Labor: An Appreciation

by Nomad

Paving Paradise: Austerity, Pristine Beaches and the Greek Fire Sale

by Nomad

Critics to proposed Greek legislation opening up beach development worry that in an effort to abide by harsh austerity measure, the Mediterranean nation will be selling off its greatest treasure, its untouched coasts. 

Teacher and chemist Irini Chassiotou, writing for a European environmental news portal, GreenFudge, describes how the Greek economic crisis has been used an pretext to undermine environmental protections and to open up areas to commercial exploitation.. 

The target? The country’s unspoiled beaches and 13,676 kilometres (8,498 mi) of coastline. On the surface, legislation proposed by the government was aimed at reducing bureaucracy and increasing investments. 

Bounty in Common: The Early Christians Fathers vs. The One Percent

by Nomad

Here's what the Early Fathers of the Christian Church had to say about the rich. Despite what many on the Far Right might say, these ideas about wealth redistribution, sharing God's blessings and holding all things for the common good came a long long time before Marx.

It always amazes me how few Christians are aware of Church teaching. They claim to believe every word but- as I saw recently from a religious politician- quote Ghandi mistaking for the Bible.

It's a pity that Christians do not actually study their faith seriously. If they reviewed for themselves what the early Church fathers said about the greedy rich- instead of taking it second-hand from wealthy evangelists, they would have cleansed the world of the 1% quite some time ago.

Of course, the sad fact is that the capitalist system untempered by at least some kind of socialism, and pure Christianity, as taught in by the Early Fathers, are two ideologies that are incompatible. Judge for yourself.

Lest We Forget: GOP Senator Feels the Sting as Veterans Remember

by Nomad via Liberaland

In yet another example of a Republican underestimating the attention span and memory of the average citizen, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr's attempt to make political hay out of a recent scandal at the Veterans' Administration has backfired. 

Last February, when Republicans successfully voted down a $21 billion Veterans Aid Bill, it was seen as yet another defeat for the president, served up cold by Congress. The vote was close at  56-41 but only two Republican Senators voted for the bill.

Bernie Sanders, (I-Vt.) , the chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and primary sponsor of the bill, warned the Republicans that there would come a time when they would have to explain themselves to the public.

You tell that [veteran] you think we cannot afford to help him or her..."But when you do that I hope you also tell him why you voted to give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 2 percent [of earners]. Virtually all my GOP colleagues thought it was important to find new tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires."

Sanders with clear contempt for the partisan political games, said, "Enough [talk] about how everybody loves the veterans." 

One Senator North Carolina Senator Richard Burr  was openly critical of the aid bill at that time and gave his reasons to the press. 

With $17 trillion in debt and massive annual deficits, our country faces a fiscal crisis of unparalleled scope. Now is not the time, in any federal department, to spend money we don't have.

The year prior to the vote disabled vets were only days away from seeing their monthly checks held up by a GOP-led government shutdown.  

Seizing what he considered a political opportunity, Burr pressed the matter a little too far when he attempted to rally veterans against the Obama administration on the matter of healthcare problems in the VA system. 

The syndicated article below explains the reaction from some veterans' groups to Republican politics in action.

Republican Senator Who Voted No On $21 Billion In Vet Aid Further Infuriates Veterans Groups (via Liberaland)

North Carolina Senator Richard Burr, the ranking Republican on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, voted no on aid for vets earlier this year. Now, veterans groups are lashing out at him for an open letter he wrote the groups condemning them for …

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Progress and Poverty: The Life and Warning of Forgotten Crusader, Henry George

by Nomad

Outside of the academic world perhaps, few people have heard of the name of Henry George. That's a real pity since his observations about economic inequality are as timely as they are essential to our own day. 

A Pyramid On Its Apex 

So long as all the increased wealth, which modern progress brings, goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. The reaction must come. The tower leans from its foundations, and every new story but hastens the final catastrophe. To educate men who must be condemned to poverty, is but to make them restive; to base on a state of most glaring social inequality, political institutions under which men are theoretically equal, is to stand a pyramid on its apex.

The life of Henry George reads like a novel from another age. George was born into a large, lower-middle class and devout Episcopalian family in Philadelphia in 1839 . His father was a publisher of religious texts and insisted on a religious education for his son.
By 14, George had left the religious academy and was seized with a wanderlust. In April 1855, young George at 15 went to sea as a foremast on the Hindoo, bound for Melbourne and Calcutta. 

After 14 months at sea, he returned to Philadelphia and began working as a printer. Ever restless, George traveled to California where he married and started a family. Despite marital and familial happiness, times were not easy and according to his own admission, there were times his family was close to starvation. 

He tried unsuccessfully to become a gold miner in British Columbia before finding work as a newspaper printer, journalist and eventually editor and newspaper owner. 

Politically, George initially leaned toward the Republican party of Lincoln but later, after viewing how corporations and industrialists were corrupting the party, switched to the Democratic party. He was a staunch opponent of the railroads which as he saw it were benefited only those fortunate enough to have a financial interest. Everybody else, he said, was being thrown into poverty. Such a stand proved to be his undoing when he attempted to run for politics in the California State Assembly. Executives from the powerful Central Pacific Railroad apparently went to some lengths to ensure George's electoral defeat. 

Incidentally it was from a minor- seemingly unimportant railroad case in California from around that time - along with a few precedents built upon that original case- which provided the Supreme Court a basis for its outlandish Citizen United decision. The Court somehow decided that corporations possess rights equality to citizens, that is, as the Republican candidate in the last election famously said, corporations are people.