The Pope came to America and he had a lot to say about economics and politics. In fact, he endorsed Barack Obama’s plan to slow down our economy, so that Russia and China can catch up to us.

The Daily Signal explains:

But experts at a Heritage Foundation event Monday painted a bleak picture of its adverse impact on the poor, warning that the shift away from natural energy sources would lead to skyrocketing electricity costs that will have “devastating” impacts on low-income families.

Mario Lopez, president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, cited a report from the National Black Chamber of Commerce that found that by 2030, the plan will increase electricity costs for consumers by $565 billion annually.

“This makes it one of the costliest regulations in American history,” he said.

That cost, Lopez continued, will hit families directly through increased prices on nearly everything ranging from luxury items to everyday necessities like clothing and toothpaste.

“When you reduce the annual income of the individual by hundreds of dollars, then you are going to have an impact, and especially a disproportionate impact on poor people,” he said.

The regulation will also directly hit businesses, forcing owners to cut costs through layoffs and reduced hiring, Lopez said. The Black Chamber of Commerce report found that these predicted job losses would disparately hit minority communities.

By 2035, African-Americans are expected to lose nearly 7 million jobs because of the regulation, while Hispanics will lose over 12 million. The result is a projected 25-percent increase in total poverty.

“These are real people we’re talking about,” Lopez said. “The EPA and the Obama administration sometimes forget that, unfortunately.”

That response made me think of this clip of Marco Rubio from the CNN debate:

If you want to find out here “green energy” initiatives take a country, look no further than Germany. The electricity bills for consumers and businesses have been skyrocketing, damaging their entire economy. Oh well, it’s not like they were facing any kind of demographic crisis or anything.

Anyway, back to the Pope. Apparently, he didn’t have anything to say to Obama about abortion. The headline at The Federalist is “Pope Francis Visits White House South Lawn, Says Nothing About Abortion”. I didn’t see anything about him defending marriage either.

FrontPage magazine talks about how the Pope met with Fidel Castro, a brutal atheistic communist dictator, but declined to meet with Cuban pro-democracy dissidents.

Excerpt:

In 1960, Cuban bishops declared that “Catholicism and Communism respond to two totally different concepts of man and the world which it will never be possible to conciliate.” Pope Francis however contends that Communism is really Christianity. “The Communists have stolen our flag,” he said.

The Cuban bishops condemned Communism as “a system which brutally denies the most fundamental rights of the human being.” Pope Francis’ criticisms of the Castro regime were limited to oblique references, a plea for religious freedom for Catholics and general criticisms that could apply to Cuba or any one of a number of other places. He failed to even reiterate his old criticisms of the regime.

Cuban dissidents were kept from meeting Pope Francis and even the “passing greeting” that had been planned was shut down when the Communist authorities detained political dissidents. When the protesters risked their freedom to get near him, they were arrested without receiving any acknowledgement from the pope. The Castros got their meetings and their publicity.

The oppressed, whom Pope Francis claimed to speak for during his visit and during his international travels, were left out in the cold. They were treated to another oblique reference, as Pope Francis expressed his desire to “embrace especially all those who for various reasons I will not be able to meet.”

“It simply doesn’t appear to us to be right or just that the pope doesn’t have a little time to meet with those Cubans who are defending human rights,” the head of the country’s largest dissident organization said.

Pope Francis spoke of Obama’s deal with Castro as a “process of normalizing relations between two peoples following years of estrangement.” But he knows quite well that it’s nothing of the kind. The Cuban people are not estranged from the Cuban refugees in America by a lack of diplomatic relations, but by the brutal suppression of political and religious freedom by the Castro regime.

The Obama deal doesn’t bring the “two peoples” together; it puts money in the pockets of a regime that Pope Francis had once called corrupt and authoritarian. It allows American leftists to tour Cuba for the trade in underage prostitutes that it has become notorious for. This isn’t reconciliation. It’s exploitation.

[…]If Pope Francis really wished to speak for the oppressed, there are eleven million of them in Cuba. They are not oppressed by capitalism or by global warming. They are oppressed by that fear, the paralyzing anguish that it brings and the apathy that comes with it. They needed weapons against that fear.

The pope’s visit gave the Castros what they wanted, but failed to give the Cuban people what they needed.

Conservative radio show host Mark Levin asks why the Pope chose to talk about global warming instead of the plight of Christians being raped and murdered for their faith by ISIS.

I’m a Protestant evangelical Christian, and Bible-based. I’m pro-life, pro-marriage and I defend religious liberty and conscience rights. I’m not Roman Catholic.