Nick Sementelli, Faith in Public Life’s Blog Editor and Online Strategy Associate, came to FPL from Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Georgetown University. He blogs about the economy, Islamophobia, Catholics in public life, and the Religious Right.
The health care law that passed two years ago includes a provision to extend the Medicaid program, a federal/state partnership that provides health insurance for some of our nation’s most vulnerable populations — children, low-income adults, people with disabilities and seniors in need of long-term care among others. It’s a program that literally saves lives.
But some states (led by Florida), which have already filed a joint lawsuit opposing the Affordable Care Act’s minimum coverage requirement, have extended their legal complaints to ask the Supreme Court to rule the Medicaid expansion unconstitutional as well.
In response, a coalition representing dozens of religious groups has written an amicus brief in support of the Medicaid law, rejecting the states’ arguments and explaining that:
This expansion is morally proper and legally permissible. Neither the facts nor the case law support any conclusion that states are or will be improperly coerced into participating in Medicaid. Congress has never required the states to participate in Medicaid. Rather, the ACA offers the states generous support for Medicaid expansion, 100 percent of which will be paid for by the federal government in the near term. Because states can opt out of Medicaid, the only compulsion they face is the knowledge that the Medicaid expansion is the right and moral thing to do.
Signers to the brief include mainline Christian denominations like the Presbyterian Church, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ. The Union for Reformed Judaism, a host of Catholic organizations, and numerous other religious health and community groups are also on the brief.
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The phony war on religion By Tom Ehrich — Religion News Service
Do you see the theme? Religion’s enemy isn’t government. If anything, the American system has bent over backwards to protect religion from the accountability, fairness and justice that are expected of other citizens. No, religion’s enemy — if it has one — is itself.
Fight over birth control mandate becomes battle to frame debate By Sam Baker — The Hill
Democrats successfully shifted a debate over religious liberty to birth control last week, but opponents of the contraception mandate are trying to shift it right back.
Religious Groups Line Up To Support Affordable Care Act By Ian Millhiser — Think Progress
On Friday, however, a broad coalition of religious organizations filed an amicus brief supporting the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion that should give the lie to any claim that the faith community opposes the ACA.
Catholic Hospitals Expand, Religious Strings Attached By Reed Abelson — New York Times
As Roman Catholic leaders and government officials clash over the proper role of religion and reproductive health, shifts in health care economics are magnifying the tension.
Santorum Obliquely Suggests Obama Worships Earth, Not God By Kirsten Powers — Daily Beast
Perhaps it’s really Senator Santorum who hews to a “phony theology” at odds with the Bible. Santorum, who has been a shameless apologist for polluters, appears to worship at the altar of business and free enterprise no matter the cost to the health of Americans—including unborn Americans.
Immigration and the Campaign By New York Times, Editorial
The Republican presidential candidates have not made immigration a focus of their campaigns. But, as they head toward a debate on Wednesday in Arizona, ground zero for anti-immigrant hostility, it is a good time to ask them hard questions about immigration. The odds are bad that they will have sensible answers.
States Move on Tuition Equity for Undocumented Students By Julianne Hing — Colorlines
Despite tough economic times and a hostile political environment, immigrant rights activists are forging ahead, and having success, pushing a pro-immigrant youth agenda at the state level.
Voter ID By Lucky Severson — PBS, Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly
…Many South Carolinians, especially citizens of color, were born at home and lack birth certificates, and so to obtain those birth certificates is a very costly endeavor and also an administrative nightmare.
NYPD monitoring of Muslim students sparks outrage By David B. Caruso and John Christoffersen — Associated Press
The mayor faced off with the president of Yale University on Tuesday over an effort by the city’s police department to monitor Muslim student groups for any signs that their members harbored terrorist sympathies.
President Obama’s Five Most Personal Religious Statements By Daniel Burke — Religion News Service
Even as a significant percentage of Americans falsely believe Obama is Muslim, the president has spoken of his Christian faith with increasing fervor during his three years in the White House.
Bishop Minerva Carcaño Has a Nearly Impossible Job By Mary E. Hunt — Religion Dispatches
Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño of the United Methodist Church is part of a new wave of women’s leadership in mainline Christian denominations—and if our recent phone conversation is any indication, she has her work cut out for her.
It looks like Bank of America read my 5-point plan to fix their image problem. News is leaking this week that the troubled mega-bank is freezing the salary of their CEO Brian Moynihan and awarding him no cash bonus after a bad year for the company.
This quote was included in a Bloomberg article:
“They’re setting an example from the top, saying, ‘You know what? If the company doesn’t do well, our CEO isn’t going to do as well,’” said Jeanne Branthover, a managing director at Boyden Global Executive Search Ltd. in New York.
This, of course, is exactly the kind of reaction Bank of America wants. But this kind of special praise is ridiculous. This is how executive pay is supposed to work — tied to the success (or lack thereof) of the company. The fact that Bank of America’s decision stands out as some kind of commendable deviation from the norm shows just how completely big-bank executives have rigged the system in their favor and shielded themselves from the accountability and consequences that are just a fact of life for the 99%.
Meanwhile, as Brian Moynihan figures out how to feed his family on only $950,000 this year, homeowners across the country continue to lose their homes because of the big banks’ aggressive foreclosure tactics.
This video from Cuentame highlights the story of Arturo de los Santos, an ex-marine in Los Angeles whose family is facing eviction for missing mortgage payments. The kicker? The de los Santos purposefully missed those payments on their bank’s advice that it would speed up their loan modification process. Instead of the promised relief, Chase bank turned around and foreclosed on the family.
When opponents of housing relief try to argue that the only people suffering are irresponsible homeowners who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford, they ignore the massive amounts of fraud and deception that have led to stories like this.
Until banks like Chase and Bank of America come clean about their illegal, immoral records and start doing something to fix the massive damage they’ve done to American families, they deserve no praise.
Faithful America has been running a campaign asking MSNBC to stop booking hate-group leader Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, on their shows. Perkins appears as a frequent contributor without being balanced by a progressive Christian leader or challenged for his organization’s hateful lies about the LGBT community.
While MSNBC is far and away the most frequent offender, other networks give Perkins a platform too. But on CNN earlier this month, anchor Don Lemon finally provided an example of how to do this right, challenging Perkins for his organization’s silence on violence against gays and lesbians.
Though Perkins denies condoning violence against gays and lesbians, he’s made a living out of peddling homophobic myths that depict LGBT people as threats, predators, and enemies of the state.
…
Perkins’ FRC also has also long opposed efforts to protect gays and lesbians from violence. The organization has been a vocal opponent of efforts to include sexual orientation in anti-bullying and hate crime legislation. FRC Senior Fellow Peter Sprigg has openly advocated for the criminalization of homosexuality and even suggested that gay people should be exported out of the country.
Good on Lemon for speaking up. Hopefully other anchors and networks will take notice and stop giving this hate group credibility and a free pass.
Dr. Stephen S. Schneck, Director of the Institute for Policy Research at Catholic University, has an important piece on the “Catholic vote” this week.
Schneck breaks the Catholic population down into three distinct groups: Latino Catholics who mirror earlier Catholic immigrants in their ethnic ties to the Democratic party, “cultural Catholics” who have lower levels of mass attendance and mixed political views, and “intentional Catholics” who by virtue of not having left the Church, are “distilled” down to a more conservative group who “actively choose to embrace the church and its teachings” and “are motivated by economic issues and increasingly by opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and illegal immigration.”
These observations seem to fit with John Sides’s analysis of presidential approval polls which tentatively suggested that Obama’s “political hit” among Catholics after the release of his administration’s contraception regulations appeared to occur largely among a limited group of Catholics who already disapprove of the President and are unlikely to vote for him anyway.
Michael Sean Winters adds:
It is true that Catholics as a whole, due to assimilation, now reflect the electorate as a whole. There are conservative Catholics on one side and liberal Catholics on the other. In between, are the Catholic swing voters. What distinguishes Catholics as a religious group in politics, then, is not that they vote as a bloc but that a significant number of them remain up for grabs, which is not necessarily true of other religious cohorts within the electorate.
The health care law that passed two years ago includes a provision to extend the Medicaid program, a federal/state partnership that provides health insurance for some of our nation’s most vulnerable populations — children, low-income adults, people with disabilities and seniors in need of long-term care among others. It’s a program that literally saves lives.