<p><a href="http://ignatiansolidarity.net/la-voz-del-pueblo/">[Ignatian Solidarity Network, 03/24/15]</a></p>
<p><em>The most violent country on the planet isn&rsquo;t halfway across the globe; it is a 2.5 hour flight from Houston. Most U.S. citizens are at best dimly aware of the bloodshed that is the defining feature of present-day Honduras. Last summer, 2014, Honduran children surfaced on the southern U.S. border by the tens of thousands, prompting a Texas congressman to decry this &ldquo;invasion of our nation.&rdquo; Likewise, protesters in California met the young immigrants with angry slogans like &ldquo;return to sender!&rdquo; But did protesters have any understanding of the situation these youth were escaping? The violence they&rsquo;d be thrown back into if they were indeed &ldquo;returned to sender&rdquo;?</em></p>
<p><em>La Voz Del Pueblo is an 18-minute documentary that explores the difficult and violent Honduran reality through the perspective of journalists at the Jesuit-run radio station, Radio Progreso.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2ZQx34dGZ0"><em><img alt="" src="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Untitled2_0.jpg" style="float: left;" /></em></a></p>
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<p><em>The Yamauchi Lectures in Religion series was begun in 1985 in memory of Professor H. James Yamauchi, S.J., a celebrated former Chair of the Department of Religious Studies who taught at Loyola University New Orleans from 1956 to 1966. Father Yamauchi was known and loved for his enthusiastic knowledge of religion and his passionate communication of same to the New Orleans community. &nbsp;This lecture series seeks to perpetuate his work by bringing the results of religious scholarship to a wider audience.</em></p>
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<p><strong>Spring 2015</strong></p>
<p>Loyola University New Orleans&rsquo; College of Humanities and Natural Sciences &amp; the Department of Religious Studies present the Spring 2015 Yamauchi Lecture:</p>
<p><strong>&ldquo;Exodus, Pilgrimage, and Jubilee Solidarity: How Today&rsquo;s Immigration Crisis Challenges People of Faith&rdquo;</strong></p>
<p>How do the immigrants&rsquo; journeys and destinations reflect a long tradition of sacred pilgrimages?</p>
<p>How do the principles of Catholic social thought shape our judgments and actions in the face of &nbsp;amnesia, indifference, and xenophobia?</p>
<p><span>How can the plight of immigrants today be situated in the context of major events and figures in Salvation History?</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Tuesday, March 24, 7pm (</strong><strong>Reception at 6:15pm)</strong></p>
<p><strong>Audubon Room on the second floor of the Dana Student Center, Loyola University New Orleans</strong></p>
<p><strong>Free, and Open to the Public</strong></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://chn.loyno.edu/religious-studies/yamauchi-lectures">MORE INFORMATION&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p>by Al&iacute; Bustamante, M.A.</p>
<p>Since June 2014, the average price of a barrel of oil has fallen from more than $100 to about $50.[1] &nbsp;Many states, including those in the Gulf South, are considering budget cuts to higher education, healthcare, and social services in order to deal with oil revenue shortfalls. But is the oil revenue shortfall really the culprit? Contrary to what state budget offices profess, pressure to public services stems from the inadequacy and regressive nature of tax structures and not from oil revenue shortfalls.</p>
<p>For example, the Gulf South&rsquo;s most oil-revenue dependent state, Louisiana, has an oil revenue shortfall of $376 million for fiscal year 2014-15. However, the budget shortfall not related to oil revenues was already an alarming $1.2 billion before oil prices began to drop. Louisiana&rsquo;s budget deficit is mainly driven by an inadequate and unfair tax structure of tax exemptions and credits for corporations and the wealthy worth more than $3 billion a year.[2]</p>
<p>Trickle-down economic theories have been wildly discredited, and yet the wealthy continue to shift their tax responsibilities onto the poor under the guise of stimulating economic growth.[3] &nbsp;The unfair structure of state and local taxes has contributed to rising income inequality and eroded state budgeting capacity.[4]&nbsp;</p>
<p>Florida and Texas have the second and third most unfair tax systems in the U.S. while Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi rank 12th, 19th and 21st respectively.[5] &nbsp;In the Gulf South and across the U.S., the poorest families, the bottom 20 percent, pay at least two times more of their income (10.9 percent) in state taxes than the top 1 percent (5.4 percent).&nbsp;</p>
<p>Between 2009 and 2012, the share of total income growth captured by the top 1 percent in the Gulf South ranged from 49.2 percent in Mississippi to 259.9 percent in Florida.[6] &nbsp;In Florida and Louisiana, all income growth between 2009 and 2012 accrued to the top 1 percent.</p>
<p>Catholic Social Teaching supports progressive taxation systems as just and equitable ways to promote the common good and reduce severe income and wealth inequalities. [7] &nbsp;Progressive systems require higher tax contributions from those with more ability to pay.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Additionally, a more progressive state income tax with a higher effective tax rate, fewer tax exemptions, and an expanded state earned income tax credit (EITC) can increase state revenues, preserve essential funding to education, healthcare, and social services, and promote a more equitable and sustainable state. &nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>[1] See: Nasdaq End of day Commodity Futures Price Quotes for Crude Oil WTI (NYMEX).</p>
<p>[2] Sources: Louisiana Department of Revenue. 2014. Tax Exemption Budget 2013-2014.</p>
<p>[3] Andrews, Dan, Christopher Jencks, &amp; Andrew Leigh. 2011. &ldquo;Do Rising Top Incomes Lift All Boats?&rdquo; The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis &amp; Policy 11: (1).</p>
<p>[4] See: Standard and Poor&rsquo;s Ratings Services. 2014. DRAFT: Income Inequality Weighs On State Tax Revenues.</p>
<p>[5] Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). 2015. Who Pays: A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All Fifty States, Fifth Edition at &nbsp;(accessed Feb. 2, 2015).&nbsp;</p>
<p>[6] Sommeiller, Estelle and Mark Price. 2015. The Increasingly Unequal States of America: Income Inequality by State, 1917 to 2012. Economic Analysis Research Network.</p>
<p>[7] Saint Pope John XXIII. 1961. Mater et Magistra, No. 102.National Conference of Catholic Bishops. 1986. Economic Justice for All. United States.</p>
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<p><a href="https://t.e2ma.net/webview/nlayh/d2dc3885b23ae5686558e2ab870e2521">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

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<p><strong>PRESS RELEASE</strong></p>
<p><strong><span>March 4, 2015&nbsp;</span></strong><strong><span>&bull;&nbsp;</span></strong><strong><span>Oliver Bernstein, 512-289-8618</span></strong></p>
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<p>AUSTIN &ndash; One in four Texas children lives in poverty, threatening their potential and the state&#39;s continued prosperity. According to State of Texas Children 2015, a new Center for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP) report released today, slight improvements in health care and school nutrition don&rsquo;t compensate for inadequate investments in education and child protection.</p>
<p>Detailed data are available for every county in Texas. Please contact Bernstein@cppp.org for child well-being data for your county.</p>
<p>&quot;Texas is consistently ranked one of the nation&rsquo;s worst states for children, but we can make our state the best place for kids if we enact smart public policies now,&quot; said Ann Beeson, Executive Director of CPPP. &quot;With 1 in 11 U.S. kids living in Texas, the future of young Texans will determine the future of our country.&quot;</p>
<p>Key findings include:</p>
<ul>
<li>
One in four Texas children lives in poverty. For a family of four, that&#39;s less than $24,000 per year. The high child poverty rate combined with a relatively good parental employment rate means that many hard-working Texas parents aren&#39;t earning enough to provide adequately for their kids.</li>
<li>
Despite modest gains for kids, Texas is ranked 49th for the percentage of children with health insurance (13 percent uninsured). Kids are more likely to be uninsured when their parents are uninsured, and Texas continues to have the highest rate of uninsured adults in the nation.</li>
<li>
Nearly two million Texas kids live in households where access to nutritious food is limited and uncertain, threating children&#39;s health and ability to learn. Expanded school nutrition programs have successfully provided more meals to students, keeping kids healthier and helping them learn.</li>
</ul>
<p>Key policy recommendations:</p>
<ul>
<li>
Invest sufficiently in public education to meet student needs.</li>
<li>
Expand Pre-K statewide to high quality, full-day programs for currently eligible students.</li>
<li>
Close the Coverage Gap, and expand health insurance coverage options for families.</li>
<li>
Provide more support for informal kinship caregivers, and streamline the process for accessing kinship care benefits.</li>
<li>
Raise the state minimum wage, and change the state law that prohibits Texas cities from setting their own minimum wage.</li>
</ul>
<p>Lawmakers have a tremendous opportunity this legislative session to adopt policy solutions that can help children and all Texans. From expanded early childhood education to health insurance coverage that protects children and families, policy solutions are available to lawmakers now that can improve the state for Texas children.</p>
<p>&quot;The decisions legislators make at the Capitol have major implications for our children,&quot; said Jennifer Lee, Research Associate at CPPP and the lead author of State of Texas Children 2015. &quot;It&rsquo;s time for all of us to stand up for Texas kids.&quot;</p>
<p>State of Texas Children 2015 is part of Texas Kids Count, a project of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, and is supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>To read the full report click <a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/cppp 15 tx kids report_0.pdf">HERE</a></p>

<p>&nbsp;by Anthony Annett, <a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/">Commonweal Magazine</a></p>
<p>Perhaps prompted by nervousness about the agenda of Pope Francis, recently there has been a flurry of activity pushing the compatibility of Catholicism with capitalism. In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Tim Busch&mdash;trustee of the Catholic University of America&mdash;praises the power of free markets to lift people out of poverty. In his view, the free-market system advances the virtues enshrined in Catholic social teaching, and is therefore superior to &ldquo;collectivist&rdquo; economic systems in which big government impinges on personal freedom.</p>
<p>Busch presents a false dichotomy. Who does not oppose the collectivism associated with the oppressive Marxist regimes of the twentieth century? Catholic social teaching has always staked out a middle-ground position that opposes the excesses of collectivism on the one hand, and laissez-faire individualism on the other&mdash;the &ldquo;twin rocks of shipwreck,&rdquo; as Pope Pius XI put it in Quadragesimo anno (1931).</p>
<p>The Catholic Church has always taught that the right to private property is never absolute, and must always be subordinated to common use&mdash;making sure that the needs of all are met. And while collectivism can elevate common use at the expense of private ownership, free-market individualism errs in the opposite direction. Writing at the time of the Great Depression, Pius XI was particularly blunt: &ldquo;The right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free competition of forces,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;For from this source, as from a poisoned spring, have originated and spread all the errors of individualist economic teaching.&rdquo;</p>
<p><a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/papal-economics">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p>by&nbsp;&nbsp;ROSS EISENBREY</p>
<p>Rampant wage theft in the United States is a huge problem for struggling workers. Surveys reveal that the underpayment of owed wages can reduce affected workers&rsquo; income by 50 percent or more. Most recently, a careful study of minimum wage violations in New York and California in 2011 commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) determined that the affected employees&rsquo; lost weekly wages averaged 37&ndash;49 percent of their income. This wage theft drove between 15,000 and 67,000 families below the poverty line. Another 50,000&ndash;100,000 already impoverished families were driven deeper into poverty.</p>
<p>The extensive weekly minimum wage violations uncovered by the DOL study in California and New York alone amount to an estimated $1.6 billion&ndash;$2.5 billion over the course of a full year. Given that the combined population of California and New York is 18.5 percent of the U.S. total, it is reasonable to estimate that minimum wage violations nationwide amount to at least $8.6 billion a year, and as much as $13.8 billion a year. On the one hand, violations in these two states might be less frequent because the wage and hour enforcement effort in New York and California is greater than in most states and violations might be deterred (Florida, for example, does not have a state labor department). But on the other hand, their large immigrant populations might increase the prevalence of wage theft&mdash;the DOL study found that non-citizens were 1.6 to 3.1 times more likely to suffer from a minimum wage violation.</p>
<p>The DOL study vastly understates the total impact of wage theft because it reported only on minimum wage violations, which are more frequent than overtime violations but usually involve smaller per violation dollar amounts than many overtime pay violations. A bookkeeper, for example, earning an annual salary of $45,000, who works 10 hours of unpaid overtime a week might lose $325, whereas a minimum wage worker forced to work &ldquo;off-the-clock&rdquo; unpaid for 10 hours would lose &ldquo;only&rdquo; $72.50, or ten times the state minimum wage if it were higher than the federal minimum. (Overtime violations are very frequent among low wage workers: a 2009 study found that on a weekly basis, 19 percent of front-line workers in low wage industries were cheated out of overtime pay to which they were entitled.)</p>
<p>DOL&rsquo;s new study shows the need for much greater efforts to ensure employer compliance. Helpfully, the president has called for increases in the budget and staffing of the Wage and Hour Division, but Congress should revisit the obsolete penalties for non-compliance: repeated or willful violations of the minimum wage and overtime requirements are subject to a maximum fine of only $1,100.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.epi.org/blog/wage-theft-by-employers-is-costing-u-s-workers-billions-of-dollars-a-year/">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p><a href="http://www.msnbc.com/ronan-farrow-daily/watch/faces-of-the-undocumented-immigration-battle-400501827671?cid=sm_tw_ronan"><img alt="" src="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Untitled_0.jpg" style="width: 744px; height: 418px;" /></a></p>

<p>by Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.</p>
<p>The question of the &ldquo;State of the Dream&rdquo; is often raised at annual celebrations of the Martin Luther King Holiday. &nbsp;I heard the question yet again at a recent panel discussion held at Dillard University. &nbsp;Dominant U.S. society, I responded, has never embraced Dr. King&rsquo;s &ldquo;Dream&rdquo; or the goals of the March on Washington.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The opportunity to enact the &ldquo;Dream&rdquo; still stands before us. There are many ways we can enact the Dream, one of which is raising the minimum wage to the level demanded by the March on Washington on March 28, 1963.</p>
<p>Dr. King began his speech to marchers by marking the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, citing the great promises made in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. &nbsp;This is the promise that all people would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. King stated:</p>
<p>It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note in so far &nbsp; as her citizens of color are concerned. &nbsp;Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check: a check which has come back marked &quot;insufficient funds.&quot;</p>
<p>152 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, have we, as a nation, honored our sacred obligations to the promises of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?</p>
<p><a href="https://t.e2ma.net/webview/j67qh/4eeeea6dd78fc7eee1929db33887cf47">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p><strong>By Jeff Ostrowski - Palm Beach Post Staff Writer</strong></p>
<p>In a sign of increasing wealth concentration, Florida&rsquo;s richest 1 percent of residents make 43 times as much as the state&rsquo;s bottom 99 percent, according to a study released Monday.</p>
<p>Florida has the nation&rsquo;s fourth-highest income gap, the Economic Policy Institute calculated. Whether the growing gulf is a troubling trend or just an inevitable result of a free-market economy is open to debate.</p>
<div>
<p>The top 1 percent of Florida wage earners made an average of $1.49 million in 2012, the study found. The bottom 99 percent earned an average family income of $34,387.</p>
<p>Connecticut, the nation&rsquo;s hedge fund capital, and New York, home of Wall Street, had the largest gaps between the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s unclear if a wide gap is such a bad thing, however. Massachusetts, Texas and Illinois &mdash; states with large numbers of corporate headquarters &mdash; also rank high on this measure. But low-wage West Virginia &mdash; no one&rsquo;s model of economic development &mdash; has one of the nation&rsquo;s narrowest income gaps.</p>
<p>Still, the Economic Policy Institute found that the rich got richer after the Great Recession, while most everyone else struggled. The top 1 percent of Floridians posted income gains of 40 percent, while the bottom 99 percent suffered a 7 percent decline.</p>
<p>&ldquo;What concerns me is that it&rsquo;s continuing to get worse,&rdquo; said Michael Dolega, senior economist at TD Bank in Toronto. &ldquo;That paints a pretty bleak picture of the recovery in Florida. Job growth in Florida has been skewed toward the lower end of the wage scale.&rdquo;</p>
<p>A widening income gap between the top and bottom might not be so bad if lower-tier wage earners are prospering, said University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith.</p>
<p>&ldquo;This is the paradox,&rdquo; Snaith said. &ldquo;You have these superstar earners who started a tech company that&rsquo;s gone from being worth nothing to being worth billions.&rdquo;</p>
<p>A more telling measure, Snaith said, is whether lower-income Floridians can move up the income ladder. The picture is mixed there, too. From 2009 to 2012, the 1 percent took a huge share of Florida&rsquo;s income growth, the Economic Policy Institute found.</p>
<p>Snaith said those numbers were inflated by a stock market that crashed in 2009 and then roared back by 2012, a move that boosted income for the wealthy.</p>
<p>Income inequality has emerged as a pivotal issue for next year&rsquo;s presidential election, but liberals and conservatives disagree on how to spur job growth and wages. President Barack Obama last week called for a higher minimum wage and stiffer taxes on the wealthy. Republicans counter that the correct answer is lower taxes and less regulation.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Inequality doesn&rsquo;t necessarily point the way to a specific policy path,&rdquo; Snaith said.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/business/florida-has-fourth-largest-income-gap-in-us-study-/njxWC/#e4eead8f.3862469.735625">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>
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<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZxYxlQOOXQ"><img alt="" src="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/health show.jpg" /></a></p>