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Tag Archives: Federal Government

The Price of Prejudice

27 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by ts4jc in About Me, General Christian issues, General Transsexual issues

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acceptance, Barry Goldwater, Bible, black Christians, Cassius Clay, Christian salvation, Christian upbringing, Christianity, Civil Rights, Civil Rights Act of 1964, coercion, conservative, de facto segregation, Deep South, Elijah Muhammad, enemy, Federal Government, gays in the military, George Will, hypocrisy, Jane Austen, Jerry Falwell, John 14:6, Judeo-Christian principles, judgment, justice, LGBT, liberty, limited government, love of Christ, Matthew 23:13, Muhammad Ali, name change, Nation of Islam, Orlando, Pat Robertson, Phoenix, prejudice, Pride, Pride and Prejudice, Pride Month, pro-choice, racism, Ravi Zacharias, religious right, Sandra Day O'Connor, segregated bathrooms, Social Justice, stumbling block, Sunni, transgender Christians, transgender discrimination, Walt Kelly, woe

One of the most beloved novels of all time is Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”.  The two main characters in this novel are able to come together in a loving relationship only after one of them overcomes internal pride and the other overcomes internal prejudice.  Clearly both pride and prejudice, if left unchecked, would have had a cost: the loss of love.

The pride talked about by the title and the character’s initial point of view relate to the type of pride that is viewed in Judeo-Christian principles as sinful.  It is the opposite of humility and equated with arrogance, haughtiness, disdain and thinking more highly of oneself than is justified (conceit).  The Bible warns us that this type of pride precedes a fall.

It is not the same as the pride that one feels for the genuine accomplishments of their children, their team, their group or their country.  It also includes self-respect and a sense that one is a deserving of respect as anyone else.  While pride in the first definition comes from a sense of selfish superiority, in the latter definition it is an assertion of equality.

June has become known as Pride Month for members of the LGBT+ coalition.  Ideally, it should celebrate the second sense of pride: equality, not superiority.  And recently in Orlando, we saw the price of Pride in the massive loss of life and injury to members of the LGBT+ coalition as a result of hatred and violence.  As oppressed and marginalized members of society, it is a price we have paid many times.  Orlando happened to be one of the steeper prices.

That said, I will now turn to the main thrust of the article: the price of prejudice.  In doing so, I will turn from the death of many by violence to the death of one by age and infirmity.

Muhammad Ali was one of the most recognizable people in the world during most of his life.  His fame far transcended the world of sports.  To many he was a champion, not just in the boxing ring but in the arena of civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War movement.  To others, he was the epitome of the arrogant pride described previously.

A major source of Ali’s controversial image was religion.  The most symbolic example of this was his change from his birth name of Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.  (I had not yet reached my teen years when Ali changed his name.  I certainly am far more appreciative of the reasons and significance for it now.)

In childhood, Ali was brought up in a home that was neither Muslim or irreligious.  He was brought up in a Christian home.  His father was Methodist and his mother was Baptist.

Ali didn’t convert to any old religion.  He joined Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam.  Without getting into the details of their beliefs, one of the greatest attractions of the movement to black people was its promise of a decisive answer to the systemic racism experienced by Blacks in the United States.

Similarly, the existence of racism in the life of Malcolm X and his reaction to it was a significant influence in leading Malcolm to convert from being known for his anti-religious stance to becoming a member of the Nation of Islam.  This is clearly seen in “The Autobiography of Malcom X” (which is, followed by Alan Paton’s “Cry the Beloved Country”, the most significant book I have read in terms of shaping my attitude towards civil rights and social justice and in opposition to racism).

The incidents of racism in the life of Muhammad Ali, including during his formative years, are also well-documented.  It is hard to imagine that racism was not the primary incubator that led Ali to begin to regularly attend Nation of Islam meetings and eventually become a member.  Furthermore eleven years later, Ali, like his mentor Malcom X, eventually broke with the Nation of Islam and converted to mainstream Sunni Islam.  He also developed an interest in the Islamic practice of Sufism in later life.  Therefore, we have multiple indications of Ali’s religious development, none of which ever brought him back to Christianity.

Only God knows the fate of Muhammad Ali’s eternal soul.  But two things related to this blog post are abundantly clear in Christian theology:

  • Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (from John 14:6)
  • Not everyone will be saved, but woe be it to those who put a stumbling block in the way of another person’s salvation.

No one is perfect and we shall have things for which to answer to God.  Those Christians who contributed to the system of racism in this country and elsewhere in the world, if they have not repented of those sins, will have to answer for that.

Racial segregation and other forms of racial prejudice are illegal in the United States in just about every situation of public accommodation, although de facto segregation still occurs.  But now we see the issue of unfounded prejudice rising up against transgender people.  Sadly, once again some Christians are not only part of this prejudice, they are at the forefront of it.  Sadder still are some black Christians who are championing the efforts to discriminate against transgender people.  Have they so soon forgotten the lies told about them and the reasons why the races needed to be separatedSegregated bathrooms?  And have they so soon forgotten that in many locations, while the white bathrooms were gendered, the black (aka Negro or Colored bathrooms as they were called in those days) were not?

Tell us, black Christian leaders of anti-transgender forces, what horrible things were black men doing to black women in those bathrooms?  (Yes, that was a rhetorical question meant to show absurdity and accuse people only of hypocrisy.)

Woe to you Christians who tell yourselves that your sins aren’t so bad, and justify yourselves that at least you aren’t wicked perverts like these transgender people.  What will you do when the judgment by which you judged transgender people is meted out to you?  What will you do when you are called to account for putting a stumbling block in the way of transgender people, turning them away from Christ?

I am amazed with joy when I meet another transgender person who is a Christian.  My respect for them is profound.  I know that their faith has stood tests that Christians in some foreign countries face, but most Christians in the U.S. could never conceive of.  It takes great spiritual strength to continue to trust in the Lord when you are told repeatedly that you are forsaken by God, given over to Satan, sinful, perverted, wicked and condemned to Hell.

I have been blessed to find a local, evangelical church with overwhelming acceptance of me by those who know about my transgender circumstance.  The transgender Christians who have reached out to me have not been nearly as fortunate.  What I do, I do for the glory of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  But I also do it so that other transgender Christians may soon receive the same acceptance I have received.  And I do it so that other transgender people may learn that Christ loves them, too.

An ending to this blog post was elusive.  Then I happened across something about another controversial figure from the mid-1960’s: Barry Goldwater.  As I watched a couple of videos and read some background information, I knew his POV would tie things altogether.

Senator Goldwater was known as the leader of the Conservative movement in the United States.  George Will once remarked after Ronald Reagan’s defeat of Jimmy Carter that it took 16 years to count the votes from 1964 and Goldwater won.

But did you know the following about Goldwater?

  • He was pro-choice.
  • He favored gays serving in the U.S. military, noting that gays had served honorably as soldiers dating back at least to the time of Julius Caesar. His remarks indicated that he only cared if you shot straight, not whether or not you were straight.
  • In his later years, he supported full civil rights for gays.
  • He decried the rise to power of the religious right in the 1980’s. He identified as a person with Christian values and was known as an honest person of firm principles.  But he opposed the political attitude of this group of conservatives who required total agreement and acted as if they were speaking for God.  He was against Pat Robertson’s political campaigns and when Jerry Falwell said that “Every good Christian should be concerned” about the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court, Goldwater replied that “Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”  (It was noted by those present that reporters had used “ass” in place of a more sensitive part of the anatomy.)
  • He found himself increasingly at odds with the conservative wing of the Republican Party, labeling them as “extremists”. A few years before he died, he claimed they hurt the GOP more than the Democrats had and forbade them from associating his name with anything they did.  In 1996, he noted with irony to Republican Presidential candidate, Bob Dole, that the two of them were now the liberals of the party.
  • His reputation on civil rights for Blacks has been dominated by his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the timing of which coincided with his campaign for President, giving it high visibility. What many don’t know is that he desegregated the Arizona Air National Guard two years before the President Truman did the same with the U.S. Military (a move which Goldwater had urged).  He also voted for every piece of federal civil rights legislation during his time in the U.S. Senate until the 1964 Act and he had voted for the original Senate version of the 1964 Act.  He opposed the final version of the 1964 Act on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, giving power to the Federal Government (and taking away power given to the states by the Constitution) that was not provided for in the Constitution.  It was that firmness of principle that I mentioned previously, but based on American law, not on a self-proclaimed pipeline from God.

Goldwater’s opposition to the final version of the 1964 Act is rooted in the same quarrel that he had with both liberal Democrats and the Religious Right.  Goldwater as a staunch defender of liberty and justice was opposed to any form of coercion, whether it was from the government or from Christian clergy and organized groups of the religious right.  This leads us to another high price for prejudice.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”  That quote (or one of its variants) didn’t originate with Barry Goldwater.  But he used it during his 1964 campaign and lived by it.

As a young man, Goldwater took over running the family business, the eponymous department store which was the largest in Phoenix.  He didn’t practice racial discrimination in business and his experience in Phoenix was that much of the desegregation of that city occurred because where moral force was insufficient, enlightened self-interest worked.  Other business owners saw that desegregation and civil rights was good for business.  Allowing black people equal access to jobs increased the consumer base and disposable income.

Based on Goldwater’s philosophy, I believe that he would not have supported laws and lawsuits against small businesses that refused to provide cakes, flowers or photographs for same-sex weddings.  He would have encouraged competing businesses to embrace such customers and be rewarded with increased sales.

He believed that enlightened self-interest would eventually bring about civil rights for black people even in the Deep South.  But there were two things he either failed to consider or didn’t weigh highly enough to change his thinking. The first is the vagueness of “eventually”.  In the places where discrimination against Blacks ran deepest, “eventually” appeared to be a long way off and black people had run out of patience.  Between Supreme Court decisions, strikes, sit-ins, freedom riders and the occasional use of Federal troops, civil rights momentum was building.  While Black leaders of the day appreciated Goldwater’s honesty and sincere belief in his philosophy, they saw the adoption of his policies as a roadblock to that momentum.  Black people had waited long enough, even 100 years since the end of the Civil War, for eventually to become today.

Furthermore, moral force and enlightened self-interest might work in a climate where there would be at least a modicum of fairness in the system to begin with.  Black leaders knew that the climate in the Deep South did not include even a smidgen of fairness to their people, let alone a modicum.  What chance does moral force and enlightened self-interest have when black people are systematically disenfranchised, the courts are prejudiced against them, the police are prejudiced against them, and white business people that buck the system are intimidated with fires, bombs and burning crosses?

Another price of prejudice is that when discrimination becomes so pervasive in a section of the country, it motivates groups to urge the Federal government to step in and take over.  An example of the law of unintended consequences, the very thing that is brought in to protect the freedom and rights of people can eventually expand through initially benign actions to become a source of tyranny that oppresses people.  Think about this year’s presidential election.  Whether you oppose either or both major party presumptive candidates becoming President, is not one of your fears that this person will be in charge of such a powerful apparatus?

When it comes to the price of prejudice, cartoonist Walt Kelly described it well (even though he used it in different contexts) when he wrote, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. – Matthew 23:13

Ravi Zacharias: Made in God’s image >>> Love thy neighbor

God bless,

Lois

My Ongoing Obamacare Nightmare

04 Sunday May 2014

Posted by ts4jc in About Me

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ACA, application, bureaucracy, bureaucrat, Federal Government, government, Health Insurance Exchange, income tax return, incompetence, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, Medicaid, net income, New York State, nightmare, Obamacare, Obamacare nightmare, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, privacy issues, proof of income, self-employed, self-employment income, Social Security Administration, Tax return (United States), United States, verification of income

Back in November, one of my clients asked for help with his Obamacare application.  Like me, he is both a New York resident and has self-employment income.  It would be a good learning experience for me, as I would be putting in my own application soon.  I found the New York health exchange easy to use, living up to the early reviews that it was far superior to the severely flawed Federal website.  It was very responsive each time we clicked on a link and soon we had a completed application except for the choice of plan.

A few weeks later in early December, I confidently ventured onto the same site for my own application.  Once again, entering personal data was quick and easy.  Then it came time to answer the income question: did I expect my 2014 income to be the same as in 2012?  And here was where the nightmare began.

When my client reached this question, he answered “yes”.  Apparently this government agency has access to your 2012 income tax return, but hey, no privacy concern there, right?  Anyway, that answer bypassed a number of additional steps and questions, as I was to find out.

My answer to this question was “no”.  While I did have a net loss of clients in 2013 (some related to my transition and some not) and some associated loss of income, the major reason for a decrease in income was that I had a project in 2011 for which I was able to charge about twenty times my usual average fee.  Three-quarters of my fee had been paid in 2012.  It is highly unlikely that this type of work will come my way again.

To be expected, I was taken to pages on the site to provide my estimated 2014 income.  Unexpectedly, this was where things started to fall apart.

First of all, it did not want to take my income as a self-employed individual.  I found I was only able to enter it if I said that I was an employee of my own company.  A further complication came because it was insisting that I provide data for my last three months of income and expenses.  As a tax preparer, providing my income and expenses for September-November would have vastly understated my net income.  There seemed to be no understanding that some people have seasonal businesses.

But the biggest problem of all was that the site kept timing out on me and returning me to an earlier screen.  I type rapidly and had all the information at my fingertips.  There was no significant delay in my data entry that should have caused this error.

Admitting defeat, I reluctantly called their help line number.  Soon, I was speaking to a capable agent who was more than willing to enter the information that I gave her.  In minutes, I felt vindicated.  She was getting the same time out problems.  Soon, we reached a point (about our fourth or fifth try), where she said that we would try it one more time and if it didn’t work she was going to call tech support.

For some reason, this time it worked.  It was like the Dilbert cartoon where the pointy-haired boss is telling Dilbert that he keeps clicking on a link and it doesn’t work.  Just as Dilbert starts to quote the line that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, the boss clicks again and it works.

So now all the income and expense data is entered.  At this point, she tells me that we cannot proceed any further as they want verification of the financial information I just provided.  Thinking quickly, I ask her what will be acceptable as verification.  I know this might be a problem as my business income comes in the form of about 80 checks a year from almost the same number of individuals.  None of them are required to issue me a 1099.  And there is little reason for me to incur the cost of a separate business bank account, so I don’t have one.

She replies that this is outside of her area, but that in about 7-10 business days, I should receive an e-mail providing this information.  Unfortunately, I received no such e-mail and that time frame took me to December 23, the original deadline by which you had to have completed your application to be covered by January 1 (which they magnanimously extended one day).  There was no way I was getting through on the phone then.

So I called back between Christmas and New Year’s Day.  This time, I got an all too familiar government bureaucrat bozo.  When I asked what I could use as verification of my income and expenses, he replied to my amazement, “We don’t tell you what to send.”

Keep in mind that I worked for HUD for three years, a local housing authority for four years, and then was a stock broker for over twenty years which meant that my activities ultimately came under regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Federal Government (and I had to know those regulations to pass my licensing exam).  And for the past twenty-five years, I have dealt with the IRS, the NY State Department of Taxation and Finance, and New York’s counterparts in a few other states in my work as a paid tax preparer.  Finally, as part of my transition, I needed to know Social Security Administration and NY Department of Motor Vehicles verification requirements.  Never has there been a time when there were not clear regulations on what could be used as verification of statements made on an application.

Even so, I had no basis on which to argue with this agent.  So I am trying to figure out what I can use as verification.  Making a spreadsheet of my income and expenses would have been easy.  But I dismissed it as self-serving.  Anyone could type numbers and descriptions into Excel without a shred of truth in it.

What followed was Kafkaesque with a touch of Seinfeld plot line.  The results were as poor as could be expected under such circumstances.

There was only one way that came to mind as to how I could verify my income in 2013 as being less than in 2012: bank statements.  My bank statements for each year would show that the deposits in 2013 were less than in 2012 (by the differential I had stated in my application).  I was able to download monthly bank statements online from my bank account in a format that was acceptable for uploading to my Obamacare application.

However, there were three problems with this method.  The first was the amount of documents I would need to send.  My bank’s website did not provide a filter so I could retrieve only the deposits.  So I had to upload the entire bank statement.  Twenty-four months’ worth of bank statements at three pages each would mean a lot of pages for some bureaucrat to review.

The second problem was directly related to my transition.  Knowing who I might be dealing with, I wanted to make it as foolproof as possible.  The name on the account in 2012 did not match the name in 2013.  I could not count on the reviewer noting that the account number did not change.  So I uploaded a cover letter with an explanation and also uploaded my name change documents.  Now some reviewer has an awful lot of information about me.  I could just see him or her calling over another reviewer: “Get a load of this person’s application!”

Finally, there is the fact that deposits show income but not expenses.  And while 99% of my deposits are business-related, many of the expenses are for personal items.  I explained that the expenses are independent of income and are basically the same from year to year.  Since the expenses are approximately the same in 2013 as in 2012 (which information they already had), the deposit differential is essentially the same as my decrease in net income.

I was able to upload all this in the first week of January.  And then I waited, and waited and waited some more for the great State of New York to reply.

Knowing I would be getting much busier over the next two and a half months, I called back at the end of January.  I figured that four weeks was enough time to expect my information to have been reviewed.  This time, the person on the other end of the phone was very competent in her job.

She noted the large number of documents that I had uploaded and said it would take a few minutes before they would all be available.  While we waited, I was able to ask her a few questions about Medicaid and how it worked.  Finally, she told me that she was able to see on her screen that they were in the process of reviewing my documents, which means they should be finished soon.

And soon they were: the documentation I supplied was not considered sufficient proof of my self-employment income.  When I received a hard copy of this notice, it came with a document that set forth all the acceptable means of verifying any statement you might make on your application: the very information I was unable to receive a month earlier.  They wanted more hard proof, not just my statement that expenses were unchanged.

So I did something that I hadn’t done for at least 30 years (since becoming self-employed made my tax return more complicated), if ever.  I was preparing my own tax return at the beginning of February instead of working on my clients’ returns.  And as soon as I learned that my e-filed return had been accepted by the IRS, on February 11, I submitted my entire, five page, 2013 Federal Income Tax return as my most up to date proof of my income and expenses.  And I sent a copy of the proof that my e-filed return had been accepted).

I went back to the waiting game.  Around March 18, I called.  It was another trip to Bozoland.  First, he told me that they hadn’t even started reviewing my latest submission.  Okay, there’s nothing he could do about that.  But then he made the most ridiculous statement.  I mentioned the irony that I would have qualified for Medicaid using the income on my 2012 return.  (I was told this by the competent agent on my previous call.)  His response?  He actually told me that you don’t apply for Medicaid through the website that I was calling about!  Since the client I had helped months earlier had his Medicaid benefit card by now, I knew this was patently absurd.

By the time April 15 came and went, I still had not heard anything.  As it turned out, my health care nightmare was only beginning.

Praise God that for those of us who are in Christ, we are only sojourners here and we have a better country to look forward to.

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. – Revelation 22:1-2

God bless,

Lois

Related articles
  • Morning Bell: Obamacare, Simplified
  • IRS will retroactively bill you for your Obamacare subsidies if your income rises
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