A somewhat slow
week at CESJ headquarters, but a number of things are happening that deserve
comment. One disappointment is that,
despite the beautiful weather in Northern Virginia — in the sixties! — an
important trip had to be cancelled due to bad weather in the Midwest. Other than that, however:
• Lincoln Park, Michigan, Presentations. Norman Kurland, president of CESJ, and Dawn
Brohawn, CESJ’s Director of Communications, were off today for Lincoln Park,
Michigan, a city in Wayne County, to give a series of presentations to key
political figures, but the airlines cancelled the flights (freezing rain in Motown), and the train was
booked before seats could be secured.
Lincoln Park is part of an area of cities and communities known as “Downriver.”
Lincoln Park was organized as a village
in 1921, and then reorganized as a city in 1925. The area was originally home to the Potawatomi
Indians who ceded the land to Pierre St. Cosme from France in 1776. It
developed as a “bedroom community” of Detroit, with many people living there
working in the nearby steel mills and automobile plants. A sound and financially feasible proposal to
revitalize Detroit is therefore exactly what the whole of Wayne County, to say
nothing of the state of Michigan and the entire United States (and did we leave
out the rest of the world?) needs. That,
of course, is exactly what Norm and Dawn hoped to do in their series of
presentations, which are currently in the process of being rescheduled.
• Official Book Release.
Monday, January 15, 2018, marks the official release date of Ten
Battles Every Catholic Should Know.
While not expressly a Just Third Way book, the publisher has indicated interest
in doing a more JTW-themed book should this one be a success. One editor has already suggested a theme for
a project that would demonstrate the compatibility of the natural law
principles underlying Catholic social teaching with, e.g., Capital Homesteading.
A preliminary outline is already in preparation. A treatment of the real significance of the “parable
of the talents” suggests itself, as many people claim to be baffled by what
seems to be a contrived situation — it’s not, but that will be covered in the
book.
• Red Star Over Bethlehem.
Work proceeds apace on the book.
We expect a draft of the foreword from a professor of philosophy within
the next couple of weeks, and hope to meet with an expert on the natural law
within that same time period. Some cover
ideas have been sent to CESJ’s graphic artist.
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| Don't expect to see this at CESJ |
• CESJ Internships and Fellowships.
CESJ has been receiving a number of internship applications for what has
become an important part of CESJ’s outreach to Academia. One CESJ intern, Eliza R., went on to present
a paper at an international conference.
CESJ is proud to say that no intern has ever been asked to get coffee or
make copies, but to engage in a meaningful project that will in some way
advance the Just Third Way.
• Central Banking. The central
bank of Switzerland has announced that it expects to realize a profit of U.S.$55 billion for the past fiscal year,
approximately 8% of the country’s total GDP.
This would appear to get away from “classic” banking theory in which the
role of a central bank is primarily to ensure accommodation for a country’s or
region’s commercial banks so that commerce, industry, and agriculture have
sufficient liquidity. It is not itself
supposed to be a primary industry, but an ancillary service that, ideally,
would always break even. When money and
credit are, instead, treated as a product or commodity in and of themselves, it
is a sign that something is fundamentally wrong in the economy, as well as the
tax and monetary systems.
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| Well, no, it isn't like that at all. |
• Inflationary Fears. U.S.
investors are starting to move their money around because of fears that there will
soon be inflation due to the economic growth that has been recorded. Aside from the fact that much of the
so-called economic growth consists of inflation in the stock market and not
actual growth, a more rational system predicated on sound monetary and tax
reform (such as found in the Capital Homesteading
proposal) would mean neither inflation nor deflation, but a stable,
uniform, asset-backed, and elastic reserve currency. The only problem is that politicians and the
rich would lose control over the money supply and be unable to manipulate it to
their advantages.
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| Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman |
• Saudi Arabia and Liberalization.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been moving forward with his
program of liberalizing various religious restrictions in the country,
primarily (according to the pundits) to support his hopes for economic
liberalism. His Highness needs to be
made aware that he might have things a little backward, and that it could cause
some problems. If he were to put in
economic reforms first and return power to people through widespread ownership,
both political and religious reforms would follow naturally — and not even the most
reactionary Saudi is going to protest empowering people economically, as it is
fully consistent with the teachings of the Prophet for people to engage in
productive work.
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| "I'm so happy you went with Smile!" |
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making
your purchases through the Amazon Smile
program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to
the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 45 different countries
and 49 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the
past week. Most visitors are from the United States, the United Kingdom,
Canada, India, and Peru. The most
popular postings this past week in descending order were, “The Anti-Francis
Effect, II: Leo’s Vision,” “The American Chesterton, IX: ‘Not Because It is
True’,” “The American Chesterton, VIII: Modernism and the New Age,” “What Pope
Leo XIII DID Say,” and “News from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 01.”
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#
