Go and Do Likewise

I practice Jesuit (that is Ignatian) spirituality and at its core is the Greatest Commandment. It dominates my life and specifically here, my politics.

I practice Jesuit (that is Ignatian) spirituality. At its core is the Greatest Commandment which dominates my life and, specifically for this discussion, my politics (more on that later).

Let’s look at the how important this is in Luke:

The Greatest Commandment. There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test [Jesus] and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” He replied to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

Luke 10:25-28 (NABre)

Love of God includes love of neighbor. It is one of the direct signs of the love of God. It’s not an accident then, that who “my neighbor” is is critically important and likely why St. Luke connected the commandment directly to the parable of The Good Samaritan.

Continue reading “Go and Do Likewise”

Healthcare is a Responsibility 

Luke 10:29-37 (NABre)

The Parable of the Good Samaritan.
But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn and cared for him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, ‘Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.’ Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.

I’ve long condemned the attempts by the GOP to repeal Obamacare. Mostly because they have no intention of replacing it with anything. As the above story illustrates, it’s patently immoral. They’ve tried to doublespeak their way around this by the canard “healthcare is a responsibility not a right” in line with the mantra of so-called personal responsibility. Notice the Samaritan nit only displays charity, he goes the distance and pays for the traveler’s care. No mention is made of the man’s ability to pay. And we can reasonably infer he cannot. And what does Jesus tell us to do? 

Go and do likewise.

Healthcare is a responsibility. Conservatives have it wrong whose it is.

A Chicken in Every Pot

How Will the Debt Limit “Game of Chicken” End?:

“The Republican strategy seems to be to ram their Medicare abolition plan into law within the next two months – Treasury says the ‘drop-dead’ date for raising the debt limit is August 2 – before people learn what they are really doing to Medicare.”

(Via Capital Gains and Games | Washington, Wall Street and Everything ….)

Isn’t this exactly what the Republicans accused Palosi and Reid of doing with “Obamacare?”

When You’re Last Year’s News

You’re the Boss: A System That Encourages Small Businesses Not to Hire Older Workers:

“I have good reason to suspect that my costs and the costs of all of my employees are going to go up if I hire an older worker…

Our current system hides these costs, and I’m sure that this is a large part of the difficulty that older workers have in getting hired. Some of you will probably object that my system would result in lower wages for older workers. In some cases it might, but that beats no wages at all. As I said in my last post, it may be illegal to discriminate on the basis of age, but there’s always a way to rationalize hiring any given worker over any other one. If we can put a price on the insurance costs, then the skills and experience that older workers bring to the table can be properly accounted for.

Postscript: Yes, I know that a single payer system would solve this problem. But it ain’t gonna happen, so I’m not waiting for it.”

(Via Business and Financial News – The New York Times.)

Markets don’t make moral decisions.  They make economic ones.

Entitlement Hypocrisy

Entitlement Hypocrisy:

“Apparently, though, Dr. Harris has never needed to purchase insurance, at least until now. He wasn’t aware that COBRA allows him to purchase insurance for himself and his family so that they won’t be without insurance until the new policy kicks in. Because of that, he apparently went ballistic when he found out that his new government subsidized health insurance would not kick in until February 1st. He, like all of us, does not want his family to go without health care insurance coverage. I’m guessing he is intimately aware of what surgery and anesthesiology services cost to people who don’t have insurance — or how difficult it is for people without insurance to get care if they have an accident, injury, or illness while they are uninsured.”

(Via God’s Politics Blog.)

Like I said in the past, you get the government you deserve.  If you want better government, vote for better people.  Harris is just one more example of why I don’t trust GOP rhetoric or ideology.  It’s just a cover for selfishness in its many forms based on ignorance.

Why Friends Dont Let Friends Vote Republican, Ever

Why Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican, Ever: “

Ezra Klein watches newly-elected Republican House member Andrew Harris (R-MD) demonstrate why he should immediately resign his post and let himself be replaced by somebody who is more intelligent:

GOP legislator frets over 28 days without insurance — but what about 30 million he’d leave uninsured?: It’s worth dwelling for a moment on the reaction of Rep. Andy Harris, an incoming legislator who staunchly opposes the new health-care law and ran promising its repeal, to news that he’d had to wait a month for his government-funded health-care benefits to kick in:

Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health-care policy would take effect Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in. ‘He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,’ said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. … ‘Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,’ added the aide.

The point is… Harris’s fear at being uninsured… whatever else you think of the health-care law, it really does keep people from being uninsured…

 

(Via Grasping Reality with Both Hands.)

Morally Impoverished Economics?

One must wonder whether physicians, nurses and other workers toiling day and night in health care — let alone the medics and helicopter pilots who risk their lives to help the wounded — see their work and its product quite as Mr. Limbaugh casts it.

One further wonders whether families with a cancer-stricken member are likely to view going without health care as the moral equivalent of going without a beach house.

via Is Health Care Special? – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com.

Great article.  There are moral dimensions to healthcare and it shows how economics can handle something as thorny as morality. But, as for Limbaugh, I can see why Jon Stewart calls him a douche.  Wow.

Democrat stands ground after ‘die quickly’ health care remark – CNN.com

Democrat stands ground after ‘die quickly’ health care remark – CNN.com:

“Citing a Harvard University study released this month that said 44,000 Americans die each year because they have no health insurance, Grayson called on Democrats and Republicans ‘to do our jobs for the sake of those dying people and their families.’
‘I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,’ he said.”

(Via CNN.)

Payback it is a …

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MSNBC’s Ratigan battles McCaughey – Ben Smith – POLITICO.com

MSNBC’s Ratigan battles McCaughey – Ben Smith – POLITICO.com:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

(Via Politico.com.)

McCaughey gets her rear end handed to her. This is what happens when someone demands an actual answer to a question.

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On Liars

Twenty-six Lies About H.R. 3200 | FactCheck.org:

“A few readers alerted us to the fact that a state representative in North Carolina, Rep. Curtis Blackwood, published a version of the e-mail in a newsletter to constituents, telling them that while going through e-mail, he came across ‘some interesting information on the Democrats’ big health care bill, H.R. 3200. … While this is federal legislation and not state, the topic is of enough significance that I thought many of you would be interested in reading it.’ We’d refer Rep. Blackwood to our special report on viral messages titled, ‘That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously.’
We can trace the origins of this collection of claims to a conservative blogger who issued his instant and mostly mistaken analyses as brief ‘tweets’ sent via Twitter as he was paging through the 1,017-page bill. The claims have been embraced as true and posted on hundreds of Web sites, and forwarded in the form of chain e-mails countless times. But there’s hardly any truth in them.”

(Via FactCheck.org.)

And this is why I said that the GOP leadership is behaving in a fashion devoid of morals, truth, and decency. A congressman, with access to the actual bill and the staff to read it, sends a chain email (!) from a conservative blogger, one with a reading comprehension problem, to his constituents. Now that’s constituent service for you.