Social Justice

Time Magazine has named Joe Biden and Kamala Harris jointly as their Person of the Year for 2020. In one sense, this is not a big surprise; it's the eighth straight time the winner of the U.S. Presidential election won the honor. The presidency is an influetial position, and the winner of the election can expect to be an influential person.

This is a slightly modified version of something I wrote for my old blog in 2005.

* * *

Payday loans work like this:

Let's say Joe is short $100 and has maxed out his credit cards. Joe goes to a payday lender. The lender gives Joe the money, and Joe writes a check for $100 plus a surcharge of, say, $15, dated two weeks in the future. Between now and two weeks, Joe gets his next paycheck, and the loan is covered.

I haven't posted new content for a while, but I expect to have some soon. For now, here is a little something I wrote for my old blog back in 2005.

* * *

He got the king's attention by telling a story:

One of the most cherished freedoms in the United States is the freedom of speech.

According to psychologist Richard Wiseman, writing for the Telegraph, luck is an easy skill to learn.

My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

Some nine hundred years ago, Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides idenified eight levels of charity. Giving of ourselves is good, but only insofar as we try to respect and preserve the dignity of the recipient. Charity, according to Maimonides, could be money or other forms of assistance.

If you pay attention to sports (or to social media), you've probably heard about San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's decision not to stand when the national anthem is played before football games this year. In a locker-room interview, Kaepernick discussed some of the reasons for his protest.

Joe Romm of Climate Progress has some concerns about Donald Trump's economic plans.

In particular, when Fox News’ Chris Wallace pressed Trump in March on how he’d cut the federal budget, Trump answered “Department of Environmental Protection [sic]. We are going to get rid of it in almost every form.”

Sometimes I take things for granted. I have a roof over my head. I have a stable job that provides me with decent wages and a good health insurance plan.

In the last two posts, we've looked at how the two sides of the slavery argument appealed to the Bible for support during debates over the morality of slavery. (Part 1: pro-slavery | Part 2: anti-slavery)