David McElroy

The Republican National Committee provided another piece of evidence this week that winning is more important to the major parties than anything else. Their lust for power outweighs any impulse they might have to tell people what they really need to know.

Republicans are supposedly the ones who understand that government can’t create jobs, yet the RNC is pandering this week to jobless Americans almost as badly as Democrats might under similar circumstances. It’s all about winning, not about explaining principles or sound policy.

With Barack Obama on his campaign swing through Virginia and North Carolina — which we’re told is not campaigning — Republicans responded with a television ad. If they had wanted an honest ad that reflected the principles they say they believe in, the ad would have attacked Obama for trying to spend money to allegedly create jobs and it would have pointed out the government’s real task is to get out of the way and let the market do the work.

Instead, the GOP’s TV spot is pandering to people who are worried about jobs — by implying that it’s a president’s job to “do something” about creating jobs. It closes by ominously asking, “What about your job?” It’s an ad that’s designed to play to people’s fears and to their emotional reasons for disliking a politician. The cheap shots about fundraising are ironic at best, since every modern president spends time doing the same thing, no matter the party. (There’s a PDF “press corps briefing book” to go along with the ad.)

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If my bank starts issuing theological pronouncements, I’m going to ignore them. I’ll probably even change banks. It seems to me that the Roman Catholic Church’s pronouncements about control of the world economy deserve just as little respect and consideration.

On Monday, the Catholic Church’s “Justice and Peace” department issued a policy paper about the world economy that is stunningly ignorant and calls for coercive measures to control the entire world’s financial business. The paper calls for a worldwide “supranational authority” that would have “universal jurisdiction” to shape the entire world’s economic policies.

The paper is couched in high-sounding language about the evils of greed and the “idolatry of the market,” which presumably means the church doesn’t understand that giving dictatorial power to human beings produces far worse results. It’s also clear that whoever wrote and approved this nonsense doesn’t understand that it was governments who created the mess in the first place.

Just Monday, a friend shared with me a video clip of Milton Friedman defending so-called greed in 1979 when he was interviewed on television by Phil Donahue. His critique of Donahue’s assumption is a perfect rejoinder to the ignorance coming from the church this week. I highly recommend you watch it.

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When Teresa Culpepper called Atlanta police to report that someone had stolen a truck from the street in front of her home, she had no idea she was about to be victimized again — by the police officers who are paid to protect her.

In a mixup that would make the Keystone Cops proud, police decided that Culpepper was another woman also named Teresa — and that other woman was wanted for aggravated assault. Culpepper’s attorney says there’s no reasonable explanation:

“Her birth date didn’t match. Her address didn’t match. Her description didn’t match. Other than the name, Teresa, nothing matched,” said Culpepper’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant.

Culpepper was kept in jail for 53 days. She was freed only after her public defender was able to get the victim in the other case to come to court and tell a judge that the woman being held wasn’t the one who assaulted her.

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