Links for 5/14/20

Links for 5/14/20
The Flynn saga needs to end, unless Flynn comes clean on what Pence knew and when he knew it. He won't, because no one has asked the question.

Donahue, like Arroyo, is best ignored as a blowhard. Still, in this case, Dolan was simply being gracious, in the same way that Francis is gracious in celebrating Mass at St. John Paul's tomb.

Biden needs to keep his powder dry on the VP nod. If Pence is pushed out, she is essential to counteract Pence in the Midwest. If Trump survives the Mazars disclosures, anyone but Warren is a good running mate (she would scare the never-Trumpers).

The main issue on birth control for workers is that, because federal funds are at issue, it violates the establish clause to give religious employers power over their workers. Free exercise does not mean the right to control the behavior of others. The Church has never liked liked the result in Griswold v. Connecticut. Tough - it's the law.

That the Vatican can fire a bishop demonstrates that bishops are employees and Rome is liable for all judgments against the American Church on child or seminarian abuse. It either needs to let the people and clergy elect them or bankroll the damages.

Many misunderstand the 3/5ths compromise as an attempt to limit slavery, not treat slaves as less than people. How to distribute electoral power remains a tendentious issue. Republican politics post Obama has become so overtly racist as to be indecent. Reactionaries tend to hold onto power by moral and ethnic populism. It is a feature, not a flaw.The Revolution, it was a mercantilist enterprise and objectors to slavery, the Quakers, helped the British because of it. The industrial revolution and the invention of the cotton gin (both by Eli Whitney) made slaves of us all - including children. The battle against workers, this time migrants, continues to this day. Slavery is still an apt word.

A Marxian analysis is not out of place, nor is noting that Lincoln's commitment to workers rights falls within that rubric. He was certainly progressive and, yes, he did correspond with Marx, The Republican Party of Lincoln mostly held onto power through T.R. It even resorted to military power to hold its gains. After defeating Johnson, a Union General was made President. Lenin could not have done it better. The Taft capitalists ended up capturing it, just as the Neo-Liberals have captured the Democrats).

On Reparations, it was all the rage for states to apologize for slavery only a decade ago - including and especially Virginia. The challenge of reparations is to take the support of children out of welfare and make it a middle-class right (and to raise the minimum wage). In other words, put Catholic social teaching into practice.