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Jesus, like the great social prophets of the Hebrew Bible, was a God-intoxicated voice of religious, social protest. He, like they, protested against and did a radical critique of the domination system of his day, just as they did of the domination systems of their day. Indeed, if one wants to ask the historical question, not "Why did Jesus die?" but "Why was he killed?", the answer is, he was killed because of his passion for justice. He was killed because of his critique of the domination system of his day. This is the political meaning of Good Friday, the passion of Jesus is about Jesus' passion for the justice of God.You can read more here about the different "lenses" Marcus Borg uses to understand Jesus. Whatever else you may believe about Jesus (some divergent views are discussed in this article in the Detroit Free Press), we can be pretty sure that his teaching was perceived as threatening by the local representatives of the Roman Empire. Crucifixion was the "ultimate form of Roman humiliation, punishment the Romans reserved for those judged guilty of insurrection against the state." So, whatever theological meaning we attach to the death of Jesus, the *political* meaning seems to be that he was perceived as a threat by the "powers that be". An "enemy combatant", if you will.
"Anger has a very important spiritual benefit," Coffin says. "If you don't have anger, you end up tolerating the intolerable - and that's intolerable. I still have plenty of anger that is ready to be used at a moment's notice."
"Easter has less to do with one person's escape from the grave than with the victory of seemingly powerless love over loveless power"Alternate link for comments
Out there, awaiting her building fury: the Angry Left, where O'Connor's reputation is as one of the angriest of all. "One long, sustained scream" is how she describes the writing she does for various Web logs, as she wonders what she should scream about this day.I haven't read the whole article yet--it's about 5 pages long. Not the most flattering picture, but I get that they're going for the "angry" liberal thing. But I'm *so* happy to see a blogger who isn't one of the authors of a book whose title rhymes with "smashing the plate" get some genuine recognition.
This was obviously not to benefit seniors, since 20 million of the 25 million already had previous drug coverage. I see a lot of propagandizing of this issue right now, and I would love to see some Democrats talking about it out loud.
The article from the NEJM below.
Part "D" for "Defective" -- The Medicare Drug-Benefit Chaos
True, the program provides drug benefits for some Americans who previously had none. But because of its strange design, enrollment is falling far short of expectations. Officials in the Bush administration boasted that 25 million people are receiving benefits through Medicare Part D. But the government's data reveal that about 20 million of them already had adequate drug coverage through Medicaid, their employers or unions, or health maintenance organizations; as of late February, the new benefit was providing only 12 percent of the elderly with coverage they did not already have.
In many cases, the program worsened patients' situations, with a particularly heavy burden falling on indigent Medicaid enrollees. Before the new entitlement, most had virtually all their medications covered fully by the states. But on January 1, 6.2 million of these vulnerable elderly were reassigned to one of the private insurance companies designated by Medicare to run its program. Word of these arrangements didn't always reach the patients, insurers, or pharmacies accurately, and tens of thousands of indigent patients were told to get prior authorization, pay a large initial deductible, or make substantial copayments for regularly used medicines they previously received at no cost. Thousands discovered that the drugs they had been taking for years were not covered by their new insurers. Clinical crises ensued, and 37 states had to provide emergency payments for frail citizens.
And it takes the power from the hands of doctors to prescribe what they consider proper medicine. The author calls this a stinging indictment of his profession, to allow this.
In Medicare Part D, decisions about which drug in a class to use are made by each insurance company, often requiring prescriptions to be rewritten. The concept abandons the expectation that a doctor will choose the most appropriate and cost-effective drug and reassigns that decision to an insurance company that has its own agenda. The current infatuation with this solution is a stinging indictment of our profession; the encroachment on our prerogatives flows from our failure to address these responsibilities ourselves.
And this paragraph addresses the dreaded doughnut hole part of the plan. It points out that many seniors will be approaching or in that hole by November.
Medicare Part D lives on, responding semiappropriately to noxious stimuli by flailing its limbs as best it can. It even shows some limited capacity for learning, and one important learning opportunity is just seven months away. Elderly citizens vote in droves, and many of them will have hit their "doughnut hole" by early November. At that point, they will let their legislators know how they feel about the program.
Someone needs to be speaking out on this issue. Even those who were able to retain their present plans for now realize that it was only because some incentive was given for their former employers to do this. And they wait for the next shoe to drop, after it is too late to sign up for coverage and drug prices are higher than ever.
COLLINS: Governor Dean, you came out yesterday and blasted the president saying that he ignored intelligence on WMD. Are you implying that the president lied about that?
HOWARD DEAN, DEMOCRATIC NATL. CMTE. CHMN.: We don't know, Heidi, once again, whether the president wasn't informed -- in which case the administration is incompetent -- or whether he did know and then he deliberately lied to the American people. We deserve to know that. What I asked the president to do was declassify this report. The president was willing, as it turned out two weeks ago, to declassify classified information for the purposes of defaming his political opponents. Well, I don't think that's a very good reason to declassify information but I do think it's a good reason to declassify information to find out if the president of the United States has told the truth to the American people before he sent hundreds of thousands of Americans abroad to fight in the Iraq war. So I want the president to declassify that report, let the American people know what did the president know and when did he know it? Did he deliberately mislead us? Or did he do it because people kept information from him in his administration?
COLLINS: Governor Dean, you talk about elections. Let's move forward to that for a moment. Midterm elections coming up and there is a 30-seat majority in the House that the Republicans have. There is a headline in "The Washington Post" today that I'm sure you probably saw. "Democrats face uphill battle to retake the House." Uphill battle in your eyes?
DEAN: Well, we think the election issue is, do you want more of the same or do you want a real change? What we're willing to do is first have real ethics legislation that we will vote on in the first hundred days. Second, we want a strong national defense that depends on telling the truth to the American people. Third we want American jobs that will stay in America using energy independence. We think these kinds of issues are the issues that are going to change the tide in America. We offer a change. We offer something new, a bolder vision.
COLLINS: What exactly is that change? How does the Democratic Party differentiate itself from the Republican Party? Because the goals that you mention or the agenda that you mention, I think a lot of people want.
DEAN: I think they do. A lot of American people including Republicans are tired of the dishonesty and the culture of corruption the Republicans brought to Washington. I think a lot of American people believe they ought to be told the truth before people get sent to war. And I think a lot of American people are wondering why the president persists in sending every manner of job to other countries.
COLLINS: But what about the Democratic Party and their thoughts on you in this job?
DEAN: We've turned this party around. I meet every week or every other week with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. We're working together. We have a message that we think is a strong message. We have a grassroots operation in every one of the 50 states now. None of those things we had before. We're remaking the Democratic Party into the party of change, the party that can bring real change to America.
Justice is at the heart of religious faith. It's not something that is tacked on. And justice is not charity. Charity tries to alleviate the effects of injustice. Justice tries to eliminate the causes of injustice. Charity is a personal disposition. Justice is public policy. What this country needs, what I think God wants us to do, is not practice piecemeal charity but engage in wholesale justice. And that's not only to erase or greatly reduce the wage gap and the living standards in America, but really to be committed to doing something about the horrible, really horrible poverty of at least one third of the people on the planet. If you want to do something good for national security, and every American should, take billions of dollars and wage war against world poverty. That would have a very sobering effect on terrorism. Terrorism now has a wonderful recruitment policy supplied by the United States foreign policy. If we were serious, with other nations, to engage the war on poverty around the world, that would stem the flow of recruits to the ranks of terrorists.
He said his favorite Democratic candidate for the presidential nomination is another Vermonter, the state's former governor, Howard Dean.
"But any Democrat, except Joe Lieberman, would be a vast improvement over George Bush," Coffin added.
As a self-described "yellow-dog Democrat," Coffin offered his opinions on the Presidential campaign. Wesley Clark, he said, "might be a highly intelligent General Haig, or he might be a good leader of the party. I don't know." John Kerry, meanwhile, "has a face that looks as though it could be moved right up on Mt. Rushmore without going through the White House." He smiled mischievously. "Joe Lieberman heard that I'm not supposed to last very long, so he called me. In his pious tone, Joe started to say how much I had meant to him. I cut him off. 'Joe, I would give my right arm to have the influence on you now that I had then. You're an orthodox Jew and a conservative Democrat. It'd be better if you were the other way around-a conservative Jew and an orthodox Democrat!" Coffin is a Howard Dean man.
Here's a recent comment from Steve at BFA:
Hello, blog.
My Congressional race heats up!
Click for article in major city paper on my position on Immigration reform.
We had the largest rally and march in city history (South Bend, IN) largest city in my district on Monday. I participated in the march which wound around my Bush clone opponent's, Chris Chocola, office.
Chocola voted for the punitive HB4437. Tear down that wall, Chocola!
Help me out if you can at www.francisforuscongress.com
Peace with justice,
Steve
Mr. Clinton delighted the audience of about 500 last night with one of his favorite stories, about a Pentecostal minister who "confessed" to him--"the world's greatest sinner," as Mr. Clinton called himself--that he voted for President Bush partly out of a belief that Democrats were not connecting with him on a gut level.
Democrats make "a terrible mistake," Mr. Clinton said, if they do not think of themselves as "values voters," a term that some political analysts use for voters who support candidates based on a sense of shared moral or religious convictions....
The fund-raiser, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Manhattan, which took in $1.3 million, honored Maureen White, who is stepping down after five years as finance chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee....Mr. Clinton praised Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, for pressing ahead to campaign in every state, including those where voters reliably support Republicans. Some Democrats have criticized Mr. Dean's strategy calling it a waste of time and money.
But Mr. Clinton said thanked Mr. Dean and said, "Democrats should campaign everywhere with everybody." And Mr. Gore called him "the ideal Democratic party chair." (NYTimes)
Next week, Republican Senate Leader Bill Frist is likely to introduce a harmful immigration bill on to the Senate floor that will criminalize good Samaritans, including church members and clergy, and does not provide a larger, comprehensive framework for reform or a path to citizenship. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement on President Bush and the Republican Congress's failure to lead on the issue of immigration:Alternate link for comments
"President Bush and his Republican Congress's failure to offer comprehensive solutions on immigration reform and their attempt to use the issue to divide Americans is contrary to our values as a people and does a disservice to all who live and work in this great nation. The hostile anti-immigrant bill passed by the Republican House and now being considered by the Republican Senate is not the answer. America needs comprehensive immigration reform that protects our borders, keeps our communities safe, and brings America together.
"Criminalizing families and the work of clergy is not the way forward. A comprehensive and compassionate approach must protect all U.S. workers and their wages, prevent exploitation of immigrant workers, and offer immigrants who have earned it the opportunities and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship. The American people want change, not more of the same scape-goating and ineffective, piecemeal immigration reform Republicans are proposing."
He was recruited to leadership in the Republican Party by President Ronald Reagan and many of his advisors, including Jack Kemp, Lynn Nofziger, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Ed Rollins. In 1989 Ken was appointed by President George H.W. Bush as an undersecretary to the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), serving under then Secretary Kemp.