Category: Blithe Spirit

The good and the bad, emphasis on Trib and Sun-Times

Fellow here couldn’t learn language of corporate life . . .

Got out while the getting was good.

I became disenchanted with corporate life. Or rather, perhaps, I could not acquire adequate proficiency in the new corporate turn of phrase.

What I called a spade had now become “an upward-downward, dynamic and portable, soil management tool.”

In fact the book “Your Daily Shakespeare” is my answer to an Orwellian language I could not learn.

How not to approve this departure from the humdrum?

Plus, let us now praise this man and his work.

Link: http://yourdailyshakespeare.com/about-the-author+

— Portland OR-based, by the way —

Strong Economy Drove Wages Higher in August as Hiring Heats Up . . .

. . . U.S. nonfarm payrolls expanded by 201,000, while private-sector hourly wages grew 2.9% from a year earlier.

So much for Nancy Pelosi’s comment on employees’ bonuses as improving their lives,

Pelosi, Jan. 11: In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put the schmooze on is so pathetic. It’s so pathetic. And I would hope that with their big advantage of bringing money home at a very low rate, that they would invest in infrastructure and things. But our experience has been that they will do dividends. They will do stock buy-backs and things like that. I think it’s insignificant.

Recalling the reply of a former Jesuit colleague to my calling his argument “irrelevant — “You’re irrelevant,” he sputtered, which I still chuckle at — I could reply to her, “Pathetic? You’re pathetic.”

Kidding, of course.

“On the square,” my father used to say, shrewdly.

Very interesting account of long-ignored whistle-blowing on McCarrick . . .

. . . by a veteran New York archdiocese pastor. Long interview by Crux. He’s a smart guy who makes reasonable distinctions but wants the book thrown at McCarrick — ecclesiastical trial and all, including defrocking — but comes across as anything but a bomb-thrower.

Reporting to responsible superiors about McCarrick since the middle ’80s, he repeatedly got non-responses from bishops and cardinals, among them cardinal and archbishop of New York Ed Egan, a Chicago priest (from St. Giles parish in Oak Park), who “clearly did not want to hear about this . . . “He knew exactly what I was talking about. Seeing how he reacted, he knew exactly what I was saying, and he didn’t want to pursue the subject.”

Caught off guard in a one-to-one conversation, my guess is that it was (and is) the rare prelate or other superior who would react otherwise. And there were others over the years.

How Trump has set economic growth on fire

I’ve been missing the big stories about this in newspapers and on the tube. Anybody else have this problem?

President Donald Trump is more than 19 months into an administration engulfed in so much controversy that it may overshadow a tremendous achievement, namely an economic boom uniquely his.

During his time in office, the economy has achieved feats most experts thought impossible. GDP is growing at a 3 percent-plus rate. The unemployment rate is near a 50-year low. Meanwhile, the stock market has jumped 27 percent amid a surge in corporate profits.

Friday brought another round of good news: Nonfarm payrolls rose by a better-than-expected 201,000 and wages, the last missing piece of the economic recovery, increased by 2.9 percent year over year to the highest level since April 2009. That made it the best gain since the recession ended in June 2009.

His critics, a group that includes a legion of Wall Street economists, most Democrats and even some in his own Republican Party, don’t believe it will last. They figure the current boom will begin petering out as soon as mid-2019 and possibly end in recession in 2020. [Italics mine throughout]

Ah yes. Consummation devoutly to be wished, by whom you can surely guess.

For them there’s a cloud for every silver lining. Oh for the Obama-trademark new normal.

Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end. And then came the evil Donald Trump. Go figure.

via CNBC

Sun-Times up and at ’em with excellent coverage of Catholic abuse story

Sun-Times’ excellent coverage here:

• Pope ‘won’t say a word about it’ after he’s accused of ignoring abuse claims

• As sex-abuse crisis roils the Catholic Church, Cupich goes on seminary retreat

• Cardinal Cupich orders priests to address disputed TV report at Mass

• In Ireland, Pope Francis apologizes for ‘crimes’ Catholic Church committed there

• In wake of sex abuse crisis, archbishop asks Pope to cancel youth conference

via Catholic Church lay board that probed sex abuse 15 years ago seeks reappointment

Catholic Church lay board that probed sex abuse 15 years ago seeks reappointment

Illinois supreme court chief justice Anne Burke wrote a letter to the U.S. bishops’ president that shows she is not kidding.

List of those willing to serve once again is nothing to sneeze at. Only the pope can call such group. Here’s the rub. Francis wants lay people to say nothing at this point. Why would he hand such an investigation over to non-vetted lay people? Would be out of character for him.

via Catholic Church lay board that probed sex abuse 15 years ago seeks reappointment

Church needs independent lay panel to probe latest allegations

A modest proposal:

Just last week, we argued that the stakes are too high for the credibility of the Catholic Church to ignore accusations of misconduct or poor judgment made against the pope and various bishops by a high-ranking church diplomat.

We said there should be an independent investigation.

Now Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke has proposed an excellent way to do just that.

Burke’s proposal — to reappoint a lay board created 15 years ago by the U.S. Conference of Bishops to investigate sex abuses by priests and authorize it now to investigate top U.S. church leaders — makes sense. Burke sat on the original lay board, and she and her colleagues are willing to be called back into service and report their findings directly to Pope Francis.

This time it may work, but no one should hold his or her breath.

via Sun-Times editorial