For the investor (the person who risks the capital to create real live self-sustaining jobs), every investment, whether it results in a profit or not, would be taxed two more times.

What is near certainty is that this bill will succeed at driving traders to international markets that are escaping the stilted centralized economy that DeFazio and Perlmutter feel the need to champion.

It’s a given that this misguided vengeance against Wall Street is comfort food for populist legislators, but “Wall Street” isn’t stocked exclusively with revolting would-be criminals. It is made up of retirees, small-business owners, entrepreneurs and parents who invest in their kids’ college funds. At last count, nearly 50 percent of Americans are, on some level, invested in the stock market.

If one was a hopeless skeptic, he might believe these legislators were trying to undermine private sector growth by re-appropriating wealth in such a ham-handed way. Even reliable liberal Sen.Chuck Schumer said that a Wall Street transaction tax had the potential to “harm economic recovery efforts by deterring capital investment.”

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The state on Wednesday told bond investors it is facing a $1 billion hole in this year’s budget ”” a shortfall five times bigger than previously disclosed ”” and will cut funding for schools, municipalities, higher education, hospitals and pension plans to close the gap.

For months, Governor Corzine has been hinting at the need for such cuts as New Jersey grapples with the fallout from the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Officials previously acknowledged a deficit of at least $8 billion for fiscal year 2011 and $190 million for this fiscal year. The depth of the state’s current shortfall was not revealed until Wednesday.

“It is going to be a gut-wrenching experience,” said Bill Dressel, executive director of the New Jersey League of Municipalities.

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However, that pricey pendant most assuredly does serve as a symbol of an unfortunate quirk in American buying habits. We are a nation that specializes in producing and consuming items that have little purpose except to facilitate extravagance, and it’s a proclivity that hardly begins or ends with jewelry. Millions of us insist on paying a great deal of money for goods that would cost little or nothing in a world where everything was ranked strictly by functionality.

Although bemoaning taxes is the true national pastime, the one tax nobody really considers is this “vanity tax”: the difference between what a thing needs to cost (to fulfill a given function) and what it ends up costing (after being artificially inflated by imperatives besides function).

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The Secretary General intends to appoint a Director for Communications to implement this vision. The post will be based at St Andrew’s House, London and will involve providing leadership and support across the full range of communication roles, both internal and external. The development and implementation of a communications strategy including the editing of the website are current priorities.

The candidate will:

* Have an understanding of and be sympathetic to the life and work of the Anglican Communion;
* Have significant experience in the field of communications, including the development of appropriate strategies for a variety of situations;
* Have experience of working collaboratively as part of a team, and of managing staff;
* Have experience of Website editing and development, with appropriate technical skills;
* Have excellent writing and personal communications skills;
* Be familiar with modern IT, and its application in a modern office context;
* Be prepared and able to travel extensively throughout the Anglican Communion and elsewhere.

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Following the resolution passed at ACC-14 (14.05) ‘The Bible in the Life of the Church’ a Steering Group has been appointed to take the work forward. It meets for the first time with the Chair, Archbishop David Moxon, Bishop of Waikato, New Zealand at the Anglican Communion Office from November 30th to December 3rd, 2009.

The work of the project will be undertaken in six regional groups hosted, in the main, by theological colleges within the Communion and a number of ‘user groups’ who will test out the work of the regional groups. Each regional group will have a coordinator who will be a member of the Steering Group. The Regional Groups are located in East Africa (St Paul’s, Limuru, Kenya), Southern Africa (University of KwaZulu-Natal and the Anglican House of Studies), North America (University of the South, Sewanee, USA), SE Asia (Trinity Theological College, Singapore), Oceania (drawing on the resources of the theological colleges in Melbourne, Australia) and Europe (Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, England).

In addition to the co-ordinators of the Regional Groups the Steering Group will have three ”˜theological consultants’ from Nigeria, Cuba and USA.

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Jon Snow talks to Colm O’Gorman, the Executive Director of Amnesty International in Ireland, who was a victim of sexual abuse perpetrated by a Catholic priest as a teenager.

The video link is provided–some 10 1/2 minutes. Watch it all.

The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland connived with the authorities in a cover-up spanning decades to shield paedophile priests from prosecution, an official report concluded yesterday. Hundreds of crimes against children were not reported as the four archbishops of the Archdiocese of Dublin remained wedded to the “maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of its assets”.

Instead, the church hierarchy shuffled the sex offenders from parish to parish, allowing them to continue to prey on victims. In some cases paedophile priests were even promoted. The 750-page report by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse on the Dublin archdiocese ”” the second significant inquiry this year to expose appalling levels of sexual abuse of minors in Ireland under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church ”” said that it had uncovered a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy throughout the period that it investigated between 1975 and 2004.

It said that the State had helped to create the culture of cover-up and that senior police officers regarded priests as “outside their remit”.

“The State authorities facilitated that cover-up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes,” it concluded.

Read the whole article.

The report states that the Commission has no doubt that clerical child abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other church authorities.

It states that the structures and rules of the church facilitated that cover-up. It also says that State authorities facilitated the cover up by allowing the church to be beyond the reach of the law.

It claims that the welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor considered in the early days by State and church authorities.

The preservation of the good name, status and assets of church institutions was the first priority, according to the report, which states that priests were seen as the most important members of the institution.

The Commission says that it has identified 320 people who complained of child sexual abuse during the period 1975-2004.

Read it all and make sure to follow all the links.

The Commission of Investigation into Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese has concluded that there is “no doubt” that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the archdiocese and other Church authorities.

The commission’s report covers the period between January 1st 1975 and April 30th 2004. It said there cover-ups took place over much of this period.

In its report, published this afternoon, it has also found that “the structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up.”

Read it all.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Mr. Justice Stephen Kelleher of the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Reasons for Judgment released today ruled that the four parish properties under ownership dispute in the suit brought against The Diocese of New Westminster and Bishop Michael Ingham by 22 leaders of four dissident congregations remain within the Diocese of New Westminster.

In a 98 page, 336 paragraph decision, Justice Kelleher has upheld the integrity and authority of Structures, Canons and Constitutions of the Diocese of New Westminster and the autonomy of the Anglican Church of Canada.

Read the whole thing.

Mr Justice Stephen Kelleher of the British Columbia Supreme Court issued a mixed decision today in the case involving the Anglican Church of Canada (ACoC) Diocese of New Westminster and four Greater Vancouver parishes in the Anglican Network in Canada.
The four parishes ”“ St Matthew’s (Abbotsford), St Matthias & St Luke’s (Vancouver), St John’s Shaughnessy (Vancouver) and Church of the Good Shepherd (Vancouver) ”“ had asked the courts in early September 2008 to clarify their Trustees’ responsibilities in light of hostile action taken by the Diocese of New Westminster. After all four parishes voted overwhelmingly in February 2008 to disaffiliate with the ACoC and realign with the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), the bishop purported to terminate and replace the Trustees and take control of two of the churches’ properties and their bank accounts. ANiC is now part of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), a new Anglican province formed as a result of the worldwide split in the Anglican Church over profound disagreement on issues of doctrine.

Mr. Justice Kelleher found that the Bishop of New Westminster did not have legal or canonical authority for his purported termination and replacement of the Trustees, who were validly elected by the congregations and who control the use of the properties. However, he said the Trustees were required to exercise their authority “in relation to the parish properties in accordance with the Act, as well as the Constitution, Canons, Rules and Regulations of the Diocese.” He then said he would “leave it to the parties to arrive at a workable solution”. This clearly leaves the parties in a difficult position as they dispute the interpretation of those documents, particularly the Constitution.

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The Anglican diocese of the Lower Mainland will be able to retain ownership of four disputed parish properties worth more than $20 million, the B.C. Supreme Court ruled today.

Justice Stephen Kelleher decided against conservative Anglican dissidents who went to court claiming they deserve to have legal control of St. John’s Shaughnessy Anglican Church in Vancouver — one of the largest Anglican congregations in Canada — as well as three other Lower Mainland church properties.

The clergy and trustees at the four conservative parishes left the 600,00-member Anglican Church of Canada last year and joined a smaller conservative breakaway Anglican organization called the Anglican Network in Canada, with about 3,500 members.

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Shares in London tumbled as the market opened this morning, following steep losses in Asia, as investor panic over banks’ exposure to Dubai’s growing financial problems gathered pace.

The FTSE 100 index of leading UK shares fell by 83.46 points to 5,110.67 in early trading, adding to yesterday’s loss of 170.68 points. The FTSE bounced back, to fall by 12 points to 5,182.13 after more than an hour of trading but all eyes will be on American shares when Wall Street opens later today after being shut for Thanksgiving yesterday.

Masayoshi Okamoto, head of dealing at Jujiya Securities in Tokyo, said: “I think we won’t know the full impact of Dubai until Monday after we see what happens in New York, where bank shares are likely to be hit pretty hard.”

Read it all.

Surely the righteous shall give thanks to thy name; the upright shall dwell in thy presence.

–Psalm 140:13

Once, in that eon before bandwidth, my mother came to visit. I had a big apartment with lots of room close the to the Vatican.

Coming home one evening at suppertime, ready to dig into the kitchen and make something to eat for us, I arrived at the door and was greeted with wondrous fragrances.

The table was set and there was great golden brown bird and dishes with delights.

That it was Thanksgiving struck me like thunder.

The woman had, without any knowledge of Italian, gone to the neighborhood stores and the open market. She had collected everything useful she could find for the day. She managed to decipher the Italian oven, which doesn’t have degree settings even in centigrade. She made a Thanksgiving feast.

You need to read the rest–wonderful stuff.

Heavenly Father, on Thanksgiving Day
We bow our hearts to You and pray.
We give You thanks for all You’ve done
Especially for the gift of Jesus, Your Son.

For beauty in nature, Your glory we see
For joy and health, friends and family,
For daily provision, Your mercy and care
These are the blessings You graciously share.
So today we offer this response of praise
With a promise to follow You all of our days.

–Mary Fairchild

In this morning’s sermon, Mike Lumpkin exhorted us from Deuteronomy 8 about the importance of remembering and the danger of forgetfulness. This brought to mind my favorite story about remembering, somehow oh-so-appropriate on Thanksgiving–KSH.
—————-
It is gratitude that prompted an old man to visit an old broken pier on the eastern seacoast of Florida. Every Friday night, until his death in 1973, he would return, walking slowly and slightly stooped with a large bucket of shrimp. The sea gulls would flock to this old man, and he would feed them from his bucket. Many years before, in October, 1942, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But there was an unexpected detour which would hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing adventure of his life.

Somewhere over the South Pacific the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean… For nearly a month Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun. They spent many sleepless nights recoiling as giant sharks rammed their rafts. The largest raft was nine by five. The biggest shark…ten feet long.
But of all their enemies at sea, one proved most formidable: starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. It would take a miracle to sustain them. And a miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie’s own words, “Cherry,” that was the B- 17 pilot, Captain William Cherry, “read the service that afternoon, and we finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was some talk, but it tapered off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down over my eyes to keep out some of the glare, I dozed off.”

Now this is still Captain Rickenbacker talking…”Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a sea gull. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. Everyone else knew too. No one said a word, but peering out from under my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their faces. They were staring at that gull. The gull meant food…if I could catch it.” And the rest, as they say, is history. Captain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone sea gull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice. You know that Captain Eddie made it. And now you also know…that he never forgot. Because every Friday evening, about sunset…on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast…you could see an old man walking…white-haired, bushy-eyebrowed, slightly bent. His bucket filled with shrimp was to feed the gulls…to remember that one which, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle…like manna in the wilderness.

—I first heard this through Paul Harvey. Happy thanksgiving! KSH

Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord,
All praise is Yours, all glory, honor and blessings.
To you alone, Most High, do they belong;
no mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your Name.

We praise You, Lord, for all Your creatures,
especially for Brother Sun,
who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
of You Most High, he bears your likeness.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars,
in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.
We praise You, Lord, for Brothers Wind and Air,
fair and stormy, all weather’s moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Water,
so useful, humble, precious and pure.

We praise You, Lord, for Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night.
He is beautiful, playful, robust, and strong.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Earth,
who sustains us
with her fruits, colored flowers, and herbs.

We praise You, Lord, for those who pardon,
for love of You bear sickness and trial.
Blessed are those who endure in peace,
by You Most High, they will be crowned.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Death,
from whom no-one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in their sins!
Blessed are those that She finds doing Your Will.
No second death can do them harm.

We praise and bless You, Lord, and give You thanks,
and serve You in all humility.

-St. Francis of Assisi (1181/82-1226)

Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is seemly. The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names. Great is our LORD, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.

–Psalm 147: 1-5

Fascinating–check it out.

Although I am feeling blessed, I am also experiencing a see-saw of emotions. I am a bit saddened tonight because the mercury is plummeting again and my thoughts revolve around the poor Afghan children who are sitting on dirt or cold concrete floors. They are huddled together around a wood burning stove or wrapped in a blanket in attempt to stay warm and survive the night. I am encouraged knowing the thousand blankets we handed out recently will provide some additional warmth and comfort. But I find myself angered at the corrupt Afghan government ministers and officials who continuously siphon off foreign aid intended to better this country. Even now as I write this entry, 15 of the current and former ministers are under investigation for corruption, President Karzai refuses to sign their arrest warrants and revoke their special immunity so they can be arrested and tried in a special court.

I also think about the hundreds of family members who have lost a military member in this war. Their chairs at their dinner tables are empty for a different reason. These brave men and women had their life taken while fighting in defense for the freedom of Afghanistan and our country. My thoughts and prayers go out to these families as they try to mend together their lives that have been forever changed. I also think about my military brothers who have suffered an injury in this war. Some of these injuries are not visibly apparent either and disguised as PTSD. I pray that God will comfort them on their road to recovery. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman once said “War is hell” and today is no different.

Tomorrow will be another day and while many will look forward to the weekend football games or shopping excursions, know that the security of our country there and abroad rest with the all-volunteer force who serve our great and proud nation. Happy Thanksgiving to my wife Liisa, my family in Pennsylvania and to America. We are so blessed, lest we never forget that.

Read it carefully and read it all.

These pictures are just terrific.

My husband is deployed and I’m too pregnant to travel comfortably these days. I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing for Thanksgiving. I talked to one of my husband’s friends, a single soldier who is deploying in a few days. He didn’t have time to get home and back before deployment, so his father was flying out to see him off. He said they’d probably have to eat at Country Kitchen or something.

We decided to do a tiny Thanksgiving together: a 9-lb bird, just a few easy sides, and a store-bought pie. A nice meal to see a soldier off before he deploys, and something to keep me feeling like it’s Thanksgiving and not just another boring day.

Read it all and remember those deployed and their families today.

Watch it all, and note the role of the local pastor–KSH