News & Articles

Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted to share his long-repressed feelings about a traumatic event. “It was,” Mitch confided, grim-faced, “the worst day of my political life.”
Was it the day of the 9/11 attacks on America? No, much worse. It was the day 12 years ago when the McCain-Feingold law was approved by the Senate, imposing some limits on campaign donations by super-rich corporate interests. While the vast majority of Americans enthusiastically support such restrictions, Mitch is not one to be swayed by what The People want, so this June, he shared the shame he felt that fateful day at a group meeting in Southern California.
It was a very sympathetic group – more than a hundred right-wing billionaires convened by the Koch brothers to fund a plutocratic takeover of this year’s Congressional elections.
McConnell was the featured act at the three-day Koch-a-palooza, held at the posh St. Regis Monarch Bay resort in Dana Point, and he titillated the elites with the changes that would result from a GOP takeover of the Senate. For one thing, he exulted, “we’re not going to be debating all these gosh darn proposals.” Like what, you ask? “Like raising the minimum wage,” explained the senator from Kentucky, a state with tens of thousands of minimum-wage workers desperately needing a raise.
Poor Mitch. For once, he was being honest, thinking his candor would not be heard outside this closed-door enclave of Koch-heads. But – oops – a recording was leaked to The Nation magazine, and now the voters of Kentucky are learning how put-upon their nearly $200,000-a-year senator feels for just having to talk about those “gosh darn proposals” to lift the roughly $15,000-a-year poverty pay of his minimum-wage constituents.
Keep talking, Mitch – such stuff is what makes politics the Greatest Show on Earth. Or is it the funniest? Or saddest? You choose.

“Exclusive: Inside the Koch Brothers’ Secret Billionaire Summit,” www.thenation.com, June 17, 2014.
“Caught on Tape: What Mitch McConnell Complained About to a Roomful of Billionaires (Exclusive),” www.thenation.com, August 26, 2014.
“Minimum Wage Workers In Kentucky – 2013,” www.bls.gov, April 22, 2014.
“Sen. Mitch McConnell (-Kentucky) - Staff Salary Data,” www.legistorm.com, 2014

Let’s turn Pope Francis loose on Wall Street

Amazing! Some people who’ve long enjoyed a lifestyle of old-money elegance, are suddenly trying to downscale their lives and show a bit more of the common touch.
They’re not corporate chieftains, but they do run multimillion-dollar operations and consider themselves role models for the masses. They are the Catholic Bishops of the United States – and it’s that role model thing that has them a bit flummoxed. Many are living in grand residences, with extensive staffs and personal servants, socializing with political elites, moralizing from elevated pulpits, and… well, generally living in a lofty manner. This has left many of them aloof from the common folk, the very flock they supposedly tend.
For years, such privileges for the Bishops were accepted as normal, even deserved. Then, last year, Francis happened.
Like a hurricane, a new pontiff – and a new ethic – hit the Catholic hierarchy. Pope Francis lives a sparten life and goes openly and gladly among the masses, while stressing simplicity and personal humility as the proper demeanor for the clergy. The Church’s moral emphasis, Francis says by word and deed, must be on service to the poor and disadvantaged, and the existence of economic inequality must be a top priority, addressed as a social evil.
So we now have the phenomenon of Bishops scrambling to cut extravagances, allocating more resources to the down and out, focusing on economic justice, becoming more available to ordinary parishioners, and... well appearing more like Francis. Actually, though, they’re not aligning their lifestyles and work with the Pope – but with the life and teaching of Jesus, the founder of their Church.
Wow, that’s a most impressive conversion! So here’s an idea: If Francis can have this affect on the elites of the Church, what say we turn him loose on the hubris of Wall Street and the extravagances of the corporate elites?

“U.S. Bishops Seek To Match Vatican In Shifting Tone,” The New York Times, June 13, 2014.