Must be Jesuits
As my mother used to say, it all depends on whose ox is being gored.
It’ll be interesting to see the response of the local bishop to this. It might result in the loss of their Catholic affiliation, or depending on the level of control the Church has over the hospital, the firing of some executives.
I’m going to hazard a guess that the hospital’s insurance company is driving this particular defense, and the hospital is stuck with the choice of letting them dictate the legal strategy or losing coverage in the case of a judgement against them. Something similar happened during all the child-abuse lawsuits against the archdiocese of Boston a while back, and the catholic church was totally willing to hide behind the “our lawyers made us do it” defense.
Or the “our Protestant/Mormon/Jewish lawyers made us do it” defense…
A pretty good argument can be made, IMO, that anyone who’s actually conservative would have to be a Never Trumper; at least by this point, if maybe not in 2016.
Yup. My brother was ROTC and went into the Army as an officer after college (Dartmouth); upon leaving the service became a business executive; also spent many years as the well-respected chief of his municipality’s volunteer fire department. He’s conservative but also civic-minded, responsible, and decidedly not a fan of a morally bankrupt, bloviating libertine who never takes responsibility for failures.
My state gives you your first 3 months of benefits with few strings attached.
After that, either you’re in a particular set-aside class (“disabled”, “elderly”) or else you have to offer proof that for 40 hours a week you are either a student enrolled full time in an accredited college or training program or you are spending that time looking for employment. Which strikes me as a much better requirement than “sit motionless in a stadium for 8 hours a day”
Another difference is that they actually have some programs to help you comply with the above. There is a limited amount of money to repair a vehicle so a person can get to and from work. There were GED and other educational classes. Classes on how to apply for a job. Two years into the Great Recession those were divided into separate tracks because what someone who had never had steady employment needed and what someone with a 30 year steady work history but unfamilar with how to apply for a job today needed were significantly different. There was also a track where you did “community service” type jobs in return for your benefits.
But, you see, back then the conservatives in this state were actually serious about wanting people to get off welfare and stay off. Not sure how it is today - the assistance I got back then is why I got a full time job and climbed back into the middle class where I make too much money for all that. Which is a good thing. I’m hoping there’s still some sense in our state system and not “the cruelty is the point” meme.
That would certainly be the ideal. Shame most of the country is rushing headlong the other way. Idjits.
I’m occasionally frustrated by some of the conservative and reactionary mindsets in my state but at least so far it’s been mostly adults running the place. I have no idea if that will continue or if the lunatics will take over.
It’s all a bit scary.
“What do we want?”
“MORE FACTORY JOBS!”
“Who do we want it for?”
“SOMEONE ELSE!”
I’d be okay with wanting to bring manufacturing to the domestic market because people in other countries are being exploited.
But the same people trying to force Americans into factories want to abolish OSHA.
I’m not okay with the solution being that we should instead exploit our own people instead.
Lengthy rant that probably belongs in another thread
Americans cannot do anything
My microwave died. So I went out and bought a new one – which was better than the cheap one I had.
Repairing my microwave was simply not an option. No one does that, and if they did, it would cost more than the relatively inexpensive one that I had. We are conditioned to buying a new thing instead of getting old reliable repaired. Because, new thing will be better than old thing.
Manufacturing is about making gobwads of stuff and getting Americans to buy it. Hey, look how much better this year’s model is. We are conditioned to buying new stuff to replace old stuff, because new stuff is always better. So we get buried in stuff.
And, as, amongst others, Jeremy Rifkin noted, stuff owns us just as much as (if not more than) we own stuff.
Craftsmanship is dead. Americans just want stuff (as we are conditioned to) and are not interested in making stuff. The business climate is constructed in a way that prevents individuals from making things and taking responsibility for their durability. We have delegated the creative process to anonymous manufacturers who build things essentially destined for the landfill in the shortest path feasible, with the fashion industry providing the model for us moving on to the next thing as soon as possible.
Honestly, no one really wants to work in a factory, but some of us might be happy to work, at a local level, as craftsmen, making long-lasting things that look nice and make people happy. But, our system is not designed to support such an ethos. As long as this system remains entrenched, we will be little more than consumerist drones, spending money we don’t have, to buy things we don’t want, to impress people we don’t like.
I cannot see the practical way out of this, but this country is desperately fucked up.
It’s New and Improved!
Better than having to get a crappier microwave as a replacement, though.
I, myself, absolutely would like to do this. But I can’t compete with 3rd world labor costs or the expectations of my fellow citizens conditioned to buy cheap crap.
I don’t know what’s in your kitchen, but my microwave doesn’t fit in any of those categories.
Agreed.
If you’re doing all of that then you are buying the wrong appliances.
And who the hell is ever going to see my appliances, anyway? This isn’t our parents’ generation, when people used to have “company” over on a regular basis; I have visitors maybe once per month, and even then it’s almost always close friends or family; the last time someone I don’t like was inside my house was never.
Who is impressed by someone else’s microwave oven?