Last night on Real News on The Blaze TV, Acton Institute Director of Research Samuel Gregg joined the panel to add his analysis of the current financial crisis in the nation of Cyprus, and the potential impacts that this crisis could have for other European Union nations that are currently trying to deal with financial issues of their own.

Read more on Video: Samuel Gregg on Cyprus and the EU…

Today, career politicians are out of fashion. In light of Washington’s dysfunction and a hyper partisan culture, the words of politicians offer little reassurances. Their deeds even less. One career public servant is finding his popularity on an upswing exactly eighty years after his death. I asked my grandfather, who turns 97 in July, to rank America’s great presidents? He immediately answered Ronald Reagan, almost reflexively. And then paused for a few moments and declared, “That Calvin Coolidge fellow was good too.”

To remember Coolidge is to remember an altogether different America. One that was rapidly modernizing but still deeply connected to rural life and its foundations. But even for his era, John Calvin Coolidge was a throw back, a man who emerged deep from within Vermont’s rugged hills. The symbols of his humble origins were magnified after the unexpected death of President Warren G. Harding in 1923. Coolidge, awakened in Vermont, was immediately sworn in to the greatest office in the world by kerosene lamp by his father, a public notary.

Oft forgotten or lampooned as a “simpleton,” there are no grand monuments for America’s 30th president. He certainly wouldn’t have sought such recognition. But in Coolidge by Amity Shlaes, she offers a kind of monument not just to Coolidge’s economic heroism, but his character.

Coolidge governed and taught from the deep well of America’s Founding and eschewed the material for the spiritual, declaring, “The things of the Spirit come first.” He was leery of progressive schemes saying, “Men do not make laws. They do but discover them.” He added, “If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.”
Read more on Finally, A Monument to Calvin Coolidge…

When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued his diktat against 20-ounce soft drinks earlier this year, the negative public outcry was tremendous.

Now comes the Interfaith Council on Corporate Responsibility with proxy shareholder resolutions aimed at PepsiCo, the parent company of Pepsi Cola, Tropicana, Quaker Oats, Frito Lay and Gatorade. At issue is PepsiCo’s freely acknowledged use of genetically modified organisms in several of its products.

Apparently the ICCR takes umbrage with GMOs and, by extension, PepsiCo’s use thereof. The ICCR proxy resolution calls for PepsiCo to label all products containing GMOs.

Trouble is ICCR fails to make its case against the use of GMOs other than a list of studies offering inconclusive evidence. Additionally, ICCR doesn’t provide any theological underpinnings for its objections other than the shareholders’ respective religious affiliations.

The ICCR proxy resolution prompted Paul Boykas, PepsiCo vice president of Global Public Policy and Federal Government Affairs, to respond in a detailed letter on March 19. In his letter, Boykas states: Read more on ICCR Shareholders Target PepsiCo…

Acton’s Director of Research and author of Becoming Europe, Sam Gregg, will be on TheBlaze TV tonight at 6 p.m. EST. The discussion will focus on the current economic situation in Cyprus, where some officials are saying bank depositors could lose up to 40% of their savings. Gregg’s book focuses on Europe’s entitlement culture, heavy taxation, government-regulated markets and over-bearing bureaucracy. He asks the question, “Is this America’s future?”

Read more on Samuel Gregg on TheBlaze TV: Europe is Getting Ugly Again…

National Public Radio did a roundup of views on what to expect from Pope Francis on economic issues. Reporter Jim Zarroli interviewed Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg and several commentators on the Catholic left. NPR host Audie Cornish introduced Zarroli’s report by observing that the new pope “comes from Argentina, where poverty and debt have long posed serious challenges. In the past, when thrust into debates about the country’s economic future, Francis had made strident comments about wealth, inequality and the markets. Now, some Catholics are hoping their new pope will play a similar role, giving voice to the poor and exerting influence on a global scale.” But Cornish cautioned that if “some say the idea that Pope Francis is some kind of economic liberal is to misread him and the church.”

Read more on Audio: On NPR, Samuel Gregg Discusses Pope Francis and Economics…

The Dow Chemical Co., along with E.I. Du Pont de Nemours, has come under fire from the Adrian Dominicans and the Sisters of Charity due to the companies’ production of genetically modified organisms.

No, the sisters aren’t mounting the barricades outside the two corporations to protest what they might term “Frankenfoods,” but they have submitted proxy shareholder resolutions to demand, among other things, the companies review and report by November 2013 on:

1. Adequacy of plans for removing GE [genetically engineered] seed from the ecosystem should circumstances require;
2. Possible impact on all Dow seed product integrity;
3. Effectiveness of established risk management processes for different environments and agricultural systems.

According to the As You Sow 2013 Proxy Preview, Harrington Investments – described in the preview as “religious investors” – are pressing Monsanto to provide even more detailed reports by July 2013.

AYS, for its part, is taking on Abbott Laboratories with a resolution seeking the company remove all GMOs from the company’s Similac Isomil infant formula “with an interim step of [requiring] labeling” that Isomil includes GMOs. The resolution reads, in part, that Abbott: Read more on Faith-Based Proxy Resolutions and GMOs…

There are 14 million Americans who are out of work yet don’t show up in the monthly unemployment statistics. The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for this group than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. They are part of the hidden social safety net. They are the disabled former workers.

NPR’s Planet Money has produced a fascinating report on the growth of federal disability programs and what disability means for American workers. Here are some of the highlights.

Whether you’re disabled often depends on your education level and what types of work you can do:

“We talk about the pain and what it’s like,” he says. “I always ask them, ‘What grade did you finish?’”

What grade did you finish, of course, is not really a medical question. But Dr. Timberlake believes he needs this information in disability cases because people who have only a high school education aren’t going to be able to get a sit-down job.

Dr. Timberlake is making a judgment call that if you have a particular back problem and a college degree, you’re not disabled. Without the degree, you are.

Read more on The Hidden Welfare Program for the Low-Skilled and Uneducated…

In the Wall Street Journal, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg turns to French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville to show how democratic systems can be used to strike a Faustian bargain. “Citizens use their votes to prop up the political class, in return for which the state uses its power to try and provide the citizens with perpetual economic security,” Gregg explains. This, of course, speaks to the current catastrophe that is the European welfare state. French workers, for example, “clearly expect the government to protect them from the economic consequences of their curious work habits,” he adds.

Read more on Samuel Gregg: What Tocqueville Knew…

The Hitachi Foundation is accepting applications for its 2013 Yoshiyama Young Entrepreneur Award, which identifies up to five young people striving to build “sustainable businesses” in the United States. Each awardee will receive $40,000 over two years, along with the tools and training designed to put a startup on the path to success. Deadline is March 28.

Read more on Cash for Young Entrepreneurs…

If a worker owes their employer thousands of dollars and refuses to pay the debt, should they be fired or have their wages garnished? What if the employer is the federal government?

Astoundingly, more than 100,000 federal employees owe more than $1 billion in federal taxes. To provide an incentive for them to pay up, a House committee approved legislation that would require the firing of government workers who are “seriously tax delinquent.”
Read more on Keeping Tax Cheats on the Government Payroll…