Progressive Evangelical Attacks AARP, Social Security
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/6844/progressive_evangelical_attacks_aarp__social_securityFebruary 21, 2013
By PETER LAARMAN
Peter Laarman is executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting, a network of activist individuals and congregations headquartered in Los Angeles. He served as the senior minister of New York’s Judson Memorial Church from 1994 to 2004. Ordained in the United Church of Christ, Peter spent 15 years as a labor movement strategist and communications specialist prior to training for the ministry.
When DC’s Religion Industrial Complex sings its hosannas about evangelicals moving toward progressive social positions I always try to be hopeful, even as I turn a gimlet eye to what’s really happening beneath the headlines.
In recent years the Red Letter Christian who gets the most ink, and the most praise from Jim Wallis and other leftish evangelical confreres, has been Ron Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action. I don’t know Sider personally, and most of what I have been able to read about his spiritual and ethical evolution is positive. Which is why I was kind of stunned to read his Huffington Post declaration on so-called inter-generational injustice. I thought, “Wow, this guy buys right into the deficit scold mentality without really doing his homework: another leader who should know better is taking his cues straight from the GOP playbook.”
In the piece Sider announces that he is tearing up his AARP card because the AARP isn’t willing to face the deficit music and join in calls to cut Social Security and Medicare. He employs familiar Greedy Geezer rhetoric: how deplorable that seniors are treated so lavishly when our young have it so rough, etc.
I’ve said before in these pages that I’ve had it with the deficit scolds; with the billionaire-financed “austerity for you but not for me” line. Thus, to see a leading “progressive” Christian figure go after what we used to call the social wage was especially distressing to me. Because I am not an expert on the technical stuff, I asked respected economist Dean Baker to comment on, among other things, Sider’s portrayal of our most-prized social insurance programs as Devouring Beasts that must be cut down to size in order for this great republic of ours to sail on in untroubled seas:
more at link
link to blog post to which he is responding:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronald-j-sider/aarp-lobby-social-security-medicare_b_2671577.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
and the AARP, obviously.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronald-j-sider/aarp-lobby-social-security-medicare_b_2671577.html
The AARP definitely has secondary gain in taking the position they have. Changes proposed would hurt their bottom line, imo.
Having said that, I'm not a fan of means testing. There may be a lot of reasons why people with higher incomes can not afford additional costs and it becomes a very slippery slope.
are evidence based. There is a massive amount of unnecessary tests and procedures and way too few protocols. Eliminating this could result in huge savings.
While many clinicians will resist, feeling that their clinical judgement is being dismissed, many will cheer. So much unnecessary testing and procedures are done for CYA purposes. Less fodder for plaintiff's attorneys if a clinician can say they were following an evidence based protocol.
But, as you can see on DU when this gets brought up, there is a general feeling among americans that everything that could possibly be done should be done - sometimes repeatedly - even though there is no evidence to support it.
