Pope Francis and Senator Elizabeth Warren - Harbingers of a New World Order

Although the refreshing Vatican leadership of Pope Francis is lifting the 2013 year end news, his world wide impact was, ironically, quietly foreshadowed by the election of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Pope Francis is the first Jesuit Pope elected after Pope Benedict XVI resigned

Senator Warren defeated incumbent Republican Senator Scott Brown. A woman defeating an incumbent is news enough but her election was a harbinger of a sea turn away from conservative politics. Warren is an academic who enjoyed being able to critique the politics of greed. In so doing, she became somewhat imune to big money's influence in politics. As a result, Warren won the popular vote to defeat an incumbent Republican Senator.

Senator Elizabeth Warren Democrat from Massachusettes

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Barack Obama. In the late 2000s she was recognized by publications such as the National Law Journal and the Time 100 as an increasingly influential public policy figure.

In September 2011, Warren announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate, challenging Republican incumbent Scott Brown. She won the general election on November 6, 2012, to become the first female Senator from Massachusetts. She was assigned to the Senate Special Committee on Aging; the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee; and the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. As a Senate leader, Warren is calling attention to the arrogance of many who have a sense of entitlement because they control wealth.

Pope Francis is the 266th and current Pope of the Catholic Church and the first Jesuit Pope. His election followed the unprecedented resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, a religious leader who was admired by conservative Catholics for his steadfast adherence to conservative social policy issues. Unfortunately, however, Pope Benedict also seemed to embellish the accoutrement's allowed for the leader of the Vatican. One of Pope Benedict's earliest images included wearing custom made red shoes. Although conservatives liked him, he didn't do much to energize the church especially after the bleak years of priest abuse issues. In fact, Pope Benedict even admitted to one reason for his resignation was because he felt like God appeared to be sleeping during his leadership.

In contrast, before he left Buenos Aires for the Roman conclave, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio's friends asked him to buy a new pair of shoes to replace the pair he was wearing. The day he was departing (Argentina) for the conclave, a couple of friends brought (the Cardinal) a pair of shoes. He's always very humbly dressed and the shoes he was wearing were not in very good shape, a pair of South American priests told Vatican Radio.

 

Quite a stark contrast between the Benedict and Francis.

 

Since Pope Francis was elected, he has electrified the Roman Catholic Church with his astounding outreach to the poor and those who feel marginalized by the society. He's even rumored to be considering giving a woman an adminisrative position in the male dominated Vatican.

God certainly  "woke up" when Pople Francis was elected by his fellow Cardinals to lead the Roman Catholic Church.

Pope Francis and Senator Warren are synergestic leaders. Both of them are politically astute because they certainly know how to electrify their supporters. Each advocates for wealth distribution. Pope Francis criticizes the concept of trickle down economics, thereby causing the rich to bristle.  He draws crowds like a rock star, was named “Person of the Year” by Time Magazine, as well as a gay rights magazine, and drew the ire of right wing radio bombastic pundit Rush Limbaugh. Pope Francis has dramatically shifted the message and tone of the Vatican and he’s forcing Republicans in Washington to reassess their relationship with the Catholic church.

For years, Catholic leaders’ staunch opposition to abortion, gay marriage and the contraception-related provisions of Obamacare made them natural allies for the GOP. But Francis scrambled the equation by de-emphasizing hot-button social issues, warning against unchecked capitalism and pushing a populist message at odds with the core of the anti-spending, anti-big government Republican Party.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/pope-francis-catholic-church-republicans-gop-economics-101522.html#ixzz2p6wFbe7B

 

Senator Warren is an advocate for sharing the weath of the rich through taxation. Warren rebuts the GOP-touted notion that raising taxes on the wealthy amounts to "class warfare," contending that "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody."

Warren rejects the concept that it is possible for Americans to become wealthy in isolation.

"You built a factory out there? Good for you," she says. "But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did."

 

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own," says Warren.

It seems natural for Senator Warren and Pope Francis to eventually meet. They'e likely energize each other because their beliefs compliment one another. As a matter of fact, if the two ever gave a joint speech, it could have an explosive impact on the world's often exploited working classes. 

 

As history has demonstrated, charismatic people frequently charge up a destructive backlash of opposition.  

 

Nevertheless, Pope Francis seems to have created new opportunities to discuss issues like poverty, wealth sharing and forgiveness. Likewise, Senator Warren dared to stand up the powerful money interests to unseat an incumbent and she uses words like "taxation".

 

Both Pope Francis and Senator Warren are harbingers of a potential new world order where the meek have an opportunity to inherit the earth.  Well, maybe that's ambitiously idealistic. Nevertheless, Republicans, conservatives, the tax averse and trickle down supply siders could soon be among economic endangered species.  

Trickle Down Economics - Proof it Doesn't Work

Finally a pin was put to busting President Ronald Reagan's fantasy balloon about trickle down economics. 
Pope Francis debunked the "trickle down" myth.  
He said there's no proof it works.

Pope Francis Slams ‘Trickle Down’ Economics and Greed at the Top

In fact, Pope Francis surprised the world with his comments on homosexuality, abortion and birth control. Now, Pope Francis has taken on “trickle down” economics.

Pope Francis took issue with so-called “trickle down” economic theories, which in the U.S. are closely associated with President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies. (Trickle Down Economics has never been challenged by such a high profile person as Pope Francis.)

Francis said trickle down policies have not been proven to work and they reflect a “naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.”

“In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” Pope Francis wrote.

“This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the...workings of the prevailing economic system,” the 76-year-old pontiff added.

Thank you, Dear Pope Francis. Your opinion directly addresses a hot political debate raging in the U.S. about whether or not governments should cut taxes for businesses and the wealthy. The theory is that the economic benefits will “trickle down” the economic ladder to the poor and middle class.

And Francis didn’t stop there. He also denounced tax evasion and economic inequality, and he exhorted governments to ponder a saying that “not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood.”

Indeed, if trickle down policies really worked, the income growth between the rich and poor couldn't be widening. But it is.

Likewise, there's also an employment gap.

The gap in employment rates between America's highest- and lowest-income families has stretched to its widest levels since officials began tracking the data a decade ago, according to an analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press.

Rates of unemployment for the lowest-income families—those earning less than $20,000—have topped 21 percent, nearly matching the rate for all workers during the 1930s Great Depression.

U.S. households with income of more than $150,000 a year have an unemployment rate of 3.2 percent, a level traditionally defined as full employment. At the same time, middle-income workers are increasingly pushed into lower-wage jobs. Many of them in turn are displacing lower-skilled, low-income workers, who become unemployed or are forced to work fewer hours, the analysis shows.

On the other hand, Americans have proof of how wealth sharing improved our nation's economic condition. Income sustaining programs like minimum wage laws, unemployment benefits, income assistance with Medicaid and pension benefits through Social Security have all been operational during the past 70 years during a time of enormous US economic growth.

Although I'm not an economist, it's clear to me that American standard of living has improved as a result of wealth sharing.

I've lived in the Philippines for 3 years. I know the difference between living in a nation where the government shares the wealth, in the US, rather than puts its money in Swiss bank accounts. Although the Philippine government claims it's recovering 500 million dollars of Swiss bank account money stashed away by President Marcos, I submit that amount of return is chump change. Americans gave the Marcos government billions and practically none of the money was shared except with his friends.

Obviously, I've no idea just how much money really landed in the Philippines as a result of American support for President Marcos. This is what I do know, because I've seen it. At any given time, I saw five American aircraft carriers in Subic Bay at one time. There are a minimum of five thousand people on each aircraft carrier. All of those people, on those aircraft carriers, eventually found themselves spending American dollars in Philippine towns and cities. In spite of this enormous amount of money spent in one small country over a period of at least 10 years, there were no advances in public plumbing, paved roads or paved streets.  

Five hundred million returned from Swiss banks to the Philippines? Ha! Chump change. What happened to trickle down economics in the Philippines? It trickled up. The US money, stashed in Swiss banks, sustains many status concious and elete Filipinos living a very high standard of living in gated communities.  Meanwhile, the standard of living for most oher Filipinoes hasn't advanced very much. Big slums remain in Manila.

Although Republicans like Sarah Palin and David Brooks are skeptical about the opinion Pope Francis shared about the wrong mindedness of trickle down economics, the proof is in the outcome. 

Where's proof that trickle down economics works? David Brooks told Public Broadcasting "News Hour" that capitalism has improved the lives of Asians.  Well, Mr. Brooks, when did you live in Asia?

There's no proof in support of trickle down economics and Pope Francis is saintly to have finally put a pin to this ridiculous myth.