Showing posts with label Moral deficit disorder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moral deficit disorder. Show all posts

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Health Care impact of Arizona Immigration Law


Today's new issue of *New England Journal of Medicine* (Volume 362, #22,June 3, 2010) includes a letter to the editor: "Arizona Immigration Law and Medical Practice." The author is Lucas Restrepo, M.D., Barrow Neurological Institute,Phoenix, AZ , mailto:lrestrepo@ucla.%20edu.


Here are some excerpts:


[begin excerpts] The new Arizona state immigration bill (SB-1070) signed into law on April 23 will seriously obstruct, if not undermine, the practice of medicine in the state of Arizona. It specifies that those who "conceal, harbor or shield or attempt to conceal, harbor or shield" a foreign person who came to the United States illicitly "are guilty of a class 1 misdemeanor" punishable by affine of at least $1,000 (Sec. 5, Section 13-2929).


It can be argued that health care providers who neglect to report illegal immigrants under their care will violate the law and be considered criminals. The bill provides physicians with no guidance as to what constitutes"reasonable grounds" to suspect that somebody is in the country illegally, leaving the particulars of such scrutiny to any one's imagination (although the fact that Arizona shares a border with Mexico rather than a European country suggests that whites will not be"reasonable" suspects).


One interpretation is that health care providers in Arizona will need to ask for a passport before seeing certain patients (and providers themselves will need to carry their own passports at all times, depending on their physical appearance or accent).


Arizona practitioners, hospitals, and medical associations need to ponder the extent of their liability under the new law and draft clear institutional policies to defend their patients and employees from potential harassment.


This bill threatens one of the oldest traditions of medicine: physicians shall protect patients regardless of nationality or race. This legislation, if unchallenged, will force health care providers to choose between the dignity of their profession and the indignity of violating the law. [end excerpts]

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Moral Deficit Disorder - Immigration is a moral and spiritual issue

It is scary to watch what is going on in Arizona where a whole state makes it illegal for a person to be who they are.

These kind of laws mark the beginning of facism in the United States and will lead to our own version of Kristallnacht.

To have brown skin in Arizona leaves one vulnerable to police scrutiny and intervention, "Show Me Your Papers!!!"

Arizona has become a police state and John McCain is their senatorial representative. Supposing he had become President along with Palin - what would they be turning our county into?

The other scary thing is that according to polls, this law has the support of 51% of Americans who are willing to scapegoat very poor immigrants who do work they will not do in order to give them a sense of power and control over a country which is so misguided it is deteriorating before our very eyes.

The problems we are experiencing as Americans has nothing to do with immigration but rather with immoral foreign wars, capitalism out of control with investment banking, dependence on foreign oil, and materialism which cannot be sustained with global warming and climate change. Like animals we turn on each other rather than face and deal with the real problems. It is a case of the rich and powerful manipulating the weak and poor.

This is a moral and spiritual issue more than a legal and political one. How will we treat our fellow human beings? How will we treat our brothers and sisters on this planet. Jesus was pretty clear about this and the right wing's reponse to this is anything but Christian.

Tom Ashbrook had a great show on May 6,2010 on what's happening in Arizona. It lasts about 45 minutes. It is well worth listening to and you can by clicking here.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

What kind of help does the UU church in Arizona need with this new law?

It appears that the State legislature in Arizona is suffering from Moral Deficit Disorder. Since when do human beings standing on the wrong land become criminal? Didn't God give it to all of us - this planet earth?

The ethnocentrism is frightening and it is a slippery slope to genocide. Do we stop it now or wait until they decide that you too are illegal?

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Is the Pope culpable for sex abuse in the church?

Is the Pope culpable for sex abuse in the church?

I would guess he is. The institution is far more important to the clergy than the people it claims to serve. I have seen this repeatedly in my life. That's why I am a Unitarian Universalist Roman Catholic and not just a Roman Catholic. Jesus would be ashamed of the church which claims to channel Him. There are many examples of the church being morally deficient. It has sometimes apologized for its mistakes in the past after centuries as in the case of Galileo and decades as in the case of anti-semitism against the Jews but only after the stench of hypocrisy has become so strong that the Magisterium has little choice if it is claim any moral credibility at all.

It is interesting that it is the secular authorities which has brought the church to account and not the church itself.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Is the American economy immoral? Moral Deficit disorder on a grand scale

The National Catholic Reporter had an article on its web site on 02/23/10 entitled "The economy's immoral, people are angry. Now what?"

Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple. Remember that? The story is in all four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Jesus wasn't having it.

What about us?

Greed has become the new virtue and the bottom line the new God. How's your stock portfolio doing? Retirement funds gone south?

Well there are people starving and they look at us like Gods.

Something stinks in America and I think it is our values.

30% of lower class people are out of work. Don't believe this 10% figure the corporate media throws around. The upper middle class, people who make $150,000.00 or more, only 3% are out of work.

What's wrong with these facts?

The income distribution inequality has become worse and worse as our government has been turned over to the corporatists from both parties. Can you be a corporatist and a person of God. Increasingly, it doesn't seem so.

Individually we can do some things but it is tough when the system is rigged. The system is immoral and induces good people to do bad things.

Move your money to locally owned banks.

Give 10% of your income to the poor.

Get rid of your credit cards and their usurious interest rates.

Pool your property.

As Robert Fulghum said in his great essay, Everything I learned, I learned in Kindergarten, SHARE.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Is Bernard Kerik suffering from Moral Deficit Disorder?

From the Associated Press:

Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was hailed as a hero after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and nearly became chief of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was sentenced to four years behind bars Thursday for eight felonies.

Kerik admitted in November that he lied to the White House, filed false taxes and committed other crimes.

"The fact that Mr. Kerik would use that event (9/11) for personal gain and aggrandizement is a dark place in the soul for me," said federal Judge Stephen Robinson.


I continue to be flabergasted and scandalized by the morally deficient behavior of high placed officals and politicians. Have politicians and high placed always been so morally deficient or is this a new phenomenon?

The thing especially eggregious about Kerik is that he was the Police Commissioner of New York City and was on track to be the Director of Homeland Security after 9/11. Fear does funny things to citizens. It seems very strange that a person suffering of such a disorder could ascend to such high places and have such power and control over millions of people.

The greed and celebrity culture we currently live in seems to know little about discipline and concern for one's fellow human beings. When people as disturbed as Kerik to rise to such levels of power and control gives one pause.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Deindividuation contributes to moral deficit disorder

I wrote a post on my other blog, Markhams Behavioral Health, about deindividuation and how it contributes to Moral Deficit Disorder. It refers to a study done with kids in the 70s about when they will cheat at Halloween. Check it out by clicking here.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

107 detainees die in ICE custody since 2003, and then ICE keeps it secret

ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, officials have been operating in an immoral manner keeping secret the deaths of 107 detainees since 2003.

During the Cold War we would hear stories of how the KGB and other Eastern Communist countries would scoop people up, incarcerate them, and they would die in custody with no word to their families or friends of what happened to them. Who would think this could happen in the United States Of American, the land of the brave and the home of the free?

Who is reponsible for these deaths? Is it a few bad apples or is it bad management and lack of accountability?

Unitarian Universalists believe in justice, equity, and ocmpassion in human relations something that doesn't seem to be believed in by ICE staff or the United States government which captures human beings and then while in custody they die.

A very moving personal account of one such death is Edwidge Danticat's autobiography, "Brother I'm Dying" which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. Interestingly both the author and her uncle who died in ICE custody are Haitian.

From The New York Times on 01/10/10:

Silence has long shrouded the men and women who die in the nation’s immigration jails. For years, they went uncounted and unnamed in the public record. Even in 2008, when The New York Times obtained and published a federal government list of such deaths, few facts were available about who these people were and how they died.


But behind the scenes, it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.


The documents, obtained over recent months by The Times and the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, concern most of the 107 deaths in detention counted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement since October 2003, after the agency was created within the Department of Homeland Security.

From Democracy Now on 01/13/2010

Monday, January 25, 2010

Close call in electing a man with Moral Deficit Disorder

I liked John Edwards during the Presidential campaign. He seemed like an honest, articulate, up front guy to me. My son, a physician, hated him because he got rich suing doctors. My son and I argued, but, as usual, my son knows more than I do and it turns out my son was right.

What kind of a father denies his own child and the child's mother? You have to be suffering from Moral Deficit Disorder. How then do you aspire to lead a nation in the free world when you are that morally bankrupt that you cannot even manage your own personal relationships in a coherent and moral manner?

It's scary that this man could have become the leader of the free world.

Unitarian Universalists know that human beings are imperfect, but we do value the free and responsible search for truth and meaning and John Edwards was way off course and was throwing others way off course in the most basic and fundamental ways.

The best thing is that he finally, when he has to, is stepping up, admitting his lie and taking some sort of responsibility but I feel terribly sorry for his family and all of us that were mislead and bamboozeled by this very charismatic but morally deficient man.

From NPR web site on January 21, 2009:

"For the first time, John Edwards is publicly admitting that he is indeed the father of a 2-year-old daughter conceived with Rielle Hunter, a campaign videographer with whom he had an affair," The Today Show reports.

In Raleigh, The News & Observer writes that the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee (and 2008 presidential contender) released a statement that says, in part:

"It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter, and hopefully one day, when she understands, she will forgive me."
The newspaper adds that:

The admission comes after more than two years of rumors and tabloid hounding and an investigation into campaign money federal authorities suspect circulated around Edward's mistress. Edwards, former North Carolina senator and failed presidential candidate, has repeatedly denied being Quinn's father since August 2008.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

The moral deficiency of the Roman Church shakes the faith of followers

In the January 15, 2009 issue of Commonweal Magazine, Undertaker Irish Catholic, Thomas Lynch preaches to the bishops which they have had a long time coming.

Any fair, objective observer has known for years that the Roman Catholic Church is morally deficient. This can be concluded from the way they have defended their pedophile priests, sided with militaristic secular powers in their immoral wars, and discriminated against minorities and women for centuries.

Since the time of Constantine, the Roman Church has supported the immoral, oppressive, subjugating exploits of the secular powers with a wink and a nod if not full fledged support, manipulating the faithful to do the bidding of the rich and powerful.

There have been exceptions by courageous souls but they usually have run afoul of the church they love rather than been supported by it.

In my life time, it has been the Berrigan brothers and Dorothy Day, and other brave souls who have struggled to live the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth while the church has gone its merry way oppressing and screwing people over. No condoms in Africa says the Pope dooming millions of people to the HIV virus. No birth control for Americans even though the church is largely disregarded in its teaching on reproductive health perceiving a bunch of old white guys out of touch with marital lust and life.

Thomas Lynch is a wise and articulate man. I have enjoyed his essays and writings for years. His preaching to the Bishops comes at a time when they need preaching to.

Here is part of what Mr. Lynch has to say in his essay:

In Ireland, the shoes of the fishermen are on the other foot. Coincident with the worst flooding in memory, budget woes and recession, and nationwide public-sector strikes, the report of Judge Yvonne Murphy on priestly abuses in the Dublin archdiocese is not so much a reiteration of old news about pedophiles as it is a stark indictment of the up-line of hierarchs who colluded with civil authorities to provide cover and protection for such criminals. Some bishops, it turns out, behaved like “company guys,” obstructing inquiry, hushing complaints, covering the tracks of abusers, protecting the interests of the world’s oldest merger-and-acquisition firm from any whiff of scandal. Their calculated malfeasance has done permanent damage to the faithful and to faithful priests who will spend the rest of their lives trying to repair trusts they never had a hand in breaking. The Murphy Report and the stonewalling from Rome have occasioned calls for the removal of the papal nuncio, for the immediate sacking of bishops (four subsequently resigned), for the removal of public schools from diocesan sponsorship, and for the church to be once and forever disentangled from the civic life of holy Ireland.

Do the bishops of the Roman church suffer from Moral Deficit Disorder? Yes, big time. They would protect their power and the organization and jeopardize the faithful rather than do the right thing. More than the evil which they perpetrate, the evil that spreads due to the hypocrisy is the most offensive and outrageous. Indeed, when you can no longer trust the self proclaimed representatives of God on earth who can you trust?

The fact that the institution is criminal has been found over and over again in secular courts in multiple countries the most recent in the United States and now in Ireland. The civil fines and settlements have bankrupted several dioceses. This is as it should be, but as a former Roman Catholic converted to Unitarian Universalism while these events validate my reasons for a change they still sadden me and leave a huge mountain of shame and anger because this is not how things are suppose to be nor how I was taught they supposedly are.

I have not lost my faith, but I have lost my trust and in that is the beginning of a true spiritual journey.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Does Senator Scott Brown represent the Unitarian Universalists of Massachusetts?

Amnesty International is concerned that President Obama has not closed Guantanamo as promised, is covering up murder there in 2006 saying that three inmates committed suicide when in fact they were killed during torture sessions, and now Senator Scot Brown newly elected from Massachusetts has this to say during his senate campaign:

"Waterboarding is an enhanced interrogation technique; it's not torture."

Scott Brown may suffer from Moral Deficit Disorder if he believes that water boarding is not torture. How a person of good conscience can say such a thing is not understandable to a person with any moral sense.

Unitarian Universalists, like most of the world, do not believe in torture and find it offensive against God's children.

Where are the Unitarian Universalists in Massachusetts who elected such a person to represent them? It seems appalling to me. The main office of the UUA is in Boston which at one time was a Bastian of Unitarianism. What has happened in Massachusetts that their Senatorial representative is so off the moral rails? I would hope that all people of faith would speak up but especially the Unitarian Universalists in the Mecca of Unitarian Universalism.

Of course, I went to the UUA between Christmas and New Year's and it was closed up tighter than a drum when the Senatorial campaign was in full tilt so it appears that the advocate for torture was winning over voters in Massachusetts while UUs were enjoying their vacation and the shop was closed.

Who was it that said that evil prevails when good people do nothing?

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Limbaugh comments on Haiti stir up racial animosity

Rush Limbaugh suffers severely from Moral Deficiency disorder. Another symptom manifested itself as he accused President Obama of taking advantage of the Haiti situation for political gain in the "light skinned and dark skinned black community in this country".

The stirring up of racism is dispicable especially in light of the human suffering in Haiti.

Unitarian Universalists believe in the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. This does not seem to be what Rush Limbaugh values as he stirs up division and racist conflict.

Further Unitarian Universalists believe in the interdependent web of all existence and reconize that advertisers and others who support this kind of bigotry without challenging it, themselves are complicit in the damage it inflicts on our fellow human beings.

Who are the advertisers that support this kind of radio programming in Rochester, NY on WHAM 1180? These advertisers who support this kind of moral pollution in our community do us a real disservice. You might let these advertisers know that you won't support them if they support this kind of programming.

Rev. Pat Robertson says that people of Haiti swore a pact with the deveil

The post below was the first post which I placed on a new blog I started entitled "Moral Deficiency Disorder". I have decided to close that blog and move similar topics to this blog. They will be tagged with the label "moral deficit disorder".

Pat Robertson says that Haiti swore a pact with the devil and so have been cursed.

It is interesting language and metaphor that Robertson uses. Robertson does a grave disservice to people who are suffering from a natural disaster. What kind of a so-called Christian minister, blames the victims for their own suffering?

It is one thing for Rev. Robertson to have this personal view, it is quite another when he influences his own television audience with this racism and bigotry.

Unitarian Universalists believe in the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. The kind of religosity that Pat Robertson preaches which demonizes people is reprehensible from a Unitarian Universalist perspective.

Who are the people that support this televangelism ministry?

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