We
do not have as many news items as we had last week, but they are at
least as significant. Rather than
telling you about what we’re going to tell you about, we’ll just go straight to
the news:
 |
| Mark Kasen |
• Mark Kasen “Hot Talk Radio.”
On Thursday Norman Kurland was interviewed by Mark Kasen of “Hot Talk” Radio
in Ferguson, Missouri. Norm covered
a broad spectrum of material, giving a general overview of the Just Third
Way. Mark Kasen
is the General Manager of the “Hot Talk Radio.”
He officially launched the station at his grand opening on August 9,
2015 at the Greater St. Mark Family Church in Ferguson, which is located in St.
Louis, Missouri, USA. The internet-based
station format is “live, call-in and talk radio” so show hosts and co-hosts can
cover specific topics and listeners can call in to comment from around the globe. We will post the link to Norm’s interview
when it is available.
 |
| Resentment over World War I reparations contributed to World War II |
• Reparations. This is not
about the injustice or justice of reparations for slavery, but a comment on a
statement made by an advocate of reparations whose efforts contributed to closing
down a proposed debate on the subject (“A Miniscule Mob Shuts Down Debate On
Reparations,” Wall Street Journal, 08/09/19, A-15). As stated by the reporter, the individual “views
reparations as damages due from the government, not contemporary Americans.” That being the case, according to the
individual, [other] Americans have nothing to say in the matter, and there is
no room for debate. It is none of their
business. This, of course, begs the
question as to where “the government” is supposed to get the money it would pay
in reparations, how many times it has to pay and to whom, and just who closed
the case and denied freedom of speech who would end up footing the bill.
 |
| John Paul II, Personalist |
• Literary Visions. Work proceeds apace on finalizing the text
for Power With Justice: An Introduction to Economic Personalism, a
45,000-word (approximately) book intended to explain the basic principles of
the paradigm to members of the Catholic hierarchy and clergy, but from an
interfaith perspective, making it accessible to people of other faiths and
philosophies. As the subject is based on
“natural law,” this is much easier than might be supposed, as it is
reason-based rather than faith-based.
With a great deal of luck, we might have everything finalized by the end
of August, so people should start thinking how they can help us spread the word
and market the book.
• CESJ Newsletter. Although plagued by unexpected events that
interfere with the launching of the newsletter, we continue to advance, and
hope to have the first issue out soon.
• NCEO Blog. The National
Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) has changed its “Employee Ownership Update”
to the “Employee
Ownership Blog.” They plan on
updating it weekly, so (as the NCEO is a valuable resource for everyone
interested in widespread ownership) it should be worth regular visits.
• Expanded Ownership in Japan. According to the Employee
Ownership Blog, in Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the
main business newspaper of Japan, included a piece supporting worker ownership.
The author, Art Hosokawa of the Japan
Employee Ownership Association, noted that worker ownership in Japan is in its early
stages. According to studies by the Japan
Employee Ownership Association, there are no legislative or taxation barriers
that would prevent Japanese companies from becoming worker owned. Japan Laser, the first worker-owned company
(although we don’t know if it is 100% worker-owned), is showing significant performance
gains and improvements in its culture, while Pia, a publicly traded company,
has granted restricted shares to all its workers. While this is, of course, not the complete
Just Third Way vision, which would include capital ownership recognized as a
fundamental right of citizenship for every child, woman, and man, it is a step
in the right direction.
• 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 22 different countries
and 37 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over
the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, India, Spain, Canada and
Nigeria. The most popular postings this
past week in descending order were “News
from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 31,” “Subsidiarity
and Democracy in America,” “A Piece of
the Action,” “Of
Dissent and Distributism,” and “Of
Distributism and Dissent.”
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.” Due to imprudent
language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled
comments.
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