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.  

Income Redistribution

Voters learned two new concepts this week - ie "victims" and "redistribution".

As a tit for tat rebuttal for Romney's very bad political week, Republicans dusted off a 14 year old video of Illinois State Senator Barack Obama supporting a concept of "redistribution". It's intended to incite right wing conservatives who, probably, like lots of other voters, have no idea what redistribution means.

Republicans want us to believe "redistribution" is a bad word. In fact, it's how the US Congress gets paid. It's how government pays the bills. It means that government pools the money collected in taxes and redistributes it based upon the best use of resources. All governments "redistribute" resources. Some, by favoring their political friends, while others create a progressive process.

Here's what I think:

Redistribution definition: "The theory, policy, or practice of lessening or reducing inequalities in income through such measures as progressive income taxation and antipoverty programs." (dictionary.com)

I submit, redistribution includes sharing wealth, as well as lessening inequalities. Meaning, all government payroll is a redistribution of tax money.

Income redistribution should not include money spent on Medicare and Social Security but, in fact, the safety-net programs do run deficits. Therefore, government must guarantee payment while hoping to recover the money from future contributions to the programs. The problem is, the US Congress took money from the Social Security fund and has not yet paid it back. In other words, the redistribution of Social Security money was authorized outside of the intended distribution of the available money. 

In Medicare, the cost of health care exceeds the pace of the premiums collected. It's essential to bring down the cost of providing health care to an increasingly aging population before Medicare can become totally sustainable- in other words, not likely. As a result, redistribution is essential to keep Medicare solvent.

This is how redistribution works....it's the same way for defense spending, for public health, for sustainable infrastructure, and so on....

In a heated political campaign, the concepts of "victims" and "redistribution" become political buzz words.  Sadly, both concepts marginalize middle class and poor people.  Neither concept raises us up. Rather, they denigrate the human condition.  People who rely on a return for being good American citizens, by rightly expecting to receive Social Security, Medicare, Veterans benefits, student loans or fuel assistance should not be labeled as "victims".  People who believe government should pay for a strong military should not claim "redistribution" is a bad word.

Romney was taped giving the label "victim" to 47 percent of voters who, he said, expect to receive help from the government. This comment rips the scab off of class warfare in America whereby conservative voters believe wealth should be owned by people who create if for themselves. This is an abrasive statement that should make moral people bristle with concern about the values of a potential Romney in the White House.  What ever happened to the concept of "Compassionate Conservative"?

When the dust settles, after the election, the fact is, those who win the elections, at all levels of government, will benefit from income redistribution, because they will be the victims of receiving a government pay check.

"Income redistribution" and "victim", as the Republicans politicize these concepts, are not mutually exclusive. In other words, if we could assign a value to "income redistribution" and to "victim", the two would add up to including all people, those who contribute and those who receive.   Redistribution is part of our responsibility in creating a human condition* in which everyone of us are subscribers.

*Definition of The Human Condition: Encompasses all of the experience of being human. As mortal entities, the term is also used to describe the joy, terror, humor and other feelings or emotions associated with being and existence....

http://www.reference.com/browse/human+condition?s=t

That's how I see it....