Redistribution to whom? [Updated]

5/1/2018: I've appended some additional material at the bottom of the post.

As Katherine calls our attention to Trump Administration proposals to crank up the percentage of their paltry incomes that the rent-subsidized (or, as they are more commonly known, "poor people") will have to pay for their crummy government subsidized apartments, let's glance over to see how the quintile, or decile, or maybe it's .1% (millile?), at the other end of the hope-and-prospects spectrum lives.

Remaining

This is my homily for this weekend, the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Cycle B.  The readings for the day are here.

The 50th Anniversary of Robert Kennedy's Whistle Stop Tour Across Nebraska

Friday was the 50th Anniversary of Robert Kennedy's seven-stop train tour across Nebraska on April 27, 1968. From the Omaha World Herald article today:

"LINCOLN — Fifty years ago in a Lincoln living room, Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign for the presidency got on track.

It was late March 1968 and Kennedy, a U.S. senator from New York, had just entered the race for the Democratic nomination for president. The incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, and a staunch anti-Vietnam War candidate, Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy, were already on the ballot in Nebraska and other early primary states....Kennedy’s Nebraska campaign organizers — including former Lt. Gov. Phil Sorensen, who returned to his home state from Indiana as a liaison between the national and state organizations — huddled at the Country Club neighborhood home of Edie Van Neste. They had little time to cobble together a statewide campaign. Nebraska’s mid-May primary loomed in about seven weeks."

How to Increase the Number of Homeless People

I was dismayed to read yesterday that HUD may push rent increases for millions of people who receive housing aid.  The Trump administration and the head of HUD, Ben Carson, have said for months that this is a step they are advocating because the present system is "unsustainable".  They have also proposed increasing already existing work requirements for those receiving housing subsidies.  Let's unpack that for a minute. They just passed a tax cut which benefits the top 2% disproportionately, and which grows an already ballooning deficit.  So I suppose in that sense helping keep a roof over poor peoples' heads is unsustainable.

Isn't this illegal? Even immoral!

According to the NYTimes: Mick Mulvaney, former Congressman (R.-SC), current head of the WH budget office, and interim head of the Consumer (unraveling) Financial Protection Bureau "... told banking industry executives on Tuesday that they should press lawmakers hard to pursue their agenda, and revealed that, as a congressman, he would meet with lobbyists only if they had contributed to his campaign.

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lending industry officials at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

Did that "I might talk to you," have a minimum price?

John Cassidy at The New Yorker: Among other favors Mulvaney is planning on doing for capitalism is:  "restricting public access the bureau’s database of consumer complaints."

Another baby car seat scandal on the horizon? Or maybe lead in toddlers' toys. What will it be, I wonder.

AND....Mulvaney's  "grandparents were originally from County Mayo, Ireland. He attended Charlotte Catholic High School and then Georgetown University, where he majored in international economics, commerce and finance. At Georgetown, he was an Honors Scholar."  Would love to see the class notes from "international economics, commerce, and finance."   How to squeeze the piggy banks? Lobbyists you can love?

 

Time to cut the cord?

While I don't wear a suit and tie every day, nor a men's hat, nor habitually carry a handkerchief with me, we do still possess one relic of a bygone era: we still have a landline telephone.  We've had the same phone number for decades.  My parents still call me on it, and it's listed as the primary number with all of our doctors and our children's schools.  Presumably, our friends have it stored somewhere, too, but I can't think offhand of the last time a friend called me on my landline phone.

RIP: Empty tables, great memories

 We celebrated our 65th April 24 together with lunch at a neighborhood Italian restaurant. We have had flashier anniversaries of the night we met, but flash fades over time. We were talking about great restaurants we will never visit again.
 Not because of us.
 Because of time.
 Deacon Jim misses department stores. I miss restaurants.

Updates

A couple of quick hit updates on previous posts:

James Comey and his moral compass

Read James Comey's book, A Higher Loyalty. I say why at dotCommonweal.

Requiescat in pace, retail clothes shopping

Bon-Ton Stores, a holding company for department store chains Bergner's, Bon-Ton, Boston Store, Carson's, Elder-Beerman, Herberger's and Younkers, together consisting of about 250 department stores, has sold its assets to two liquidation firms.  All of these department stores will close down over the coming weeks, leaving cavernous holes in suburban malls across the Midwest and Northeast.

Cranky White Feedback

The following is excerpted from this article on the Commonweal site by Mollie Wilson O'Reilly; quoting a letter writer who objected to what he considered excessive (read *any*) coverage of  non-white Catholics in the Archdiocese of New York:
"A trend is accelerating rapidly at Catholic New York: that of blatant favoritism towards Latinos and blacks in the Archdiocese of New York.” That was the opening sentence of a letter published in our diocesan newspaper last December, under the bland heading “Publishing ‘Trend.’” The author’s evidence of favoritism was a handful of recent articles that covered the activities of nonwhite Catholics, as well as a national news item in which a bishop described Hispanic immigrants as “our brothers and sisters.” The letter concluded by asking, “Considering that the majority of issues of CNY over the past few years have published some element of this favoritism, why should any self-respecting white person belong to the Archdiocese of New York?”

Su problem es non mi problem

 As I said yesterday, there is a new one every day about Immigration and Customs Enforcement treating people like stucke.  Stucke is the word the executors of the Nazi Final Solution used for their victims; it means "piece" or maybe "chunk." I am not going to make a daily habit of proving what I said, but here, thanks to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, is today's example.

 In this case, it is a private contractor running an ICE detention facility. Whenever I think of prisoners having to work for civilians in Georgia, I think of chain gangs. Can't think why. This isn't a chain gang setup yet, just a "slave to shave" proposition. The Obama administration was getting rid of private, for-profit prisons, but the Trump administration is resuscitating them. Like most pubic-private partnerships, the private gets the profit and the public gets the shaft. The pressure is always on, of course, to keep detaining people so the privates can get their profits.

 I may return to this subject from time to time because it's important that we not forget that we have something like ICE running wild across the land. It's especially important when our professional, i.e., real, federal law enforcement people are under assault from the White House and its echo chambers.

Hey, he is illegal. OK?

 What should you do when you encounter a 22-year-old with Down syndrome and diabetes while raiding a business looking for non-citizens here illegally?
 Slap him in a detention facility with all the other Guatemalans without passports. Like the others, he can look forward to his case coming up in maybe a few months and then being deported to Guatemala, where he has no family.
 Immigration and Customs Enforcement carefully explains:

 “ICE conducts targeted immigration enforcement in compliance with federal law and agency policy. However, as ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan has made clear, ICE does not exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement. All of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States.”

Yes, you lock them up. There are stories like this one, from the Miami Herald, almost daily. It takes a special kind of person to work for ICE.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article209114679.html#storylink=cpy

Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky

 On the north side, President Trump's local world-class golf course abuts the county jail. On the south side, it is across the street from the school bus motor pool. The street on the east side runs past bail bondsmen, fast food joints and a gentleman's club that was called T's Lounge long before the Trump Organization extorted the golf course land from the county. Donald T. did not like T, but after some of his lawyers looked into it, he decided not to fight. T of the lounge got there first.
 So when Rudy Giuliani or Tom Brady or whoever, rode by en route from the tax dodge at Mar-a-Lago to the gold-plated gates of the golf course, he couldn't miss the unrelated T's Lounge with the Trumpian T on it.
 T eventually cashed out, and the lounge has a new, more acceptable (to Donald T) name, although it still is a strip club across the street from the world-class golf course.
 Starring in the strip club over last weekend was Stormy Daniels herself.

Kucinich Update: Plain Dealor Endorsement

Cleveland Plain Dealer Editorial Board Endorsment of Kucinich

"Ohio's next governor must be a fighter -- a fighter for greater equity, justice and common sense; a fighter for the state's urban centers; and a fighter against the moribund thinking on education, diversity, economic opportunity and home-rule rights that's held Ohio back for too long.

The editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer is as aware as any could be of Kucinich's flaws.

But of the major Democratic candidates, Kucinich is the one most likely to challenge Statehouse inertia."

The Cleveland Scene described this endorsement as:

"The decision for most Democratic voters on May 8 will be between Kucinich and Richard Cordray, the former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and long the presumed front-runner in the race. But the board waved Cordray away, citing a lack of evident passion and vision. Most surprisingly of all, they gave Cordray only a few more lines than Youngstown-area state senator Joe Schiavoni in their write-up, and fewer than former justice Bill O’Neill, whose candidacy soured before it officially began and ought to be disregarded.

On the Cordray front, the editorial alluded to his lack of charisma, which has been an oft-noted vulnerability on the campaign trail, though Cordray has been more animated in recent weeks. But it neglected to mention his support for gun rights, support that, despite recent modulations and calls for common sense regulation, may be a hangup for voters galvanized by national protests in the wake of the Parkland shooting.

On the Republican side, the editorial board endorsed Mike DeWine, the epitome of the statehouse inertia they’ve endorsed Kucinich to challenge."

Elizabeth Warren explained her support for Corday as follows

Missile attack against Syria

As I am sure all readers know already, the US, Britain and France launched a missile strike on Syria on April 13th, to punish the Syrian regime for using chemical weapons (again) on its own people.

An Effect of Amoris Laetitia?

I know very well that "anecdote does not equal data". But sometimes anecdotes can show a shift in the wind. Over the years I have known a number of people who were seeking annulments of a previous marriage in order to enter into a second marriage or convalidate an existing one and be able to receive the sacraments. For various reasons some of these annulment efforts had hit a dead end as far as being able to be processed.  Recently I have known of a couple of instances in which the people were able to move forward. Actually, fast forward.

Plane amusement: a true story

An overnight trip of about 400 miles would get me there by car, bus, train, or plane. Bus and train were ten hours one-way each way. The train had a 10 percent on-time arrival record; the bus, well no. The car at seven hours would have meant fourteen hours driving over two days. The plane was 90 minutes, no driving. 

It’s been several years since I have had to take a plane. All I know about them is what I read in the papers: ever-smaller seats, claustrophobia, dogs, peacocks, germs, crotchety passengers, angry crew, fights, aisle-dragging, sitting for hours on the tarmac. Having no choice if this was to be an overnight trip, it was take the plane or cancel the trip. I took the plane.

Luck was on my side. Yes, seats tight, but no dogs or peacocks. And there was much to amuse. The plane was half-empty out-bound. Flight attendants were no longer retired models tottering on four- inch heels, but short, chubby, middle-aged women in stylish sneakers and wrinkled uniforms. The single disruption was a seating rearrangement. A young couple with a small baby on the left side of the plane was asked to switch to the right side. No explanation. No discussion. They moved. The general consensus was that the fifteen-pound baby was needed to balance the plane. After that, passengers were issued a small bottle of water and could choose among teeny bags of nuts, chips, or pretzels. Then we landed.

The return trip was full, and amusing in it’s own way. It began with seat confusion: 

The Dispossessed

Here is a briefish description of NYC's landlord culture and ethics (CF. Donald Trump). It is a truncated version of a story in the Broadsheet, the daily e-paper of Battery Park City in lower Manhattan and an example of what many much larger towns/cities are losing when local coverage disappears. 

Displaced Residents of 85 Bowery, Still Homeless 13 Weeks Later, Find Belongings in Trash

     The suffering continues for tenants of 85 Bowery, who were driven from their homes on January 18, after inspectors from the City's Department of Buildings (DOB) determined that an interior staircase in the building was unstable, and in danger of collapsing. More than 75 residents of the building -- including 17 young children and dozens of elderly residents -- have been living in hotels and shelters ever since. On Wednesday, employees of the building's owner, Joseph Betesh, began tossing the residents' belongings into a dumpster in front of 85 Bowery. 
[Local elected officials reacted with fury to this development. …..]

      This is only the most recent travail for residents of 85 Bowery, who had originally been told they would return to their homes by mid-February. When repairs were not completed by that deadline, the landlord promised the staircase would be replaced by the end of February, and then by March 28. This project appears to have been successfully completed by that third deadline, but while it was underway, Mr. Betesh announced this his contractors had found asbestos in the building, which required immediate remediation. This extended pushed back to the end of April the deadline for moving displaced residents back into the building. In the meantime, he decided to dump into a trash cart the belongings those tenants had left behind. The reasons for this decision, or whether is was even legal, were not immediately clear.

[more elected official and City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD); nothing happens ]

     In 2013, Mr. Betesh's firm, Milestone Equities, paid $62 million in cash for a portfolio of 11 apartment buildings on the Bowery, between Canal and Houston Streets. (In addition to 85 Bowery, located half a block north of the Manhattan Bridge, he bought the buildings at 83, 88, 103, 105, 219, 221, 262, 276, 280, and 284 Bowery.) Shortly after taking possession of 85 Bowery, Mr. Betesh began trying to evict the 27 families who had lived there, in many cases, for decades. 

        It was at this point, on January 18, that DOB inspectors showed up at 85 Bowery, examined the staircase, and ordered everyone to vacate the premises immediately. Thirteen weeks later, it remains unclear when -- or even whether -- residents of 85 Bowery will be able to return to their homes.

Story by Matthew Fenton 

[Sorry, I can't get a link to the piece, but here is The Broadsheet's Home Page.]

Francis: Sexual Abuse; Women in the Church

Pope Francis Admits Serious Errors in Handling Chilean Sex Abuse Cases

In a three-page letter, Francis admits his own “serious mistakes” in dealing with this scandal and asks for forgiveness and goes on to take two dramatic steps: He summons the entire Chilean hierarchy to meet him in the Vatican in May and invites the three main accusers of Bishop Barros to meet him there too at the end of April.

The American Hierarchy did meet with Pope John Paul II, mainly to sell him and the Vatican on their one strike and you are out policy. The Irish Hierarchy meet with Benedict; unfortunately the new Archbishop of Dublin did not receive the backing he should have had from the Vatican Curia even though he was a former Curia official and had been appointed by Benedict to remedy the situation.

Rocco Palmo's coverage gives some indication of just how difficult it has been for Benedict as well as Francis to move against the clerical establishment  There are many cardinals and bishops in Rome and around the world who continue to oppose transparency and reform.

Hierarchies around the world will be watching this. If Francis accomplishes a major reform of the Chilean hierarchy everyone may wonder if they could be next.

Pontifical Commission For Latin America Proposes Synod on Women

They Are Still Waiting For Their Me Too Moment

This article, by activist Kim Brown, appeared on the Huffington site yesterday.  It deals with the too-common occurrence of the sexual assault of women in prison:

" The Me Too movement has successfully taken down some powerful men who sexually abuse and harass women. But a large group of survivors has been excluded from the conversation: incarcerated women."

Ohio Governor : Dennis Kucinich?

Washington Post: The Vindication of Dennis Kucinich?

Dennis Kucinich lost his house seat when redistricting forced him to complete with Marcy Kaptur from Toledo. I am not in that district but I certainly would have voted for Marcy.

Richard Corday his establishment opponent has a "A" rating from the NRA; Kucinich is proud of his "F" rating.

Kucinich has been endorsed by Our Revolution, Sander's post election organization, but not by Sanders. Part of the design of Our Revolution was to get Sander's out of the endorsement role, although he sometimes still endorses people personally.

A recent e-mail for Corday admits the race is neck and neck. Early balloting began yesterday; Primary Day is May 8th.

I plan to vote for Dennis. Never though gun control would make me a single issue voter, but in this case with the momentum to do something about gun control it is worth the chance. His nomination would also send a message to the Democratic establishment.

Whether Dennis can ride the "non-establishment" role that has helped Trump and Sanders to victory in the general election remains to be seen.

Pastor Hybels retires under a cloud

The founder and spiritual leader of Willow Creek Community Church, one of the most successful megachurches in the United States, is taking early retirement amid a flurry of accusations of inappropriate behavior with women employees and church members.

Pope Francis on Clericalism

Imagine There Is No Clergy: Two Views by Willam Shea and David Cloutier is the topic for April's meeting of the Cleveland Commonweal Local Community. 

I want to avoid a discussion in which everyone projects their gripes about aspects of Catholicism unto the "clergy" and "clericalism', and so I have also sent everybody these two links to help center the discussion upon what Francis means when he criticizes clericalism.  I am interested in your reaction to these two talks and my interpretation of them?.  Do you have a different take upon what he means? Do you have better examples either in terms of talks, quotes, or actions that could help define what Francis means by clericalism?

Pope Francis has been particularly critical of clericalism in Latin America. His talk to the bishops of Chile is a recent example. This example as well as the next indicate that for Francis, "elitism" of all kinds including a non-ordained elite of men and women religious is at the center of clericalism.  

Pope reminds bishops they are part of God's people

Church is not, nor will it ever be, an élite of consecrated men and women, priests, and bishops.

Clericalism is the lack of consciousness of belonging to God’s people as servants, and not masters.

Mission belongs to the entire Church, and not to the individual priest or bishop,

Let us be clear about this. The laypersons are not our peons, or our employees. They don’t have to parrot back whatever we say.

Clericalism gradually extinguishes the prophetic flame to which the entire Church is called to bear witness. Implore from the Holy Spirit the gift of dreaming and working for a missionary and prophetic option capable of transforming everything, so that our customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and ecclesial structures can be suitably channeled for evangelization rather than for ecclesiastical self-preservation. Let us not be afraid to strip ourselves of everything that separates us from the missionary mandate.

In some of his critiques Francis has stated that the laity are part of the problem, that they enable clericalism. So he obviously does not think that it is the clergy alone who must change. Some of this viewpoint is evident in the following criticism of the lay elite of pastoral workers.

Letter to the Pontifical Commission on Latin America

More beyond the break....

When Public Opinion Gets It Wrong

I don't know how many of you have been following this story; the trial of the Pulse shooter's widow, Noor Salman.
"Seven months after the shooting, Salman was hit with federal terrorism charges for allegedly aiding and abetting her husband.....From the start, the evidence against Salman was paper-thin and hinged on a “confession” that an FBI agent hand-wrote for her after an 11-hour interrogation in the immediate aftermath of the massacre that was neither filmed nor recorded. Her lawyers maintain the statement was coerced....

What's news? [Updated]

I'd consider yesterday's YouTube shooting in San Bruno, CA to be the news cycle's top story.  Apparently, local newspaper editors disagree.

https://twitter.com/r0eland/status/981361949366784000

The first signs of springtime in America?

 It is bound to come sometime. Maybe it is coming now. Bullies can keep their boots on people's necks only so long before they trigger a reaction. Maybe...
 It happened first among the kids at Margery Stoneman Douglas High School who refused the "thoughts and prayers" guff and said, in effect: If guns are more important to your than our childhoods, we will recover childhood, if not for us (you screwed that up) for our younger sibs.
 Then a strange thing happened in West Virginia. Teachers won  strike. This is a state in which the leading Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate nomination is a big giver to the Republican Party who was convicted of violating mine safety laws. The violations led to the Big Branch disaster in which 29 miners died for Mr. Blankenship's bank account. The felon is out of prison after doing his year and is seeking rehabilitation in a party that no longer asks big givers about felonies.
 Nevertheless, the teachers struck. And won.
 Now Kentucky and Oklahoma teachers are following suit. Their issues are not only their poverty- level wages that their bullies say is all their can afford if they are to properly coddle business interests. They are also talking about what is being done to their students. In Oklahoma, some districts can afford school only four days a week.
 We have watched this build since 1980. People seemed to accept it. Suddenly, the young and their teachers are saying "enough." About time. If only it lasts.

"As carbon dioxide is to global warming, cost is to healthcare"

This article, Five Worrisome Trends in Healthcare, appearing on Medpage Today, is worth reading.
The writer is Joyce Frieden, quoting  Chester Burrell, outgoing CEO of the CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield health plan, at the annual meeting of the National Hispanic Medical Association at National Harbor, MD.
 Some of the trends were not surprising to me.  One of them was.
Briefly summarized; the five trends are:

A visit from the Easter Grinch

  I don't comment here every time the undisciplined 4-year-old in  chief throws a tantrum. Nor do I comment here every time he throws a fog of hate over major church feasts just by being himself in my vicinity. But we are stuck with him for both Christmas and Easter every year when he comes to visit...

   ... well that is the first thing.  Mar-a-Lago is described by the national press as "his" private club in Palm Beach. It could be more accurately described as his tax break. He gave a "conservation easement" on the former Marjorie Merriwether Post mansion  to the National Trust. That allows him to deduct on his taxes whatever he has lost by not being able to convert the mansion into condos or to sell off the land. How much he deducts is a state secret. We'd need to see his tax returns to know. And they are state secrets. But he did issue a list of his charitable contributions between 20010 and 2015, and conservation easements accounted for almost 65 percent of what he "gave."

 So you might say he comes to the his National Trust tax break. Except, we don't know how many mortgages he has on Mar-a-Lago, and who is holding them. Maybe he visits his tax break at The First Bank of Vlad's Mar-a-Lago. As Comrade Trump would say, who knows?

  But that is routine; it is not the hate-fog he unleashed for Easter...

What's the buzz? [Updates]

There are a couple of updates down at the bottom of the post.

Did you watch NBC's live staging of "Jesus Christ Superstar" on Easter evening?

There was a lot to really like.  And some things that left me wanting something more, or different.

Thank you, China

This probably won't end well--or maybe everyone will throw in the towel and drop the tariffwars.

In the meantime: "The [Chinese] Ministry  of Commerce said then that it could impose tariffs in two stages: first, a 15 percent duty on 120 products, including fruit and wine, and then, after further assessing the impact of the United States’ tariffs, a 25 percent tariff on eight other products, including pork, an important moneymaker, especially in farming regions in states that voted for Mr. Trump."

I am hoping the tariff on pork will reduce the price of bacon, which is now $8.99 for a pound package. Yes, NY is over-priced, but this is ridiculous. When we stop exporting pork to China, I expect to go back to the $4.99 a pound. And the farmer's will have seen the downside of voting for Trump.

China Slaps Tariffs on 128 products.

Happy Easter

 One thing nice about Lent being over is Easter music.  Here is an oldie but goodie that we are still using:
Alleluia, Alleluia, Let the Holy Anthem Rise

And here is a newer one.  The title puts me in mind of Julian of Norwich:
All Shall Be Well