@EdwardPentin Liberties are granted to secularists but the same charitable response is not granted to the orthodox; how can one conclude anything other than heterodoxy is the preferred path??
"Recently, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, affirmed that, regarding the deviations of the German bishops, the Holy See does not wish divisions to escalate into punitive measures, emphasizing that problems within the Church should, whenever possible, be resolved peacefully. Why should this approach not also be applied to the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), which denies no dogma, recognizes the primacy of the Pope, prays for him, and professes filial devotion to him, while preserving only what the Church believed and celebrated universally until the Council? At the same time, the German Synodal Way has advanced clear doctrinal deviations that promote de facto heresies and even blasphemous positions. Why, then, should reconciliation and patient dialogue be emphasized in one case but not in the other?" — Bishop Athanasius Schneider, appointed by Pope Francis in 2015 to serve as a Vatican visitator to SSPX seminaries and houses.
@JessicaTarlov You’re a complete and total hypocrite, which is unsurprising as truth is not a leftist value. You’d accept anyone who would advance your agenda. Zero standards, zero ethics: just pure partisan hackery.
Milton Friedman's greatest regret.
The federal government discovered the perfect crime in 1943: make employers collect taxes before workers ever see their paychecks. You think you earn $60,000 per year, but you actually earn $75,000 and hand over $15,000 to politicians without ever touching it. The psychological difference is enormous.
Before payroll withholding, Americans wrote quarterly checks directly to the Treasury. Picture yourself sitting at your kitchen table, writing a $3,750 check to the IRS every three months. The pain was immediate and visceral. Politicians faced constant pressure to justify every dollar because citizens felt the extraction in real time.
Withholding transforms this concrete loss into an abstract accounting entry. Your employer becomes an unpaid tax collector, and you never experience the actual cost of government. Worse, most people celebrate their tax refunds as government generosity rather than recognizing them as interest-free loans they provided to politicians. The Treasury collects your money throughout the year, spends it immediately, then returns your own cash and receives gratitude.
This system enables the explosion in government spending you witness today. Defense contractors billing $640 for toilet seats, agricultural subsidies for corn syrup, and congressional salaries for 535 people who rarely show up to work. When taxation feels painless, voters stop demanding accountability for how their money gets spent.
Milton Friedman helped design withholding as a wartime emergency measure and later called it his greatest regret. Free market economists recognized that the psychological pain of direct taxation creates political pressure for fiscal restraint. The temporary always becomes permanent in government hands, and the emergency justification disappears while the extraction mechanism remains forever.
@BernieSanders “Oligarch decisions”? You’re confusing that with Big Government decisions? Like the ones that resulted in censorship on YouTube and Twitter during Covid? There is no reason to align big government with big tech; especially coming from a pol w/CCP sympathies. Hard pass, comrade
A reminder that the only thing stopping the left from seizing your property is a Supreme Court they attack as illegitimate for not letting them just do stuff
@TVietor08 Of course an “Obama staffer” would advocate for the confiscation of private property to be “given” to others. You socialists are such a scourge. Piss off, agent of the state.
@CatholicHerald I would like our bishops to draw away from the secularism that Vatican II promotes and closer to orthodoxy so they can gain an essential understanding of what authentic Catholicism is all about.
@klastastic@GovPritzker Kudos to @GovPritzker for not only losing the Bears and the revenue they would brought to Chicago, but also Boeing, Caterpilar, Citadel, TJX & Tyson Foods. Bad leadership produces bad fruit. Get ready for your taxes to go even higher.
@nosoupforgeorge The Nears had the worst stadium deal in the NFL. If you owned the team you’d do the same thing. If you can, look at it from both sides.
@chicagobeers1@DarinLaHoodIL Wait to you realize that Chicago not only lost the Bears and the revenue they bring to the city, but also Boeing, Caterpillar, Tyson Foods, Cotadel & TJX companies. Bad leadership produces bad fruit.
Good morning all & OTD 82 years ago, Operation OVERLORD commenced with a massive naval and air bombardment of German positions, concurrent with Allied paratrooper and glider landings in occupied France, as well as Allied landings on the beaches and cliffs of Normandy. #DDay