Pope Francis rips capitalism and trickle-down economics to shreds in new policy statement

The pontiff released his Evangelii Gadium, or Joy of the Gospel, attacking capitalism as a form of tyranny and calling on church and political leaders to address the needs of the poor.

“As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems,” the pope said in the 224-page document that essentially serves as his official platform.

Pope Francis said that inequality was the root of social ills, and prayed for world leaders with more empathy and sense of social justice.

“I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor!” Pope Francis wrote. “It is vital that government leaders and financial leaders take heed and broaden their horizons, working to ensure that all citizens have dignified work, education and healthcare.”

The pope has already drawn the ire of some conservative Catholics, particularly in the U.S., for his open-minded comments on social issues such as homosexuality, abortion and contraception, and he’s also previously criticized capitalism for promoting greed.

But his latest statements put those concerns into sharper focus – and puts him in sharp contrast to American conservative leaders who prize the unfettered free market and promote the Randian theory of objectivism, or rational self-interest.

“I am interested only in helping those who are in thrall to an individualistic, indifferent and self-centered mentality to be freed from those unworthy chains and to attain a way of living and thinking which is more humane, noble and fruitful, and which will bring dignity to their presence on this earth,” the pope wrote.

He also launched a broadside against former President Ronald Reagan’s signature economic theory, which continues to serve as conservative Republican dogma.

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“Americans think the system is rigged. They are ready to throw the bums out. They want to know who will be the change. Who understands how hard it is out there for working families, for the young trying to get started, for older workers headed into retirement without a pension or savings. Who is prepared to take on the special interests, the big banks and the corporate tax dodgers? And who stands in the way?”

“If Democrats are to have any shot in 2014, they have no choice but to be the change. They have to be willing to indict an economy that does not work for working people. They have to call out the special interests and the inside deals. They should be lining up fights – to raise the minimum wage, to close tax havens and use the money to rebuild the country and put people to work, to break up the big banks and censure the Justice Department and regulatory agencies that have failed to hold bankers accountable for the epidemic of frauds and fixes that they used to fleece their customers. They’ve got to move on slamming shut the revolving door that undermines any hope of independent government. And they should make it clear in fight after fight that Republicans are standing in the way.”

President Obama’s DreamWorks Economy and the Challenge for Democrats

November 27, 2013

President Obama traveled to Hollywood’s DreamWorks studio to address the economy yesterday.  The speech itself was economical, recycling many of his favorite tropes.  But it revealed the perils Democrats face if they let the president define their agenda and argument over the next months.

Contrary to the current media craze, health care reform isn’t the problem.   Public approval of government, the president, and Democrats has plummeted in the wake of the botched Obamacare launch.  But as the system gets fixed and more and more Americans get access to affordable health care, the foul tempers will calm; the political hemorrhaging will stop.  Supporters may still bear some scars in the 2014 elections but the wounds will have largely healed.

No, the problem is that the president wants to sell this economy.  By next year’s elections, he’ll be in his sixth year and he wants Americans to know that “America has largely fought our way back. We’ve made the tough choices not just to help the economy recovery, but to rebuild it on a new foundation.”

Only Americans aren’t buying:  68% think we are on the wrong track.

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John F. Kennedy’s Vision of Peace

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Rolling Stone

21 November 13

On the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death, his nephew recalls the fallen president’s attempts to halt the war machine.

n November 22nd, 1963, my uncle, president John F. Kennedy, went to Dallas intending to condemn as “nonsense” the right-wing notion that “peace is a sign of weakness.” He meant to argue that the best way to demonstrate American strength was not by using destructive weapons and threats but by being a nation that “practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice,” striving toward peace instead of “aggressive ambitions.” Despite the Cold War rhetoric of his campaign, JFK’s greatest ambition as president was to break the militaristic ideology that has dominated our country since World War II. He told his close friend Ben Bradlee that he wanted the epitaph “He kept the peace,” and said to another friend, William Walton, “I am almost a ‘peace at any price’ president.” Hugh Sidey, a journalist and friend, wrote that the governing aspect of JFK’s leadership was “a total revulsion” of war. Nevertheless, as James W. Douglass argues in his book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, JFK’s presidency would be a continuous struggle with his own military and intelligence agencies, which engaged in incessant schemes to trap him into escalating the Cold War into a hot one. His first major confrontation with the Pentagon, the Bay of Pigs catastrophe, came only three months into his presidency and would set the course for the next 1,000 days.

JFK’s predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had finalized support on March 17th, 1960, for a Cuban invasion by anti-Castro insurgents, but the wily general left its execution to the incoming Kennedy team. From the start, JFK recoiled at the caper’s stench, as CIA Director Allen Dulles has acknowledged, demanding assurances from CIA and Pentagon brass that there was no chance of failure and that there would be no need for U.S. military involvement. Dulles and the generals knowingly lied and gave him those guarantees.

When the invasion failed, JFK refused to order airstrikes against Castro. Realizing he had been drawn into a trap, he told his top aides, David Powers and Kenneth O’Donnell, “They were sure I’d give in to them and send the go-ahead order to the [U.S. Navy aircraft carrier] Essex. They couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong.” JFK was realizing that the CIA posed a monumental threat to American democracy. As the brigade faltered, he told Arthur Schlesinger that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

The next confrontation with the defense and intelligence establishments had already begun as JFK resisted pressure from Eisenhower, the Joint Chiefs and the CIA to prop up the CIA’s puppet government in Laos against the communist Pathet Lao guerrillas. The military wanted 140,000 ground troops, with some officials advocating for nuclear weapons. “If it hadn’t been for Cuba,” JFK told Schlesinger, “we might be about to intervene in Laos. I might have taken this advice seriously.” JFK instead signed a neutrality agreement the following year and was joined by 13 nations, including the Soviet Union.

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Herald-Leader Editorial

Message from Martin County: What’s good for Eastern Kentucky good for U.S.A.

Eastern Kentucky needs a nation that’s committed to economic justice. What we have is identical in Martin County and the U.S.: Great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few while the middle class is hollowed out and those at the bottom watch their opportunities dwindle along with their hope.

November 21, 2013

It’s always been easy to think of Eastern Kentucky as separate and apart from America’s mainstream.

It was true at the turn of the 20th century when John Fox Jr. wrote wildly popular novels about guileless mountaineers.

It was true in 1963 when Harry Caudill wrote of the region’s brutal exploitation in Night Comes to the Cumberlands, the book that launched a War on Poverty.

And it’s true today when we read of poverty’s stubborn persistence 50 years after Night in Herald-Leader reporter John Cheves’ powerful reporting from Martin County.

The temptation is to think of this troubled, yet compelling, place as aberrant and unique — The Other America, as Michael Harrington said in the title of his famous 1962 book about poverty in America.

But the notion of Appalachian exceptionalism has never been reality and is more wrong today than ever.

Far from being an outlier, the region, if anything, is a microcosm of this country and the challenges facing all of America.

Any plan for igniting Eastern Kentucky’s moribund economy will have to be built on principles that would work anywhere: Local ownership; support for entrepreneurs; a healthy, educated workforce; healthy land, clean water, good food; towns and parks where people want to visit, live and invest; accountable, honest government; clean energy, and, as Lexington Mayor Jim Gray often says, an authenticity of place.

By the same token, Eastern Kentucky can never pull itself up in a country where the deck is stacked overwhelmingly in favor of the rich and powerful, where Congress won’t raise the minimum wage to make work a rational alternative to disability, or tax the wealthy to support early childhood programs, first-generation college students or the kind of investment in research and infrastructure that built U.S. prosperity and the middle class.

Eastern Kentucky needs a nation that’s committed to economic justice. What we have is identical in Martin County and the U.S.: Great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few while the middle class is hollowed out and those at the bottom watch their opportunities dwindle along with their hope.

Another common thread will sound like fighting words in coal’s kingdom. The 21st century’s biggest challenge will be making the transition away from fossil fuels to avert a climate catastrophe without strangling economic opportunity.

Since the 1970s, any prosperity in Martin County, limited though it has been, came from coal. The price has been poisoned water, land and, according to a growing body of science, sickened people.

Even without the climate crisis, though, Eastern Kentucky coal has become noncompetitive in the marketplace. Hardly anyone relishes change, but when change is inevitable, the smart look for opportunities.

Corruption, as endemic to Eastern Kentucky as ginseng and gospel hymns, is far from unique to the region. Somehow, though, our despair grows the closer the corruption.

An impoverished place like Martin County steers college scholarships to the children of public school administrators instead of poor kids and seems just plain hopeless. Meanwhile, we tolerate a U.S. tax code that’s a collection of favors for the special interests that finance political candidates.

The fact that the mountains have no corner on corruption does not excuse the plague of grand and petty thievery, cronyism and nepotism.

Eastern Kentucky must clean up its image by eradicating corruption if it is to attract outside private investment or keep its bright young people. Honest competitors will go elsewhere to find a game that’s not fixed.

And, just think, if Eastern Kentucky leads, maybe Congress will take a hint and clean up the tax code.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/11/21/2943945/message-from-martin-county-whats.html#storylink=cpy

Tue Nov 05, 2013 at 07:09 AM PST

I bet you didn’t know this : Most Americans will get Obamacare at their drugstore.

by Pluto

Months ago, the major drugstore chains of the US announced that they were joining with the Federal Government to help their customers around the nation to get signed up for “ObamaScare.” Computer shopping isn’t ubiquitous — and it is merely ONE approach to retail sales. That’s why the Federal Government set up bricks-and-mortar PPACA stores in every neighborhood in America.

I hopped into Walgreens last night and noticed a sign outside offering to get me ACA health insurance. And why wouldn’t they? After all, they receive a commission for doing so, which costs the customer nothing whatsoever. Sounds like a a win-win to me.

Walgreens offers customers a chance to speak to licensed insurance advisors to discuss health insurance plans sold through the state HIXs. They also have their own private online health insurance portal contracted by GoHealth. According their website, tax credits and subsidies are issued there, as well.

Rite Aid announced that it will initially station independent, licensed insurance agents in nearly 2,000 of its 4,600 stores to help uninsured customers sign up for a health insurance plan for the entire six-month enrollment period. The agents will work one-on-one with customers to help them make insurance choices.

Like Rite Aid and Walgreens, CVS Pharmacy is offering Affordable Care Act information in its 7,500 stores and 650 MinuteClinics; it has launched an informational web site, as well. CVS also plans to have health insurance experts answer customer questions in various stores nationwide during the enrollment period. In a recent press release, CVS notes:

Our survey results, based on a sample of over 1,000 respondents, found general awareness of the ACA has increased to 74 percent, up from 57 percent as seen in a similar 2011 CVS Caremark survey. But the new survey found that 36 percent of respondents who are likely to enroll in health exchanges need more information and help in evaluating the insurance exchange process. What’s more, perceptions about cost remain the biggest barrier to the likelihood of enrolling and lack of knowledge could prove costly: Only 48 percent of those who are eligible for a subsidy believe that they are.

“We have a tremendous opportunity to help Americans understand the new health care law and how it affects them so consumers receive the coverage that best fits their families,” said Helena Foulkes, Executive Vice President and Chief Health Care Strategy and Marketing Officer of CVS Caremark.

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