Corruption
What Was the RNC About? Plus Jon Corzine. Podcast of July 23, 2016 Show
Hour 1 Hour 2 Hour 3
“Instantly Labeled the Panama Papers” (Propaganda Report)
This is part of a series called: The Propaganda Report, Your MSM Companion. Here’s what it’s about: I read the WSJ to keep up with the official narrative–if we know what they’re trying to feed us, we might be able to figure out why. I have concluded that nothing in The Wall Street Journal, which I consider to be the “conservative” newspaper of record, is put there simply to inform. It is to misinform in order to serve an agenda or to spin real information that cannot be ignored. With that said, I thought I would take an article or related articles from The Journal (and occasionally elsewhere) every day and try to start a conversation.
For some reason, today I read The Wall Street Journal backwards. The funny thing was, that let me see where they were headed with today’s theme before I got bogged down in the set-up. Here’s what I started with–an editorial on page A12:
The Panama Papers in Perspective
The news here are the incomes and bank accounts of politicians.
That subheading didn’t appear in the print edition, so I had to read the whole article to get the punchline:
[I]t’s hard to see how the big question in this story is whether everyone with a company in Panama paid the correct amount of tax. The far more important question is how so many public officials in so many governments managed to accumulate so much money.. . . .
The mistake now would be to narrow the focus prematurely, zeroing in on tax avoidance that is a hobbyhorse of the political class but in this case is a distraction. The real news here are the incomes and far-flung bank accounts of the political class.
But not just any political class…the body of the article set up exactly whom should be in the crosshairs…
It’s no surprise that the world’s undemocratic and nontransparent regimes figure prominently in the Panama Papers. . . .
Specifically?
Too Many Clinton Scandals To Name: podcast of January 23, 2016 Show
Hour 1 Hour 2 Must see video in which Hillary says in 2000 that she doesn’t use email because of all the times she’s been investigated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DSzcdCv8_s&spfreload=10
Emailgate Is a Diversion! (video preview of this week’s show)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DFhM_OWxCk&spfreload=10
Captive Institutions
Yesterday I posted a great video in which an Irish writer, Gearoid O Colmain, reporting from France, explained beautifully what is happening in the world today. He really nails it and puts it succinctly, so I didn’t want to put a caveat on my endorsement of his report, but there is one thing that’s been rankling … Read more
What To Make of Pope Francis?
In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you, I am a practicing Catholic and I raise my children Catholic, but I’m not a great Catholic. I follow the rules of the Church to the best of my ability and try to live by the spirit of Christ’s teachings, but I struggle with faith and am not versed in every nuance of the Church’s tenets. I do, however, respect those Catholics who still keep the faith in the same tradition my parents upheld and I benefit greatly from the culture they create in the Catholic community. For this reason, I never want my skin-of-the-teeth Catholicism in any way to diminish the Catholic culture or reflect poorly on it, so I try to stay away from public discussions on religion. Recently, however, many people of different creeds and political stripes have asked me what I think of Pope Francis, and I’m happy to respond, but I must emphasize, this is, of course, only my opinion. I’m not trying to represent the Church or libertarians, or preach or criticize–I’m just recording my observations for those interested in reading them.
I always give the Pope the benefit of the doubt, but boy are my doubts mounting! Here are the main issues I have with some of the positions the Pope is reported to have taken….
Redistributing WealthÂ
Not too long ago, I sifted through all the relevant writings I could reasonably assess in order to see if any Pope had openly advocated for government redistribution of wealth. From what I could tell, many had come close but no Pope had gone all the way–until now.
This alarms me. The modern state’s use of violence and the threat of violence to take property from its rightful owners (assuming there are any objective laws left in this world, there are clearly defined rightful owners at least of the fruits of their labor) and give it to someone else not only breaks the sixth and eighth commandments, but also makes it impossible for able-bodied producers to live Christ’s exhortation to charity as well as reduces the poor from a default state of virtue (assuming money really is the root of all evil), to being receivers of stolen goods.
As progressive taxation comes closer to absorbing all surplus wages and putting them at the disposal of the modern state, even the highest earners may no longer have the means to engage in meaningful charity. And with what result? The governments in the United States, for example, spend approximately 40% of the country’s production (GDP), the vast majority of which is redistribution of wealth.