Ok, my man crush on Pope Francis is now complete.

The Pope's got that one right. I have been making daily trips through some really depressing neighborhoods in Omaha. The people who live there are caught in a cycle of crime and poverty that seems insurmountable. Because land is so cheap here, the city just expands westward and abandons whole neighborhoods to this fate. It's stupid and wasteful, but "the heartland" is not known for its smarts. The sheer amount of simple-minded Republican political ads on TV is enough to dumb anyone down.

@3 Republicans promote inequality and their TV ads (and concomitant coordinated right-wing talking points) are diabolical. Money is one important aspect of inequality, but in order to keep the lower classes from focusing on that, they promote all other aspects of inequality. One of their favoritest tricks of recent years is distracting the proles by playing up to the illusion of moral superiority, "pro-life," "anti-gay/pro-'traditionalism'," "anti-atheist" (also synonymous with anti-liberal, anti-secular, anti-science, anti-ecology, and anti-gun-control -- because God takes care of us and the planet, dontcha know?).

There's nothing simple-minded going on. It's some very clever manipulative propaganda, all designed (by the best advertising and motivational psychology gurus) to keep the rich getting richer and contributing to Republican campaigns.

Education is the path out of poverty, but the Democratic party in lockstep with the teacher's unions, have ruined public education in this country. Screaming for more money, but denying accountability.

Give every child an education voucher and let them vote with their feet.

I'm with you, Brooklyn Dear. I was just commenting on the pure simple-mindedness of the ads and the ways the politicians present themselves. One guy is promoting himself as the CONSERVATIVE Republican (he's basically saying he'll travel extensively when Governor and cut property taxes by 100 million dollars) another one is the son of the founder of e-trade who "knows how to run a business" (his dad bankrolled his failed senate run, now he's bankrolling his run for governor). The first one is endorsed by Sarah Palin - she's done an ad for him, which is a joy to see - and the other one is endorsed by ex Cornhusker coach Tom Osborne.

Where does all the evil caused by the catholic church come from?

@4 - I know I'm not supposed to respond to trolls, but in practice (as opposed to theory), most communist countries are really Feudal Oligarchies where the entire system is run for the benefit of a minority of elites. This is true of the Mandarins who run China, the 1% who run the US and the Boyars who run Russia (and called themselves Commissars when they ran the Soviet version of the Russian Empire).

Social Democracies - actual Socialist countries - are, in fact, quite nice places to live...nicer for most of the population than the US is. They are heaven on earth in many respects.

@10 where == the notion that greed is a path to virtue (where virtue is defined by utility and utility is measured in monetary terms alone).

Honestly, though I was raised an Episcopal (some time in church schools no less), which is a kind of RCC-lite, and I read a great deal of OT and NT, I don't remember ever seeing the passage that described the above. I did see it in Bentham and Smith.

Said the white, male, unelected leader of a fanatical religious cult.

Troll dear, of course crime has something to do with it, but it's much more about racism and fear. And it's not an unjustified fear: those neighborhoods are rough - much rougher than anything in Seattle. They make the CD look like Magnolia.

But it all started with racism and fear. The first major influx of blacks in Omaha was as strike breakers at the packing house, which set the two groups of poor people against each other, based on color.

Later, due to redlining, blacks were confined to the near north side, but as housing restrictions fell, they expanded westward. The children of those packing house workers, egged on by slumlords and unscrupulous realtors, sold their homes at a lower value because of fear of the neighborhood "going down". And since Omaha has two school districts, this had a devastating effect on the Omaha Public School District as well.

Thus the downward spiral, and again, the lower middle class and poor of both races got the shaft.

@15 - both democracy and socialism work well in places where institutions are strong, vis-a-vis personalities and parties. Greece, with it's history of fascism, is no more a poster-boy for democracy than for socialism. The US could quite easily effectively implement a western-european (German, French, Scandanavian) style socialism, without resorting to the elimination of property rights. Of course, one has to accept that a tax is not fundamentally a theft of private property.

His Holiness has great sentiments, but that statement doesn't make sense.
First of all, inequality of what? Of income or of opportunity? Equality of opportunity? Of course yes. Of income no, because that would require an totalitarian economic system that history has shown having failed - of which his predecessor, St. John Paul II, I think deemed as as evil.

@9 As long as you keep insisting that poverty is nothing but an individual moral failing, you can deny that it is a social problem that requires social solutions. Very, very typical American conservative attitude.

@19 - I think the thrust of @9's comment was that there was a flawed assumption in the free-market solution for schools, rather than a morality play or blaming the poor for their own problems.

As a supporter of public schools over private for profit (charter) systems, I'm kind of inclined to agree that letting parents decide with their vouchers isn't such a hot idea.

@20/21 - Thanks for clarifying.

@9

Poor people often make astoundingly bad life choices.

I would amend that to say "Poor people often HAVE astoundingly bad life choices."
When your choices are to eat a shit sandwich, or eat a different smelling shit sandwich, the actual choice itself becomes fairly irrelevant.

@21, the interest level in making quality decisions goes way down when the people potentially make them are pretty persuaded that they make no difference. Poor people in this country have very, very few ways out, and "getting a good education" and all the other conservative tropes don't make a lick of difference in most cases. A poor black kid in Philly is probably not going to get out into the world of the middle class no matter what kind of education he gets. And even it does, he's still going to get the short end of every stick he encounters, forever and ever.

As for the Pope, I still want to ask him how being the world's most successful enabler of child rape gets you sainthood.

I find it highly disingenuous for the leader of the Catholic Church to say anything about poor people when it has been the previous Popes' irresponsible stances on birth control that has created so many of them due to overpopulation and birth rates that are just too high for a wealthy, technological society.

@15,

Yes, all the tax-dodgers in Greece makes things difficult, don't they?

American democracy works reasonably well in America, but our efforts to export that system to places like Iraq and Afghanistan haven't gone so well.

You don't say.

@12: atleastyoutried.bmp

@26,
Those are the exceptions, not the rules. For each person who wins the lottery, a multitude more do not. For each poor person who "makes it," a multitude more do not.

Conservatives frequently zero in on the anecdotal few who make it and ignore the ones who don't. It's disingenuous.

@23/26: This ties in with studies showing that stressed people make worse decisions. Relieve stress and they are able to make better ones. The crush of living paycheck to paycheck helps enforce societal inequality by acting as a downward pressure on people in those conditions. Do they have worse choices? In some situations, yes. In others they simply don't recognize an option or options, thus leading them to make an inferior choice. And sometimes, the only choice that lets you survive is a choice that at the same time makes it harder later on. Those choices are ones I have great familiarity with making, from depressed states.

@31,
But doesn't the culture of the U.S. value hard work and (to a seemingly lesser extent) education more than almost any other country in the world?
U.S. workers almost never take vacations. Productivity is through the roof.
Every day, people are bombed with the messages that if you work hard you'll make it.

I'd say the United States' native culture IS one that values hard work.

So where's the upward mobility?

@32: Oh look, it's another drip who can't tell the difference between correlation and causation.

@24's racist stereotype promoting comments are abhorrent. i agree about the childrape thing though. Pikkety has an interesting book on ghe pitfalls of inequality. Its a good read on the subject.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/21/news/com…

@37: What are you talking about? Fnarf didn't say anything inappropriate.

Kids at all income levels make poor decisions. Middle class families and above can afford to bail their kids out of the results of those decisions.

So we can look forward to the Vatican divesting itself of a few of its billions of dollars in order to combat inequality? Any day, real soon now, right?