DL Open Thread: Saturday, Feb. 25, 2023
Northern Idaho: The Home Of Christian Nationalism? I’m jiggy wid it. They can have northern Idaho:
North Idaho has long been known for its hyperlibertarians, apocalyptic “preppers” and white supremacist groups who have retreated to the region’s sweeping frozen lakes and wild forests to await the collapse of American society, when they’ll assert control over what remains.
But in recent years, the state’s existing separatists have been joined by conservatives fleeing bluer Western states, opportunistic faith leaders, real estate developers and, most recently, those opposed to coronavirus restrictions and vaccines. Though few arrived carrying Christian nationalist banners, many have quickly adopted aspects of the ideology to advance conservative causes and seek strength in unity.
The origin of North Idaho’s relationship with contemporary Christian nationalism can be traced to a 2011 blog post published by survivalist author James Wesley, Rawles (the comma is his addition). Titled “The American Redoubt — Move to the Mountain States,” Rawles’s 4,000-word treatise called on conservative followers to pursue “exit strategies” from liberal states and move to “safe havens” in the American Northwest — specifically Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and eastern sections of Oregon and Washington. He dubbed the imagined region the “American Redoubt” and listed Christianity as a pillar of his society-to-be.
Anti-Science/Anti-Vaxx Ex-Senator Admits It: He Retired Due To Long-Term COVID:
For the first time in 36 years, Jim Inhofe does not have “Congressman” or “Senator” in front of his name. Nor do any of the appellations — “mayor,” “state senator,” “state representative,” “candidate” — by which he has been known for most of the past 57 years still apply.
The man whose political career spanned nearly six decades has indeed retired, at least from elected office. At 88, Inhofe says he intends to remain involved in politics but admits to still suffering the long-term effects of COVID-19. It is the reason, he said, he left the Senate.
“Five or six others have (long COVID), but I’m the only one who admits it,” Inhofe said during a recent interview.
Report: All Extremist Killings In US In 2022 Linked To Right-Wing Nut Jobs:
The number of US mass killings linked to extremism over the past decade was at least three times higher than the total from any other 10-year period since the 1970s, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League.
The report, provided to The Associated Press ahead of its public release Thursday, also found that all extremist killings identified in 2022 were linked to right-wing extremism, with an especially high number linked to white supremacy. They include a racist mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that left 10 Black shoppers dead and a mass shooting that killed five people at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that we live in an age of extremist mass killings,” the report from the group’s Center on Extremism says.
‘Health Care Sharing Ministries’. Can you say ‘yet another religious scam’? Totally free from regulation:
Liberty is what’s known as a health care sharing ministry, a nonprofit alternative to medical insurance rooted in Christian principles. Hundreds of thousands of people rely on such organizations for basic health coverage. They promise no red tape, lower costs and compassion for the sick. Although Martin wasn’t religious, she found comfort in Liberty’s pledge to “carry one another’s burdens.”
What Martin didn’t know when she joined Liberty was that she was sending her money to members of a family with a long and well-documented history of fraud.
For generations, members of the Beers family of Canton, Ohio, have used Christian faith to sell health coverage to more than a hundred thousand people like Martin. Instead they delivered pain, debt and financial ruin, according to an investigation by ProPublica based on leaked internal documents, land records, court files and interviews. They have done this not once but twice and have faced few consequences.
Patriarch Daniel J. Beers, 60, lies at the center of the family network. He was a leading figure in a scheme in the 1990s involving a health care sharing ministry that fraudulently siphoned tens of millions of dollars from members, court records show. Two decades later, he played a key role in building Liberty into one of the nation’s largest sharing ministries, several of the nonprofit’s current and former employees told ProPublica.
Four years after its launch in 2014, the ministry enrolled members in almost every state and collected $300 million in annual revenue. Liberty used the money to pay at least $140 million to businesses owned and operated by Beers family members and friends over a seven-year period, the investigation found. The family then funneled the money through a network of shell companies to buy a private airline in Ohio, more than $20 million in real estate holdings and scores of other businesses, including a winery in Oregon that they turned into a marijuana farm. The family calls this collection of enterprises “the conglomerate.”
Wonder if any of those shell companies are incorporated in Delaware.
Despite abundant evidence of fraud, much of it detailed in court records and law enforcement files obtained by ProPublica, members of the Beers family have flourished in the health care industry and have never been prevented from running a nonprofit. Instead, the family’s long and lucrative history illustrates how health care sharing ministries thrive in a regulatory no man’s land where state insurance commissioners are barred from investigating, federal agencies turn a blind eye and law enforcement settles for paltry civil settlements.
This is some great reporting by Pro Publica. Read it.
“The Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out, The Worms Play Pinochle On Your Snout”. The greenest way to recycle your lifeless body?:
As interest in alternatives rises, startups aiming to disrupt these practices are gaining steam. New York in January became the sixth state in the US to legalize human composting, also known as “natural organic reduction,” which uses heat and oxygen to speed up the microbial process that converts bodies into soil.
The growth in demand comes in part due to Covid-19, experts say. The pandemic brought death to the forefront of the public consciousness and exposed concerns about its environmental destruction, as places like Los Angeles had to suspend air pollution rules to allow an influx of bodies to be processed.
Human composters are pitching themselves as part of the solution—and trying to dismantle the funeral industry in the process. The potential to alter an age-old practice has brought together former Silicon Valley types, celebrity investors and mission-driven entrepreneurs as interested in lofty green goals as they are in changing our relationship to death.
‘Human composters’. Huh.
Scott Walker Claims ‘Disability’ In DUI Case. “Hey, I’m an alcoholic. Therefore, I can’t be held responsible for driving while drunk”:
Scott Walker, a longtime political candidate who’s well-known for his homemade political signs along Delaware roadways, is arguing in a federal lawsuit that his alcoholism classifies him as disabled and that he should not have been cited with drunken driving by Milford police.
Walker argues in his 47-page complaint that because of his disability, police should have heeded his request to be left alone in order to sober up after being found semi-nude and sleeping behind the wheel of his running car in a restaurant drive-thru. Having not followed his request, Milford police violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, he claims.
Hello, is this mic on? Unless somebody else drove Walker to the drive-thru and left him there, he drove there while snockered. That’s a DUI in my book. Joe Louis Walker puts it best:
What do you want to talk about?
Yep! Idaho is a magnet for the ultra far right, and while I may not be jiggy with it prefer to see the Nazi clustered in one place. As for the Creeps for Christ of the “healthcare ministry” believe it’s safe to say no Atheists got suckered, although a great many “believers” apparently did. As for human composting if it derails America’s incredibly expensive “Funeral Industry” I’m all for it. That and I’ll be dead and who gives a good god damn.
Those Christian Healthshare programs are such trash. Both John Oliver and Sam Bee did expose episodes about them.
We take them at our office because they basically turn into cash patients, but I always hope those people don’t end up in the hospital because they’ll go bankrupt from bills.
Oh Jesus fucking christ! That Christian Healthshare story. Just remove the tax exempt status from Churches for fucksake.
Inhofe even lied about this. Tim Kaine announced last August that he had long Covid. Asked if Congress was addressing this, Inhofe told Politico, “I have other priorities. We’re handling all we can right now,” adding that long Covid is “not that well defined” and arguing that “there’s no way to determine how many people are affected.”
I could be charitable and chalk it up to his age and long Covid-damaged brain, but I won’t.