A Brief Comment from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
Let me begin this short sermon by saying that when it comes to religion, I fall into the George Carlin and Bill Maher camp.
Pope Francis
I never was a Catholic and whatever other religious church teaching I received as a child was ended, quite voluntarily, by me a few years after I got passed the Sunday school colouring book stage and reached the age of reason.
Yet I have always felt that there some important things we can learn from religious leaders and theologians, even though so many of the modern-day, right-wing, evangelical Christian leaders dominating the big-box church scene today deliver messages around the idea that you get closer and closer to God by accumulating more and more personal wealth in terms of money. Don’t know what ever happened to those warnings about the money lenders and that line I remember from my old King James version of the Bible that read; “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
In all due respect to popular North American evangelicals like Joel Osteen, who reportedly has accumulated enough worldly wealth from the faithful to live in a three-storey home with elevators, I guess the ‘eye in the needle’ line and warnings about money leaders might, to channel George Carlin, might be the kind of stuff Jesus would say.
It is also the kind of thing we are hearing these days from the current spiritual leader of the Catholic church, Pope Francis, who has been vilified by right-wing voice boxes like Rush Limbaugh and others as a socialist or commie or worse for preaching about more equity when it comes to the ability for people to make enough to comfortably support a home and family.
One of our NAL readers sent me the following poster, with words from Pope Francis on the fallacy of trickle-down economics, which goes back to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher preaching, that the best way to get us little people more jobs and income is to slash corporate taxes and deregulate rules for these same corporations around labour, environmental and other laws.
One of the most vocal champions for this trickle-down ideology today is Tim Hudak, opposition leader for the Ontario Tory party, who relentlessly advocates for cross-the-board corporate tax cuts in a country where we already have among the lowest corporate taxes in the developed world, including the knitted States where corporate taxes (believe it or not) are higher than they are in Canada.
Hudak automatically calls all corporations in Ontario, whether they are Caterpillar Inc. or Wal-Mart or MacDonald, “job creators,” even if they take the corporate tax cuts and stuff them into their own board members and shareholders’ pockets.
I’m guessing that Hudak also believes that Santa Claus still lands on our chimneys at Christmas with a sleigh full of gifts and this Easter, a bunny showed up at our doors with a basket full of painted eggs.
Yet Hudak and his trickle-down economics party are now showing well in the polls if an election in Ontario was held today. God help us.
Now here is the poster and the quote on trickle doown from Pope Francis.
(NOW IT IS YOUR TURN. Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)
Niagara At Large 
I am with you all the way. While I am not particularly religious (even though I was brought up a Catholic), I do tend to follow humanistic and “spiritual” principles with the understanding that we are by nature selfish and by other means, altruistic. In that sense, one would think that, to paraphrase CG Jung, the collective unconscious represents the “mood” of society or to use Plato’s idea, the Form which represents the ideal. Political leaders can either tap the worst of the “mood” or the best of this “mood”. Now days we find that leaders tend to follow the former. They don’t rally to ideals but rather lead from the gutter. The “tempo” of the people is resonating to altruistic ideas while the leaders follow the baseness. The common good has been replaced with utter selfishness while democracy has been usurped by corporatocracy. Togetherness has been replaced with divisiveness. Leadership has been relegated to propaganda and PR spin. To quote Poggo, “I have recognized the enemy and it is us”.
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When I first came to “Upper” Canada from the unsophistication of Prince Edward Island it was obvious there was much I had to learn.
I was damn lucky and found employment with Dofasco, I guess they liked the work habits of down homers. Anyway I held in there, worked hard became supervision and eventually retired, not with riches but enough to get by on.
During my time at Dofasco they brought in a Dr. Demers type associate to speak to all 12,000 employees (paid the OT) (Floor sweepers along with Supervision) He began with the same rhetoric as this “Common Man” Pope articulates “That trickle down economics does not and cannot work in a democratic society”.
As I inferred Supervisors were not exempted from attending and smirks were evident of their faces as this gentleman began to relate the lessons taught to the Japanese manufacturing establishment.
Efficient work habits and togetherness has to begin with the employee sweeping the floors and must generate upward to include everyone in a common bond of commitment.to product as well as production. He was a very articulate speaker and did pose questions to the audience and soon the smirks became interesting questions.
When I had seen this poster earlier this incident came to mind, and Doug I am grateful that you felt it needed to be expanded upon because you are right Harris/Hudak and their “Corporate” philosophies started the decline of Ontario and it is damn scarey to think this gang just might be in the drivers seat once again, thank to the rhetoric of their totally owned corporate medias.
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A modification to the above is that respect for the input of each member of the team had to flow from the “top” right down to the person sweeping the floor. and in Japan after just about each shift a meeting was held to garner any new ideas that might help in improving the product or process. Dofasco wanted to implement this system and have the upper level be more responsible and responsive to each and every team member. CEOs making 400+ times the salary of the President of the USA while the minimum wage is cut or stagnated was what FDR and his Canadian Economist Galbraith felt needed to be corrected and they implemented regulations to prevent corruption of this nature happening in the future….Sorry to say it has happened.
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I can’t remember reading anywhere that Pope Francis was one of the worlds great economics experts.
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True but then again, the trickle down economics has been shown by well respected economists not to work and in fact has never worked. You only have to look at what is happening now days to see the results. Now corporatocracy is in the process of relegating our democracy into a commodity through free trade agreement that have nothing to do with trade but everything to do with the loss of sovereignty. This from corporations that abhor democracy and would prefer monopoly.
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This may come as a surprise to some of my blog-mates, but I agree with many of the concerns shared in these pages.
I see what was once our “liberal” democracy morphing into what can be called “neo-feudalism” … the emergence of a super class that relegates the rest of us to a form of serfdom, indentured servitude to the new elite and their factotems in the bureaucracy.
This is exemplified by the privitization of governance … the abdication of the right of governance by the elected. Those who are not blind can see the widening of not just the wealth gap but also the power gap as the impoverished, the elderly, the sick and the socially marginalized are excluded from from the state’s provision of health services, education (replaced by indoctrination), and security. All this foretells of the disenfranchisement of family, death of community, and the end of shared citizenship.
Spin this anyway you like, but one must fear for the generations that follow. “Apres nous, le Deluge”.
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