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Explore the latent response of philosophy and philosophy to the global economic arena.
Early posts include the study of heresies in the early church and the problems of Liberalism and Raw Capitalism in our times
Ray Tapajna news and issues networks Flat World of Globalism running on flat tires
The end must correspond with the means
Our economic lives and our time spent at work should be a continuous spiritual pursuit. Dividing the two is dualism where we are told we have to face the real world in our business and work day. If we believe in God and say we want to follow His teaching on earth, we need to remold social and economic structures based on justice, human dignity and in co-operation of the working classes. The Capital system is not doing this in our times. Workers have no voice in the process and of free trade and globalization. We are regressing into the age of the Robber Barons.
Too many people of good will are ignoring the suffering of workers. They do not question what others have to do to provide them with the things they use and consume. They hide from the fact that many impoverished workers and even child labor make and grow what they consume. We live in a world where only a few can make a living as a farmer. We live in a world where workers can not afford to buy the things they make. This is not only wrong but impractical. As the Bible says, "Do unto others as you would have them do to you." is not only spiritual but practical.
We need to know and live the part we play in God's plan. The Occupation Wall Street movement is here. It is real and it is growing across the world.
It is a vast movement and is still in the process of defining itself. Christians and people of good will should be a part of it because it basically boils down to the fact that workers do not have any voice in their destiny in the work world. When good people ignore the suffering others, ugly things follow.
Our major news channels do not take on the voice of the people . They speak for elite powerful groupings who want to control the flow of wealth. We need journalists who will sort out the facts and print it. Our unemployment rate is fiction. Our labor force is shrinking even though our population is growing. Only about 38 percent of all workers in the U.S. qualify for unemployment insurance. This means there are more then 60 percent of all workers living is some sort of economic limbo. They are missing in action from any kind of real reporting .
A person making only about 100 dollars a month is considered employed. Many are forced to make it in the underground economy. On garbage collection day, many sort through the garbage on the street looking for something they can sell and this has become a common practice.
There is a vast pool of educated Christians who do not have a job. This is why the Occupy Wall Street movement will continue for a long time.
Economic Sins of Omission
Jacque Maritain, one of the last great philosopher in our times, says Christianity becomes dormant when Christians isolate themselves to a conservative stance. They say let each man do his work where he is placed,
without concerning himself about the rest and all will go well. There a
lot of human virtue and dignity in such an attitude. Many conservative journalists portray this in their writings. However, this also leads to routine, stoic thinking and even negligence. The social gospel of our church is a very
demonstrative activist model. We should be acting out the story of the Good Samaritan from the Bible. In the Catholic Church we have Pope Leo's Rerum Novarum encyclical on work and ownership. It stood the test of time for more than a hundred years and led the way for workers to unite and seek a middle class living in production work. Good Conservatives attacked unions. There was plenty of issues that needed to be reformed but just when many minorities were entering the middle class as union members, unfair economic practices took them out. Too many people of good will are ignoring the suffering of those who lost everything due to free trade and globalization.
It is not enough for them to rest upon structures of existing civilizations because they have a good and proper social foundation. The world is now paying for this conservative approach. Too many are now outside looking in as what is supposed to be. The way it was is gone. Liberal Capitalism has capture us. It is raw Capitalism that no longer resembles what it was. What we have has led to egoism and truly sins of omission. The current
Republican crop of politicians confirms this. Pope John Paul said
workers are not tools of Capitalism. The two major presidential candidates don not care. And this is what the Occupy Wall Street movement is all about people who do care. It is about too good people saying " I got mine. Why don't your have yours." The close their eyes and ears to the suffering of others. They live off the working poor class in our country and a vast underclass overseas who are making the things we use. It is more about people of good will who call themselves Conservatives committing sins of omissions. All of us have to open our eyes and ears to what is really happening and not isolate ourselves behind closed doors. We can not say "I got mine. Why don't you have yours." We need to find out why we lost the way we were and the the way it was.
Today, we have Conservatives who foster Liberal Capitalism and Liberals like President Obama who bailed out big money, married them to big government and created a new kind of State Capitalism. No matter who does it , it is still a trickle down economy that will not work.
Ray Tapajna Today Super-Links Network
Congressman and church are both blind to the core issues of the impoverished.
The Catholic bishops sent letters to Congress saying Congressman Paul Ryan's budget passed by the House, "fails to meet" the moral criteria of the church. They emphasize the disproportional cuts in essential services to the poor and talk about shared sacrifice.
The problem goes much deeper than that. It is surrounds the problems of
our times with the value of workers and labor being degraded and deflated.
It is happening in a time when workers dignity is being ignored and where
even the business schools in Catholic colleges ignore the teaching of
business ethics. The problem even goes deeper than that. The covenant between worker and owners as noted in the teachings of Rerum Novarum has been broken. Workers have an ownership of their labor and free trade has come and stole their ownership away from them. Workers have been put on a global trading block to compete with one another for the same jobs with the lowest common denominator being wage slave and child
labor. How can anyone talk about equity of distribution of wealth when this
is happening. Free trade is a new wage slave trade. In the U.S., a new working poor class has replaced the middle class. The balance in our
economy has been lost. There is not enough money to pay the bills.
I hear people talk about keeping the Sunday holy but few talk about what
happens on Monday when the workday starts. The church parking lot on
Sundays is full of automobiles made in part by impoverished workers who
work around the clock for pennies per hour. Nothing good will happen until
we all identify what went wrong and why.
The matter of economic equity debate should start there. The core problem
is not how much money is paid out be it taxes or the cost of government services, but it is a more of a matter of how much money comes in. With the value of workers and labor being deflated, we lost an economic balance. There is an endless pool of workers in the world who will work for practically nothing to survive. If this is the balancing point, then everything else flows to the bottom like water automatically seeking it lowest level. Workers now are forced to shop their way out of their jobs. They are forced to live off
the suffering of others.
This also translate to purchasing power. If I have to spend time to make a major decision in buying a $100 computer item that once was took the same
amount of time and judgement to buy a $1000 computer item, something is very wrong with the whole economic system.
The globalist free traders like Congressman Ryan, Mitt Romney and President Obama will never make things match up. The free traders follow economic patterns where the value of workers keeps going down. This is the real value that pays the toll for government services and the power to shop for some thing at a higher price. If our free trader economists rest on deflation of labor, then not much good will follow who shares any sacrifice. If our free trader economists say the trade deficit is just an economic statistic, how can we expect anything more than what is happening now. It is a race to the bottom.
Both sides to the question of social justice are blind to the core problems
of our times. You can not pay Peter by robbing Paul. It never worked and never will. It is all about value added economies in as local of setting as possible in balanced geopolitical settings. It is about the common good.
--
Ray Tapajna
tapsearch@fastmail.net
Ray Tapajna Real World News
Our major newspaper in Ohio USA, provides a service rating the facts in given issues as presented by a political leader or some other major person or reporting agency.
It is called Politifact Ohio. It is really about re-directing the truth instead of fact finding.
Rating facts or is it Re-directing the main issue.
The Politifact ratings as being true or false or in between may be a dis-service when the core of an issue is passed over by conclusions that hide the real core factors behind an issue.
Recently, our top newspaper, reported about President Obama trade deals which limited the core issue on the matter. They do this frequently. They do it by ignoring the starting point of an issue and make assumptions about
the authority as being in order when they are not.
The recent Politifact Ohio shows how deep we have sunk into the free trade lies. Nothing matches up with real trade. Free trade is a scam. It has very little to do with trade as historically practiced and defined. Still services like Politifact assume it is real trading when it is really about moving production from place to place for the sake of cheaper labor. In a proper order of things, you would think the reporting process would start with a judging what free trade really is today and go from there. Politifact also assumes international organizations like the WTO have the proper credentials to control the flow of wealth related to trade. They never ask where did the WTO get the right to do what they do. It is obvious, they were granted their power by elite groupings outside of any democratic process. Just for this reason alone, any conclusion by the WTO should be wide open for discussion and not automatically assumed organizations like this have a rightful authority.
Politifact Ohio should be ashamed of themselves for the part they are
playing in the free trade scam. Politifact seems to be an agent for these lies. The Plain Dealer, the top newspaper in Ohio , seems to be just another agent for these lies . The newspaper is openly a globalist free trade agent. The issues of free trade are for the most part left out of any real political debate even though it is the major cause behind our economic crisis and represents a broken covenant between workers and employers. It covers the fact that workers have ownership of their labor and are not commodities to be traded on a global block for the sake of cheaper labor.
I fought to the end for the last micro computer made in the USA. I thought the people would wake up to the real facts and the press would report about
the greatest betrayal of workers in history. They did not . Whole technology and component manufacturing was moved outside of the USA. I witnessed the closing of thousands of big and small computer ventures with more than a millions workers in the computer industry losing their jobs. It was an economic massacre and the press practiced a new kind of yellow journalism by untelling the story of this economic carnage.
Free Trade would have never passed if it had to be ratified by a popular vote in a real democratic process.
To describe the latest happenings about President Obama bringing trade
cases to the WTO is like kicking a dead horse over and over again. And in the process of Politifact reporting, the WTO is automatically accepted as a power to control events when they never received the right to do this in any democratic process. Free trade itself was forced upon the American people. It is obvious free trade would never have passed if it had to be ratified by a popular vote.
The real facts are hidden behind this masquerade. President Clinton
gifted all our technology to China in the 1990s. On top of this the U.S. moved
production to other lands. When this happens the technology blueprints automatically follow along. Clinton and the Globalist Free Traders gave away what took decades of computer generations to obtain. On top of this, if Politifact really want to get into the facts, they should first find out that many computer products still have to be smuggled into China. The gray market may be bigger than the reported one.
Ray Tapajna Tapsearch Com Networks Tapart News online since 1998
Free Trade makes no sense and it is immoral.
It is an assault on human dignity in the workday
Why Free Trade won't work and is counterproductive
First of all, free trade does not make any sense and it is indeed immoral
Free trade is a failure because it is not really based on trade.
It is based on moving production from place to place based on the cheapest labor markets. With more than a billion workers in the world who are willing to work for practically nothing to survive, it becomes a senseless race to the bottom with poverty and suffering being the lowest common denominator.
Free trade also has negatively affected all business models. It includes a reckless manipulation of values that are counter productive. We now have a mix of state capitalism with economies based on making money on money instead of making things. It has created chaos in a very confused free enterprise system where the term free market includes isolating competition
and creating global monopolies in the process.
Workers are the real commodities being traded. They are being traded as human being on a world trading block to compete with each other for the same jobs down to the lowest levels of wage slave and even child workers. It locks in an impoverished working class. This makes free trade an immoral process. It blinds our consciences as we get hooked on what looks like cheaper prices at the check out counter. However, with the natural flow
of the free enterprise economics being interrupted, we will never know what the best prices could have been if a real free market was in place. We do know that the value of workers and labor has been deflated and degraded with this value being a better money standard than all the current money standards being used. If you cut the value of workers in half, there is automatically a 50 percent decrease in what workers can afford to buy.
In America and elsewhere in the world a new working poor class has replaced the working middle class. Just think of all the money values that were lost this way.
Even in my computer business during the 1970s etc, I was able to spend more than a thousand dollars for a copier and have a service contract. Just this one purchase alone, added several levels of added value from the raw material up through about five and seven levels to the retail end user level. And also created jobs in the service sectors.
With free trade, I no longer can afford to buy a item like this. I have a copier that cost only about 150 dollars new and it is now broke with the service charge to get it fixed higher than the price of the machine itself. This example applies to most everything we use now. Also in the 1970s etc., I had customers and clients who could easily purchased 5,000 dollars or more of components etc. with just an ok by an purchasing agent.Today you have to have a top executive to approve a 500 dollar purchase.
In the end, all we have left are throw away products and throw away workers.
Even worst, no one knows anymore what a proper business model is because in the free trade era, governments subsidize companies and bail out big companies and big money interests. It is no longer possible to know who really has a good business model. State governments have paid foreign manufacturers to build their assembly plants in the U.S. and then due to this they pay for other companies to stay in the U.S. Taxpayers pay the toll even if these companies outsource their labor needs and send more jobs
outside the country.
President Obama found out after he bailed out big money while ignoring the suffering of workers, there are no longer any sound business models to create. He subsidized green products like solar energy. After most of all the ventures failed, he retaliated by proposing tariffs on Chinese solar companies for underselling the market. He ignored the fact that the same process has been going on for a very long time. This was just a typical event in the free trade process.
President Obama and all the past three globalist free trader presidents should know this confirms what is basically an inherent problem with free trade. There will always be someone who will work for less and companies who will find ways to beat the system. There will be always
companies who will sell under costs to grab market share until their money runs out. And there is always the money changers who are willing to make money no matter what.
At the other end of things there are inherent tariffs at the check out counter.
With most of the money spent at retail quickly fanning out to the places where the products are made in other countries, it does not stay here
to recycle our economy. Governments then have to find ways to fill the
voids. They put taxes on purchases which in effect are inherent tariffs. When
President Bush and President Obama bailed out the stock market and the banks while subsidizing big manufacturers, they in essence put a tariff on future generations.
The globalist free traders are finding out that you trying to make money on
money instead of making things has created an economic disaster. Still, they try to hide this fact bailing out big money and putting them back in charge of a failed process. It is also a failure of human reason to seek the common good for all.
By Ray Tapajna preface to Thomas Palaima about warfare Globalism breeds False Crusades and Black Knights ( free to copy this article to your blogs )
What happens when wars go on too long and a culture of death takes over
Having troops under the siege of war too long takes its toll.
There was a brief period right after World War 2, with many believing there would never be another limited war. It was too dangerous with the atom bomb being the trump card. However as time went by, the U.S. jumped into the Korean War and then went into Vietnam. We should have learned the repercussion of prolonged warfare back then but did not.
We now have unjust wars, undeclared wars and contract armies. We have
urban and guerrilla warfare with no cautions about how many innocent people are killed. Pres Bush used the National Guard in his first strikes which seldom happen in any other wars. The National Guard needs months of training to change into combatant soldiers with many never being able
to make the transfer. The National Guard is trained to have a defensive mindset and not an offensive one. How can they deal with an enemy that uses human bombs in war. There are not many ways to control this type of warfare.
History vividly demonstrates that the Middle East remains the same no matter what army comes and goes. Going into the Middle East is a never ending war until you leave as the crusaders did centuries ago.
If this keeps up, Americans will see their daughters and granddaughters drafted. When a society has their women killing people, this signals the end of that society. It is the wife and mother in history that told the man to stop it and come back home. There is a great movie about the thirty years war related to this titled THE LAST VALLEY starring Michael Caine and Omar Sharif. Another great movie about the horror of wars is SAVIOR , 1998, with brilliant acting by Dennis Quaid. It is about the Balkan wars and how there are no good guys in wars with war making you do something you never knew you would do. Before talking about the right for a nation to defend itself, watch these two movies and then recall how our recent wars were one sided preemptive wars.
Here is a good article about what happens when wars last too long by Tom Palaima
"Shootings in Afghanistan have roots in our history"
Reference
If you live long enough, one sure fact of life is that history will repeat itself and pose questions about who we are and try to be as civilized human beings. Earlier this month, in southern Afghanistan, a 38-year-old U.S. sergeant with the 3rd Stryker, Brigade Combat Team, a veteran of three tours of duty in Iraq, slipped off base and into two villages and killed at least 16 fellow human beings in three homes. Among the dead were nine children and three women. He set 11 bodies on fire. He apparently acted alone and surrendered upon returning to his base. Reactions bring a sense of déjà vu to anyone familiar with the wars American soldiers have fought in the past 50 years. Even guarded official responses are in their own ways sincere
and true.
A mother is reported to have opened the flowered blanket in which her 2-year-old daughter's dead body was wrapped and asked, "Was this child
Taliban?" Of course, she wasn't. The woman's daughter's death is unholy. It offends our moral and religious codes, our deep-rooted instincts to protect the young and innocent.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the killings were "acts of terror and unforgivable." Of course, they look like acts of terror to people who know firsthand what terrible acts terrorists commit. Forgiveness should be sought from the hearts of those who loved the victims.
President Barack Obama issued a statement that mostly rings true, "This incident is tragic and shocking, and does not represent the exceptional
character of our military and the respect that the people of the United States has for the people of Afghanistan." Of course, mass killing of defenseless innocents by an experienced soldier is beyond tragedy.
There is no question that American soldiers are well-trained and learn rules of engagement to follow even in environments where the enemy is hard to identify. Most Americans do not lack respect for the people of Afghanistan, even if few of us have personal ties with Afghans or can even locate their country on a map. The deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, declared, "I cannot explain the motivation behind such callous acts." He probably cannot. But I bet he could begin a list of factors that would lead an experienced soldier, a married father of two, to
do what he did on that morning. Online, opinions are varied and less guarded, as we also might expect. Many see the killings as understandable, though not condonable - a product of the stresses our volunteer soldiers now face in the formally undeclared wars we are now fighting. They point out that our soldiers serve too many tours of duty and that veteran suicides have reached record rates. They call for us to pull our troops out of Afghanistan and not send them anywhere else. They wonder how soldiers operating under constant strain can hold themselves together while overseas and return as psychologically healthy human beings.
One spouse of a Special Forces veteran writes eloquently that this kind of brutal murder "is not what (Special Forces) soldiers are trained to do. The Special Forces code is 'free the oppressed' and that is what they are trying to do. The danger that they put themselves in to bring freedom for these people."
Indeed, Obama stresses, "In no way is this representative of the enormous sacrifices that our men and women have made in Afghanistan." Finally, Obama was asked point-blank whether this incident in Afghanistan was comparable to the My Lai massacre that took place, uncannily, five calendar days later, March 16, 1968. He dismissed the comparison, saying in Afghanistan "you had a lone gunman who acted on his own." But we should
remember that, controversially, only Lt. William J. Calley was convicted on the charge that he did "with premeditation murder Oriental human beings,
whose names and sex are unknown, by shooting them with a rifle." Yet more than 500 women, children and old men were killed on that single day.
Seymour Hersh, who won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking the My Lai story in November 1969, will deliver a public lecture on Thursday at the University of Texas.
Make an effort to come to listen to what he thinks about the history he has lived through and sees now. History, unfortunately, will just not go away.
Palaima is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin:
tpalaima@sbcglobal.net.
Learn more
Seymour Hersh speaks at 7 p.m. Thursday at UT's
AT&T conference center. Information:
Reference Events
Addendum
The initial charge against Calley as reported by Mr. Hersh was as reported here with the total number dead adding up to 109.
In the event, Calley was charged with four specifications alleging premeditated murder in violation of Article 118 of Uniform Code of
Military Justice:
Article. 118. Murder
Any person subject to this chapter who without justification or excuse, unlawfully kills a human being when he-- 1) has a premeditated design to kill; 2) intends to kill or inflict great bodily harm; 3) is engaged in an act which is inherently dangerous to others and evinces a wanton disregard of human life; or 4) is engaged in perpetration or attempted perpetration of burglary, sodomy, rape, robbery, or aggravated arson; is guilty of murder, and shall suffer such punishment as a court-martial trial may direct.
The specifications:
Specification 1: In that First Lieutenant William
L. Calley, Jr. ...did, at My Lai 4, Quang Ngai Province, Republic of South Viet-Nam, on or about 16 March 1968, with premeditation, murder an unknown number, not less than thirty, Oriental human beings, males and females of various ages, whose names are unknown, occupants of the village of My Lai 4, by means of shooting them with a
rifle.
Specification 2: In that First Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr...did, at My Lai 4, Quang Ngai Province, Republic of South Viet-Nam, on or about 16 March 1968, with premeditation, murder an unknown number, not less than seventy, Oriental human beings, males and females of various ages, whose names are unknown, occupants of the village of My Lai 4, by means of shooting them with a ifle.
Specification 3: In that First Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr...did, at My Lai 4, Quang Ngai Province, Republic of South Viet-Nam, on or about 16 March 1968, with premeditation, murder one Oriental male human being, whose name and age is unknown, by shooting him with a rifle.
Specification 4: In that First Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr...did, at My Lai 4, Quang Ngai Province, Republic of South Viet-Nam, on or about
16 March 1968, with premeditation, murder one Oriental human being, an occupant of the village of My Lai 4, approximately two years old, by
shooting him with a rifle.
.... and so it goes with history repeating itself.
By Ray Tapajna - search under Tapsearch War for many more articles. Today we also have economic wars triggered by free trade and globalization colonialism.
Everything is seems to be off track with the way the U.S.approaches the use of force. There was a brief period right after World War 2, when many believed there would never be another limited war. The risks were too great. It was considered to be to dangerous with the atom bomb being the trump card.
How the West Lost the World
Patrick J. Buchanan recently wrote a book, which will become a great resource for future generations to study about wars. Buchanan writes about World War 2 and how it could have been avoided. It demonstrates the failure of human reasoning when it comes down to wars as the final solution. The title of the book is Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War. The sub title reads... How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost The World
The U.S. seems to be set on repeating the mistakes of the past. No one seems to know why. The proper reasoning is all in place with books like Buchanan demonstrates and yet our leaders ignore both logic and history. We now have unjust wars, undeclared wars, preemptive wars, secret armies, mercenaries, hidden contract armies, CIA armies, guerrilla warfare and bloody urban warfare where thousands of innocent people are killed with very few cautions in place. President Clinton bombed aspirin factories and consistently bombed Iraq. He went into the Balkans to stop ethnic cleansing by creating more. 750,000 Serbs and Gypsies fled for their lives. The U.S. bombed them on the way and also when they fled to Belgrade and Kosovo. The Chinese embassy in Belgrade was even bombed.
President Bush followed President Clinton with his shock and awe preemptive wars stirring up conflict instead of stopping it. One of the most unusual things I noticed was Bush's use of the National Guard. It now seems to me a mute issue after so many other actions became worst but
the use of the National Guard as a direct assault force is supposed to be a last alternative measure and not the first attack mode. Using the National
Guard in his first strikes never happen before like they did under President Bush. First of all, the mindset of the National Guard is set to defend our nation in local environments and not in offense in some far away place. The National Guard needed months of training to offset this dramatic change but never got it. Instead they were thrown into battle ill-prepared. It is now obvious many never were able to transform their skills and mental mindset to die in some far away place overseas.
On the other side of things, we has a more radical setting where people are willing to become human bombs. With this in place there is hardly anyway to control events. It creates a new barbarianism on both sides of a conflict. And when a nation coins a term like "Terrorism" to fight the mission and targets change from real objectives to illogical enemies that really do not exist.
Also history vividly demonstrates that the Middle East remains much of the same as it always was throughout history. It has its own order of things and no forced feeding of Western Democracy will work. The Middle East nations return to their own order of things no matter who comes and goes. History tells us by going into the Middle East with armies always create a never ending war. The failures of the Crusades confirm this. It is beyond me how our nation has put up with this mass killing of innocent people in recent wars. I never saw a bomber or a drone fly over our country to trigger something like this but we do it all the time in other lands. The killing fields are somewhere else in the world with 9/11 being the only exception. And if should be noted several of the 9/11 attackers were called " Islamic Freedom Fighters" when President Clinton invited them to fight in Bosnia.
In the name of equality, we now have women in the military with many now evolving into combat soldiers. If this keeps evolving the way it is now, American will see their daughters and granddaughters drafted. When a society has their women killing people in offensive wars, this signals the end of society. It was the mother and wife who told the husband soldier - "that's enough," it's time to come home.
Who can untangle the terror, free trade colonialism and globalization have bred ? View my artwork and tell me.
The Cross of 9/11 Tangle of Terror
Ref. President Obama chops up the whole truthBy Ray Tapajna
Absolutes are Excluded
Mental Contraception at Catholic Jesuit University as about 20 percent of the teaching staff endorses President Obama Contraception Mandate
This follows our last post about President Obama's mandate forcing Catholic institutions to participate in insurance paying for contraception.
Mandating Paying for Artificial Birth Control - Nothing for Natural Birth Control. Logic is out of whack
President Obama mandating the payment for artificial contraception is the core problem in the present controversy. He directly challenges a basic tenet of the Catholic Church. Logically, he should also mandate payment for natural birth control accordingly. It is obvious the far left liberals want to create their own secular religion and convert the Constitution to their way of thinking. Secularism is a useful good but can cause more harm than good. The major problems of our times is primarily the lack of philosophy and the seeking of the objective truth in sync with the Perfect Love of our creator. The study of being as being takes you the to the door of Faith in the Perfect Love of Jesus and the Trinity. Jesus said knock and it will be opened. Philosophy alone can point to the errors of artificial birth control because it interrupts the plan of a creator. It is self evident that we did not create ourselves and we have no right disrupt creator. It is about seeking the objective truth by reason alone. If we knock on the door of Faith we will also hear the words of the mother of Jesus saying - Let it be.
I feel like taking a ride to St. Stan's retreat house where Father Otting is buried to see if he is still in his grave. He taught the ethics course in philosophy at John Carroll. If he was still at JCU, a lot of people would be graded F right now. This was Father's Otting's favorite grade. Father McQuade who was Cleveland's Bishop Sheen would be chalking on the board and diagramming the essential core of the problem. He also had a course on Modern Heresies which included a chapter on Liberalism. We write about it at Really Long Link and Really Long Link
Father Henninger who taught The Family course in sociology would have some titillating thing to say to keep us lusty students awake. His course turned out to be a God-send for me ten years into my marriage. Father Schell with his perfect logic and his tender heart would put the two together to chart a syllogism to show the mental errors about the matter. It is a matter of studying being as being with religion being external to the study. Father Kerner who taught history with his Geopolitics courses being the best where all things are considered including location and culture, would go step by step demonstrating how our Constitution is being attacked by President Obama's mandate. It comes down to this. Father , oops - I mean President Obama should respect the meaning of liberals favorite word - choice, in this situation. However, we now live in the land of "is" where everything depends on personal interpretations of what the definition of "is", is. Absolutes are excluded. John Carroll U. seems to be riding this tide these days. Ray Tapajna JCU 55
The term productivity is not what it used to be - Ray Tapajna Pages Network
When efficiency is not efficient or ethical
Once a company enjoyed a rise in the value of their stock by the number of workers they could hire and still show a profit. The business reports made it a big thing too when a company hired more and more workers. This alone raised the value of a given stock. Today, the stock market rewards companies by the number of workers they let go or by the number of jobs that are sent to cheaper labor markets of the world. The business and stock market reports this as an increase in productivity. They also give favorable reports about how many less workers are needed to complete a certain task in comparison with the past. This means less workers have to do work harder and put much more time on the job to get things done. We have latch key children raising themselves and when the parents come home they tend to the children for awhile but then go off to complete some task on the computer.
These new ways lead to increasing the jobless rates which in turn affect the ability to pay for the mortgage etc. plus pay the taxes for even the basic necessary public services. A new working poor class has replaced the middle class with many of the underemployed needing government assistance to survive. The underemployed are finding they can not even
afford to buy the cheaper imports..
Once factories would take workers off the assembly lines when the orders slowed down and switched them to making the parts. This way there was also plenty of pre and post production quality control steps. The inventory grew in value just sitting in inventory. This way the companies were able to keep their experienced workers on the job without worrying about training new workers over and over again. Now so called just in time supply has products coming from everywhere based primarily on lowest prices. The quality factor is second to getting the parts on time. If there is a bad
batch, the factory have to go with it or else suffer heavy losses.
There are many companies that have statistical testing programs that
sort out bad batches of production and some put the rejects on the shelf to deal with later. However, when the number counters start tallying what they need to have a profitable month, some of the rejects are sent out anyway so the monthly numbers look good.
The biggest economic sin is using impoverished workers here and abroad who take any job to survive. This is a never ending cycle because there are more than a billion workers who are willing to work for practically nothing in the world. On the other side of the spectrum, big box retailers like Walmart use many workers who need government assistance to survive which makes the whole process an overall economic mess when all things are considered. The savings from one cycle in an economy is cancelled out by having a society that can not support itself. The need for emergency food and help to pay for the utilities plus other essential needs keeps growing with no money left to pay for them by public and private support channels. It is a road to nowhere.
Also, no one seems to count the cost of long haul ocean, air , rail and trucking shipping that represents a costly massive overhead and a massive assault on the ecology. The stock market also ignores the dirty manufacturing in other lands that pollutes not only the local environments but the whole world. There are no partitions in the sky that blocks this out.
Just because a certain country has strong pollution laws does not mean the pollution is coming from somewhere else in the world.
A climb in the value of the stock market quickly makes the news but no one talks about what havoc is being created behind the scene.
The process is not only economic insanity but it is also a sin. Both liberals and conservatives play the game with apparently no consciences about causes and effect of free trade and globalization.
There is very little discussions about free trade being the major cause of our economic crisis. A few percentage points one way or another do not change the core problems. They are there as we wait for the next big economic bubble to burst. Economically we are not only broke money wise but we are also morally broke.
Pope Benedict economic encyclical - Ray Tapajna Network - Free bulletin boards
What President Obama and the Far Left do not understand.
The whole truth means the whole truth without any exceptions
There is a natural order of things and a supernatural order of thing and the two have to be in sync with each other or things will grind until they do. It is not just a spiritual matter but it is also a philosophy matter too with philosophy a study of being as being. Artificial contraception is part of the deal no matter how it gets into the sophist viewpoint of a useful good.
The contraception issue exposes far left liberals mindset where something
seemingly useful is something good. They even want to pontificate
about Catholics who want to be free of absolutes.The tenets of the Church have to be in sync with absolutes or else the Church is nothing. The Catholic Church has stood the test of time on matters like this for centuries and will stand the test of time because human reason is capable of seeking out absolutes and the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Cardinal Newman did say all must follow their conscience no matter
how ill-informed it is. He is a convert and knows how many of good people think they are doing the right thing in practicing contraception. Their conscience may leave them off the hook as far as sin is concerned since the Catholic Church had taught for centuries that a person must know what they are doing is wrong but choose to do it anyway. There are degrees of liabilities in the reasoning process but still artificial contraception is wrong Contraception interrupts God's plan in the cycle of life. It is a declared doctrine of the Church and also part of the natural order of things.
It is obvious President Obama and the far left want to impose their will to fit their scheme of things in making all pay for artificial contraception no matter what their conscience tells them. If you pull off these liberals masks, you will find what they really want is their own state religion. However, they should know there is both a divine and natural order of things that keeps sorting out the bad from the good. The divine order is supreme. The state is not. The natural order of things has proven this time and time again throughout history. And the founders of our country knew this when they wrote the Constitution. The right to life is a basic part of it. Any interruption of the the process of life must be carefully considered no matter what the common practices are. Just because something is practical, does not make it right.
Plain Dealer Assistant Editorial Page Editor, Kevin O'Brien wrote how President Obama is tilting the separation of church and state far to the left relating to his contraception mandate. Every act has a reaction and chain of events. Artificial contraception is no exception. It affects how we treat others on many levels. It affects our thoughts about human dignity across the
board and even our thoughts about just wars. It leads to a philosophy of
"doing what comes naturally" as a pragmatic outlook on everything we do. Not only are religious beliefs put aside by the state but it also affects the
objective truth overall. No man can change the objective or whole truth no matter how many people are doing it.
The popular song " What does love have to do with it" takes over. An act
that should truly be about real love and commitment is deluded. It affects brotherly love too in our economic day and our social behavior.
Liberals like to make distinctions without worrying about the extension
of their actions. Chesterson said it is not the bad things that destroy
us as much as trying to do good with partial goods that offset each other.
No laws will change the objective truth. An order of things keeps
shifting through everything we do until we get it right. Love has everything to
do with it. The founders of the constitution sensed this and did a good
job establishing an order to things. People like President Obama disrupt
it.
Ray Tapajna Trade Traps Workers Dignity
Our economy is imploding with big government bailing out big money and not anyone else. Workers and small businesses were promised help if they lost their jobs or businesses due to free trade. They get nothing while big money and giant corporations get bailed out. This involved trillions of dollars. It mortgage future generations with the coming generations carrying a tariff on their heads. It throws the economy totally out of sync.
Economic diseases spred in unholy economy
Workers Dignity Destroyed
We are not living in ordinary times. We must include this in our thoughts when we try to find new ways in restoring our economy local or nationally. President Franklin Roosevelt said economic diseases are highly communicable. Free trade is a cancer. It is spreading into every part of our lives. It is the major cause behind our economic crisis. It is time to stop denying this reality. It is not even part of the presidential debates and yet it encompasses everthing we are and what we must do during these unusual times. When a patient comes in to see a doctor for a illness, the doctor does not treat them until he finds out what is wrong. We need to first diagnose what went wrong with our economy and what caused it. We need to first do this before we try to find a solution. Two things stand out. This thing that is called free trade is not trade. It is not trade as historically practiced and defined. Workers are the main commodities being traded. They are put on global trading block to compete with each other for the same jobs down to wage slave and even child labor.
Also the news media has the responsibility of questioning the unemployment rate reporting. It is irrational. Using the present statistics to do comparative analysis conjures things that do not compute. How can we restore much of anything based on these lies. We told our newspaper editors at the Plain Dealer they should have an investigative journalist working on the these obvious lies. This would be better than any other advocacy or editorial position.
What can we do until things get back to where they were. People will try many new things to survive. People turned to buying and selling when there is nothing else left to do. We should attach ourselves to this practice now and not when the economy implodes as it obviously will. The bail outs of big money and big banks are only temporary props. They will fall in time and most likely it will be sooner than we think. People naturally become merchants when they have no other possibilities left. This is why I proposed my ideas years ago at Restoring our cities If these simple plans would have been enacted years ago, our city would have had an good platform to launch many things from the bottom up. We have a mayor who has surrendered to free trade ( click on Trade Traps or search under the phrase and add tapart news. ) We have a governor who took part in the grand betrayal of workers caused by free trade and then made many dollars after the fact. The investment communities and big money who funded this failed system ended up being bailed out my the taxpayers with an added tariff put on future generations. The governor now attempts to create new jobs by giving tax money to corporations to create jobs. This too will prove to be a failed system. Until some real common sense solutions are found, mercantilism from the bottom to the top must be initiated at as many levels as possible. The Plain Dealer could play a major role in becoming an authority on micro loans to fund these enterprises of the people. Every eligible small business should be sought out. The next economic meltdown is on its way but we have ways to make it through the economic storms this way. However, thinking we can restore our economy by token endeavors backed by money from the top down will not work. If we keep trying to do the things in the same way as always, all we will get is the same results. Funding research and development, high tech and green industries are useless efforts if the production goes somewhere else in the world. From what I see, all the tax funded efforts so far end up with a net zero if not negative results.
What is possible now? Actually the reality programs on television offers us some insights. For example, Pickers, Pawn Shop, Storage Wars, Antique shows, Restoration and Gold Rush give us ideas of how to form new local value added economies with the inventory we have in place. Restoration shows us we can add value to this inventory. Gold Rush shows us that anything in the ground represents a way to start with a raw product and grown added values up through several levels. Even when these miners do not make a profit, we see examples of millions of dollars poured into a local economy. Just with the equipment needed, new economies are formed. The same applies to growing food where small entities can work from the ground up creating new supplies of food channels. In other areas, craftsmen can find ways to add value to what is already in place especially in solar kits for individual homes and vehicles. We have ignored the fact that only local added value economies work. It is equally obvious that the retail industry that sells primarily imports do not. All the money spend in the big box stores, quickly fans out to where the products are made and does not stay in place to recycle the economy in the surrounding environment where the products are sold. It is also obvious retail workers do not make a living wage with many needing government and private assistance to survive. A working poor class that is underemployed selling imports to others is indeed a race to the bottom.
Right out of high school , I became a set up man for three oil burner assembly lines. I was taught many skills in a short time by foremen on site. When the orders slowed down, workers were taken off the assembly line and helped make the parts. The company had a heavy inventory of parts that increased in value by just sitting in the bins. This was before personal tax on inventories took this option away. Inventory at any level is the key to restoring our economy. This inventory can include all things we have on hand where a mark up can be enjoyed. For example, I noticed after our garage street sale that many people were did not want to take the things they had for sale back into their homes or storage areas. I saw how someone could go into business and name it "Just leave it", where those who did not want the items could have someone come and pick them up and do a clean up for the people who were too tired to bring the items back in. Many just threw the things that they did not want to sell on the tree lawn. Neighbors were reluctant to pick anything out in front of everyone else. The garbage men were not. Newspapers are hooked on slick advertising inserts that promote and push imported products. The classified ad sections are small. I recall when the classified ads and the help wanted ads were about two pounds on a Sunday. Today, the slick advertising inserts full of imported products actually promote people to shop their way out of their jobs. It is a contradiction for a newspaper to foster things to restoring a local economy when they send out so many inviting ads for imports. Newspapers have become part of the problem. They need to find a way to increase their classified ad services in an E-Bay fashion. Perhaps they can offer free advertising upfront and take a commission after the sale. The newspapers could offer some extras for a fee. Instead of doing things like this.
A Plain Dealer editor wrote that they will support free trade no matter what readers think. We have big money and banks controlling not only our economy but the news too. They failed. Now we have to find ways to go back to simple free enterprise endeavors where someone can make or grow something and add a reasonable mark up to make a living plus have something left to have all their workers enjoy a living wage. It is senseless to try to build an economy using the working poor. Common sense solutions are there. However, everything must be based on adding values from the raw product up through to the end user or retail level. There are about five to seven levels or stages where values can be added before the retail or end user level. The levels should be as local as possible. Many reports indicate just by shopping at local independent businesses there is an added value at about three levels instead of just one after shopping at a big box store. At these stores, the money spent at retail quickly fans out to the places where the products come from. The money does not stay in place to recycle our local economies. The money goes outside the country to grow other peoples' economies at our expense. Our economies based on making money on money are burning out. We need to find ways to make and grow things that can carry the label Made in the USA or Made in Cleveland etc. not labels that read Made in China or even reading Assembled or Built in America. It is senseless to fund foreign assembly plants here that hire only a small portion of workers when the parts come from somewhere else in the world. The State of Indiana paid out about $160 million dollars to Honda to build their assembly plant in their state. This came after thousands of auto workers lost their jobs in the state with Honda only able to hire about 5,000 workers at a lower wage. At the same time 20,000 auto parts workers in the state lost their jobs. This is economic insanity. And the newspapers remain silent about all these obvious contradictions. What is human dignity in the workday all about ?
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