“Republican leaders have repeatedly cited support of (some) Catholic leaders in their opposition to the Obama Administration’s health care policies—particularly a requirement that insurance plans cover contraception, which the Church opposes on principle. But now Republicans are the ones catching grief from Catholic leaders, for violating a different set of Church teachings: about the need to protect the poor and vulnerable,” as The New Republic is reporting.
“On Tuesday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a series of stern letters to Republican committee chairman in the House. The subject was proposed cuts to programs like food stamps and housing assistance, consistent with the overall spending blueprint that House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan has put forward. The message: Don’t slash the safety net, particularly if you’re doing so to finance tax cuts for the wealthy.”
The rest of the article is here.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Jeff,
“Bishops Blaire and Pates reaffirmed the “moral criteria to guide these difficult budget decisions” outlined in their March 6 budget letter:
1.Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.
2.A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.
3.Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times…
Just solutions, however, must require shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and fairly addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs.”
http://www.usccb.org/news/2012/12-063.cfm
Does anybody really think Congress is going to close tax loopholes for the rich and powerful corporations? You can bet if there was tax reform going on they would lower the tax rate, but close the loopholes that lobbyists worked so hard to put in the tax code over the last several decades? You got to be kidding! Who writes the laws that Congress votes on, industry lobbyists write most of them. The only loopholes that could be closed are ones that aren’t needed anymore.
I just finished reading Toxic Charity by Lupton and it was a big validation of what I believe and somewhat of a mix of what left and the right hold dear.
Food stamps and United Nations food programs etc. quickly become toxic and create a dependence trap instead of independence. Safety nets are still nets and they trap people in a world of ignorance, excuses and entitlement instead of providing the means to achieve independence. The right sees this pitfall and the left won’t abandon the needy. Why not combine these objections and try new ideas to build a just and balanced society? There are many ways to accomplish this and Lupton gives several in his book. All of them require more or less getting out of the box which both the left and the right have trapped themselves, mainly due to squabbling instead of listening. It begins with listening with an open mind.
Greg,
The answer is the government represent the needs of the people over the desires of big business in the economic realm. What nobody seems to look at is how we got to where we are today in terms of economics. It is has to do with Trickle Down policies and Free Trade.
The further we go down the road where government has made bribery legal in US politics the further away from a fair and just economic system we find ourselves. The largest banking crisis in modern if not US history and not one banker has gone to jail, why? Because the bankers have bought off our government and much of what they were doing has become legal. The other is politicians and both R’s/ D’s are afraid to bite the hand that feeds them.
Paul Krugman wrote a very good analogy comparing the largest US employer of 1968 and 2005.
“In 1968, when General Motors was a widely emulated icon of American business, many of its workers were lifetime employees. On average, they earned about $29,000 a year in today’s dollars, a solidly middle-class income at the time. They also had generous health and retirement benefits. ”
“Today, Wal-Mart is America’s largest corporation. Like G.M. in its prime, it has become a widely emulated business icon. But there the resemblance ends.
The average full-time Wal-Mart employee is paid only about $17,000 a year. The company’s health care plan covers fewer than half of its workers.
True, not everyone is badly paid. In 1968, the head of General Motors received about $4 million in today’s dollars – and that was considered extravagant. But last year Scott Lee Jr., Wal-Mart’s chief executive, was paid $17.5 million. That is, every two weeks Mr. Lee was paid about as much as his average employee will earn in a lifetime.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/13/opinion/13krugman.html
Greg,
OMG. You should like Lupton “converted” you! I read that book too and found the perspective valuable, such as questioning the value of short-term mission trips and food co-ops instead of food pantries. But so is the “safety net” perspective, particularly in this economy. As I reported over the weekend, our County’s demographic report shows 9 percent of our “neighbors” are now at poverty level. Lupton is an activist with a toxic book title, and I am weary of activists. I like to take a little of this and a little of that to come up with a solution. Pragmatism, not ideology, is preferable to me.
I’m confused. It sounds like the only place we differ is that you think we differ.
Books like this are good for initiating dialogue, but they also are written to sell copies. A book like this will do well in a political climate like this. If you agree that the reality of what this author purports and the “safety net” argument is somewhere in between, then we are in agreement.
Yes, then we are in agreement.
I am working on a homeless project along these lines called Coliving Transitional Village as part of CoLiving Network. This empowerment ladder concept is in different phases of development. A pro bono real estate attorney and CPA are needed as well as other specialized professionals. http://www.colivingnetwork.org
I’m still thinking about this and I’m now not sure what ” the reality of what this author purports and the “safety net” argument is somewhere in between” actually means.
Lupton is a doer who is having success by building programs that encourage moving out of the “safety net”. Most of the programs in this county lack this vision and have no mechanism to move out of the safety net and it has become a trap. The relationship is “the worse you do, the more you get” rather than than offering a realistic path to achieve more while fading the safety net trap. Handout only programs are lazy, ignorant, and create the poverty mindset. And, thank God, we can’t afford them anymore because of the recession, global warming etc.
Clearly, as a community, a nation, and a global society we cannot continue doling out materials to compensate for a lack of independence and we need to get out of this box by exploring realistic avenues to follow. Already on a global scale mass starvation is probably the inescapable consequence, and on the local scale it is a class of purposeless non contributors who find their only relief in drugs.
I certainly don’t agree with the idea of simply cutting these destructive programs as the right would have us do. I also certainly don’t agree with expanding them as the left would have us do. The only way out is to get out of the box and embrace solutions that encourage independence.
Jeff and Greg,
Pragmatism or compromise works when there are two willing participants. At the moment we have a republican party in uncharted territory of living memory and a democratic party veering over the center line into the right side of the political spectrum. The republicans have moved so far right any compromise will land securely on the right side of the aisle. Obamacare or ACA was virtually identical to a republican health care reform in the 1970′s but has been called a road to communism in today’s political climate. Right now in America we are in a fight for the direction of our country not just tinkering around with existing policies.
I tend to read books from what I call realists such as Thomas Friedman. I find his writings to be incredibly inciteful, as I just read “Hot, Flat & Crowded” where he speaks about how, as the world develops, everyone will want to start “Americanizing” their life style, When this happens people will buy a car, and use energy on a increasing rate.
It’s pretty interesting as I think he is right on the money, in many of his writings/observations.
Brad,
The only problem with those ideas of everyone owning a car is that it is in no way shape or form sustainable or plausible. The big three developing nations have an accumulated population of 2,700,000,000 billion people is almost 40% of the global population. America has 5% of the worlds population and uses/ produces 25% of the worlds resources/ waste.
“”The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.” That’s freshly minted GOP vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan talking — statements he would eventually recant — at a party celebrating what would have been the prolific author’s 100th birthday,
Rand’s books are a big driver in the long-term right-wing campaign to delude millions of people into believing that there’s no such thing as society — that everyone must look out only for themselves. Lately, Rand’s work has enjoyed a major revival of interest. Besides Ryan, she’s inspired yoga-wear company Lululemon to publish her quotations on its products, and she’s even made inroads into the North”
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/paul-ryans-biggest-influence-10-things-you-should-know-about-lunatic-ayn-rand?paging=off