Economic Justice
House Republicans announced a plan yesterday to cut $43 billion in domestic spend
Yesterday I received my email copy of ePistle, Evangelicals for Social Action’s weekly electronic communication. This article discussing the situation in the Ivory Coast and the former president Laurent Gbagbo immediately caught my attention:
“The Ivory Coast is on the brink of civil war, and chocolate companies could play a critical role in saving lives and bringing peace.
Before the 2011 State of the Union address, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that President Obama would speak about "investments" and that it was Latin for spending. I looked it up. The Latin root for "investment" is in + vesti meaning to clothe or surround. The definition of "invest" according to Dictionary.com is: "to put money to use, by purchase or expenditure, in something offering potential profitable returns, as interest, income or appreciation in value." The difference between an investment and spending is the difference between buying a new pair of shoes and buying stock in the company that makes the shoes. I may enjoy the shoes, but stock in the company will pay dividends long after the shoes are old and gone. The shoes are of little value or benefit to my children, but stock in the company, especially if the company grows and prospers, will benefit them. In his State of the Union address, President Obama spoke about winning the future. In order to do this, the United States ought to attend to innovation and education. We, as a nation, ought to rebuild the country's infrastructure, bring down national debt, reorganize government for more efficiency, and continue our support for the democratic aspirations of people across the globe. All of these will require investments.
[Editors' note: Below is a hymn written by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette lamenting gun violence. We hope you find it helpful in light of the shootings in Arizona.]
Back in the Clinton era, Congress and regulators shredded many of the ground rules that had been keeping our financial system working safely since the Great Depression. The people making the big money (and creating the toxic assets) set themselves and their cronies up as the "experts" and told the rest of us not to worry our pretty little heads about it.
The crash of 2008 made it painfully clear it was time to stop letting Wall Street make up the rules. Last June, Congress passed, and President Obama signed into law, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. In addition to creating the much-needed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the act contains reforms that can head off future crashes. But, to put that law into action, various agencies have to write ground-level regulations and definitions.
How these rules get written can make Dodd-Frank either an effective, strong law or—if Wall Street’s swarm of lobbyists gets its way—a washed-out shell. "The number of people that have come in requesting to be exempt from the law, or to have the law delayed, has literally shocked me," a Commodity Futures Trading Commission official told Bloomberg News.
If the love of money is the root of all evil, let's just say the devil is trying to get into the details.
In 2010, the moral measure of tax policy choice is: Does it further concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few?