Pope Francis targets 'post-truth' media and culture in speech to social movements

Pope Francis targets 'post-truth' media and culture in speech to social movements 

The key to speaking with moral clarity is speaking in humility. Francis does that well. It is not only in the imitation of Christ, but also of the Father - or Abba. The Divinity needs nothing from us. They are whole and complete and perfectly loving and happy. Their entire concern is our welfare - as such, it is humanist. Morality must be humanist. Economy must be humanist. Humanism implies equality, so that the children of workers and the children of executives have equal opportunities, services, decent housing, security and food. 

In a way, consumerism is not bad because it gives workers a better life than poverty. It is a gilded cage. Consumer economies are not revolutionary economies. Even China knows that in its authoritarian state capitalism. For the revolution to occur, there must be unity. Division by race or morals is the tool of the economically powerful to divide the workers. Even vaccine hesitancy is proded by NewsCorp (Fox News), oddly under the banner of fighting big PhARMA profiteering.

Militarize policing, including misuse of Border Control Agents under the prior regime was designed to be divisive. Calls to defund the police and fund community organizing are not helpful, however. They are mocked, even by MSW, as wokeness (which is the new way to denigrate social equality). The option to muscular policing is medical intervention and mental healthcare. This must include options for robust custodial care, plus its funding. 

Immediate danger is too weak a standard. Likely danger must be the standard for release from care. Additionally, criminals who were impaired, feeding an addiction or mentally ill should be allowed to plea guilty by reason of insanity, to be committed for care for their minimum sentence and until successful treatment, whichever is longer.

Social division is why we have never been able to achieve socialism at the ballot box. Social Democracy is also a gilded cage. It has limited shop floor democracy and allocates social goods and often profits, but true ownership is denied to workers and CEOs still expect some level of obedience.

Capitalism in production, consumption and finance needs to be replaced with cooperation - not by government entities but by a transition to ownership. Shifting employer taxes from profit to all value added with all revenue going to child subsidies, childcare and healthcare. Firms could either pay the tax or provide the funds and services to employees - who would also be paid a higher minimum wage. 

Shifting ownership is possible by taxing asset transactions including dividend, interest payments, rent at distribution or receipt (capital income) or capital gains. Value taxed will be marked to market at IPO, option exercise, short sale and the first sale after inheritance, donation or gift. The tax would be zero rated for sales to a qualified broad-based Employee Stock Ownership Plan or Cooperative (which is an ESOP with everyone having one vote and additional property interest in the form of preferred shares).

Cooperatives and ESOPs would force CEOs and middle management to bid in open auction, with the bottom two bidders standing for election - aka a free market. They would provide payroll lines of credit for consumer purchases and mortgages. Cash would be replaced with standard labor hour based currency. Consumers would control the means of consumption - with make-buy decisions on each type of product or service, including education, health, housing, clothing, food and vacation travel and lodging.

In the interim, or as some would say, back to reality, the Holy Father must get cooperation from the bishops in supporting the family support and educational provisions of the Build Back Better Act. It is a pro-life measure and should be scored as such. The pro-life movement would rather not have such subsidies, which they feel would not be needed if abortion were criminalized. This shows their true colors - because they do not want to reward sexuality. In other words, they really do want to control women's bodies.

Trumpian Truth is supported by the pro-life movement because he and McConnell delivered judges, especially on the Circuit Courts. Cases that should have been ruled under precedents are being heard by the Supreme Court so that they must hear the case (or rule per Curiam) to reverse these judges.

Trump himself is headed for jail due to his support from and of Vladimir Putin. Yesterday's raids of Oleg Daripaska's residences indicate where the case against Trump is headed. The question is, at what point will supporters, especially Catholics, realize that supporting Trump means being soft on Putin. My guess is fairly quickly. Igor Fruman pleads guilty in early December. He is the lynch pin of the money flow between Putin, Trump, his Super PAC and those members of Congress and the Senate who took Trump money.