While the weather (at least in Northern Virginia) has taken a turn for the better, the same cannot be said about the world situation. In our opinion, that is not going to improve other than temporarily until and unless the Economic Democracy Act is passed:
President Biden
• The Wrong Fight. With all due respect, President Biden is picking the wrong fight: the Texas abortion law. Frankly, the pro-abortion lobby is strong enough without the assistance of the President of the United States who is supposed to work for every American, not just those with the loudest voices or the most money or votes. He should be concentrating on what to do about Afghanistan, and, no, it’s not going away. If President Biden believes making the Texas situation a presidential issue will divert attention away from the Afghan debacle, he’s got another think coming. If he doesn’t come up with something BIG in capital letters that benefits everybody at no cost to anyone, and do it soon, he will simply be handing the Oval Office back to ex-president Trump. We “suggest” that President Biden forget about Texas (at least in this context) and make passage of the Economic Democracy Act his absolute top priority.
• Canadian Worker Ownership. According to the e-Bulletin of the National Center for Employee Ownership, the Conservative Party of Canada is including in its platform a provision for capital gain deferrals for owners who sell the company to their workers. The Liberal Party was already pushing for some similar proposals.
• Australian Expanded Ownership. Also according to the NCEO, Australia is investigating expanding its encouragement of worker ownership. The investigative committee’s report didn’t get all their facts straight, but “‘recommends that the Productivity Commission investigate how the use of employee ownership trusts can be facilitated and encouraged’ and also that the Committee explore the use of stock plans in other countries.” It’s at least a step in the right direction.
• Massachusetts and Worker Ownership. Finally, we note that the NCEO also reports that the Democratic Party of Massachusetts “strongly endorses” worker ownership: “At its recent convention, the Massachusetts Democratic Party gave a full-throated endorsement to employee ownership, joining the national Republican and the Texas Republican party in adding employee ownership to its party platform.”
• Savings Wars. As usual, the financial sections of the media are telling people to save . . . but not too much! Actually, all of this would be a completely moot point if the Economic Democracy Act is passed.
• Hortense and Her Whos. In case you’ve been wondering how you might advance the Just Third Way by introducing it to legislators at any and all levels of government, we’ve made it easy for you, with the “Hortense Hears Three Whos” initiative. Visit the explanatory website, and consider downloading the postcard to send to people in government. Don’t worry if you think they won’t be open to it, as the postcard is intended to get them to open their eyes.
• Economic Personalism Landing Page. A landing page for CESJ’s latest publication, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, has been created and can be accessed by clicking on this link. Everyone is encouraged to visit the page and send the link out to their networks.
• Economic Personalism. When you purchase a copy of Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, be sure you post a review after you’ve read it. It is available on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble at the cover price of $10 per copy. You can also download the free copy in .pdf available from the CESJ website. If you’d like to order in bulk (i.e., ten or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to publications@cesj.org for details. CESJ members get a $2 rebate per copy on submission of proof of purchase. Wholesale case lots of 52 copies are available at $350, plus shipping (whole case lots ONLY). Prices are in U.S. dollars.
• Sensus Fidelium Videos, Update. CESJ’s series of videos for Sensus Fidelium are doing very well, with over 150,000 total views. The latest Sensus Fidelium video is “The Four Pillars of a Just Market Economy.” The video is part of the series on the book, Economic Personalism. The latest completed series on “the Great Reset” can be found on the “Playlist” for the series. The previous series of sixteen videos on socialism is available by clicking on the link: “Socialism, Modernism, and the New Age,” along with some book reviews and other selected topics. For “interfaith” presentations to a Catholic audience they’ve proved to be popular, edging up to 150,000 views to date. They aren’t really “Just Third Way videos,” but they do incorporate a Just Third Way perspective. You can access the playlist for the entire series The point of the videos is to explain how socialism and socialist assumptions got such a stranglehold on the understanding of the role of the State and thus the interpretation of Catholic social teaching, and even the way non-Catholics and even non-Christians understand the roles of Church, State, and Family, and the human person’s place in society.
• 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 30 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, Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The most popular postings this past week in descending order were “On Usury and Other Dishonest Profit,” “Did C.S. Lewis Approve of Socialism?” “Chesterton and Shaw: How to Argue With a Socialist,” “News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 34,” and “Social Justice, IV: The Characteristics of Social Justice.”
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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