Sheldon Adelson: Leading member of the job creating class and puppeteer of Newt Gingrich and Bibi Netanyahu

Well, it seems that Gingrich’s own masters, his fund raisers and those who may want to engage a historian in the future, did not take kindly to Gingrich’s attacks on slash and burn capitalism. Undoubtedly even if they were not practicing that version of capitalism now, they wanted to keep their options open. And probably not a few of them got “seed” money from Latin America, or worse. So you can see why Gingrich admitted that he crossed the line. That line being between, I guess, the ruthless, untruthful, bigoted ambitious on the one hand and those making truthful indictments of the ruthless, untruthful, bigoted ambitious, on the other.

But it didn’t have to come to this. Newt could have forestalled (get it? check def. 3) all this bellyaching that he didn’t admire the sharp practices of those who simply wanted to make the market more efficient by eliminating those less 1% than the rest of us. Newt should have said up front: “I admire the ruthlessness of CEO Romney and its effects on our economy. As president I wouldn’t do anything to prevent the slash and burn practices of those with venture capital in their hands. Let’s be frank, if we’ve ever run a business or worked at one, we know that many people need to be fired. Their presence on the payroll not only subtracts from the profits that ought to go to the job creator class but also demoralizes other employees, who therefore become another burden on profits. So no one objects to firing. If anything, more Americans ought to be fired. Particularly if they cost more than 10 year old Thai girls. After all, if the job-creating class receives less money, then there will be less jobs created. By definition. QED. GOP.

“But the problem is who wants to do the firing? I know that I’m far too compassionate to go up to someone, someone who perhaps has a sick family member in the hospital recovering from serious surgery, and say: It’s over. We’re done with you. I’m sure that most of you couldn’t do it either. Or else you would lose sleep and perhaps your conscience would bother you. That’s why I admire a man like Mitt Romney, who has neither conscience or any other known human emotion. Seriously, look at him. Can a guy that lies as much as he does have a conscience?

That’s why I want you to examine his life’s work. A work that we can all admire. It’s so admirable that most of you should probably pay more taxes so he doesn’t have as much tax burden.

“But the question is, Ought a man like that be president. Sure, his job elimination talents might come in handy in the EPA or the Department of Education or some other job-killing federal department. But President? He might look at the money that goes to red states, more than collected from them in taxes, and say, “Hey, that’s inefficient. Let’s cut that!” Then where would the job creators be? And what about the job creators in the oil business or in agricuilture or in the arms industry? Do we need a person who “likes firing people” there? I suggest you think about it when you watch that film that I had no coordination with: ‘When Romney came to town.’ It certainly is thought provoking. Not that I ever saw it or know anything about it.”

The Job Creator/Slasher meets the Idea Creator/Slasher.

Now you see, neither Sheldon Adelson nor any other plutocratic master of the GOP would take offense at this. None of the truly great collectors of capital really wants to be president; the office has to great an opportunity cost for a real capitalist. And as long a Newt hints that he would be as regressive a tax slasher as a real plutocrat, then why would they care if Mitt gets thrown to the dogs. Hell, Mitt isn’t that reliable to begin with. This approach surely would have gotten Newt out of the jam he’s now in. Hell, even Sarah Palin could have figured that out.

It wouldn’t work for Rick Perry, however. It’s far too subtle a concept for Perry to understand.

Map of Sumatra by Neil Franklin of the Sumatran Tiger Conservation Program (Flickr).

Bukit Tigapuluh is a 354,000 acre national park located on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, mostly in the Province of Riau with about 81,500 acres in the Province of Jambi. It is the home for such endangered species as the Malayan Tapir (Tapirus indicus) and the Sumatran Elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus), and the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) and Sumatran Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis). The smallest tiger subspecies, the Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae), lives only on Sumatra. Listed by the IUCN as critically endangerd, it has no subpopulation larger than 50 individuals, and fewere than 300 individuals in total remain. Numerous threatened species of bird are also found there.

Like many third world wildlife sanctuaries, the park is under constant threat. Here the chief reasons for deforestation are logging (principally by Asia Pulp & Paper) and encroachment by palm oil plantations. Two-thirds of the park has been logged. Like many third world countries, Indonesia devotes insufficient resources to prevent destruction of its wildlife resources.

The park is also the home of two minority indigenous tribes, the Talang Mamak and Orang Rimba, who are also dependent on the natural resources of the forest.

On Wednesday WWF-Indonesia again issued a plea to the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry for more strict scrutiny of industrial activity in and around the park. This plea was accompanied by photographs of five species of felids taken by its camera trapping program during a systematic three-month sampling in the corridor to the park. The cats were photographed in an unprotected forest corridor between the Bukit Tigapuluh forest landscape and the Rimbang Baling Wildlife sanctuary in Riau Province. This area, says WWF-Indonesia, is especially threatened by encroachment and forest clearance for industrial plantations.

As for the cats, Karmila Parakkasi, coordinator of the WWF-Indonesia Tiger Research Team says:

Four of these species are protected by Indonesian Government regulations and are listed as threatened by extinction on the IUCN Red List. This underscores the rich biodiversity of the Bukit Tigapuluh landscape and the forest corridors that connect to it. These amazing cat photos also remind us of how much we could lose as more of these fragile forests are lost to logging, plantations and illegal encroachment.

But of course a picture is worth a thousand words.

The Sunda Clouded Leopard.

Distinct from the clouded leopard of mainland Asia (Neofelis nebulosa), the Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi) lives only in Borneo and Sumatra. In Borneo they live in lowland rainforests; in Sumatra in montane areas. Their two inch long canines are as large as any felid, but because they are smaller, Sunda clouded leopards have the largest canines proportionate to their skull size of any extant cat. The animals evidently used a now submerged land bridge to reach Sumatra, where they diverged from the mainland clouded leopards about 1.4 Ma in the mid-Pleistocene.

The clouded leopard is strongly arboreal, so logging and deforestration are grave treats.

Neofelis diardi. The long tail is useful for balance in trees.

The Leopard Cat.

From a conservation point of view, the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) is of the least concern of these five cats. From northern China and Korea to the central Asia countries, the leopard cat is the most widely distributed small Asian cat.  They have long legs and webbed toes, but otherwise are much like a domestic cat. Their strikingly striped faces are quite distinctive.

Prionailurus bengalensis.

The Asian Golden Cat.

Considered near threatened, the Asian golden cat (Catopuma temmincki) ranges from Nepal and India to China to Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Its coat is a solid single color, but that color could be anything from red to golden brown, dark brown to pale cinnamon, gray to black. Some in China show a recessive characteristic, spotted fur, making them look like large leopard cats. They hunt birds, large rodents and reptiles, and small ungulates.

Catopuma temmincki.

Marbled Cat.

The marbled cat (Pardofelis marmorata) belongs to the clade which contains the Asian golden cat, which diverged from other felids 9.4 Ma in the latter part of the Miocene. About the size of a domestic cat, it has proportionally larger feet, tail and canines. Its markings are much like the larger clouded leopards. It is found from Nepal through southern China into Southeast Asia and Indonesia. It is listed by the IUCN as vulnerable.

Pardofelis marmorat.

The Sumatran Tiger.

Sumatran tigers became genetically distinct from the mainland subspecies at the end of the Pleistocene or beginning of the Holocene (12,000-6,000 years ago). It is smaller than the mainland subspecies (males are about 8 feet long) and its stripes are noticeably thinner. It is, however, the apex predator of Sumatra, feeding on anything from large ungulates to small rodents. The are both fast runners and fast swimmers. But their numbers are so low that their future seems bleak.

Panthera tigris sumatrae.

Aditya Bayunanda, WWF-Indonesia’s Coordinator for the Global Forest Trade Network Programme, says:

“The abundant evidence of these five wild cat species suggests that the concession licenses of companies operating in these areas, such as Barito Pacific, should be reviewed and adjusted according to Indonesian Ministry regulations, which state that concession areas with the presence of endangered species should be protected by the concessionaire. WWF-Indonesia has also called on protection for areas bordering Bukit Tigapuluh National Park, either by expanding the park or managing it under the current forest ecosystem restoration scheme.”

No mention was made that the vast majority all the English words contained in translation authorized by James I came from William Tyndale. According to Tyndale’s modern biographer, Brian Moynahan, Tyndale’s words account for 84% of the King James Version New Testament and for 75.8% of the Old Testament books that he translated. Even the editors of the the Revised Standard Versions said that the King James Version “owed most, especially in the New Testament, to Tyndale.”

Of course a state sponsored religion, like the Church of England, tends to satisfy the needs of its sponsor. And Tyndale’s fate does not reflect kindly on either the Church or the monarchy. Henry VIII, the Anglican of convenience, and the the catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V connived to have Tyndale executed precisely for putting the Hebrew and Greek texts into vulgar English. Tyndale’s language, which was praised today before the current monarch, ran afoul of Henry’s 1530 proclamation “for the damning of erroneous books and heresies and prohibiting the having of Holy Scriptures translated into vulgar tongues”—the vulgar tongue in question was the language that the Archbishop of Canterbury today compared favorably to Shakespeare’s.

Tyndale was in Antwerp at the time at the time of the proclamation and out of the reach of Henry VIII. So it took catholic Charles V to arrange the kidnapping that brought Tyndale to Brussels where he was executed in 1536 with the tenderness that is usually extended by the religious against intellectuals who presume to infringe on their monopoly of truth.

The religious strangling and burning of William Tyndale. Woodcut from the 1563 edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

A woodcut from the other Authroized Version of James I, Daemonologie.

The other English monarch celebrated today, James I, whose committee of translators relied mostly on the words of the executed heretic, was in the business of religious exegesis himself. In 1597, before his Authorized Version of god’s word, he produced his famous Daemonologie, In Forme of a Dialogie, Diuided into three Bookes. By James Rx. In this book, the head of the Church of England relied on his own witch hunting days back when he was in Scotland to recommend for the whole kingdom the healthy practice of witch hunting (and burning).

The great 17th century English witch hunting soon followed. Even Shakespeare himself, with words as English as Tyndales, painted a kindom of witches (appropriately in Scotland) in Macbeth. The Puritans, who would kill James I’s son, nevertheless continued the enthusiasm of the father for examining and then killing women. But that is another story, of course. What we celebrate here today is the beauty and power of the language of a man the British monarchy condemned without trial for heresy. The words are now called the King James Version, after a monarch who advocated the religious necessity for burning women as witches.

Darwin was probably turning over in his grave (just beneath the festivities).

Now it doesn’t surprise me that WordPress is slapping advertisements on old posts. I’m certainly not Pollyanna enough to think that WordPress wouldn’t unexpectedly institute some program or change its relation with bloggers in ways designed solely to increase its own revenue. And I expect more such arbitrary actions of self-interest in the future. Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if WordPress goes out of the business of letting people say their piece for free and, for profit alone, goes over to the business of letting people say their piece for a price, a pay-for-piece model, if you will. Or, if the propaganda of GE is “proudly powered by WordPress” as Eco-Press says at the bottom, perhaps WordPress will entirely go over to the highest bidder. Who knows, maybe the Koch brothers. It’s not like any other part of our society is holding out.

But here’s the thing: It would be responsible on WordPress’s part, and tend to reinforce the imagine it tries to portray, if WordPress labelled the ads it affixes to other’s people’s posts as, well, ads put there by WordPress. I noticed that WordPress slapped an “Eco-Pressed” ad on my poor Ground Beetles post. I wonder why WordPress believed that readers of that post might be interested in a Colombian math professor who has decided to jog barefoot to “raise awareness” of some environmental problem or another. Then, I went back to make sure I was accurately relating the content of the piece, but the eco-pressing vandalism was gone. It’s evidently a moving target for WordPress and GE.

Now as I said I have no proprietary interest in the cyberspace WordPress makes available. I have no reasonable expectation that WordPress is not going to act in some irresponsible, arbitrary, underhanded or devious way. But I would expect that WordPress had enough integrity not to give the impression that any blogger who had not consented was supporting the corporate site sponsored by one of the great corporate criminals of our time.

And there is no other word to describe how GE treats its legal responsibities. In almost every endeavor it undertakes. As a military contractor, GE has had its run ins with the federal government over those things that are often called “fraud.” Criminal cases have been brought that cost GE millions. But of course in the business of war profiteering, fraud is just one of the tools. Any military contractor who doesn’t defraud the government isn’t considered serious enough to get repeat business. But GE has a history of crimes in other areas. Perhaps the most gruesome, and one of the most immoral acts in American corporate history (ranking GE with the likes of IG Farben) involved its history of radiation testing, which it undertook individually, on prison inmates, and by more wide-spread means involving entire (and unsuspecting) communities. These crimes will probably never receive serious attention on Eco-Pressed or on any post of the bloggers they promote. Nor will any of its other immoral conduct. Its own nuclear plants have had a history of safety violations serious enough to draw substantial fines. You might have thought that an organization that had used human guinea pigs to learn of the effects of radiation sickness might be a little more careful when it actually produces radiation. But that would just show you lack Ecomagination.™ If you want to see how responsible corporate executives, like the folks who Bring Good Things to Life, you should see the Academy Award winning documentary Deadly Deception. Radiation poisoning is not the only category of Good Things Brought to Life by GE. According to the Center for Public Integrity, GE is the 4th largest owner of superfund sites—in other words, only three other organizations have contaminated more of the United States. GE, however, was never satisfied with poisoning only the land. The Political Economy Research Institute listed GE as the fourth-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States, with more than 4.4 million pounds per year (2,000 tons) of toxic chemicals released into the air. The land, the air, what could be next? Oh, of course. Who could forget the dumping of 1.3 million pounds of PCB into the Hudson River and GE’s dogged campaign to prove that PCBs were really good for you? Now that was “imagination at work.” I could go on and on, but you can see it all (or at least a good part of it) for youself at cleanupGE.org. The point is that there probably could not be a worse company (Koch Industries aside) to take on the job of “pressing” environmental posts. Unless, of course, the exercise is not a serious attempt to address the existential threats we face and instead is simply another corporate-right wing exercise in painting happy faces over greed, white collar crime and theft. Do you think?

So, yes, posting ads for a “Green Living” site aggregated by a corporate criminal and one of the most immoral of the degraders of our planet should at least come with disclaimers. But since WordPress won’t put the disclaimers up themselves, let me do it. When I put my “ecomagination”™ to work, I concluded that our lifestyle would be more “sustainable” if we all stopped buying products manufactured or sold by GE. So if you want to do something constructive, don’t run over two continents in your bare feet. Boycott GE.

I wonder if this post will be picked up by Eco Pressed?

The Earth and Moon 6 million miles away. Photo from NASA's Juno spacecraft on August 26, 2011.

from Paradiso

Canto XXII, lines 133-38; 148-154

by Dante Alighieri

Col viso ritornai per tutte quante
le sette spere, e vidi questo globo
tal, ch’io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante;

e quel consiglio per migliore approbo
che l’ha per meno; e chi ad altro pensa
chiamar si puote veramente probo.

. . .

e tutti e sette mi si dimostraro
quanto son grandi e quanto son veloci
e come sono in distante riparo.

L’aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci,
volgendom’io con li etterni Gemelli,
tutta m’apparve da’ colli a le foci;

poscia rivolsi li occhi a li occhi belli.

I looked back through each one
of the Seven Spheres, and I saw this globe
so base that I smiled at its appearance.

I regard best the judgment
that holds it least. He whose thoughts transcend it
can truly regard himself upright.

. . .

And all Seven showed to me
Their grandeur, their velocity
And how distant are their abodes.

The little patch with all our ferocity,
while I revolved with the eternal Gemini,
was shown me from the hills to the mouths of the rivers.

I then returned my gaze to the beautiful eyes.

1. Secessionist Governor of former Confederate state travels to South Carolina 100 years after South Carolina seceded in order to announce his candidacy for Presidency of the United States. He did this after holding a rally with fringe religious reactionaries and blowhards that filled less than half the stadium he rented for the occasion.

2. Christian fascist wins 4,823 “votes” in a contest in a small town in Iowa, causing at least one other candidate to drop out of the race for the presidency. The winner points to the vote as proof that she will win the presidency, which last time was won with 66,882,230 votes.

3. A former Speaker of the House of Representatives, hyped by the GOP as its sharpest intellectual but known mostly for having cheated on two wives and regaling the latest one with a substantial credit line at Tiffany & Co.®, was found to have paid a firm to create dummy twitter followers. This discovery came after he said that poll results were unimportant; the critical metric was the number of twitter followers.

4. The President and House Republicans were unable to devise the best way to destroy Social Security and other social safety net programs for the vulnerable, while still maintaining historical low taxes for the wealthy and taxes on capital at one-half the rate to taxes on labor. So they devised a scheme to hand the task over to 12 members of congress, with the caveat that if they fail, a substantial cut would take place to our bloated military budget. The 12 congress persons selected turn out to be ones with substantial contributions from or other connections to military contractors.

5. The front-runner for the GOP presidential nominee told a questioner that “corporations are people too.”

6. After S&P downgraded its opinion on the creditworthiness of US securities, investors immediately disinvested in private securities and placed their money in US securities for safety.

7. The new Secretary of  Defense, the fourth Republican in a row to hold the office during the last four terms of the  never-ending Republican presidency, warned against any cuts in the Defense budget. The Pentagon’s budget is now slightly under one-half of all military spending by all governments on the planet; nearly 10 times that of the next highest spender.

8. Years of Republican court packing have paid off: The Republican Eleventh Circuit has ruled health reform unconstitutional. The Eleventh Circuit was once known for its desegregation and bussing rulings. The right-wing has been working hard for a long time. The should feel proud of themselves for righting this ship. But they won’t stop. The right wing has more money and devotion and energy than we do. So expect worse judges who have less decorum. And rulings that will be abjectly political.

9. Gitmo remains open. No one has yet been prosecuted for torture in the “war on terror.” No one seems disturbed by the Administration’s position that it can assassinate American citizens if it deems them harmful. The current Administration, publicly committed to transparency, has prosecuted 5 whistleblowers so far. In one case, the prosecutor announced it might classify previously unclassified material about the NSA so that it could not be used during trial. It held an uncharged suspect in a military leaks case in solitary confinement, even though the Secretary of Defense testified that the leaks did minimal harm to the U.S.

In short, the march towards an authoritarian plutocracy (once quaintly called fascism) is proceeding unabated.

We had a variety of excuses. The economy constrained his choices. The right would savage him if he deviated from the proscribed “war on terror.” He had to make deals with powerful money interests if we were to have even the smallest health care reform. The time wasn’t right for immigration reform. The president was just being “realistic” on education issues. The Bush Tax Cut extension was just for a short period. We had to let his thinking “evolve” on issues of human rights. Really, deep down he was one of us. He’s just bad at negotiating. The bully pulpit is not his style. He can’t act like an angry black man, that would play into stereotypes. Class warfare is not his style.

Well, after the Deal, we will either have to face reality or give up our illusions once and for all. And they were always illusions. We knew from the beginning where he was headed. It was apparent when he picked his economic team. Essentially the same people who put together TARP. It’s not that the economy constrained him. (It didn’t “constrain” FDR.) It’s his imagination that constrained him. The President is fundamentally a timid man with shallow education in matters of policy and history. And he has little intellectual curiosity. We mistook the insight his books had into himself as analysis. The Right was closer to the mark when they said it was narcissism. His inability to empathize is troubling. His inability to gauge the motivations, strategies and potential moves of others is fatal for a politician. He maneuvered a very slim corridor where only television looks and personality were important. Fortunately for him, since the 1970s the Democratic Party has systematically dismantled the safeguards it had in place to ensure that a seasoned statesman was its candidate. It was as though the experience of Adlai Stevenson and George McGovern that the problem was principle. So they adopted the strategy of the Republicans: political style over substance. The result was Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and, fatally for the Democratic Party, Barack Obama.

The strange characteristic of Obama is that he is persistently conservative. It’s not just that he can’t lead. He can’t even follow public opinion. So he always finds comfort in being to the right of what the public wants. It’s the perfection of the Clinton triangulation. It allows him to go to his donors (big donors are always to the right of the party’s center anyway) and even if he is to the right of them, he can (and does) say: Who you gonna call?

His campaign rhetoric had us so fooled that it took us a long time before we admitted to ourselves what we had done. But now there can’t be any more self-deception. Representative John Conyers crystallized everything we knew but refused to admit to ourselves: “[T]he Republicans, the Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal – the president of the United States called for that … “

And so, gentle reader, the course is clear. Instead of putting any effort into re-electing the President, we must invest it into building a liberal-leftist infrastructure. And even if we are too exhausted and beaten down at this point to take to the streets or organize or give money, the answer is not in re-electing this President. It’s time we stop fooling ourselves with the mantra the lesser of two evils. Because a Democrat who is willing to hand over the crown jewels is not the lesser of two evils. Remember it was Bill Clinton that ended welfare after re-election. God knows what Barack Obama will do if he is given the chance. He tried to give away Social Security in his first term.

Democrats always looked at the nomination of Barry Goldwater as the disaster they intended never to emulate. We must be moderate, they always cautioned. And then McGovern was nominated, and they realized they  had to manage the nomination. Eventually, (despite the disaster of Jimmy Carter) these wise men formed a group, the DLC, to take over the party. It was designed to ensure that a conservative would always be the nominee or at least the guiding force. As a result we have been “guided” by realists like Bill Clinton, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and numerous others whose lack of dedication to anything other than short-term expediency dooms them to a quick exit from the public mind and disregard by history. An extremist would doom our Party! they constantly clamor. Meanwhile, the Republicans, far from rejecting Goldwater, rededicated themselves to making lasting change, rather than short-term victory. As a result, their Party is far to the right of where Barry Goldwater ever was. And because the “leaders” who counseled moderation and compromise are in charge of the Democrats, that Party is constantly moving to the right.

Ask yourself: Is Barack Obama to the left of Richard Nixon? Think about their positions on progressive income tax, environmental regulation, economic activism, fighting poverty, powers of the President, civil liberties. Not their rhetoric, their actual decisions.

Yes, I know, Michele Bachmann will be “worse.” She might suggest cutting Social Security! She might want to extend the Bush tax cuts! She might say the President has the right to assassinate an American citizen. She might say that using drones is not “hostilities” for the War Powers Act. She might keep Gitmo open. She may fail to promote immigration reform. She may do nothing on greenhouse emissions.

She’d be much worse.

The two “crises” of the past couple of weeks illustrate what that world view is. One we treated in our last post. In that case the Bishop of Toledo, Ohio, has ordered Catholic Schools to stop collecting money and donating it to a foundation that sponsors research into the cause and cure of breast cancer. The reason was not that the foundation does anything that is proscribed by Catholic teaching, but rather because some day it might fund stem cell research that uses fetal tissue. We needn’t go into the dizzying thinking behind the Catholic Church’s hysteria over stem cell research. Let’s just say that it involves a dread that refrigerators are filling up all over the world with dead fetuses. This fear has led one Catholic moral philosopher who supposedly specializes in bioethics (an official one, not some free lancer at a University or in the press) to condemn in vitro fertilization. In the world of Catholic “ethics” being against something requires almost no thought, and clearly no rational thought.

The Toledo diocese’s conduct in that case can be explained this way: There are some evils that are so great that doing anything that makes them more likely is prohibited. And that is so, even when the thing being done doesn’t necessarily lead to that evil and also in itself is something good. I suppose you would have to balance the good (a possible cure for breast cancer) against the evil (the use of fetal stem cells), but Bishop Leonard Blair did not spell it out in his letter to his Friends in Christ. Since he balanced a remote possibility against a current scourge on very many women, we have to assume that he believes the evil he is worried about is very considerably greater than the good of doing something against breast cancer, because in the balance you have to discount the evil by the probability of its future occurence. Of course, predicting how an institution will behave in the future is always tricky. There was a time that the Church sanctioned the torture then burning of Lutherans, and now they even send ambassadors to Anglican countries, however much they hold them in contempt.

The other “crisis,” of course, was the one that involved Ireland. No Anglican country there. But the Church is taking immense heat over, once again, the inability of it to police its agents (the ones who are able to intercede between us and God) and prevent them from assaulting and molesting children. One wonders how many religions in the world at their heart are so deeply corrupted as to be ambivalent about whether its priests should be punished for sexually assaulting children. But it is so deeply ingrained in the hierarchy of this “faith” that they cannot bring themselves to even do what they themselves promise to do to police their own urges. This is especially evident in the recent report into the conduct of the Diocese of Cloyne, Ireland. The Cloyne Report (which can be read in its gruesome 421 page entirety) is not about some ancient history where the hierarchy didn’t know anything about the crimes being committed in the name of Jesus. (How many times in its history have crimes in the name of Jesus been committed by this institution?) No, it covers the period from 1999 to 2009. And significantly, this period took place after the publication in 1996 of the “Report and Recommendation of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Advisory Committee on Child Sexual Abuse by Priests,” also known as the Green Book or the Framework Document. This document required that complaints and evidence of criminal activity be reported to the civil police authorities. Pretty simple, right? Some might think that elementary principles of “ethics” might require it. How did that work out in Cloyne?

First off the Congregation for the Clergy opposed the Framework and in not too subtle a way threatened the bishops who would enforce it:

The Congregation for the Clergy told the bishops of Ireland that the document was “not an official document of the Episcopal Conference but merely a study document”. The Congregation further stated that it contained:

“procedures and dispositions which appear contrary to canonical discipline and which, if applied, could invalidate the acts of the same Bishops who are attempting to put a stop to these problems. If such procedures were to be followed by the Bishops and there were cases of eventual hierarchical recourse lodged at the Holy See, the results could be highly embarrassing and detrimental to those same Diocesan authorities.

In particular, the situation of ‘mandatory reporting’ gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature”.

(Cloyne Report, 1.18; for the authority that the Church has granted the Congregation for the Clergy, see its official explanation.)

Then the Papal Nuncio significantly pointed out the clergy’s objections in a secret letter to the Bishops, who had applied to the Vatican for recognition of the Frameworks:

“The Congregation for the Clergy has attentively studied the complex question of sexual abuse of minors by clerics and the document entitled “Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response”, published by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Advisory Committee. The Congregation wishes to emphasize the need for this document to conform to the canonical norms presently in force.

The text, however, contains ‘procedures and dispositions which appear contrary to canonical discipline and which, if applied, could invalidate the acts of the same Bishops who are attempting to put a stop to these problems. If such procedures were to be followed by the Bishops and there were cases of eventual hierarchical recourse lodged at the Holy See, the results could be highly embarrassing and detrimental to those same Diocesan authorities. In particular, the situation of “mandatory reporting” gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature’. Since the policies on sexual abuse in the English speaking world exhibit many of the same characteristics and procedures, the Congregation is involved in a global study of them. At the appropriate time, with the collaboration of the interested Episcopal Conferences and in dialogue with them, the Congregation will not be remiss in establishing some concrete directives with regard to these Policies.

For these reasons and because the abovementioned text is not an official document of the Episcopal Conference but merely a study document, I am directed to inform the individual Bishops of Ireland of the preoccupations of the Congregation in its regard, underlining that in the sad cases of accusations of sexual abuse by clerics, the procedures established by the Code of Canon Law must be meticulously followed under pain of invalidity of the acts involved if the priest so punished were to make hierarchical recourse against his Bishop.”

(Cloyne Report 4.21.)

There were further Vatican communications on this point, and all of them not-so-subtle in suggesting on which side the Pope would land in any dispute between criminal priests and innocent children victims. The language, all couched in canon legalese and not specifically saying not to report criminal priests, was written the way an investment banking CEO would advise his underlings on his feelings against a too strict enforcement of the law or morality. There is no doubt that like any corrupt and morally depraved executive, the Pope had more interest in preventing the disclosure of the crimes of the priests than protecting the well-being of the children of the priests’ flocks. Evidently, when Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me” (Mark 10:14), he was not guaranteeing they wouldn’t be raped. Or at least that’s how the successors to Peter saw their responsibility.

Needless to say, the Diocese of Cloyne failed to follow the Framework set out by the Bishops of Ireland. Evidently, when you work with child molesters on a daily basis, it’s easier to take their side than to follow what your superiors require of you. Predictably, the revelations and conclusions of this report have been greeted with a firestorm in Ireland. Even the Prime Minister of Ireland has lambasted the Church. The Prime Minister of Ireland! What next? Italy demanding that the Church adhere to minimal standards of human decency?

The Vatican has been through this before. Many times. They have what they consider the fire drill down pat. The Pope has recalled the Papal Nunzio, Giuseppe Leanza for discussions. (This is not the same Papal Nunzio who warned the bishops in secret, on  behalf of the Pope, not to enforce the Framework.) The Vatican PR had its pat response. According to the BBC:

Vice-director of the Vatican press office Father Ciro Benedettini said the nuncio’s recall “should be interpreted as an expression of the desire of the Holy See for serious and effective collaboration with the (Irish) government.”

And:

… it “denotes the seriousness of the situation and the Holy See’s desire to face it objectively and determinately.”

You see, like any organization caught with its pants down (in this case literally), the church pretends it wants to cooperate. But the Cloyne Report showed that the Church intended no such thing. In fact it was the Pope himself who in secret showed he was dead-set against it. And the Church still can’t bring itself to offer even a pretend apology. To prove the point that the pope was not going to be swept in in the fury of irrational people (Irish, for god’s sake!) who wanted to protect their children from being criminally violated by those that the Church has expressly warranted have an inside track to the great I AM, Father Benedettini added: “Nor does it [the Pope's action in recalling the Papal Nunzio] exclude some degree of surprise and disappointment at certain excessive reactions.” Yes, those “excess reactions.” The Church has always been the victim.

You see, like all criminal organizations, the Church can see clearly what the appropriate level of reactions to its crimes ought to be. It is not rational to go overboard in condemning an organization that intentionally and secretly breaks the promises it makes to the public. After all, if the public gets this upset about a little child molestation, what are they going to think when they find out the Church can’t deliver on salvation, eternal life and being direct channels to the great I AM?

It might also be worth noting that Mr. Benedettini’s use of the title “Father,” like all Catholic clerics, indeed like the child molestors themselves, is to demonstrate his concern for his “children.” Of course Mr. Benedettini has no children of his own and therefore has never experienced the outrage that a father feels when his child is violated. So even the titles these men assume reveals how far short of their promises they aspire to and how little substance there is in their assumed positions.

So what do these two instances of Catholic conduct demonstrate? On the one had we have a friend in Christ so meticulous about the possibility of potential sin that he instructs his followers to not contribute to an organization trying to alleviate the suffering of women. (And remember, it is women that his screed was about. The foundation did not do reasearch into prostate cancer.) So someone assisting a person doing good (for women, keep in mind) now must be stopped because the person doing good now might do evil in the future. (And keep in mind I’m not now debating the ridiculous position the Church takes on stem cell research, which if I did would make the supposed “evil” potentially to be done in the future so much less clear.)

Compare that with actual evil being committed by the agents of the Church itself against the most vulnerable of the persons it claims it is serving. Not only does the Church do nothing. It tries to prevent others from doing anything.

Now isn’t this all odd? The whole sex thing with women involves all sorts of rules against having sex unless child-bearing is intended. But when their agents, illegally, force sex on children, the response is to hide the sin. Put it another way: If a US Congressman proposes family planning, he can be excommunicated. If a Catholic-ordained priest spends his life forcing himself on children, the Church allows him to continue “ministering” to his flock.

Why the difference? The answer has nothing to do with scripture. It is simply a matter of the Church’s historic role in Europe. This medieval organization who supported the power structure of the Dark Ages was able to retain its position by providing the ideological cover for the use of power that the economic system demanded. And that system demanded that the role of women was solely to bear and raise children. They had no value otherwise. Their status was slightly above a milk cow. And so the rules of the church have been arranged with that role in mind. If women die in childbirth, so be it. There are plenty. If they suffer breast cancer, so be it. Frankly, most women who get breast cancer are above the childbearing age, so their usefulness is long gone. By contrast, the crimes of the clergy, whether violation of celibacy, drunkenness, child rape, simony, and so forth, don’t prevent the Church from fulfilling its role as ideological handmaiden of power. So what of it?

The Church, unlike some other religious organizations, some of which actually confront power, has never lost sight of its role. It is remarkably flexible when it finds that it has to adapt. Now a Catholic can actually believe that the Earth revolves around the sun. Or not. It doesn’t matter. Catholics are now allowed to read the Bible in their own language. Lutherans can actually live in Catholic countries. But if something as fundamental as a woman’s role in society is concerned, the Church will make itself ridiculous standing against women.

Nothing will change the Church. After 2,000 years the Church has failed to heed the ancient wisdom: “One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.” (In fairness, the direction was issued by someone the Church rarely listens to. See Mark 10:21.) Instead the Church has spent most of its earthly career storing up wealth on Earth. So be it. It’s none of my business. Except that contributing to this organization gives you a tax deduction in the US. And it doesn’t pay property taxes on the extensive real estate it owns. And the churches are all tax exempt when they engage in profit making activities. And they are given leeway when they engage in all sorts of minor crimes and violate commercial regulations. So we are all forced to indirectly subsidize this organization. It would be as though Enron were given tax exempt status.

One thing this organization should learn, however, if it intends to continue its career of standing against ameliorating suffering and for obstructing the justice that should be meted out against its agents: It should learn PR. It is truly surprising that the Vatican can continue to hire a PR hack like Father Benedettini. If we have learned anything about how a criminal organization should handle PR, it is that it does no good for their representatives to say that the outrage is too much. It may make the insiders feel better, but it doesn’t help the organization’s long-term survival. Rupert Murdoch initially took that tack recently. He soon found that it only enraged public opinion. He has since learned that eating humble pie is the best course, however distasteful the meal is. Perhaps the Vatican could hire Joel Klein to give it some lessons in damage control. Except for that historical problem the Church has had with Jewish people.

Maybe the only thing that can help at this point is someone attacking the Pope with a pie. But then again the Pope doesn’t have a wife half his age to run interference. The Pope certainly doesn’t need the help of a woman. That’s not what his organization stands for at all.

Bishop Leonard P. Blair. Dear Friend in Chirst, There are just too many theoretical dangers in attempts to alleviate human suffering. Best not to bother yourself about it.

The Bishop of Toledo has sent a letter to his friends in Christ, as well as the Catholic schools under his control, advising them to stop donating money to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for research into breast cancer. In case you are wondering, the bishop was Leonard Blair and the Toledo in question is in Ohio, much as this story sounds like it’s about a bishop out of Don Quixote.

The Most Reverend (he tells us that himself in the closing to his letter) uses the scholastic thinking that made the medieval chuch such an oppressor of the innocent and scourge of the helpless. Reason one: although he and his fellow Ohio bishops scurried themselves about to see if the Susan G. Komen Foundation used stem cell tissues in their research, they found no evidence of it. Nevertheless (and this makes their effort in trying to find out whether the foundation was actually using stem cells a fool’s errand), nothing prevents the foundation in the future from using fetal stem cells. The possibility that this might happen is enough to endanger the mortal souls of believers who thought they might be contributing to the elimination of a disease. Being able to see thus murkily into the future is enough to justify preventing Catholics (some of whom might someday contract breast cancer) from contributing to a cure. I’m not quite sure how Catholic authoritarian pronouncements are supposed to sqaure with scripture, but it seems that this elevates the gift of (unsure) prophesy over the gift of charity. (Cf. I Corintians 13.)

Reason two: the foundation gives money to Planned Parenthood for the benefit of breast cancer victims. Now as the bishop notes, Planned Parenthood is the largest provided of abortions in America. Therefore any money that might end up in their hands is a gift to the devil, even if the money was not to be used for abortion. Likewise, I guess, giving money to any public hospital in America might endanger you mortal soul.

But the bishop has a heart. The school children can continue collecting money, which should be directed to a Catholic charity, the Mercy Cancer Centers. Now these hospitals don’t do the research supported by the Foundation, but the Bishop wasn’t exactly looking to help cure cancer. That’s not the Church’s business. The Church is there to tell you what not to do. If you get cancer, that’s your own business.

You have to wonder what possible use there could be for such a person as the Most Reverend Leonard Blair in Paradise. Perhaps it is because there will be none that he was given such a small soul.

What if our President proposed gutting the Voting Rights Act? Or the Securities Exchange Act of 1934? Or if he said that labor unions no longer needed the protection of the Wagner Act? Or the antitrust laws were no longer necessary?

Because it appears that he has offered up two key pieces of the New Deal and the Great Society for Republicans to gorge themselves on. The man who brokered a deal to preserve the Bush Tax Cuts just last December, is now the socialist who is going to do what neither Ronald Reagan nor George W. Bush were able to do: gut Social Security and Medicare. And Bush had Republican control of Congress.

The President doesn't even fake to his left anymore.

No one knows what the President is agreeing to with his new golf buddy John Boehner. (By the way, did Martin Luther King or Adlai Stevenson or Hubert Humphrey play golf? That probably accounts for that inconvenient backbone that they had.) Maybe dangling Social Security and Medicare out there is just a ploy, some clever ruse to position himself for re-election.

But even if it is, why should we care to re-elect him? What can we expect from a second term of Barack Obama? He has successfully continued the major achievements of George W. Bush and he is now engineering something that no one since Barry Goldwater thought achievable. His recent neo-liberal nonsense is not much different from Mitt Romney. Hell, his most liberal achievement was Mitt Romney’s. He spends more time with John Boehner than he does with Nancy Pelosi. Maybe they are sharing contributor lists?

But what if, you say, the Republicans nominate someone completely nuts, like Michele Bachmann? Is it better, I ask, that a sane man kick down the achievements of statesmen of good will and activists over several life times? Should we be comforted that a man who memorized some of the phrases of liberals is the one who makes the income gap in this country (already greater than at any time since the beginning of FDR’s Administration) even greater? Should we be proud that an African-American is the one who perpetuates constitutional violations, condones inhuman treatment and arrogates to himself the right to decide which American citizens are “enemy combatants” and therefore able to be killed at his whim?

Mitt Romney might not look as cool putting at Andrews Air Force Base, but I bet we’ll get over it. Michele Bachmann probably doesn’t golf (the Bible says that men play golf and women cover their heads), but I’m sure she will do something that will equally amuse us. Maybe speak in tongues.

The fact is that after the largest economic crisis in any of our lifetimes, the best the left could produce were the neo-liberal bromides of the new “centrist” Obama. It looks like we are going to have to go through an even bigger crisis before the left starts thinking for itself and stops cheerleading someone who, for reasons that none of us can know, has decided to undo programs and turn his back on principles that made up nearly a century of statesmanship that he has no affinity for. And while he is betraying the needy for the benefit of the powerful, the country sees him as a “liberal.”

It’s better we take our lumps now and start over from scratch.