Was about to make a online comment about an egregiously one-sided account in Our Sunday Visitor of Catholic social teaching about compulsory unionism —

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case overshadowed another ruling the court issued the same day, one Catholic legal scholars and activists fear might undermine the ability of public-sector unions to collectively bargain.

On June 30, the high court ruled 5-4 that home health care workers in Illinois could not be compelled to pay union dues because that requirement under Illinois state law violated the workers’ free speech rights.

etc. — when I (naturally) checked out already-made comments, which frequently give you a good idea of what an article says, where I found this:

jagnote: This is not a question of collective bargaining and it is certainly not a question of Catholic Social Teaching [but] a question of labor union leaders taking money from people forced to be in a union and then using the money . . . to funnel political donations to the Democratic party.  . . . union members are forced to support the Democratic political party even if they are fundamentally opposed to its positions….for example, abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage, removing God from any mention in the party platform.

Do you want an example of the end game for American public sector unions? I give you Detroit. Collective bargaining might have been necessary in the nineteenth century but today America has been “collective bargained” out of competitive salaries and benefits.

Most of us faithful Catholics are appalled at how the “social teaching” of the Church is continually used to support political positions which are diametrically opposed to the true teachings of Christ. To quote Pope Benedict XVI (Deus Caritas Est, section 28): “. . . Catholic social doctrine . . . has no intention of giving the Church power over the State. . . .  Its aim is . . . to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just.” [I]t is not just to force people to give their hard earned money to support an ideology in which they do not believe.

To which five readers responded, all in support of the first, of which two stand out:

Jim F:  Precisely! The days when James Cardinal Gibbons openly and correctly supported the union movement are long gone. Corporate greed has been replaced (or supplemented) by union greed. Does no one note that “women’s health care” (i.e. abortion) is always on the union agenda? “Activists” are concerned because their ability to compel others to pay for their activism may now be restricted.

Pamela: It’s bad enough that we have to fight progressivism from outside our fold…but seeing it held up and praised as “Catholic social teaching” is an outrage.

To which I added a sixth:

I would have found this article/essay/column far more interesting if it gave even lip service to differences of opinion among Catholic scholars about compulsory unionism as discussed in official Catholic documents.

Michael Novak comes to mind (The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which I have not read) but more to the point Thomas J. DiLorenzo, professor of econ at Loyola College-Maryland, and Thomas E. Woods Jr., author of The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy.

Even one of these could have offered an arresting comment or two. As it is, you have here a sort of catechism piece or pamphlet, nicely done but a trifle lame for all that.

So it goes. Oh, and that article. As I say, comments often tell it all, but you deserve a closer look, right here —

Catholics back unions after court decision Supreme Court rules dues aren’t mandatory; Church has long history of supporting labor rights

OK?

Time “of the essence” in spreading it around.

Top Quinn officials put together the violence prevention program in the months before the governor stood for election in 2010 amid a spate of Chicago shootings. Then-chief of staff Jack Lavin underscored the need to move quickly in a Sept. 2 email to a top deputy, asking whether staff members could work the weekend. “Time is of the essence,” Lavin wrote.

State money that, now we hear of federal money tacked on, a lending program for people deemed bad risks by banks. Couldn’t be trusted.

In the rush to get the program launched, the Quinn administration hired a financially troubled West Side business development group to dole out loans, despite concluding the organization had recently misspent state grant funds.

The group, Chicago Community Ventures did not make a single loan, but was allowed to keep more than $150,000 when the contract was nixed, the Tribune has found.

No wonder they couldn’t be trusted.

End result of loan program?

Less than a year later, the state agency suspended the contract, records show. The group had not issued a single loan, according to a letter the agency wrote to CCV. Officials pointed to the May 2011 firing of CCV President Anita Hollins, who had been accused by her board of directors of misusing about $960,000 from a separate loan program not affiliated with the state.

So much for “job creation” by government agency, especially in Illinois.

 

Paul Schimpf, GOP Candidate against Lisa Madigan, in Crystal Lake:

1. “It’s between me and Lisa Madigan.”  On an ideological scale where Michael Moore is a one and Rush Limbaugh a 10, Schimpf said he would be “about a 7.”  “I’m a lot closer to the center than Lisa is.”  He pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on which Madigan filed a brief that was decided 9-0 for the other side.  That meant liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg even disagreed with Madigan.
2. The “kind of Attorney General’s Office we’re going to have.” Now, Schimpf said the office is on the “ABC Plan–Anything But Corruption.” Lisa Madigan concentrates on consumer protection, her opponent says. “Fighting corruption will be my number one priority.” He said the Attorney General’s Office for the last twelve years has been “just another cog in the governmental machine.”
3. “A referendum on the political system and political family that has failed out state.” Schimpf touted his independence from “the political hacks of either political party.” He said he was not recruited by the Republican Party. “If elected, my loyalty will be to the people of the State of Illinois.”

Oak Park-area fund-raisers for this guy coming up. Stay tuned.

Made life dangerous for manchild Bill on several occasions.

Conscientiously working my way through a Chi Trib editorial about the cost of a new “wonder” drug, I found myself working too hard.

There’s a new breakthrough hepatitis C drug treatment that cures — yes, cures — almost everyone who takes it. Unlike previous, far less effective treatments, patients suffer few if any side effects. The entire regimen takes only 12 weeks, much shorter than previous regimens.

The drug, Sovaldi, could save the lives of many of the estimated 80,000 people a year who die from the blood-borne liver disease. Eventually, Sovaldi could save the nation’s health system billions of dollars by preventing liver failure and liver cancer, not to mention curbing the huge costs of liver transplants.

And which blood-born liver disease is that? Oh sure, I can figure it out, hepatitis C, backtracking to solve the little puzzle the writer puts in my way. What do you think I am, stupid?

No, but I would rather move right along, In this wise:

“The drug could save the lives of many who die from hepatitis C, which is a blood-born liver disease.”

Better yet, I could have been informed at the start:

“There’s a breakthrough [not new: breakthroughs are never old] drug treatment for the blood-borne liver disease hepatitis-C,” etc.

Breakthrough is the point. A lot of us don’t know hepatitis-C from A or B, and of course we don’t like puzzles in editorials.

“Though” when you mean “because”:

The company also cites data collected by a state air pollution monitor at Washington High School, about two-thirds of a mile southeast of the Burley Avenue terminal.

The monitor has recorded no violations of the federal standard for particulate matter since at least 1993, though prevailing winds typically don’t blow toward the monitor from the KCBX site.

This is common journalese. Writer wants to question something, tosses in oppositional clause, making it an argument against something. But there’s no opposition. Both things can happen. There’s nothing in one to prevent the other.

Both do happen, of course. So what? So the one may mean little, in view of the other. “Because” says more than the writer wants; he wants to hint at it, not say it outright.

Which leads to the question whether he should say it at all — unless he can fine-tune the refutational nature of the second, so that (a) it’s clear and (b) it does not ask or require the reader to supply more than he’d care to come up with on a nice July morning.

Keep the momentum?

(From Illinois Policy Institute)

Nice point made by free-market-oriented Mises Institute blogger, on his way to disapproving Right to Work legislation:

Right-to-work laws are attractive to some because they help undercut the monopoly powers granted to labor unions by government.

They also appeal to the more pragmatic minded because of the distinct improvements in economic growth.

A recent study by the National Institute of Labor Relations Research found that, over a ten year period, states with right-to-work laws experience significant growth in manufacturing output and GDP compared to non-right-to-work states.

This is, of course, the result we would expect from diminishing the power of government-created monopolies such as those granted to labor unions.

But it’s using government to thwart government, and therefore objectionable:

As Murray Rothbard writes in The Case for Radical Idealism, “the libertarian must never allow himself to be trapped into any sort of proposal for ‘positive’ governmental action; in his perspective, the role of government should only be to remove itself from all spheres of society just as rapidly as it can be pressured to do so.

Stubborn lot, those libertarians.