<p><img alt="" src="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Katrina-ten years.jpg" style="width: 700px; height: 788px;" /></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Katrina-ten years-0915-kat.pdf">FULL PRINTABLE VERSION&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p>by Jeanie Donovan, MPA, MPH&nbsp;</p>
<p>The Christmas season is in full swing, which for some means an abundance of holiday shopping, eating, and festive gatherings. For others, however, the holiday season is a time of financial strain, unpredictable work schedules, and disappointed children. Minimum wage workers in the retail and service industries bear the brunt of increased consumerism during the holidays and reap little reward. Despite their long and unforgiving hours in the workplace, these workers often come home without enough earnings to pay their rent and bills, let alone buy food for special holiday meals or gifts to put under the Christmas tree.</p>
<p>The cashier at the grocery store, retail clerk at the mall, or server at a holiday party are examples of employees who put in long hours during the holiday season and typically make minimum wage or less. Many of these low-wage workers will end the year earning below the federal poverty line. For example, a single parent with one child who works a full-time minimum wage job earns just $15,080 before taxes. The federal poverty line for a family of two is $15,930&mdash;and that is considered by many to be an insufficient measure of what a family actually needs to earn to pay for basic expenses. Hard work clearly does not equal economic security.</p>
<p>So what can be done to change this? While gift drives and holiday giving campaigns can help working poor families enjoy some Christmas cheer, a more just and sustainable way would be to raise wages. Efforts to raise the federal minimum wage have stalled, but calls for state leaders to pass their own minimum wage laws are mounting. To date, 29 states and Washington D.C. have enacted state laws setting the minimum wage higher than the federal limit of $7.25. In 2014 alone, 10 state legislatures enacted legislation that increased their state&rsquo;s minimum wage. Unfortunately, Louisiana was not one of them. Despite broad public support, state lawmakers quickly rejected several bills aimed at increasing Louisiana&rsquo;s minimum wage during the 2014 legislative session.</p>
<p>Change may be on the horizon, though. Newly elected Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards has voiced his support for increasing the state&rsquo;s minimum wage. What&rsquo;s more, he is Catholic and his website states that his religious upbringing has &ldquo;shaped his commitment to his community.&rdquo; Catholic social teaching takes a clear stance on just wages and government&rsquo;s role in protecting workers. The Catechism of the Catholic Church holds that remuneration for work should guarantee workers the opportunity to provide a dignified livelihood for themselves and their families on the material, social, cultural, and spiritual level. Moreover, Saint John XXIII explained &ldquo;It can never be right for the State to shirk its obligation of working actively for the betterment of the condition of the workingman.&rdquo;</p>
<p>As 2015 comes to a close and new legislative session approaches, Louisianans must call on their new governor and state legislators to give workers and families the gift they truly deserve: a raise. &nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="https://t.e2ma.net/webview/jm8xj/09dfe00c33134d35d66e89de8295dc9e">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p>Texas has a lot to brag about: It&rsquo;s a leader in job growth, energy production and building.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s also near the top of another list, but it&rsquo;s not something you&rsquo;ll likely see shared often on social media: child poverty.</p>
<p>Texas ranks 43rd in the country to be a kid, based on economic well-being, health and education, according to the Annie Casey Foundation, a private charitable watchdog organization.</p>
<p>In Travis County, U.S. Census numbers show child poverty has increased nearly each year since 2000.</p>
<p>In 2014, the county added an additional 9,860 children in poverty, totaling 64,000. About one in four children live in poverty in Texas&mdash;a staggering statistic that dates back to 1989. Today, that&rsquo;s 1.7 million Texas children.</p>
<p>One of those children includes 13-year-old Paige Rogers, who lives in a group home run by the Foundation for the Homeless in north Austin. She has four siblings, ranging from 3 months old to 14 years old.</p>
<p>Just like many eighth graders, she has big dreams of becoming an artist or working with animals, but she talks a lot about getting a job for someone so young.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I thought about working at, like, computer tech places and stuff,&rdquo; Paige said, holding a crayon while coloring. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s be honest, with a career, you get paid more rather than getting paid minimum wage at an ordinary job.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Her mom, Kayla Dixon, works nights at a nursing home. Her dad, Jared Dixon, works during the day at a call center. They moved to Austin about six months ago from Lubbock in search of a better life.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We probably bring together, like, $800 between the both of us,&rdquo; said Dixon.</p>
<p>Before finding the group home, they slept in hotels and eventually their SUV.</p>
<p>&ldquo;You keep on waiting on a time to get a place, but you know you don&rsquo;t have a place to go to like everybody else does,&rdquo; said Paige.</p>
<p>Most families, like Paige&rsquo;s, move to Austin looking for a job. Unemployment is low in Texas and its lawmakers, especially its former governor, enjoy reminding the rest of the country.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.kens5.com/story/news/investigations/2015/12/13/state-our-children/76959510/">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p><a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/multimedia/data-visualizations/2012/payday-loans-really-add-up?img&amp;utm_campaign=2015-12-16 PNN&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=Eloqua"><img alt="" src="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/HolidayInfographicSmallLoansv6_990_web.png" style="width: 700px; height: 1902px;" /></a></p>

<p><strong>Executive Summary&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>By Allyson Fredericksen</p>
<p><em>Not all wages are living wages. In October of this year, we found that across the United States the hourly, full-time wage paid to many workers falls far short of the amount necessary to cover basic needs and save a small amount for emergencies. For workers paid low wages, even a fulltime job is not enough, and they must either go without necessities or work multiple full-time jobs. </em></p>
<p>Adequate wages are only one difficulty that workers face in an economy with a widespread shortage of living wage jobs. Workers across the country struggle to find full-time work at any wage, let alone a living-wage. Women, Latinos and Latinas, and workers of color are especially likely to end up in part-time work, often patching together multiple jobs to make ends meet. So, both wages and hours must be considered when discussing the adequacy of workers&rsquo; earnings.</p>
<p>The Alliance for a Just Society has produced reports on jobs and wages since 1999, showing the wage needed to make ends meet and how many jobs are available at that living wage threshold.</p>
<p>The first report in this year&rsquo;s series, &ldquo;Pay Up!&rdquo;, calculated a living wage in all 50 states and in Washington, D.C. and showed that a single adult worker must earn from $14.26 an hour (Arkansas) to $21.86 (Washington, D.C.) to make ends meet. This report calculates the availability of living-wage jobs nationally and in states across the country, and shows how difficult it is for job seekers to find such employment.</p>
<p>Nationwide, there are more than 17 million job seekers, including both the unemployed and those who are looking for a different or better job. However, there are only 5 million job openings total, paying any wage. Of these, only 2.7 million openings that pay at least $15 per hour &ndash; the new wage floor already established in several cities to bring minimum wages closer to living wages. Across the country, six out of seven job seekers will be unable to find a job that pays at least $15 per hour, and almost 13 million will be unable to find any job.</p>
<p>In every state and in Washington, D.C., the number of people looking for work exceeds the number of living wage jobs. In Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, there are three job seekers for each job opening that pays enough for a single adult to make ends meet. In California,<span class="maroon"> Florida</span>, Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and South Carolina there are 10 job seekers for every living wage job opening. The ratio is even greater for job openings that pay enough for families with children to make ends meet.</p>
<p>Occupational projections show that this is a trend unlikely to change in the near future. Nationally, four of the top five fastest growing occupations &ndash; those occupations with the &nbsp;most job openings &ndash; pay less than $15 per hour. This finding suggests that our economy is not growing in a way that is delivering returns to workers.</p>
<p>Additionally, the projected openings in the top five occupations for job seekers are less likely to be full-time. In all five of these leading occupations, including the relatively well-paid occupation category of Registered Nurses, workers are more likely to work part-time than are workers overall. In three of these leading occupations, workers are more likely to work part-time than full-time. Job-seekers face not only inadequate wages but also inadequate hours, making it even more difficult for them to make ends meet.</p>
<p>For part-time workers, a job that pays an hourly wage equal to the living wage would still not provide enough to make ends meet. If they are paid less than a living wage, it will take even more hours per week just to make ends meet. Furthermore, because part-time workers are less likely to receive benefits such as employer-sponsored health insurance and may commute between multiple jobs, their actual cost of living could be even greater than those with full-time jobs.</p>
<p>Tools exist to help ensure that all workers can make ends meet. They include increasing the federal minimum wage to at least $15 per hour; ensuring that state and federal subsidies go to businesses that produce full-time living wage jobs; strengthening the safety net; improving regulation of scheduling practices; and supporting workers&rsquo; ability to organize and collectively bargain for higher wages, full-time work, and benefits.</p>
<p>Such measures are needed to ensure that workers are properly compensated for their participation in the economy, while preserving their ability to lead lives outside work. These protections will contribute not only to workers&rsquo; economic security, but also to the well-being of their families and communities.</p>
<p><img alt="" src="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/paycheck image.jpg" /></p>
<p><a href="http://allianceforajustsociety.org/2015/12/patchwork-of-paychecks/">FULL REPORT&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuuLEszrFok"><img alt="" src="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/SNAp 2.jpg" /></a></p>

<p>BY MATT HADRO/CNA</p>
<p>WASHINGTON &mdash; As the U.S. plans to increase its intake of Syrian refugees to 10,000 next year, Americans &mdash; including Catholics &mdash; are trying to balance national security concerns with compassion for the refugees.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&ldquo;Americans need to understand that responding to a core tenant of our faith to provide compassion and care to suffering people like Syrian refugees and maintaining national security are not mutually exclusive &mdash; it is not an either-or proposition,&rdquo; said <span class="maroon">Susan Weishar, a migration fellow at the Jesuit Social Research Institute</span>, who directed immigration and refugee services for Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans for 14 years.</p>
<p>&ldquo;A rigorous, multilayered and lengthy vetting and security-clearance procedure is in place to screen refugees,&rdquo; she told CNA. &ldquo;As the leader of the free world, the wealthiest democracy on the planet, the U.S. must not turn its back on the Syrian refugees.&rdquo;</p>
<p>However, there are intelligence gaps that could jeopardize the vetting process for refugees, said Seth Jones, who directs the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corp.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&ldquo;I actually think the U.S. needs better intel collection in Syria. So I would actually push more resources to setting up a technical architecture in Syria and then resources for human collection in Syria,&rdquo; he told CNA.</p>
<p><strong>Debate Over Refugees</strong></p>
<p>The Obama administration has announced its plan to accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S. next year. The U.S. has only accepted close to 2,000 Syrian refugees total since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, and 1,682 of those were accepted in Fiscal Year 2015.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/compassion-vs.-security-what-to-do-with-syrian-refugees?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NCRegisterDailyBlog+National+Catholic+Register#When%3A2015-11-25+14%3A43%3A01">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p>by The Editorial Board, Nola.com/Times-Picayune</p>
<p>he effort to give thousands of Louisiana workers a little extra in their tax refund failed at the end of the legislative session last summer. But New Orleans Rep. Walt Leger and business and community groups pushing for an increase in the state&#39;s earned income tax credit for low-income workers will have an important ally in 2016.</p>
<p>Gov.-elect John Bel Edwards said this week that he wants to double the state&#39;s earned income tax credit as part of his legislative agenda. That is what Rep. Leger tried to do this year. He kept the measure alive until the final day of the session, when it died.</p>
<p>Louisiana&#39;s earned income tax credit is 3.5 percent of the federal tax credit, which makes it the lowest among 26 states that offer one. Rep. Leger proposed that the Legislature increase the Louisiana credit to 7 percent.</p>
<p>He had an impressive group of allies: Entergy, the United Way of Southeast Louisiana, the Louisiana Association of United Ways, the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola University and AARP Louisiana, among others.</p>
<p>Entergy has seen the benefits of the extra money for individual families. The company helps its low-income customers file for the annual tax credit, which is paid as a refund.</p>
<p>But the Legislature balked at increasing the credit.</p>
<p>That is a shame. More than 224,000 families in Louisiana have difficulty paying for essentials because of low wages, high housing costs, expensive health care and difficulty finding child care, according to a study released last January by the<span class="maroon"><strong> Jesuit Social Research Institute</strong></span> in Loyola University&#39;s College of Social Sciences in New Orleans.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/12/louisiana_income_tax_credit.html#incart_m-rpt-1">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p><strong>The deep connection between environment destruction and poverty</strong></p>
<p>by Fred Kammer, SJ&nbsp;</p>
<p>One of the most significant insights of Pope Francis in his May 24 encyclical on the environment&mdash;Laudato Si&rsquo;&mdash;is the direct connection between environmental degradation and the plight of people who are poor. A critical look at this connection can help to unlock the message of the entire document. [1]</p>
<p>The concern of Francis for the poor and the environment is not new to papal teaching nor Catholic social concern. In his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI developed the theme of a &ldquo;covenant between human beings and the environment&rdquo; [7] [2] in which he delineated a threefold responsibility that is part of the human relationship to the environment: &ldquo;a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations, and towards humanity as a whole&rdquo; [48].</p>
<p>Before Benedict, St. Pope John Paul II had made the connection in his 1990 World Day of Peace message Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All of Creation. National and regional conferences of bishops also made the same connection in the years that followed. Of course, teaching at the hierarchical level was deeply influenced by the work of local Catholics and other people of good will on issues of environment preservation and &ldquo;environmental justice&rdquo; (often referring to the connection of environmental degradation and its profound impact especially on poor and minority communities).</p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Canaries in the Cole Mine.pdf">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p><strong>Catholic Social Thought and the Environment&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>By Fred Kammer, SJ&nbsp;</p>
<p>Contemporary environmental consciousness in the Church received a strong kickstart with St. Pope John Paul&rsquo;s 1990 World Day of Peace message Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All of Creation and in a number of statements from conferences of bishops in recent years. [1] While there had been some environmental activism from the Catholic Rural Life Conference and other grassroots Catholic groups and church leaders at the local, national, and international levels prior to 1990, it intensified in the years following.</p>
<p>A strong component of that consciousness focused on stewardship of the environment, drawing inspiration from scripture. John Paul argued that through the Genesis work mandate &ldquo;to subdue the earth,&rdquo; humans image their Creator and share God&rsquo;s creative action, a font of deep spirituality. [2] With the Lord, we become co-creators of the earth and the ways humans have developed society over time, what we might call &ldquo;creation given&rdquo; and &ldquo;creation enhanced.&rdquo;[3]</p>
<p>In his 2008 World Day of Peace message The Human Family, A Community of Peace, Pope Benedict XVI introduced the concept of a &ldquo;covenant between human beings and the environment&rdquo; [7][4]. In his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate, the Holy Father developed a threefold responsibility tied to the environment: &ldquo;a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations, and towards humanity as a whole&rdquo; [48]. Pope Benedict, in framing the environmental concerns in terms of covenant, took a giant step from just the &ldquo;stewardship model&rdquo;&mdash;which positions humans over-against the rest of creation&mdash;to a more adequate approach that takes seriously the solidarity that extends beyond the human species to other forms of life and their habitats. [5]</p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/CST and the Environment_0.pdf">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>