Economic Justice

Cornell president and Network of Spiritual Progressives both urge this big step forward     [6-7-07]

Witherspooner Betty Hale recently told us of the commencement address by Cornell's president, David Skorton, calling for the creation of a "New Marshall Plan" to alleviate the gaps between rich and poor nations, and much more.  He urges universities to spearhead this move, using their capacities for research and innovation to benefit a world in crisis.

At the same time, the Network of Spiritual Progressives is putting forth a similar call, rooted not in academia but in the growing conviction among people of faith that the world must begin learning to operate on the basis of generosity rather than selfishness and fear of the other.

While leaders of the World Bank debate what to do with Paul Wolfowitz, their embattled president, the IMF and World Bank are facing a deeper challenge , which the think-tank Foreign Policy in Focus calls a "confidence crisis."  The essay begins:

As International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank officials engage in their joint semi-annual meetings in Washington, the Fund has a nettlesome new task: convincing its shareholders (most of the world’s governments, represented at the meeting by Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors) that the institution should continue to exist.

After some 30 years of making "bail-out" and "structural adjustment" loans to indebted and impoverished countries in return for their adherence to a long list of neo-liberal economic reforms–trade and investment deregulation, privatization, tightening access to credit, and rapid budget cuts and public-sector layoffs, to name a few–the IMF has been confronting a crisis of confidence for the past two years. Demand for its services has been shrinking. Its reputation has never recovered from its disastrous interventions in the East Asian and Argentinean financial crises (1997-1998 and 2001-2002 respectively).

The latest US Census Bureau report tells us that "in the world's biggest economy one in eight Americans and almost one in four blacks lived in poverty last year ..." In addition, "15.9 percent of the population, or 46.6 million, had no health insurance, up from 15.6 percent in 2004 and the fifth increase in a row." And yet again, the study finds poverty "especially concentrated among blacks and Hispanics."

It's interesting, though, how many US media are highlighting the fact that this Census Bureau report says that for the first time in the Bush presidency, poverty has not gotten worse -- although other reports are noting that rising per capita income is not keeping up with inflation rates.

Alliance for Fair Food Calls on McDonald’s to work with farmworkers to end exploitation in the fields of its suppliers   [5-26-06]

King Amendment latest in a series of attempts to gut equal opportunity programs    [4-17-06]

The third annual conference is billed as "a place for anti-sweatshop activists to share experiences, learn vital organizing skills, and build joint strategy."

The announcement begins --

March 6, 2006 Join us at the SweatFree Communities International Conference!
April 7-9, 2006 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Our third annual gathering is a place for anti-sweatshop activists to share experiences, learn vital organizing skills, and build joint strategy. If you are campaigning for sweatshop-free government or religious purchasing or if you are interested in learning more and getting active in the movement, this gathering is not to be missed!    More >>

Quaker group warns that President Bush’s new budget undermines basic values

"It is a reproach to religion and government to suffer so much poverty and excess."
--William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, No. 52

And more numbers reveal sad realities:

Abid Aslam, a contributing editor for Foreign Policy In Focus, offers more data (if more is needed) on the falling incomes, a growing gap between rich and poor, and growing hunger in America – even as the President said last week during a speech in Milwaukee. "We're doing fine," and described the economy as "strong and gaining steam."

His article is posted on OneWorld.net, which describes itself thus: "The OneWorld network spans five continents and produces content in 11 different languages, published across its international site, regional editions, and thematic channels. Many of these are produced from the South to widen the participation of the world's poorest and most marginalised peoples in the global debate."

by Jerry M. Landay, a former CBS News correspondent and journalism professor, who writes now for Media Transparency, which reports on "the money behind conservative media."

His report begins:

"There's bankruptcy and there's bankruptcy. We learn that in 2005, more than two million Americans filed for bankruptcy -- one in every 53 American households -- many having fallen prey to excessive medical costs, and/or maxed out on their credit cards. It's the highest number of bankruptcies on record. It coincided with Congressional passage of legislation misleadingly labeled The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Law. ... Now, many Americans may never escape the clutches of indebtedness."

This, he says, is part of a larger trend, "in which the gulf between the privileged management class and the rest of us grows wider and wider, in which a new corporate aristocracy will preside over ever more impoverished proles, a destructive socioeconomic process in which the middle class merges into the underclass. ... The middle class has been the architect and maintainer of a healthy democracy -- well educated, informed, aware. It works hard, the living symbol of upward mobility, a place you can always reach if you try. Out of the great middle class came the potent activist concern for equal opportunity, the defense of the poor and needy, and enlightened justice.

"But the middle class in America is eroding as the national wealth is shifted upward. It's getting tougher to hold onto jobs headed overseas, to afford suitable housing, to meet escalating bills for energy, medical care, education, food and transportation."

The rest of the story >>

The Sago mine disaster – not merely an accident

The Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO, provided a helpful examination of the political and economic factors underlying the explosion in the West Virginia mine on January 2. They also offer links to a number of other analyses.    [1-9-06]

In an editorial this morning (January 2, 2006) the Minneapolis Star Tribune raises this question, noting that the amount of charitable giving "directed specifically to people in poverty is shrinking, by some measures quite dramatically. Total giving is on the rise, but increasingly the money goes to health or educational institutions -- whose efforts on behalf of the disadvantaged may be surprisingly meager -- or to arts and cultural organizations that, it can be argued, serve chiefly the middle and upper classes." 

If you make enough money to pay taxes, you get money back in the form of health care and housing write-offs. If you don’t earn enough, you won’t get that help. And even the Child Tax Credit program, the largest American child subsidy program at $47 billion dollars, fails to cover more than a quarter of America’s children (half of America’s black children) because their parents don’t earn enough to pay taxes – even though three quarters of them are working.

So it seems we’ll help those who are relatively well off, but if you’re poor, you’re on your own.

NOTE:  News reports suggest that the Republican leaders in Congress have decided that this is not the ideal time to call for an end to the estate tax.  But things sometimes change, so it may behoove us to continue to watch this issue.

CALL TO ACTION:

No millionaire tax cuts during national disasters

We urge you to take urgent action to stop the U.S. Senate from voting on estate tax repeal in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

A devastating hurricane clobbers the Gulf coast. The war in Iraq claims almost 1,900 American lives with no end in sight in both casualties and cost. And red ink flows through both short and long term federal deficit projections.

Yet in the coming days, Senate leaders plan to vote on permanently abolishing the estate tax, America¹s only levy on concentrations of inherited wealth.

They want to end the estate tax despite the fact that a new national poll shows that 59% of Americans from all political parties and incomes favor estate tax reform, while only 29% favor repeal -- a 2-1 ratio.

Please contact your Senator TODAY. You can reach your Senator by calling toll free at 1-800-708-9781 or the U.S. Senate Switchboard at 1-202-224-3121, or find their direct phone at:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

The message is: In the face of Hurricane Katrina, it is shocking and inappropriate that Congress would vote for a trillion dollar tax cut for millionaires and billionaires. Vote NO on ESTATE TAX REPEAL. OPPOSE FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE COMPROMISES that will GUT the law.

THANKS,
Chuck Collins, Senior Fellow, ccollins@faireconomy.org
Lee Farris, Senior Organizer on Estate Tax Policy, x133, lfarris@faireconomy.org

Washington, D.C. – In an unprecedented gathering, more than 1,000 people of various religious affiliations joined leaders of more than 40 faith communities for an interfaith convocation at Washington National Cathedral June 6 united in a common conviction that no one should go hungry.

Hosted by the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., the event formed part of the One Table, Many Voices conference, a mobilization organized by two advocacy groups, Bread for the World and Call to Renewal, to highlight issues of domestic and international hunger and to call on President Bush and the United States Congress to commit to eradicating poverty worldwide.

The full report >>

The Presbyterian Church has repeatedly called for various measures by the US government (and others) to ease the crushing burden of debt on many developing nations.

In 1996, for example, the 208th General Assembly "call[ed] upon all governments, all multilateral lending institutions, and commercial banks . . . to strive to insulate the poor of indebted countries from the costs of debt repayment and to consider seriously debt forgiveness or debt relief for the most heavily indebted and poorest countries."

A new study paper from Foreign Policy in Focus reports on "how 100% debt cancellation for poor countries--now being debated by wealthy nations--was transformed from an implausible demand into a winning issue, and what barriers lie ahead for the debt relief movement."

Two Presbyterians and former mission co-workers, Ross and Gloria Kinsler, are deeply involved in work for fair trade as a way of reflecting the biblical principle of Jubilee in our global society.

Seven-week program examines links between faith and food
[4-27-05]

The Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP), in collaboration with two other organizations, has developed a seven-week curriculum for congregations exploring the relationship between the way we eat and the way we live.

If you’ve been following the Senate debate and action on the so-called “bankruptcy reform bill,” you’re probably aware that it will have a great impact on many people of limited means, who have used bankruptcy as a way to get a fresh start – often when they have been overcome by illness and medical bills, or by unemployment.

This article provides more details on the impact of the bill, which passed the Senate last week, and will very likely be approved by the House and then signed by the President.

A day after President Bush's inaugural speech, in which he made sweeping statements about America's role in global security, world-renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs and his Millennium Project presented the UN with a 3,000 page report that outlines how to improve world security and cut world poverty in half by 2015. Leaders from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, Pakistan, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Dominican Republic, and Botswana have since vocalized support and been listed on the project's Web site. So far, the US has been conspicuously silent on the subject.

Religion, conflict & peace discussed at World Social Forum

Voices of Sophia blog

Heather Reichgott, who has created this new blog for Voices of Sophia, introduces it:

Witherspoon’s Facebook page

Mitch Trigger, Witherspoon’s Secretary/Communicator, has created a Facebook page where Witherspoon members and others can gather to exchange news and views. Mitch and a few others have posted bits of news, both personal and organizational. But there’s room for more!

John Harris’ Summit to Shore blogspot

John Shuck’s Shuck and Jive

Got more blogs to recommend?

Plan now for our 2010 Ghost Ranch Seminar!

GHOST RANCH SEMINAR

July 26-August 1, 2010

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