything he put forth.  Lots of things got done during Dubya's last year in office.

Okay, back to Fantasy Politics. 

How likely is it that Democrats, that liberals, or the liberal media would claim RBG was murdered by Bush so that he could cement a conservative majority on the Supreme Court?  How likely is it that Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader in 2008, would have announced within hours of her death that President Bush should not nominate anyone, but should let his successor do it.  How likely is it that he would vow to block any nomination by the lame duck President?

If you think any of that is likely, you truly live in a Fantasy World.

When Is Free Speech Hate Speech?

When the Charlie Hebdo massacre occurred, my friends, led by my Jewish friends came to the support of the magazine and its employees by saying and posting "Je suis Charlie."  I jumped on the bandwagon back then.  Lately, I've struggled with some questions.

Freedom of speech is supremely important, but... is freedom of hate speech the same thing?  Of course not, but where is the dividing line?  I'm afraid I can't give you a definitive answer.  All I can do is mimic Potter Stewart and say, "I know it when I see it."

Charlie Hebdo made fun of all religions: Islam, Judaism, Catholicism.  But the American Freedom Defense Initiative is not Charlie Hebdo.  And Pamela Geller is not Gérard Biard.  Satire can be biting but deliberately tryng to provoke an attack by a Muslim, any Muslim, goes too far.

Geller is the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  She also runs Stop Islamizaton of America.  The United Kingdom has identified her as a leader of a hate group and will not let her into that country.

So, although I don't condone any kind of armed attack at all, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people that taunt and tease until their target blows his top and does something regrettable.

Some Thoughts about flag-burning

There was about a 1-second clip on the news the other day, after an allegedly armed teenager was killed by a police officer, that showed an American Flag being set alight by a group of angry people.  I had a problem with that.

The only time a flag should be burned is "when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display".  This is what the US Flag Code prescribes.  When a flag has aged, faded, been worn out by a long life of proudly flying above government buildings, schools, even private homes, it becomes time to lay it to rest.  The preferable means of destruction is burning.

Before President Obama was elected for a second term, some Syrian rebels who had aligned themselves with Al-Qaeda, burned an American flag.  They did it to enrage us.  And it worked.

There've been disgraceful flag incidents in this country too, long before Ferguson MO erupted.  In 1943 some Jehovah's Witnesses refused to salute the US flag in school -- they were found to be exercising free speech.  In 1969, some Vietnam War protesters burned a US flag in New York -- they too were found to be exercising free speech.  (They burned their draft cards too.)

There've been numerous lawsuits against people allegedly desecrating the US flag in various ways.  But the US Supreme Court in numerous decisions, including two in 1989 and 1990, has shown it considers burning the American Flag something that is protected under the Constitution.  It's free speech.  As is corporate campaign spending.  Some of that enrages people too.  But as the Court has said, "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."

The society of Ferguson MO apparently did not find burning the flag offensive or disagreeable, even though most of us did.

But why did they do it?  According to USA Today, one protester said, "It's not our flag.  Our children are being killed in the street. This flag doesn't cover black or brown people."

It's hard for me to get inside that person's head, as I'm sure it is for most Americans.  I served in Viet Nam, put my life on the line, to defend that flag and what it stands for -- for me, that is.  Does it stand for the same things for all folks?  Ask around, and not just your friends.  Ask strangers too.  Ask Native Americans.  Ask black people.  Ask Muslims, Catholics, evangelicals, Hindus, young people, old people, rich people, poor people, smart people, simple people.  See if there's a pattern.

I remember the 60s when students were burning flags in protest of the war in Viet Nam.  And when I came back from Viet Nam, I didn't advertise where I'd been.  No one welcomed me back.  Except my family.  Yet, years later, when I heard on NPR a story about a flag burning, I wrote a letter to them.

May 30, 1990

Dear All Things Considered:

The story yesterday on the Louisiana flag desecration/assault law left the bad taste of words like "red neck" and "racist" in my mouth.  Yet I, too, get emotionally wrenched when I see an issue of the American flag being burned, ripped or trodden upon.  I thought much about this dichotomous reaction.  Finally, I think I've resolved it.

Old Glory is like a soldier.  Of my contemporaries, a vast number, myself among them, went to Viet Nam.  Of those, a great number were maimed: physically, psychologically, or both.  A smaller percentage give their lives.

Now, it's the same with flags.  The overwhelming majority fly their entire lives on flagpoles until they wear out and are given decent burials.  Some fall into the hands of unpatriotic, or merely unconscientious, citizens who neglect them.  They become dirty and wrinkled.  Some are called upon to give their lives in free speech demonstrations.

I believe the issues of the Stars and Stripes that "die" in this way should be honored just as our fallen servicemen are honored.  Perhaps the remains of flags thus burned could be buried in a National Cemetery.  Maybe there could be a monument erected: the "Tomb of the Unknown Flag".

The perpetrators, the flag-burners, should be ignored.  Just ignored.  If we do anything else to them, we cause the flags they burn to have died in vain.  Those flags should be honored as fallen heroes who gave their lives in defense of Freedom!

Very, very sincerely,

Randolph B. Jones