Links: "Maid" and working, single moms; sustainable energy; our neighbors in Latin America

Links: "Maid" and working, single moms; sustainable energy; our neighbors in Latin America 

Mnuchin and Pelosi negotiated the bailout, which did not have time for new efforts. The task was to keep the lights on right away by keeping existing plants running.  Build Back Better is the venue for change. We need one or two Republicans to get such a thing passed.

Texas is an example of why localized grids are a bad idea.

Childcare should be funded through employer paid taxes (with credits counting against the tax) and include onsite daycare for both healthy and sick children - as well as clinics for employees. Small firms would purchase services from their office buildings.

Biden's speech also demonstrates the need for accountability against runaway leaders. From what I hear, this is coming sooner than later. Have I mentioned that Oleg Daripaska's homes were raided and that Igor Fruman is pleading guilty (and cooperating) in early December? Trump supporters, especially the pro-lifers, need to realize that by supporting a Putinist and by continuing to do so they are soft on Vlad.

The best thing that Latin America can do is what the U.S. did in 1787, at which time they can tel the U.S. to take a hike.

Small d democracy has no place deciding on individual rights. Justices and judges learn on the job. Look at Souter and O'Connor - and likely Gorsuch. Roberts certainly. In recent history, there have always been 3 factions on the Court of relatively equal strength - progressives, moderate conservatives and the right wing. Like supermajorities in the Senate (especially on Judges), be careful of how you tinker with what mostly works.

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.

Links: Vaccine mandate exemptions; Supreme Court changes; ideology run amok

Links: Vaccine mandate exemptions; Supreme Court changes; ideology run amok 

Trump fanatics believe that he is sent by God to save either the White race or the unborn. We cannot change the minds of the true believers, we can only arrest the violent ones and show Trump to be poor, therefore lacking God's favor.

The problem is not the Court, it's the Senate - which responds to the problems of the House. Open rules for debate in the House will lead to comity in the Senate and no extremists on the Court. God will do the rest. Justices Thomas and Breyer are getting long in tooth. The meme on partisan justices is only half right. On some issues, especially in dissent, less conservative justices (and they are all conservative) strive for justice over law. 

We must balance both - and no, Roe is not going to overturned. The most the Court will do is extend legal protection for those unborn who respond to painful stimuli. Settling second trimester issues ends the debate. Congress should consider how to do it before the Court does. Recognizing it can also ends the debate. Civil rights law is a mess because the Senate is broken and because, unless lotteries are recognized as the best affirmative action, there is no good solution where no one feels cheated.

The biggest question for vaccine hesitancy is whether people who have had the disease can be counted as immune. Those in that boat have suspicions about profiteering by drug companies. The key issue for the moment is that children are no longer immune like they were a year ago. Isolating them was not a good idea. Now they must have the vaccine to be safe.

The Carroll schools incident shows why strong central administration in education is a lousy idea. Let every school have a board made up of people who now serve on the PTA. Smaller scale discussions will stop systemic insanity.

Law schools are a way to make sure Associates can be worked to death because of their educational debt. Like medical residency, doing law is the best way to learn it. Law school politics is training for what happens when older lawyers run for Congress. As for Yale, they need to give Senator Josh Hawley his money back. He seems to have forgotten basic Con-Law.

Florida voting depends on who dies and who moves down to retire. Global warming also has a say in the matter. The state is a good argument for district level voting in the Electoral College, with the two votes for Senators going to whomever wins the popular vote. The South is the reason why an independent judiciary is needed to restrain democracy. It is too easy for elites, like Catholic bishops, to put their moral agendas over the rights of individuals.

I am all for women working, especially in high paying jobs. Whomever makes the least amount should be the stay at home parent /golfer. It is time to escape the bonds of evolution that require men to work. I would hope that Ms. Nooyi does stand up for Build Back Better - as well as the Child Tax Credit's expansion. She, and Biden, should shame the bishops into joining them.

Bill Donohue's criticism of Biden pick for Vatican ambassador shows only his own narrowness

Bill Donohue's criticism of Biden pick for Vatican ambassador shows only his own narrowness 

Bill and company are best ignored, but they are correct on what constitutes being pro-life as their side sees it. Democrats who call themselves pro-life need to be honest on whether they would ban abortion or neither side will trust them (nor should they). It is the role of the ambassador to the Holy See to communicate the views of the United States, not American conservative Catholics. 

It is about time we had an ambassador who will call out the bishops Rome appoints for their partisanship. This is especially the case when a politician is denied Communion for acting in accordance with the Constitution. The word for doing so is sedition. It becomes a diplomatic issue when the seditious person is appointed by a head of government. It is ironic that the objections to Catholicism leveled against Catholics of a prior generation have been realized in conservative bishop's attacks against other Catholics.

'Pro-lifers' make suicide pact with anti-vaxxers

'Pro-lifers' make suicide pact with anti-vaxxers 

It is sad when bishops and the Bioethics Center that they support don't remember the principle of the double effect from their undergraduate ethics classes. That they do this to pander to the Republican Catholics (note word order) is even worse (especially if they do remember their classwork. Then they are truly lying. 

Their vax knowledge is as inaccurate as their biology regarding birth control, which prevents gastrulation - the first point where the soul is present - at least the materialistic soul which prevents entropy and stops at death. I am leery of birth control for economic reasons (including NFP), because the Church needs to bare witness to the economic rights of women and families.

Texas Republicans give Florida Republicans a run for their money on the race to Crazytown.

Links: Palm oil corruption; the blue-collar struggle for social justice

Links: Palm oil corruption; the blue-collar struggle for social justice 

Sadly, palm oil companies are not that much worse than other industries in that part of the world. If they were the worst of the worse, no one would work there. Consumerism drives this. If it were more cooperative, along with cooperative labor, no industry could get away with this stuff. They could also not offshore jobs or use race and sex to divide workers.

Cooperative purchasing and work should also be better for the environment, especially because it should do better urban planning and land use than the free market can. Or government, which responds to disaster more than thinking ahead (especially on water).

The moral clarity of the bloody shirt was great for winning elections. The Dixiecrats have now switched parties, but are still up to their usual tricks. To reiterate, they are the shock troops of capitalism.

The problem with the Bioethics Center is the bishops who support their astroturf. They are the problem, not the solution.

Dignitatis Humanae carried with it not only democracy but the God given nature of individual rights. The Curia and its counter-revolutionary popes did not want to see this. This pope is only beginning to see it and it is the heart of why the Bishops are mistaken when they seek a criminal solution to abortion. The drive to ordain women and let sexual teaching evolve dates from that era, although it took the abuse crisis for us to realize that Medieval ecclesiology is neither necessary or desirable.

Platitudes on wood carving trivializes the self-inflicted wounds of Zionism, which also claims to advance American ideals. Given the treatment of Tribal Nations, they learned the wrong lesson. If anyone is locked out of rights, they are not really inviolate for anyone. This is before we consider abuse of the alien (in their own land) as taught in Torah.

Follow Pope Francis' call to be a listening church — but from a 45-degree angle

Follow Pope Francis' call to be a listening church — but from a 45-degree angle 

I agree with the Pope, especially regarding Catholic business owners. No employee's children should live in poverty. No employee should have to pay for an abortion for their wife, daughter or partner because their pay is too low. Indeed, an argument can be made that there is no excuse for the children of the workers to receive any less than the children of owners. If that is not possible in the firm, then owners must campaign for laws which provide such benefits to his family and those of his or her workers. 

The key in dealing with sin is that you look at your own first, not those of your neighbors or parishioners, which of course is at odds with the paragraph above. What kind of justice does the Church fight for, a God of personal perfection or perfect love of others. One of these produces happiness. If one is in doubt, find a spiritual director. If he is in doubt, ask a she.

This is where the Church must listen and learn. The most profound sexual sins in the Church today are scruples and misogyny. Clergy must examine their own sexuallity before rendering judgement on anyone else's. Much is to be learned, but will the Church listen?