What on earth are you supposed to report on when the world
ends, i.e., the stock market is
closed, and won’t reopen until Monday?
And that is after the vote in
Greece. Still, there are a few items that
appear to be noteworthy:
• The CESJ article that appeared three
weeks ago in Homiletic and Pastoral
Review, “Pope
Francis and the Just Third Way”, has been getting a
lot of circulation. According to
reports, the link has been sent to all members of the Catholic hierarchy
(Catholic-talk for “bishops”) in Australia, and an attorney in Buenos Aires has
been approached about either doing or supervising a translation into Spanish
for circulation among the faculty and administration at the Pontifical Catholic
University of Buenos Aires, and possibly publication in a journal. One CESJ member has even sent a copy to the
Vatican — which raises an interesting question.
Suppose you were sending a copy to Pope Francis personally instead of
to, say, John Cardinal Smith or Msgr. Jack Jones . . . what do you put on the
customs declaration for “last name”?
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| July 4, 1776: A Unanimous Decision |
• Regardless where you
stand on the same sex marriage issue, Peggy Noonan’s piece in today’s Wall Street Journal makes an interesting
observation and raises an even more interesting question: why isn’t it
mandatory that decisions on such visceral and fundamental issues be
unanimous? A split decision virtually
guarantees that the decision on an important issue will be divisive. In the notorious Dred Scott case of 1857 (Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393), for
example, the decision was split three ways: six for, one concurrence (Justice
Samuel Nelson agreed with the ruling but not the reasoning), and two
dissenting, reported in the history books as a 7-2 decision. In the Slaughterhouse
Cases of 1873 (83 U.S. 36), which nullified the 14th Amendment
and overturned the overturning of Scott
v. Sandford, the decision was 5-4.
In Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113)
there was again a three-way split: four for, three concurrences, and two
dissenting. Noonan argues that a
unanimous decision would prevent the necessary alienation, even oppression, of
those who dissent. The Continental
Congress in 1776 agreed, for example, that any decision in favor of
independence had to be unanimous, for otherwise they would be setting brother
against brother. Of course, us
non-lawyers wonder how a “concurrence” can be counted as a yea, when the issue
is justice: either something is, or is not, just. You shouldn’t be able to say yea because it
gets you what you want, regardless of the argument. That’s just a way of saying “might makes
right.” Or should that be “raw judicial
power”?
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| The Hon. Luis A. Ferré, Governor of Puerto Rico. |
• The debt crisis in
Puerto Rico, while not quite on the same scale as that in Greece, shares some
common elements, which conservatives have been quick to latch onto. There are, however, some significant
differences, which they ignore. For one,
Puerto Rico could never monetize its debt.
It either had to borrow existing funds, or get federal money created for
that purpose out of federal, not Puerto Rican debt. Puerto Rico is therefore obligated to private
creditors and the federal government, and its sovereignty is not an issue since
it is not an independent country. Puerto
Rico doesn’t have to worry about being sold down the river and being taken over
by foreign interests. For another,
Puerto Rico comes under U.S. law — and mechanisms exist already to bring the
island back to productivity, which is the only real way to get out of
debt. The S-Corp ESOP suggests itself,
as does the plan proposed decades ago by Louis Kelso under Governor Luis A.
Ferré, but which was depth charged by Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson in what can
only be described as petulant and incoherent testimony before Congress (but he
did have a Nobel Prize).
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 59 different countries and 44 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from
the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Kenya, and Australia. The most
popular postings this past week were “Halloween Horror Special XIII: Mean Green
Mother from Outer Space,” “News from the Network, Vol. 8, No. 26,” “Thomas
Hobbes on Private Property,” “Yet More on Property, II: Hudock’s Alleged
Errors,” and “Avoiding Monetary Meltdown, II: Salmon P. Chase and the
Greenbacks.”
Those are the happenings for this week, at least those that
we know about. If you have an
accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at
mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into the next
“issue.” If you have a short (250-400
word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog —
do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#