It may be totally unfair. After all, Home Depot is a public company, and its shareholders are not responsible for anything the company’s founder says. But I will never darken Home Depot’s doors again. I will give all my business to Lowe’s (and Ace, which is just up the street).

It’s the only outlet I have for my disgust. And I am very, very disgusted with Ken Langone, Home Depot’s founder. He is trying to blackmail the Pope!

In a recent interview with CNBC  he hinted that he might end his charitable giving if the Pope doesn’t stop complaining about income inequality.

Wealthy people are feeling unfairly criticized by the Pope’s pleas in support of the poor, he explained.

Writing for Examiner.com this morning, David Phillips reports that:

The billionaire, who’s a major donor to the Republican Party, is currently working with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, to raise $180 million for the restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Langone said that he told the Archbishop about a wealthy donor who could give millions of dollars to the Cathedral project but was worried about the Pope’s “exclusionary” remarks.

As I understand it, the Pope reports to God, not Ken Langone. And it is my confident belief that Ken Langone will also have to report to God eventually.

Good luck wiggling through the eye of that needle, Ken Langone!

What is really, really disgusting about this horrible man and his filthy lucre is that he is not alone. From what I’m reading, many of the looters who have – by luck, guile or outright robbery – raked in the bulk of society’s resources are sulking. They say we should all just shut up about the way in which the 1 percent have ripped off the other 99 percent in American society, for example.

The nerve!

They’re lucky the poor and middle class aren’t out in the streets throwing Molotov cocktails.

America’s top 1 percent is collecting about 20 percent of the nation’s total household income – their largest share in  the past 100 years. And the income gap is widening rapidly.

There are a lot of underlying reasons, of course, but the way I see it, the main cause is the way in which the financial sector has managed to keeep a bigger and bigger share of the pie as they move the world’s money around. With support from the politicians they’ve bought, they can take as much as they like off the top. And they’re taking more and more.

Pope Francis would be derelict in his duty if he did not remind them of their spiritual obligation to share some of their ill-gotten gains.

But it’s not only up to the Pope to try and fix the problem. It’s also up to us.

And the only way we can do that is by voting for politicians (like Elizabeth Warren), who have the guts and the know-how to keep Wall Street in check.

I wish I could say that every Democrat is on our side. But, sadly, you and I know that’s not true.

What I can say is that every Republican is on the side of the looters.

That makes it a lot simpler for me to decide who to vote for in November.

Click for David Phillips’ story.

Click for more on income inequality.