Links for 05/04/16 | National Catholic Reporter

Links for 05/04/16 | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: The Conference needs Blaise Cupich to get a red hat and be elected President - and then clean out the staff - who are complicit in egging on the Republicanization of the Conference.



The Church provides education and social services and the facilities to do this should not pay property taxes.  The sanctuaries can be taxed or not taxed - as long as in the South they don't leave the Catholics taxed and the Baptists exempt because they think the papacy is anti-christ (and they still do).  Rectories and convents, like all residences, should be taxed and the exemption on paying Social Security revoked.  Many religious seniors are poor (as in destitute, not spiritually so) because not paying taxes seemed like a good idea at the time.



Silk is right, but let me add that the GOP is caught in the kind of authoritarian extremism that John Dean warns about in his books, particularly Conservatism without Conscience.



The problem with the developing world is that the nations are too small with too many concentrated elites.  Anglo North America would have been just like modern Africa had it not been for a Constitution that united many smaller polities into a larger union of differing cultures where totalitarianism is that much harder (although we are certainly testing that with Trump).