CESJ’s annual celebration is tomorrow, so we’re getting this out as fast as we can and should have more items directly related to the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism next week. Until then, just sit around and wonder why no government has yet adopted the Economic Democracy Act:
• The Price of Injustice. That justice (or what passes for it) can be bought and sold has been an acknowledged fact for millennia, with even the most horrific means to stop it often being ineffective, although as Herodotus claimed, an honest tyrant has a better chance than a mostly honest popular assembly. Of course, if the tyrant is dishonest, then corruption will not merely be rampant, it will even come to be accepted as normal, even patriotic behavior . . . at least out loud; as John Harrington noted in his Epigrams (IV.5), “Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.” This was not original with Harrington. As Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger), said, “Rursus prosperum ac felix scelus virtus vocatur.” (“Profitable and successful crime is again called virtue.”; Hercules Furens, ii, line 251.) So much for today’s history lesson. Coming to the present time, it appears that justice is not only for sale under the current administration, but there is also an active retail trade in it. As reported by CBS News, a “sting” operation revealed a level of corruption that would be breathtaking in some other time and place but is pretty much business as usual today. It seems “pardon brokers” are charging six-figure fees to “put pressure” on President Trump to get him to issue pardons wholesale to convicted criminals. As noted, this has always been done, but now “there is near-unanimity among the federal prosecutors, defense attorneys and other sources who discussed the clemency process with CBS News: There has never been such a dizzying pardon economy as there is in Washington right now — a Wild West of clemency populated by MAGA-connected brokers and influencers — where the old norms have been largely tossed aside.” The only real solution is to return power to the people through the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• “If I Don’t Work, NOBODY Works!” They’ve been calling it “the Silver Tsunami” and an opportunity to use Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) in succession planning, but a better label might be “the Selfish Tsunami.” Although it is astonishingly cost effective for a retiring sole proprietor to sell to an ESOP — huge tax deferral, which often means no tax liability for the selling owner, just his or her heirs — a rather large number of aging entrepreneurs would rather just shut down the business and take a significant financial hit than even consider selling to the workers. As reported in Fortune magazine, “Jamie Dimon has been warning since March that ‘the American Dream is alive, but it's slipping out of reach for too many people—and for future generations.’ Six months later, JPMorganChase is pointing to a specific, dollar-quantified reason why: Millions of aging small-business owners are approaching retirement with no real plan for what happens to the businesses they built — and the dysfunction is only getting harder to ignore. . . . The dysfunction isn’t just that baby boomers own an outsize share of American small businesses. It’s that they are approaching the exit with something close to paralysis. The McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility, in a February report on what it called ‘the Great Ownership Transfer,’ estimated 6% to 13% of small-business closures over the coming decade could be avoided if owners planned better — closures driven less by failing businesses than by owners who simply ran out of runway before finding a buyer or successor. A 2025 Gallup survey found 27% of employer firms with owners 55 or older are either unsure of their long-term plan or intend to close the business outright rather than sell or transfer it.” Part of the planning should include adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) so that others in addition to the workers can get in on “the Great Ownership Transfer.”
• The New Corporate Welfare? At first glance, nothing seems so contrary to the Just Third Way than a gambling casino run as a person’s livelihood. Or a lot of people’s livelihoods. On second glance . . . nothing IS so contrary to the Just Third Way. Or so we thought. Then comes this story from Fortune magazine about a casino celebrating its operator’s fiftieth birthday by giving employees shares of stock in the casino: “To celebrate the Las Vegas casino operator’s 50th birthday, Station Casinos last Wednesday surprised nearly 10,000 full- and part-time employees with a stock award worth more than $70 million. Frank Fertitta III, chairman and CEO of Station Casinos parent company Red Rock Resorts, and Vice Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta told a ballroom of workers that anyone employed as of that date would receive $1,000 in Red Rock Resorts Class A stock for every year of service.” Sounds nice and in some respects, it is, but there is a slight ethical problem about running a casino as a productive business enterprise, although not anywhere near as much as running a plantation with slave workers. Still, every worker (and everyone else) has a right to ownership, although not of course anything that is already owned by another, but in the as-yet unowned growth in the future. But to give ownership as a gift when it is due as a right is a little “off.” As moral theologians have taught for centuries and as Paragraph 2446 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church declares, “that which is already due in justice is not to be offered as a gift of charity.” Although the business itself is not exactly consistent with the Just Third Way, making it possible for workers to own even a casino through the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) would be an act of justice, not charity.
• Pound Foolish and Penny Foolisher. The current administration in Washington declared it was going to save so much money that every American would be rolling in cash, or something like that. It turns out there SOME Americans might be doing a little lucre lolling, but the majority might be worse off than before. In addition to the damage such things as tariffs, deportations, and wars have done to the economy, Time magazine reports that another presumably cost-saving measure seems to have cost more than it saved: “The federal government spent an estimated $9.5 billion paying employees to not work last year, with most of the cost tied to a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative to shrink the federal workforce, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. The report, published Tuesday, found that the use of paid administrative leave increased 435% from 2023 to 2025, while associated salary costs rose sixfold. GAO estimated that $6.7 billion — around 70% of the 2025 total — was associated with the Administration's deferred resignation program. The congressional watchdog analyzed payroll data from 76 agencies representing around 95% of the civilian federal workforce.” There is a better way to shrink government and save money without doing all the damage being inflicted by the current administration: adopt the Economic Democracy Act.
• All Those Selfish Young People. If you want to know why people are poor, just ask a billionaire . . . right? After all, if you want to know why people are hungry, ask someone who is overweight; if you want to know why people are walking, ask someone who has a car; if . . . you get the idea. The irony comes to a head in an article in the Business Insider this week. As the article reports, “David Einhorn says younger generations’ own habits are holding them back from breaking into the housing market or building wealth. The billionaire founder of Greenlight Capital recently speculated about the reasons younger Americans are falling behind in homeownership. The main reason, in Einhorn’s view, is that many young people lack the patience and investment discipline needed to save up for a home, and are funneling their wealth into speculative assets or sports betting.” This calls to mind the prescription of Peter Gaskell in The Manufacturing Population of England (1833) for people who were unable to live in anything other than squalor on wages of sometimes two to four shillings a week (about 80¢): just quit drinking alcohol and everything will be alright. Karl Marx loved Gaskell as a source to prove his case in Das Kapital (1867) because he said such heartless and stupid things. Einhorn’s prescription sounds similar to that of Gaskell: just stop gambling and investing in speculative assets and they will be able to afford a house. Really? Einhorn should read the newspapers. Despite record income highs, many households report feeling stretched due to persistent costs in housing, groceries, and utilities. Average credit card debt is around $7,000 per person — NOT per credit card holder! Maybe people are gambling or investing in speculative assets because they see no other hope of getting ahead and homes are so overpriced that they see no use in trying to save up for something they can’t have, anyway. Instead of castigating people for being lazy slackasses, why doesn’t Einhorn advocate adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) if he is so concerned for others?
• Kelso World. Recently we got our hands on a first edition of Morris Hershman’s novel, Shareworld (1972). It seems to take the line that Kelso had some interesting ideas, but things might not work out as Kelso thought. The problem is that what is described does not really resemble Kelso’s ideas but seem more like what has been touted as “the Great Reset.” Shares are not sold, but distributed without rights to the poor, everything is based on past savings, the stock market is a giant gambling casino, and the government takes a controlling role in the global economy. It’s a caricature of the Just Third Way and is nowhere near what would be the case if the world were to adopt the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• Greater Reset “Book Trailers”. We have produced two ninety-second “Book Trailers” for distribution (by whoever wants to distribute them), essentially minute-and-a-half commercials for The Greater Reset. There are two versions of the videos, one for “general audiences” and the other for “Catholic audiences”. Take your pick.
• The Greater Reset. CESJ’s book by members of CESJ’s core group, The Greater Reset: Reclaiming Personal Sovereignty Under Natural Law is, of course, available from the publisher, TAN Books, an imprint of Saint Benedict Press, and has already gotten a top review on that website. It can also be obtained from Barnes and Noble, as well as Amazon, or by special order from your local “bricks and mortar” bookstore. The Greater Reset is the only book of which we’re aware on “the Great Reset” that presents an alternative instead of simply warning of the dangers inherent in a proposal that is contrary to natural law. It describes reality, rather than a Keynesian fantasy world. Please note that The Greater Reset is NOT a CESJ publication as such, and enquiries about quantity discounts and wholesale orders for resale must be sent to the publisher, Saint Benedict Press, NOT to CESJ.
• Economic Personalism Landing Page. A landing page for CESJ’s latest publication (now with an imprimatur), 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., 52 or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to info@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 155,000 total views. The latest Sensus Fidelium video is “The Five Levers of Change.” 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 persons place in society.
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 well see that it gets into the next “issue.” Due to imprudent and intemperate language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled comments.
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