What Ghanaians Can Learn From Pope Francis 2

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ELINAM 10 years ago

There nothing Ghanaians have to learn from a Catholic white supremacy anti African church and their equally devilish pope.

The moment Blacks will wake up to the tricks and embrace their own power given them by God to be th ...
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There nothing Ghanaians have to learn from a Catholic white supremacy anti African church and their equally devilish pope.

The moment Blacks will wake up to the tricks and embrace their own power given them by God to be the original people on the wealthiest land and have the courage to protect our continent from invaders like the catholic church that had made us all captives and slaves for the multi national corporate establishment, all our problems will be over.

We do not need nobody but ourselves.
Sir Frank 10 years ago

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.
Sir Frank 10 years ago

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.
Sir Frank 10 years ago

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.
Sir Frank 10 years ago

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.
GORGORDUTOR 10 years ago

WARNING ?: IF YOU DISAGREE WITH NKRUMAISTS/AFRICAN PROGRESSIVES THATS ALL WELL AND GOOD! IF YOU WANT TO SETTRIP AND BANG ON US THAT'S COOL, WE ARE MORE THAN WILLING TO ENGAGE IN ANALYTICAL AND RHETORICAL COMBAT, DEMONSTRABLY ...
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WARNING ?: IF YOU DISAGREE WITH NKRUMAISTS/AFRICAN PROGRESSIVES THATS ALL WELL AND GOOD! IF YOU WANT TO SETTRIP AND BANG ON US THAT'S COOL, WE ARE MORE THAN WILLING TO ENGAGE IN ANALYTICAL AND RHETORICAL COMBAT, DEMONSTRABLY WE ATE MORE THAN CAPABLE OF HOLDING OUR OWN CORNER. HOWEVER, IF YOU WITH THE BITCH STUFF I.E. VILIFICATION, CALUMNY , FALSIFICATION OF THE HISTORICAL RECORD, AD HOMINEM ATTACKS ETC WATCH OUT. BEWARE YOU WILL BE RIDICULED, SATIRIZED AND SUBJECTED TO WITHERING COMMENTARY. IF YOU GONNA COME AT US COME CORRECT OR DEAL WITH THE MERCILESS RIPOSTES THAT WILL BE UNLEASHED. A WORD TO THE WISE IS ENOUGH!!
Sir Frank 10 years ago

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.
GORGORDUTOR 10 years ago

UPON FURTHER REVIEW sir frank IS DIAGNOSED WITH THE FF: GROSS SOCIO-POLITICAL INSULTITIS, PSYCHOPATHIC ARGUMENTAE NUL-COGENTA. PATIENT DISPLAYS SUNDRY SYMPTOMS OF POLITICAL INADEQUACY, HOWEVER PATIENT HAS NOT ENTERED THE TERM ...
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UPON FURTHER REVIEW sir frank IS DIAGNOSED WITH THE FF: GROSS SOCIO-POLITICAL INSULTITIS, PSYCHOPATHIC ARGUMENTAE NUL-COGENTA. PATIENT DISPLAYS SUNDRY SYMPTOMS OF POLITICAL INADEQUACY, HOWEVER PATIENT HAS NOT ENTERED THE TERMINAL STAGE. THERAPEUTIC PROTOCOL: IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT PATIENT REFRAIN FROM DISPLAYING AN INABILITY TO THINK, PATIENT MUST ADOPT REASON AND USE THE FACTUAL RECORD TO CRITIQUE THOSE HE DISAGREES WITH.
Sir Frank 10 years ago

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.
Sir Frank 10 years ago

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.

Sir Frank 10 years ago

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.

Some Ghanaian people do not really know what to do with their time. This article is a damn rubbish space and time wasting, senseless and stupid.
YAW 10 years ago

Do you have a problem with all the excellent catholic schools and hospitals dotted around Volta Region?

Do you have a problem with all the excellent catholic schools and hospitals dotted around Volta Region?
Prof Lungu 10 years ago

Watching Al JaZeera "America Tonight", there is a South Korean pop band going to North Korea to perform a 2-day live gig this month, the first of its kind, ever.

Reflecting on totalitarian North Korea, the spokesman for th ...
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Watching Al JaZeera "America Tonight", there is a South Korean pop band going to North Korea to perform a 2-day live gig this month, the first of its kind, ever.

Reflecting on totalitarian North Korea, the spokesman for the band said the band has some apprehensions going to North Korea. But then, he observed that he also knows that there is "totalitarianism of capitalism". We are thinking he was talking about South Korea, in that regard.

Now, we much prefer the totalitarianism of capitalism in America, even of South Korea, or Ghana, compared to the totalitarianism of North Korea.

But, as we told Phillip Kobina Baidoo elsewhere recently, there is more socialism in capitalist Switzerland, Belgium, and Germany, than there is capitalism in socialist America.

Thus operationally, on the average, few legal residents of Switzerland, Belgium, and Germany, Canada, etc., will freely choose to live in capitalist USA if they have to work, as they must, unless they have already a Donald Trump wallet,

But, as Thomas Piketty tells us, that Trump (and Rand Paul) wallet are a a lot bigger in the first place because of inheritance: Not because Trump worked a lot harder (Bush-version) or a lot longer (Rand Paul version), all juvenile factoids. (NOTE: Piketty looked at historical data going back hundred of years, across several continents, and many countries).

In addition, working smarter is not guaranteed to cut it, if any smart Baidoo-policy-analyst thinks they see an opening.

Not!

By the Way: The South Korean band will have to turn in their mobile phones to authorities first thing upon arrival in North Korea. Our hunch is, they will probably have to let go their mobile phones shortly before the craft arrives in North Korean territory.

NOW THIS FROM A TALKING HEAD: American general elections are meaningless due to gerrymandering (by Republicans. In the last election, they have consistently lost the popular vote, but won most seats).

IN SUMMARY: UNlike DEnnis Rudman, we do not see anything worthy of the North Korean regime.

Nonetheless, we all a responsibility to critically look at the mixed-economy system we all live under - from the US, to Germany, to Ghana, etc. They can be improved. These are not perfect systems under the democracies we claim as foundation.

As such, the critique of the Pope goes to that point - historically, and within context, right now, today.

Worth noting is what value the average person receives/earns from the mixed system, compared to the value received by those who take the most from the system.

IN CLOSING: Readers in Ghana, a New-Developing-Oil-Economy, should read this about Capitalist/Individualist Sarah Palin's Alaska, USA:

TITLE: The Alaska Permanent Fund: Socialism in a Republican State
DATE: OCTOBER 28, 2014
AUTHOR: JOHN LAWRENCE
SOURCE: San Diego Free Press
LINK: www.sandiegofreepress.org/2014/10/the-alaska-permanent-fund-socialism-in-a-republican-state/ .

Greetings!
francis kwarteng 10 years ago

Dear Prof. Lungu,

Thanks. Anyway let me reproduce the article here for readers:
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Dear Prof. Lungu,

Thanks. Anyway let me reproduce the article here for readers:
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Alaska is a land of rugged individualists – Republicans all the way. However, a little known fact is that Alaska taxes the oil and gas corporations operating there and distributes the proceeds on an annual basis equally among every man, woman and child living in the state.

The biggest farce of all is that Tea Party touter, Governor Sarah Palin, slapped an excess profits tax on the state’s oil companies in 2008, the year she ran for vice-President alongside John McCain, so that every person in Alaska received a dividend of $3269 that year. That was a pretty good haul for a family of four: $13,076. For Palin’s family – husband Todd, sons Track and Trig and daughters Bristol, Willow and Piper – it came to an even better haul – $22,883!

Let me be clear. I am totally in favor of institutions like the Alaska Permanent Fund and think they should be extended to the entire US which would guarantee every American citizen a basic income which would come from things we all own in common like oil and mineral deposits, the electromagnetic spectrum and the air we breathe. But someone like Palin, who presided over a plan that taxed corporations and distributed the proceeds to each citizen of Alaska while at the same time taking humungus speaking fees to egg on the Tea Party with anti-tax, anti-socialist and free market rhetoric, is nothing but a super hypocrite, someone beyond the pale – in.

Jay Hammond, the Governor of Alaska from 1974 to 1982 is the father of Alaska’s Permanent Fund. He conceived and then persuaded voters and legislators in a state of rugged individualists to adopt the world’s first dividend paying fund of the sort that American forefather Thomas Paine envisioned. Paine in his pamphlet Agrarian Justice proposed a guaranteed basic income, a precursor of Social Security.

Although supposedly ideologically opposed to such a plan, Alaskans approved it and it has proved to be a big success and very popular despite the state’ s supposed rugged individualistic ethic. They thought it was a pretty good idea to get a check for over $1000. in the mail every year or, as is done today, a direct deposit wired into their bank account.

Since 1980 the fund has grown from $900 million in assets to over $44 billion today. It has paid yearly dividends to Alaskans that have regularly exceeded $1000. As Hammond conceived it, it enabled Alaskans to benefit from the many natural resources they owned in common rather than let private corporations, who are in the business of exploiting those resources, be the only beneficiaries.

The dividends from Alaska’s fund have stimulated the economy from the bottom up rather than from the top down and have virtually eliminated poverty within the state. Alaska is economically one of the most equal states in the union.

But Palin is such a hypocrite. When asked by Sean Hannity about the inconsistency of her actions as Governor and her rhetoric as the queen bee of the Tea Party, Palin said “What we’re doing up there is returning a share of resource development dollars back to the people who own the resources. Our constitution mandates that as you develop resources, it’s to be for the maximum benefit of the people, not the corporations, not the government, but the people of Alaska.” Very well, but then why all the rhetoric that extolls private over public interests and lowering as opposed to raising taxes on corporations?

Contrast this with what Palin told a Tea Party crowd on September 4, 2011: “So, to make America the most attractive and competitive place to do business, to set up shop here and hire people here, to attract capital from all over the globe that will lead to an explosion of growth, instead of chasing industry offshore, I propose to eliminate all federal corporate income tax.”

I suppose this doesn’t include the Alaska Permanent Fund user’s fee because it is not strictly speaking a tax. It’s a user’s fee! The fees charged the oil and gas corporations operating in Alaska are owed to the owners of the resource who happen to be the citizens of Alaska. This defies those like Tea Party activists who would privatize everything. But Palin would privatize everything as long as it was not her ox that was being gored!

Palin’s rhetoric extolling the free market economy and lowering taxes on corporations flies in the face of the reality in her own state of Alaska. Her mouth is disconnected from her reality on the ground. The fact of the matter is that Alaska’s reality should be extended to all citizens of the US who are the true owners of America’s resources. There should be a permanent fund which collects monies owed to the American people and distributes them to every man, woman and child.

Right now public resources rightfully owned by the American people are being privatized and profited from by large corporations feeding an ever increasing inequality. Royalties from the extraction industries are not anywhere near as high as they should be. They should go into a people’s fund. Norway imposes a 50% tax on oil extraction which is put into its sovereign wealth fund which provides pensions and benefits for the Norwegian people. Of course, fossil fuel resources should be left in the ground in order to forestall global warming but that’s a subject for another day.

The disconnect between right wing rhetoric and left wing reality is seen not only in Alaska but in Kentucky where the Kentucky version of Obamacare known as Kynect is hugely popular for what it accomplishes for the citizens of Kentucky. But on the rhetorical level Kentuckians all hate Obamacare. Mention Obamacare and they will lapse into a dither of denunciation. It is pretty pathetic that people will get so worked up over a name while loving a service provided as long as you call it by a different name.

As Peter Barnes points out in his book, With Liberty and Dividends for All, nothing is realized for the benefit of the people from the electromagnetic spectrum which is given away free to corporations. Nothing is realized for the co-owners of the system (us) that protects intellectual property and supports the financial system. A financial transaction tax (or user’s fee if you prefer) could partially fund a dividend for the American people.

Money creation, supposedly the province of the Congress, has been delegated to private banks who do it by the process of fractional reserve banking and for their own private profit. It should be done by the representatives of the American people, as specified in the Constitution, with the profits going to the American people via a sovereign wealth fund instead of to the private banks.

Co-ops and other forms of common ownership by worker/owners should make a portion of profits directly payable to worker/owners instead of holding the profits or spending them in common for them. This spreads the wealth rather than holding it in trust. A public bank could distribute its profits as dividends to the public that owned it instead of all the profits from banking going to Wall Street.

Rich people live off of dividends paid to them in one form or other from their accumulated wealth. Public wealth is owned by the citizens of the US collectively. To receive a dividend from their co-owned wealth would tend to ameliorate the growing inequality of wealth ownership in the US and supplement middle class incomes.

Every citizen should be in a position of deriving at least a part of their income from co-owned wealth, especially since income from jobs is going downhill due to automation and outsourcing. It would eliminate poverty, provide a basic income guarantee, stimulate the economic system from the bottom up and restore the middle class.
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YAW 10 years ago

What a gem! I am inclined to believe that it will require a proper "surgical incision" for "persemankomya" people like Mr Baidoo to understand this social concept. He will probably come up with some "quasi capitalist" mumbo j ...
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What a gem! I am inclined to believe that it will require a proper "surgical incision" for "persemankomya" people like Mr Baidoo to understand this social concept. He will probably come up with some "quasi capitalist" mumbo jumbo to justify why Nigerians,Angolans,Gabonese,Equatorial Guineans are better off under the present capitalist take all system. Nothing is more annoying/unsettling than Baidoo and his ilk preaching the virtues of corporate raiders.
francis kwarteng 10 years ago

Dear GORGORTUDOR/YAW,

I have been monitoring him closely.

And he is "persemankomya" indeed.

There is so much happening across that, if brought to Baidoo's and his ilk's attention, will be surprised.

Not only th ...
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Dear GORGORTUDOR/YAW,

I have been monitoring him closely.

And he is "persemankomya" indeed.

There is so much happening across that, if brought to Baidoo's and his ilk's attention, will be surprised.

Not only that, across Europe and the world at large. What Baidoo has been preaching (100% or paper capitalism) on Ghanaweb hardly exists anywehere on the planet or in human history.

I am closely monitoring him. Like Prof. Lungu said, there is so much socialism in America. And there is so more socialism in capitalist Switzerland, Belgium, and Germany, than there is capitalism in socialist America.

Technically Baidoo is not of this world! He lives on Pluto!

When Adam Smith says this, he says that.

When John Maynard Keynes says this, he says that.

When Karl Marx says this, he says that.

When Marcus Garvey says this, he says that.

When WEB Du Bois says this, he says that.

When Paul Krugman says this, he says that.

Even Milton Friedman, his idol, says this, he says that.

When the historical record says this, he says that.

When the scientific evidence says this, he says that.

When the world says this, he says that. Baidoo is certainly not of this world.

Thanks.
GORGORDUTOR 10 years ago

Massa Kwarteng correct well well, I just think pkb & co na worm hole of the universe wey dry from. Keep up the fight. I am working on a satirical commentary on the high minded means you used to dufu that man. As I said before ...
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Massa Kwarteng correct well well, I just think pkb & co na worm hole of the universe wey dry from. Keep up the fight. I am working on a satirical commentary on the high minded means you used to dufu that man. As I said before : Aoh Massa bunu boom gwao mor leh. IF I WAS pkb's cornerman I would have thrown in the towel, if I was the ref seeing as he is punch drunk I would wrap my arms around this poor journeyman and declare a TKO!! MANY THANKS FOR THE ERUDITE WAY YOU ARTICULATE THE NKRUMAIST/AFRICAN PROGRESSIVE POSITION. AYEKOO!!
GORGORDUTOR 10 years ago

Thank you for the erudite way you go about your business. It is pure pleasure to observe. HAMMER THEM. AYEKOO EGYA KWARTENG MMO.

Thank you for the erudite way you go about your business. It is pure pleasure to observe. HAMMER THEM. AYEKOO EGYA KWARTENG MMO.
francis kwarteng 10 years ago

Dear Gorgortudor,

Thanks for the encouragement.

Like I said before, I am monitoring him on all the major websites. We all have a lot in store for him.

Fortunately, he Baidoo has taken on an area of intellectual his ...
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Dear Gorgortudor,

Thanks for the encouragement.

Like I said before, I am monitoring him on all the major websites. We all have a lot in store for him.

Fortunately, he Baidoo has taken on an area of intellectual history that I enjoy and cherish the most.

Unfortunately, I am also familiar with almost all his sources and know when he is lying, quoting his sources out of context, fabricating and misrepreseing authors, and making up stuff.

But I know we are all doing this together. In other words I am not doing this alone. I am fortunate to have readers like you (and all the others) who are just as equally well informed. And we are all learning from each other.

Please have a great week and continur your good work on behalf of the Great Nkrumah!

Thanks.
amanfo 10 years ago

Dear Sir Frank, you have posted this comment at a rate no one has ever done and you have the audacity to refer to the essay as senseless. Have you in anyway consider what others will think of you when they notice contineous r ...
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Dear Sir Frank, you have posted this comment at a rate no one has ever done and you have the audacity to refer to the essay as senseless. Have you in anyway consider what others will think of you when they notice contineous repetition of the same comment? Anywhere, any system put in place can't function solely unless they work tandem with others, even in the jungle where the lion is considered the strongest sometimes relies on nature to hunt its preys. Than you

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What Ghanaians Can Learn From Pope Francis 2

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