Forget the 10 Commandments — George Carlin has already downsized those to 2 anyway.  Here’s the 3 Commandments we Americans should adhere to — all Americans should have:

#1) Access to adequate & free medical care, regardless of income level.  Sure, those with money will have access to faster & better care, but that’s capitalism.

#2) Adequate & safe minimum free housing, if they can’t afford it.  Not slums, but decent accommodations.

#3) Free adequate & nutritious food, should they not be able to afford it.  Nobody in America should be starving or malnourished, but it’s happening.

I’m not saying they should live like kings, but they should have safe & adequate medical care, housing & food free of charge to some degree.

If they’re sheltered & working, whether in a rusty trailer, an old apartment, a suburban home or a mansion, they should have access to free basic medical care paid for by our government.  No, it might not performed by the greatest specialists in the world, but it’s adequate medical care & they should be able to get what they need, including any medicine or surgical procedure in a timely manner.

If they NEED shelter, whether working or not, they should have free (if unemployed) or low-cost access (if employed) to at least an apartment or trailer that provides the minimum adequate shelter for their family size, i.e., 2 people per bedroom & 3 people per bath.  I’m not talking about a high-rise condo or a home in your neighborhood (NIMBY, you know), but safe & adequate shelter somewhere, paid for by our government via our taxes, and also subsidized by deleting unnecessary government programs & other political “pork” projects that serve to help no one but the rich & privileged, who don’t need our help at all.  I’ve been a long-time advocate for a bipartisan government agency that is given a mandate to delete a certain portion of Federal spending each year.

If they don’t have food, they should have access to getting free meals when needed.  I’m not saying steak & or a premium vegan menu, just adequate nutritious hot meals 3 times a day.

Why?  Because we’re all in the same boat.  We’re all human, and we’re all Americans.  We all have compassion in our minds, but we seem to oppress it as much as possible.  “Hmmm”, as The Church Lady might have once said: What would Jesus do?

How do we pay for all this?  Simple — downsize the overblown military starting first with their ridiculous defense spending (we have more military spending than the next 10 kazillion countries combined) & their overblown worldwide presence (we don’t need air bases in many of these places we have them, including many in America); cut out all the “political pork” programs we subsidize annually (mostly hidden inside of bills that have nothing to do with them); heavily raise taxes on the wealthy & on corporations & remove their tax breaks that limit that tax; nail the large estates (I say that’s those over $2 million) with a hefty estate tax & disallow all the breaks they use to get out of it; levy a small flat minimum tax on all religions (I know — separation of church & state, but I can dream, can’t I?); eliminate the subsidies & expenditures we make for people & programs that obviously don’t need it (we have a National Helium Reserve that’s costed us billions that they’ve been trying to delete for appx 20 years now with no luck); and eliminate all those gov’t agencies that employ people with overblown salaries who do pretty much next to nothing but live off the gov’t teat, the same teat they don’t want the poor to partake upon.  And a final salvo the GOP-ers will like — pay the Earned Income Credit in 12 monthly checks instead of a big check they simply blow once a year — look at all the interest the gov’t will make floating it for a year.

After all, isn’t all of this what Jesus would do?  Funny how the right-wing chooses which of Jesus’ teachings to adhere to.  Of course, that assumes he really existed in the first place.  If he did, how come The Jerusalem Times (of that day) had all kinds of contemporary news reports & special editorials about all the other figures of history in that time, yet nothing about Jesus until 40 years after he allegedly died?  That’s a whole other blog entry.