Aging Index: A Wake-Up Call for Policymakers - TheFiscalTimes.com by Michael Hodin
The answer is more kids and possibly higher taxes, rather than lower benefits. That expands GDP in the long term, so that in concert with more technical productivity, makes longer retirement - and indeed - younger retirement - more affordable.
Another piece of the long term sustainability puzzle is the development of self-sustaining environments with food production facilities. If people could grow much of their own food hydproponically, they could spend down their savings less quickly (and receive lower pensions where those still exist) - keeping active in retirement without taking a job away from younger workers. Indeed, as retirees age, they might even provide shelter and a job to younger workers so that they can assit them in growing their food while learning how to run a hydroponic house. This would be the perfect part time job for a young family or couple to take while still in training for a primary career.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
What Tucson Doesn't Mean | National Catholic Reporter
What Tucson Doesn't Mean National Catholic Reporter by Michael Sean Winters.
There is definitely reason to politicize this tragedy, but not regarding the political discourse. Instead, this should open the conversation about how poorly we fund services to the mentally ill (giving them Medicaid does not help if doctors won't take it) and how hard it is to confine them when they refuse treatment or relapse within it.
This guy should not only not have had a gun, he should not have been walking around at-large. His college should have not only been able to insist he go, but alert the authorities so that he was both evaluated and treated.
How the mentally ill are treated in the criminal justice system should be changed. Obviously deranged killers (through either addiction, alcoholism or mental illness) should be able to plead Guilty By Reason of Insanity and be confined to at least the minimum treatment for the crime committed or until safe, whichever comes last. In the present example, the period would be for six counts of voluntary manslaughter with some leeway as to whether they should be consecutive or concurrent.
There is definitely reason to politicize this tragedy, but not regarding the political discourse. Instead, this should open the conversation about how poorly we fund services to the mentally ill (giving them Medicaid does not help if doctors won't take it) and how hard it is to confine them when they refuse treatment or relapse within it.
This guy should not only not have had a gun, he should not have been walking around at-large. His college should have not only been able to insist he go, but alert the authorities so that he was both evaluated and treated.
How the mentally ill are treated in the criminal justice system should be changed. Obviously deranged killers (through either addiction, alcoholism or mental illness) should be able to plead Guilty By Reason of Insanity and be confined to at least the minimum treatment for the crime committed or until safe, whichever comes last. In the present example, the period would be for six counts of voluntary manslaughter with some leeway as to whether they should be consecutive or concurrent.
Dolan, Abortion & NOW | National Catholic Reporter
Dolan, Abortion & NOW National Catholic Reporter by Michael Sean Winter
It is good A/B Dolan is taking this step - but he needs to take one step farther and give free tuition to any teenage couple in a family way at both the high school and college level and make sure their living and day care expenses are met as well.
He should also pay families in his employ a living wage, meaning that if someone has a child, they get a $1000 per month raise to cover expenses (if not more, given housing prices in NYC). He should also lobby for tax policy so that the state and the fed each kick in $500 per month per child.
As for Roe being unjust - yes and no. It was surely unfortunate, but under the constitutional rules for who has protection and how they should get it, the ruling was absolutely just. Who is a person is a matter of federal jurisdiction, not state and until someone is a person, their interests are not to be considered in public policy (that's privacy). A constitutional amendment is not needed to do this, however caution is.
One cannot begin life at conception - or even gastrulation - and not consider what would happen to society if each person were given equal access to justice after that point (meaning that abortion would not be punished as a medical misdomeanor but as a felony with all concerned - including mothers - subject to punishment and that all failed pregnancies would be subject to some type of investigation - including natural miscarriage - as well as tort action - thereby denying care for anyone who has a pregnancy until the danger of miscarriage is passed (at the behest of insurers). An adult policy would take the paranthetical issues into consideration. It is not up to pro-choice Catholic politicians to come up with work-arounds and until the pro-life side does, pro-choice pols get a free ride.
As for NOW, they are pretty much pro-abortion - however, unless they had a draft of his speech, they protested because they expected the worst. It would take both the economic measures I mentioned previously, the ordination of women and a rethinking of how crisis pregnancies are dealt with - like in Phoenix and Brazil where the child has no chance of living and therefore no right to life - for them to stop their opposition to Church policy.
It is good A/B Dolan is taking this step - but he needs to take one step farther and give free tuition to any teenage couple in a family way at both the high school and college level and make sure their living and day care expenses are met as well.
He should also pay families in his employ a living wage, meaning that if someone has a child, they get a $1000 per month raise to cover expenses (if not more, given housing prices in NYC). He should also lobby for tax policy so that the state and the fed each kick in $500 per month per child.
As for Roe being unjust - yes and no. It was surely unfortunate, but under the constitutional rules for who has protection and how they should get it, the ruling was absolutely just. Who is a person is a matter of federal jurisdiction, not state and until someone is a person, their interests are not to be considered in public policy (that's privacy). A constitutional amendment is not needed to do this, however caution is.
One cannot begin life at conception - or even gastrulation - and not consider what would happen to society if each person were given equal access to justice after that point (meaning that abortion would not be punished as a medical misdomeanor but as a felony with all concerned - including mothers - subject to punishment and that all failed pregnancies would be subject to some type of investigation - including natural miscarriage - as well as tort action - thereby denying care for anyone who has a pregnancy until the danger of miscarriage is passed (at the behest of insurers). An adult policy would take the paranthetical issues into consideration. It is not up to pro-choice Catholic politicians to come up with work-arounds and until the pro-life side does, pro-choice pols get a free ride.
As for NOW, they are pretty much pro-abortion - however, unless they had a draft of his speech, they protested because they expected the worst. It would take both the economic measures I mentioned previously, the ordination of women and a rethinking of how crisis pregnancies are dealt with - like in Phoenix and Brazil where the child has no chance of living and therefore no right to life - for them to stop their opposition to Church policy.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
St. Joseph’s Hospital: A phoenix in the desert | National Catholic Reporter
St. Joseph’s Hospital: A phoenix in the desert | National Catholic Reporter
While the Bishop directed that the Eucharist be removed, a little reporting is warranted as to whether this has, in fact, occurred. I would hope that it is being reserved somewhere clandestinely in the same way that the archbishop who confirmed me, Nick Elko, would sneak the Eucharist through Kremlin Square when he was the Catholic Archbishop of Moscow or when he said Mass in the Gulag - and yes, I am equating Olmsted with Stalin.
While the Bishop directed that the Eucharist be removed, a little reporting is warranted as to whether this has, in fact, occurred. I would hope that it is being reserved somewhere clandestinely in the same way that the archbishop who confirmed me, Nick Elko, would sneak the Eucharist through Kremlin Square when he was the Catholic Archbishop of Moscow or when he said Mass in the Gulag - and yes, I am equating Olmsted with Stalin.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
The uniqueness of Jesus | National Catholic Reporter
The uniqueness of Jesus National Catholic Reporter
Father is smart to publicly ignore the USCCB and Rome as long as possible. No good can come from poking them with a stick.
I like what he says about Jesus as a man of faith. Indeed, Man of Faith is one of his titles. My take on it is that the way Jesus found out about his identity as Son of God was through the Scriptures rather than some mental hotline to the Divine. While he was filled with the Spirit, as the man of faith, he had to do the head work for himself.
As to his mental anguish on the cross, I suspect it to be entirely authentic and not at all hopeful. If one reads all four Gospels, one can come to the truth. Just prior to this moment, in John, he gives the care of his mother over to his beloved disciple (rather than telling this disciple to carry on his mission). In other words, he cuts himself off from the source of his divinity - his virgin birth (whose recollections also must have informed him of his divine nature). He also cuts off his mission.
Doing these things likely fills him with the anguish he needs to authentically call out to God in despair. The fact that this despair is the essence of salvation can be demostrated by his drinking of the fruit of the vine at this next moment after the statement "I thirst." If drinking the vinegar falls into the promise that he wait to do so until he is in his Father's kingdom, then it must already be fulfilled, even before his death. The alternative is that the whole of Christianity is a sham, for he indeed drink the fruit of the vine before he died, although he refused it when first crucified.
Father is smart to publicly ignore the USCCB and Rome as long as possible. No good can come from poking them with a stick.
I like what he says about Jesus as a man of faith. Indeed, Man of Faith is one of his titles. My take on it is that the way Jesus found out about his identity as Son of God was through the Scriptures rather than some mental hotline to the Divine. While he was filled with the Spirit, as the man of faith, he had to do the head work for himself.
As to his mental anguish on the cross, I suspect it to be entirely authentic and not at all hopeful. If one reads all four Gospels, one can come to the truth. Just prior to this moment, in John, he gives the care of his mother over to his beloved disciple (rather than telling this disciple to carry on his mission). In other words, he cuts himself off from the source of his divinity - his virgin birth (whose recollections also must have informed him of his divine nature). He also cuts off his mission.
Doing these things likely fills him with the anguish he needs to authentically call out to God in despair. The fact that this despair is the essence of salvation can be demostrated by his drinking of the fruit of the vine at this next moment after the statement "I thirst." If drinking the vinegar falls into the promise that he wait to do so until he is in his Father's kingdom, then it must already be fulfilled, even before his death. The alternative is that the whole of Christianity is a sham, for he indeed drink the fruit of the vine before he died, although he refused it when first crucified.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
No direct abortion at Phoenix hospital, theologian says | National Catholic Reporter
No direct abortion at Phoenix hospital, theologian says National Catholic Reporter By Jerry Filteau
Since no process was afforded to Sr. Margaret, whether or not she is excommunicate is between her, God and her confessor. If the bishop wants real penalties, he must afford her the full process of canon law for direct excommunication and risk being told by experts that he is wrong. If he does that, then he may have to take the issue of calumny to his confessor.
Since no process was afforded to Sr. Margaret, whether or not she is excommunicate is between her, God and her confessor. If the bishop wants real penalties, he must afford her the full process of canon law for direct excommunication and risk being told by experts that he is wrong. If he does that, then he may have to take the issue of calumny to his confessor.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
About Condoms
It is being reported that the Vatican is saying that it is better to use condoms than to infect someone with HIV and kill them. I'm glad they are finally saying it - many of us have been thinking it since the mid-1980s. Among many, Michael Sean Winters writes about this in the National Catholic Reporter.
The birth control conversation, however, is not just about preventing disease. This Pope is taking the conversation on contraception back to where it should be and away from the absolutism where it has previously lived. More importantly, Caritas in Veritate emphasized how birth control is a capitulation to economic reality that no Catholic family need take. Economic reality must bend to procreation, not the other way around. The Church must always stand with the poor and their freedom to grow their families without starving, whether in the developing world or the Catholic middle class.
This is where I part company with the advocates of natural family planning, who seem to have no such qualms about telling families not to have more kids, but just by doing it the culturally approved Catholic way. Natural family planning should never be encouraged for economic reasons (that is a cop out to economic power) - it should only be used for health reasons - and I suspect if you make this leap, one can more easily see that the same motiviations make artificial birth control a less frightening moral concept - particularly in cases where another pregnancy could be deadly for the mother.
The birth control conversation, however, is not just about preventing disease. This Pope is taking the conversation on contraception back to where it should be and away from the absolutism where it has previously lived. More importantly, Caritas in Veritate emphasized how birth control is a capitulation to economic reality that no Catholic family need take. Economic reality must bend to procreation, not the other way around. The Church must always stand with the poor and their freedom to grow their families without starving, whether in the developing world or the Catholic middle class.
This is where I part company with the advocates of natural family planning, who seem to have no such qualms about telling families not to have more kids, but just by doing it the culturally approved Catholic way. Natural family planning should never be encouraged for economic reasons (that is a cop out to economic power) - it should only be used for health reasons - and I suspect if you make this leap, one can more easily see that the same motiviations make artificial birth control a less frightening moral concept - particularly in cases where another pregnancy could be deadly for the mother.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)