USCCB REFUSES TO DISTANCE ITSELF FROM ALINSKY - CCHD CORRUPTION

I was reading the Reform CCHD Website today and came across the report they issued regarding the newest appeal for our money and the relationship between the CCHD, the USCCB and The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a leftist social justice group. This led me to do some research on the other groups mentioned in the report and guess what? All of them have ties back to Chicago and our old friend Saul Alinsky.

Will the bishops never learn?

Starve this beast. Give your money to your parish or your favorite charity. And make sure that you put a nice note in the envelope explaining to the good Bishops just why you won't support their pet cause and all their leftist friends.

Enough is enough!

"As a national initiative of the Bishops‟ Conference, CCHD is an essential and complementary part of the Catholic social mission proclaimed by Jesus Christ and taught by His Church. CCHD does not replace, nor can it be replaced by, other expressions of the Church‟s essential social mission. CCHD is one of the most widely supported collections and initiatives of our Bishops‟ Conference, raising more than ten million dollars every year. CCHD helps our Church in the United States practice what we preach about human life and dignity, social and economic justice, solidarity and the common good in local communities across our country. Here are just a few examples of CCHD‟s remarkable work:

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is an organization of Latino, and Haitian migrant farm workers in Florida. Working with the local diocese, the Florida Catholic Conference and many other groups, CIW has won groundbreaking agreements with major fast food chains to increase wages and improve better working conditions for their members who pick tomatoes.

St. Agatha Family Empowerment (SAFE) is a group of neighbors who worked in the North Lawndale area of Illinois with the support of St. Agatha Catholic Church to give youth positive alternative to drugs, gangs, and violence and offer access to employment and job training, educational assistance, mentoring and leadership development.

The Federation of Congregations United to Serve (FOCUS) in the Orlando area has worked through local parishes, congregations and other groups to address issues of immigration, crime, education and housing. After one of their members died in a fire because there was no water in nearby fire hydrants, FOCUS undertook a successful campaign to have all fire hydrants, especially in poor areas, inspected and repaired so that no other lives are lost because fire hydrants failed.

Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) in San Antonio, Texas has worked for almost 30 years with Catholic parishes, other congregations, schools, and unions to involve their members in the public decisions that affect their lives. It has won over $1 billion in public projects to improve drainage, streets and housing and to provide better education, healthcare, and job training in low income neighborhoods."
Review of CCHD - USCCB

Communities Organized for Public Service

"Ernesto Cortéz Jr. and other activists in San Antonio, Texas, founded Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) in 1974. Cortés was trained in community activism by Saul Alinsky's Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation, which advocated a pragmatic approach to organizing. Given its Alinsky-inspired approach, COPS harkened back to an older style of organizing, similar to the Community Service Organization, rather than the more militant groups that emerged during the Chicano/a Movement."
JRank.org

The Federation of Congregations United to Serve

From the FOCUS website I found that they are part of the PICO network. What is PICO?

"PICO National Network was founded in 1972 by John Baumann, a Jesuit priest, as the Pacific Institute for Community Organization (PICO), headquartered in Oakland, California. In the late 1960s Baumann had worked with community organizing projects in Chicago, where he became familiar with Saul Alinsky’s ideas. During the 1970s PICO worked with five neighborhood-based organizations, recruiting individuals and families. As neighborhoods experienced the economic and social upheavals of that decade, the neighborhood-based model of organizing became less viable as communities fractured. Following a staff retreat in 1984, PICO shifted to a congregation-based model based in part on the experience of COPS, a federation in San Antonio, Texas developed by Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation.[3] As it expanded beyond the West Coast, in 2004 PICO characterized its acronym as standing for People Improving Communities through Organizing. In 2005 it renamed itself PICO National Network, emphasizing the autonomy of its affiliated organizations, and its role developing national strategy, training, and consultation."
Wikipedia

St. Agatha Family Empowerment (SAFE)

St. Agatha Family Empowerment is affiliated with the Chicago Area Project, a group founded by Clifford Snow, the criminologist that trained Saul Alinsky and for whom Alinsky was working when he formed the Industrial Areas Foundation:

"Saul Alinsky was born in Chicago on 30 January 1909, the child of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. Saul Alinsky's parents divorced when he was 13 years old, and he went to live with his father who had moved to Los Angeles. At an early age he was interested in the dynamics of power and the interaction between those who are denied resources and those who deny. 'I never thought of walking on the grass,' he recalls, 'until I saw a sign saying 'Keep off the grass.' Then I would stomp all over it.'

He earned a doctorate in archaeology from the University of Chicago in 1930. However, it was spending a summer helping dissident miners in their revolt against John L. Lewis's United Mine Workers that influenced his future direction. Upon graduation he won a fellowship from the university's sociology department which enabled him to study criminology. He went to work for Clifford Shaw at the Institute for Juvenile Research and soon found himself working at the State Penitentiary (at which he stayed for three years). At this time he married Helene Simon, with whom he had a son and a daughter. He had met Helene while studying at the University and they married in 1932. As Horwitt (1989: 17) has commented, the Depression and the growing turbulence of the 1930s politicized both of them. Helene, a social worker, was a strong organizer and gained a considerable reputation in the labour movement.

In 1936 Saul Alinsky left his work at the Penitentiary to return to the Institute in Chicago. He appeared set for a career as a criminologist, however a growing concern to counter the threat of Fascism, and the development of more militant labour organizing (especially that linked to the development of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) grew in their appeal. Alinsky was particularly struck by the way in which John L. Lewis led the CIO (Horwitt 1989: 17). Clifford Shaw and Saul Alinsky were both convinced that it was the 'social milieu' that caused delinquency rather than some particular quality of individuals. It was the study of this – and in particular gang life – that took Alinsky to South Chicago and then to the Back-of-the-Yards (the slum area that Upton Sinclair had earlier written so movingly about in The Jungle). There Saul Alinsky found a number of people who wanted change. Joe Meegan, who had grown up in the area worked his way through De Paul University, and had become a teacher became a key ally and together they set up the Back-of-the-Yards Neighborhood Council. While historically an Irish-Catholic community, they were able to identify common interests that brought together previously hostile ethnic groups of Serbs and Croatians, Czechs and Slovaks, Poles and Lithuanians in the community and brought them into the organization. Alinsky also worked closely with local Catholic priests to build the council. The way they built the coalition meant that the council had great success in stabilizing the Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood and in advocating for that community.

In 1939 Saul Alinsky established the Industrial Areas Foundation to bring his method of reform to other declining urban neighborhoods. He left the Institute to work for the Foundation. His approach depended on uniting ordinary citizens around immediate grievances in their neighborhoods and in protesting vigorously and outside of the ‘established’ ways of expressing dissent (see below). He concentrated on recruiting and training indigenous ‘organizers’ to take a lead in the communities. His first book Reveille for Radicals outlines the principles and practice of community organizing and just one month after its publication in 1946 it made the New York Times best-seller list (Horwitt 1989: 176)."
INFED

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)

From Reform CCHD NOW:

"The Reform CCHD Now Coalition has discovered that one of the documents outlining "The Review and Renewal of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD)" features a grantee that participated in the US Social Forum 2010, and has other problematic memberships and partnerships.

The Reform CCHD Now coalition has reported that 21 CCHD grantees from the 2009 grants list participated in the US Social Forum 2010 (USSF). Included in that report is the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. USSF is a forum specifically designed to unify progressive activist groups toward "setting a national agenda". And what does that agenda entail?

Abortion:
Reproductive Justice 101: Creative Vision, Innovative Strategies, and Powerful Networks
Maintaining abortion as a reproductive right for low-income women
Reproductive Justice in the Age of Obama

Marxism: Marxism for the 21st Century:
Capitalist Crisis, Socialist Solutions
Why Capitalism is Organized Crime & Socialism is the Alternative
Meet the YCL (Young Communist League)

Lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer workshops:
Integrating LGBT Equality into Social, Racial & Socio-Economic Justice Movements
Radical Queer Festivals
Queer Injustice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in United States

The Reform CCHD Now coalition has also discovered that CCHD grantee CIW is partnered with several pro-abortion, pro-homosexual organizations.
CIW is a member of US Human Rights Network."

(Go to Reform CCHD website linked above to follow links back to sources)

SACRED COWS, SNIVELING POLITICIANS AND THE COMING COLLAPSE

"Republicans are mapping an agenda for the new Congress that calls for a radical reduction in government spending, a hard-line stance against new taxes and a "sustained" battle against federal regulators - all aimed at easing the concerns of voters desperate for jobs and anxious about the soaring national debt.

...Because Republicans propose to exempt the Pentagon, veterans programs and homeland security from these cuts, liberal analysts said the reductions would decimate education funding, the National Park Service and other worthy programs."
Washington Post

And there you have it all wrapped up with a bow, right there in the last paragraph; the reason the Republicans are no different than the Democrats. They have their sacred cows and they won't touch 'em.

When I see a party, any party, that is willing to tackle the military, social programs and corporate welfare I'll start to think that maybe, just maybe we have a chance. That won't happen in my lifetime so it'll never happen because we'll collapse a whole lot sooner than that.

If we want to have any even slight chance of surviving the economic tsunami that's headed our way we need to slice the federal government in half, tell China and everyone else we owe money to sorry and bring the troops back home, from everywhere.

We need to get back inside our own walls, pull up the drawbridge and go it on our own. Withdraw from the world. Keep our nukes and other defensive weapons and tell the world that if they leave us alone we'll leave them alone. Touch us and we'll wipe you off the map. No diplomacy, no engagement, no compromise.

Take the money we save and use it to slowly withdraw every one from the government tit. All social programs will stop in five years. Social Security, Medicare ,AFDC, food stamps and everything else.

If we close our doors to imports and make do with what we can produce ourselves there'll be plenty of work for everyone.

I'm not saying that there's anything easy about this. Lots and lots of pain will be involved. But, do you think that pain is avoidable at this point? If we just go along as we have we will collapse, and rather shortly. And that will be far more painful than contracting under our own terms.

So don't look to Washington. Nobody there will do a thing.

Absent the country retreating you can do it yourself. Stop living as though the grocery store will always be stocked and the lights will always be on. Get to know your neighbors and start to plan for a return to life more as it was during the majority of human history. Our 21st century fantasy is about to come to an abrupt end.

Stock up on food and whatever else you consider vital. Within a very few months the prices may make a good deal of it unaffordable.

Refuse to live as the modern world demands and chart a new course for yourself and your family. Opt out of as much of it as possible. Prepare for what, just a few years ago, was unimaginable.

Nothing in Washington will change so the course we've set ourselves on will continue to lead us to destruction.

Pray for guidance, strength and courage because we'll need all three to get through what's just around the corner.

BUCKLE UP FOR $11.43 CORN - FOR ONE EAR

I received this e-mail today and I thought I'd pass it along:

"NIA Projects Future U.S. Food Price Increases

The National Inflation Association today announced the release of its report about NIA's projections of future U.S. food price increases due to the massive monetary inflation being created by the Federal Reserve's $600 billion quantitative easing. This report was written by NIA's President Gerard Adams, who believes food inflation will take over in 2011 as America's greatest crisis. According to Mr. Adams, making mortgage payments will soon be the last thing on the minds of all Americans. We currently have a currency crisis that could soon turn into hyperinflation and a complete societal collapse.

"For every economic problem the U.S. government tries to solve, it always creates two or three much larger catastrophes in the process," said Adams. "Just like we predicted this past December, the U.S. dollar index bounced in early 2010 and has been in free-fall ever since. Bernanke's QE2 will likely accelerate this free-fall into a complete U.S. dollar rout," warned Adams.

NIA projects that at the average U.S. grocery store it will soon cost $11.43 for one ear of corn, $23.05 for a 24 oz loaf of wheat bread, $62.21 for a 32 oz package of Domino Granulated Sugar, $24.31 for a 32 fl oz container of soy milk, $77.71 for a 11.30 oz container of Folgers Classic Roast Coffee, $45.71 for a 64 fl oz container of Minute Maid Orange Juice, and $15.50 for a Hershey's Milk Chocolate 1.55 oz candy bar. NIA also projects that by the end of this decade, a plain white men's cotton t-shirt at Wal-Mart will cost $55.57.

NIA's special U.S. food price projection report is now available to download for free at: http://inflation.us/foodpriceprojections.pdf

The report highlights how despite cotton rising by 54%, corn rising by 29%, soybeans rising by 22%, orange juice rising by 17%, and sugar rising by 51% during the months of September and October alone, these huge commodity price increases have yet to make their way into America's grocery stores because corporations have been reluctant to pass these price increases along to the consumer. In today's dismal economy, no retailer wants to be the first to dramatically raise food prices. However, NIA expects all retailers to soon substantially raise food prices at the same time, which will ensure that this Holiday shopping season will be the worst in recorded American history.

If you are an NIA member and have a question about the U.S. economy or inflation, please browse through our ‘NIAnswers’ database and if your question hasn’t already been answered there, you can either submit it on ‘NIAnswers’ or email it to us at: editor@inflation.us

If you are a member of the media and would like to schedule an interview with NIA’s President Gerard Adams about inflation, please send an email to media@inflation.us or if it is urgent you can call us directly at 1-888-99-NIA US (1-888-996-4287)."

(Make sure to follow the link contained in the letter; it's worth the read.)

Take this for what it's worth. I think that, while the specific numbers may be off, the general information relating to the coming hyperinflation of food and other commodities is on the money.

Look, you don't have to be an economist to understand this. As a matter of fact, it may be better if you aren't.

We continue to flood the market with dollars. More of anything means that it has less worth. As the dollar continues to decline in value speculators (investors) will look for someplace to put their money to keep it safe or grow it (that used to be U.S. Treasuries; not so much anymore. The Fed is poised to become the largest purchaser and owner of U.S. debt. No one else wants it.). That something will have to have intrinsic value so commodities such as food, fuel and precious metals make the most sense. As demand for commodities continues to rise the price will go up. And food is the one that will go up the fastest.

Not only is there demand from investors but we are facing a food shortage globally. There have been crop failures around the world and the third world, the people that have been living on rice for millenia, are now, because of their growing economies and wealth, demanding more meat and other foods we consider staples. This is placing upward pressures on pricing as well.

So get ready for the real possibility that food WILL consume nearly all of your disposable income.

And the really cool part is that as commodities rise in price asset deflation will occur big time. When a loaf of bread costs more than your house how much is your house worth?

DEVALUING THE DOLLAR - BECK ON THE COMING HYPERINFLATION

For further verification of what Beck says go to The Market Ticker and read what Karl Denninger has to say.

COUPLE WINS $11 MILLION AND GIVES IT ALL AWAY

"A Canadian couple who won $11.2million (£7million) on the lottery have given it all away to friends, charities and hospitals.

Allen and Violet Large, both in their 70s, said their good fortune earlier this year had been a 'big headache' and they had decided against going on a spending spree.

'What you’ve never had, you never miss,' Violet, 78, told the Toronto Star."
Daily Mail

I'm hoping that at least they paid off the credit cards first.

TIMES ARE CHANGING - UNION HURTS WORKERS AND LOCAL ECONOMY

"The Olin Corp. said Wednesday that it will put its money where its mouth is — in Mississippi.
A day after union workers rejected for a second time a contract that might have saved their jobs, the Metro East company told them it was moving about 1,000 ammunition production jobs from Metro East to Oxford, Miss.

As members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 9 left the East Alton catering hall where the ballots were tallied Tuesday night, more than a few of the employees ventured that Olin was bluffing.

The company, they maintained, had no intention of following through on its threat to move their jobs. On Wednesday, Olin called their bluff by announcing that it would build a 500,000-square-foot facility when it moves its ammunitions operations.

According to an Olin news release, Mississippi provided 'significant incentives" to entice the manufacturer to expand production near a current Olin plant.

Joseph Rupp, the chairman, president and CEO of Clayton-based Olin, pointed the finger at the workers' failure to accept a contract that guaranteed seven years of job security in exchange for reductions in vacation time, an elimination of a matching company contribution to retirement plans and other incentives."
STL Today

St. Louis is part of the old rust belt. At one time we had all kinds of high paying manufacturing jobs. We made cars, shoes, chemicals, steel and all sorts of other things. We were headquarters for many Fortune 500 companies. There was the Chrysler, Ford and Chevy plants. This is where the Corvette was built. We were second only to Detroit in auto production.

Well, the times have changed. Yet the unions act as though it's still the '50's and the good times are still rolling along. They demand and demand, even though the unemployment rate is near the levels of the '30's and the future keeps looking worse and worse.

They sell their members a bill of goods and after the jobs leave what does the union do? Nothin'. But the bosses, the guys that convinced their members that there is strength in numbers and if we just hold together we'll get more, well, they still have their jobs, anyway.

At least Olin kept the jobs here in America, I'll give them credit for that. And now, because of the union mentality, more guys are on the streets competing for fewer and fewer jobs. I'd venture to say that none of the guys that lose their job at Olin will ever find a job with comparable wages and benefits to replace them.

It ain't the '50's any more.

BORROWING OUR WAY TO COLLAPSE

"The Federal Reserve Wednesday unveiled a controversial new plan to buy U.S. Treasurys, hoping to spur growth in a disappointingly slow U.S. economy.

After two days of discussions, Fed officials decided to go ahead with a much anticipated program, saying they will buy $600 billion of U.S. government debt over the next eight months."
Wall Street Journal

And when the room runs out on that credit card we'll just get another. Because that's what's happening now. We're borrowing (printing) money to pay off debt. How well would that work in your house?

Buy all the food and other commodities you'll need now because between the increase in speculation driving up the price and the value of the dollar decreasing, it's going to get real expensive just to buy the basics.

REPEALING DON'T ASK - DON'T TELL WOULD DENY FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS

"A federal court has again reinstated the U.S. military’s policy against open homosexuals in service. While military chaplains are “hopeful” the policy will stay in place, some have been told they should “just get out” if the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is repealed.

On Monday two of the three judges on the panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halted a judge’s order which forbade the enforcement of the U.S. military’s policy against open homosexuals in the armed forces.

...Asked about reports that active chaplains can be accused of insubordination if they publicly oppose changes to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the ADF attorney said that the servicemen have been informed through their chain of command that “they should not be commenting on this at this time.”

“One chaplain stood up in a high-level meeting created precisely for the purpose of getting service members’ thoughts on the repeal of the policy. And he asked ‘What should chaplains do? What should people of faith do if this policy changes and we have problems of conscience with how it’s going to affect us?’” Blomberg said.

“That individual was told by a high-ranking member of the panel that they should just get out of the military.”

...“The concern of the chaplains is if they counsel, if they preach, if they do their ethical teaching duties, and indicate that homosexual behavior is not good, or is a form of sin, then they would be treated as if they had said being black is sinful, or being a woman is wrong. That would be viewed as on that same level of discrimination.”

...Archbishop for the Military Services Timothy J. Broglio has opposed repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." In an interview with CNA last month, he warned of a “latent” danger to religious liberty in the agenda advanced by some people in the name of tolerance.

“(T)here is an agenda to force everyone to accept as normal and positive behavior that is contrary to the moral norms of many religions, including the Catholic Church,” he commented, voicing concern that teaching morality or forming young people in their faith could be misconstrued as intolerance."
Catholic News Agency

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
First Amendment to the United States Constitution

If a religious person, be he minister or lay person, cannot express his religious belief that homosexuality is a sin because of federal law, could someone please explain to me how that doesn't violate the First Amendment? All in one grand sweep of judicial fiat the court orders the government to prohibit the free exercise of religious belief and proscribes freedom of speech. And then it orders it officers to enforce these wrongs!

How can any decision from judges that have sworn to uphold the Constitution, and then turn and blatantly decide against the clear intent of that same document, be taken seriously, much less be allowed to carry the force of law?

I don't care if homosexuals serve openly in the military. That's up to the military and the men and women that serve to decide. None of my business. But when that service coincides with a suppression of liberties all in the name of political correctness, that's an entirely different matter.

Why does the homosexual movement insist on taking everything too far?