Catholic Hypocrisy: "Religious Freedom?"

"My house will be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves!" 

                                                                                                                  --Matthew 21:13

"Then Jesus asked them, "which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" but they remained silent."
                                                                                                                   --Mark 3:4

Having been raised Roman Catholic, gotten a master's degree in religious studies from a Catholic institution, and having taught high school religion at a Catholic school, I am terribly disappointed and ashamed of Catholic institutions suing the government over the HHS mandate with respect to the provision of birth control.  Instead of standing up for the health needs of all people, it has myopically become obsessed with a Pharisee-like legalism regarding the contraception issue.  The bishops and the religious in charge of so-called Catholic institutions have lost their way.   

Before World War II, the founder of the public relations industry, Edward Bernays, was asked by the head of an American tobacco company to help increase the cigarette smoking market.  It had been considered unfeminine for women to smoke.  Men would not let their wives or girlfriends smoke publicly.  So Bernays spoke with a psychoanalyst to see how to get more women to smoke.  

Bernays devised a plan.  First, he told women that cigarettes were "torches of freedom," and that anyone who told you not to smoke was actually opposed to you having freedom.  In reality, smoking cigarettes has nothing to do with being independent.  Then he told suffragette women to light up their torches of freedom during a parade, where the media would be present.  The women did so, pictures of them smoking went around the world, and anyone who opposed women smoking was subject to the rhetoric that their freedom was being denied.  Cigarette makers were happy, and smoking among women skyrocketed.  20 years later, so did the incident of lung cancer among women.

The Catholic bishops and the religious leaders of Catholic institutions have their own "torches of freedom", it's called "religious liberty."  What it really means is allowing employers to deny certain forms of health coverage to their employees under the guise of religious freedom.  The problem with this is that there are a number of religious employers in the United States.  To allow the Catholic Church an exception would be unfair not only to non-religious Catholic employees who were being denied low cost contraception, but also to other employers.  Any employer can claim that they must be able to ignore the provisions of the health care mandate because of any number of religious convictions.  Does a Jehovah's Witnesses employer have the right to deny blood transplant coverage to its employees?  Under the Catholic Church argument, the answer would be yes.  

The other issue is that of Catholic hypocrisy.  It's interesting how they can be filled with such conviction over such a small issue as contraception, while not seeming to raise a fuss about how the poor and the working class are taking an economic beating at the hands of the Republicans.  These bishops should have been rioting in the streets when Paul Ryan proposed his budget that made dire changes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamp assistance to the poor and elderly.  Who cares about the disabled man down the street who would go hungry without food stamps, or the woman who would die without dialysis treatments?  Instead, the bishops are silent.  Apparently the lives of the already born are worth less than those of disjointed sperm and eggs.

Never mind the issue as to why some people use contraception.  There are some women who have endometreosis, a painful condition that is treated by the prescription of birth control pills to regulate the body.  This has nothing to do with preventing conception.  Or consider the case of married couples where one of the partners is in danger of dying from becoming pregnant.  Or the use of contraception to prevent serious birth defects in cases where the mother or father is taking drugs like Accutane that would cause extreme disability to potential offspring.

The Franciscan University of Steubenville, a place that likes to think of itself as pious and faithful, recently announced it would be dropping health coverage for its employees out of spite because of the health care mandate with respect to contraception.  This means Catholic employees with Type I diabetes will no longer be able to get the life-sustaining insulin they need to survive.  A number of families with sick children and sick parents are going to suffer now in real and concrete ways.  I suppose they think this is what Jesus must have wanted.  If Jesus were around now to see what is being done in his name, he would have been filled with righteous indignation and driven them out of the temple.

 The Catholic Church is acting like a spoiled child and a bully.  It is convenient for unmarried bishops to deny health coverage to others while they comfortably get to keep theirs.  If they wanted to avoid hypocrisy, they could give up their health insurance in solidarity with those whom they are denying coverage by virtue of their self-righteous "principles."  Right now, the cost for them is too cheap.

Catholics who attend church and attend religious institutions need to make their voices heard against the bishops.  They need to let them know that the collection baskets will be empty until they open their eyes.  These bishops and religious leaders live an incredibly privileged existence.  Just like major banks, they get bailed out when they mismanage things.  The average churchgoer pays the cost.  Remember the pedophile priest scandal?  The bishops concealed, hid, and covered up thousands of cases of abuse.  After the truth came out and the lawsuits were filed, many got to keep their jobs while parishes were closed.  Money acquired from churchgoers was used to help pay the lawsuit damages.  The bishops were bailed out.  All of the offending cover up artists should have been fired after the truth came out.  That never happened.  The moral authority of the U.S. bishops and religious leaders, such as those at Notre Dame and The Franciscan University of Steubenville is exhausted.

The current Catholic position by the bishops and religious leaders shows just how morally bankrupt they have become.  It is time for a renewal by the body of Christ--the actual members of the Church, to demand that the Church start acting Christian again.  Every Catholic who remains silent on this issue remains morally culpable for the eventual erosion of health care coverage for all. 

The Cost of Ignorance

I just spent some time checking the cost of tuition and room and board at my undergraduate alma mater, Ashland University.  It now costs $38, 360--per year.  This would mean over $150,000 in student loan debt for a four year degree.  And this isn't unusual.  Private liberal arts colleges have become totally unaffordable for all but the most affluent of families.

My parents didn't go to college.  They were excited for me to go.  Attending college was the most intellectually enriching experience of my life.  It changed the direction of my life for the better.  I was introduced to the classics of literature, art, philosophy, and religion.  I was exposed to ideas, history, and beliefs that I could never have learned on my own.  It was a monumental period of personal growth for me.  I can't imagine my life without that experience.  Because my parents didn't have that exposure, they couldn't have given that experience.  Despite the quality of my high school education, I wasn't mature enough and ready to grow at this level.  College wasn't just about learning vocational skills to earn money.  It was about sampling the history of Western civilization, about understanding the world and learning to think critically.  It was about learning what was needed to be an informed citizen and a non brainwashed consumer.  The experience was valuable in itself, apart from any monetary considerations or potential employment.

It saddens me to see that my future children, and my current niece and nephew, will never know that experience.  The cost of college has become prohibitively expensive.

This is all the same for the corporations.  After all, the more student loans people have, the more docile they will be when they start to work.  They become indentured servants.  The other issue is that critical thinking skills are simply not in the long term interest of the corporations.  This might lead people to avoid buying unnecessary junk.  Millions of dollars are spent trying to convince us to buy junk.  Not to mention that critical thinkers ask pesky questions, such as "why don't we have universal health care" or "why isn't everyone paying their fair share", or, even worse, "why are we going to war for oil industry profits?"  Plus, well educated people expect to use their degrees to earn money.  But if it is cheaper to hire well educated Indian workers, such as engineers and programmers at a fraction of the cost of American workers, then why educate Americans in the first place?  All this leads to is increased anger and hostility.  No sense in that.  Better off keeping everyone in America as ignorant and as docile as possible.

It's amazing to me how some people say that we can't afford to give people access to health care and education.  We are the richest nation in the world.  Our economy dwarfs that of countries like Sweden, Cuba, and even Japan.  Yet somehow these countries find the money to provide universal health care for everyone, and to educate their populace.  The literacy rate in Cuba, which has been suffering from U.S. economic terrorism for the last 50 years, is above 98%.  Their health outcomes are better, too.

The truth is that we can find the money to pay LeBron James, Jamie Dimon, and other jokers, but the reason we don't have the money is because we don't value education in this country.  Politicians can give lip service to education all they want, but just look at the hostile attack on teachers and No Child Left Behind (aka No Brain Cell Left Behind), which are both systematic attacks on teachers and education.

The real truth is that this country is very anti-intellectual, and it always has been.  How else could we have elected someone like George W. Bush, a man who mangled the English language with glee and who we loved because he was someone "we would like to have a beer with."  He wasn't all pompous and uppity like that nerd, Al Gore, or that Frenchy sounding John Kerry.  No way.  He was a "real man."  Look where that got us, two wars and an economic meltdown.

The saying goes, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."  And the taste is bitter but not at all sweet.  I mourn for the future generations, those like mine, who grew up in blue collar families who won't be able to send their children to college.  Perhaps we better start building more prisons.  After all, there is going to be a huge superfluous population of people who can't contribute anything to either the workforce or as consumers.  We need to keep them out of sight, out of mind so they don't make trouble.  Time to increase our petty drug laws and increase penalties for the use of marijuana.  Private prisons are profitable, too!

The whole situation is a damn shame, and we're too worried about the inconsequential differences between Obama and Romney to see how the entire system is rotten through and through, corrupted by money.  Perhaps we are better off worrying about what the next iPhone is going to do or whether this corporate team or that is going to win the Super Bowl, or whether our new video game has a good ending to it or not.

How to Know Your Country is Messed Up

You know your country is pretty messed up when the law says that those who don't actually exist--corporations--have essentially more rights than actual people, while the unborn, who actually are people, have no rights at all.

The War on Women?

Some Democrats have been claiming that there has been a "War on Women" waged by the GOP, presumably because of Republican attempts to block the provision of free contraceptives by health insurers.

This makes for a great marketing slogan.  I am sure it will help a great deal in the upcoming elections.  Taking a slogan that makes for a great sound bite is just the sort of mindless, emotional propaganda that works well in the modern farce called our electoral system.

But the truth goes much deeper.  The truth is that Republicans aren't singling out just women.  They don't only hate Sandra Fluke.  What they also dislike are the "special interests."  This would include everyone except white males making six figures and above, along with large corporations.  These represent the "national" interest.  So, for example, in Wisconsin, when public sector workers were trying to protect their collective bargaining rights against mortal attack, even though this represented thousands of workers, this was merely the work of loud, union-backed "special interests."

All you have to do this is think for about 5 seconds to realize that Newt Gingrich can't care about contraception.  After all, he is on his third wife after cheating on the first two.  If adultery isn't high on his list of moral offenses, I highly doubt contraceptives even show up on the radar screen.  And somehow I find it hard to believe that many members of Congress are relying on the rhythm method to avoid having large families.  Instead, the Republicans have grabbed onto the contraception issue to try and water down the health care mandate.  The real issue for them has nothing to do with morality.  It is about ensuring that employers don't have to provide health care to their employees with comprehensive coverage.  That is the real issue.  If you think Mitch McConnell is staying up at night worrying about whether people use contraception or not, then perhaps you should use your mandated coverage to get a much needed head check.  Make sure you do this before the Republicans try and eliminate mental health coverage by insurers as also being against an employer's "religious sensibilities."

The GOP also supports a "War on Privacy," apparently, considering it has consistently shot down attempts by Democrats to prevent employers from demanding employees fork over their Facebook and other social media passwords.  Apparently there should be no separation or privacy for employees.  The corporate masters must have complete control over every aspect of our lives.  Congratulations, guys, you've managed to be wrong on just about every single issue.

What about the GOP's "War on the Poor?"  If Paul Ryan had his way, there would no longer be Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.  To hell with the old, the disabled, and the poor.  They need to learn "personal responsibility" and be subject to "market discipline."  Why should we be concerned about them?  No sense in burdening the rich, aka "the job creators."  That might interfere with massive corporate profits.  

While the "War on Women" is great marketing, it is much too narrow.  The truth is that the aims of the GOP  are much more sinister, and much more selfish than they appear to be on the surface.  

What's Not On The News

Judging by the recent news headlines, you'd think nothing of real consequence is going on.  After all, we've heard no end about the Colombia Secret Service prostitution scandal and the uproar over Hilary Rosen saying that Ann Romney "has never worked a day in her life."  While controversial, these topics are actually superficial given the real news that has been going on.  Yet the news media doesn't focus on these things at all, not even NPR or PBS.

Even the news that does matter is cloaked in propaganda.  For example, Obama visited a leadership summit with other American, mainly South American, leaders.  He negotiated a "free trade" deal with Colombia that was described as helping to "create American jobs."  It may create jobs, but certainly not for U.S. citizens.  In fact, this type of "free trade" really exists to help American corporations offshore more of their labor to save on costs at the expense of American workers.  Yet the media doesn't even bother to mention or analyze this.  It's just taken for granted that "free trade" is a good thing.  In other circumstances, free trade means that American agribusiness can flood Third World countries with American grain which is subsidized by the government.  This then leads to the local population losing its ability to maintain local farming and economic collapse.  But this is profitable to American business, so if a few people starve, that's not a problem.

Another essentially buried story is that the South American leaders were strongly opposed to the United States demanding that they continue the "War on Drugs" which is causing untold suffering to their populations.    This war has become a means of the U.S. having control over these nations in a futile effort to stamp out drug production.  Mexico is currently being torn apart by drug lords and cartels going to war with one another.  It is like Prohibition only much, much worse.

The other nations on this continent (apart from Canada) are opposed to the continued U.S. embargo on Cuba as well.  While done supposedly to fight communism, this effort reeks of hypocrisy.  We do business with Red China every day.  We do business with Vietnam as well.  So apparently fighting communism has nothing to do with it.  It has already been estimated that thousands of children have died from malnutrition and lack of medication caused by the embargo.

What matters in the news is often all that is not promoted.  The media is too busy worrying about the horse race between Romney and Obama, focusing on superficial qualities while refusing to open up the real issues behind the race.

Maybe we are all just better of mindlessly texting on our iPhones and updating our Facebook pages and letting the world go to hell.  It's certainly easier that way.

E-Lawyering: Lawyering at the Speed of Light

The exponential growth of information technology has not been lost to the legal field.  Despite being rooted in tradition, and known for moving slower than other areas, the legal field is indeed changing.  The tools used by lawyers have gone high tech.  For lawyers who embrace change, new technology can greatly increase their productivity and even untether them from their offices.

Since going nearly paperless almost a year ago, my productivity and efficiency has increased dramatically.  No more looking for buried files, no more digging for just that one piece of paper which happens to be critical--it's available and easily searchable.  If a client needs a copy of that particular document, I can email them and avoid the time spent meeting in person or waiting for the mail to be delivered.

In civil suits, litigation right before trial involves the exchanging of information quickly as settlement negotiations heat up.  The faster that documents and information can be shared, the higher the chances are that one can get a positive resolution for one's client, and the more one can save his or her client money in the process.  Before, I would have to wait for the mail to come, review them, get documents signed, and then drop them back in the mail.  Now, more and more lawyers prepare documents, scan them in pdf format and email them for immediate review.  This is especially important for last minute negotiations.

The same goes for accessing legal information.  Being able to search the entirety of case law using your computer radically enhances not only your mobility but your ability to avoid the expense of maintaining an expensive paper law library or having to make late night trips to the law library.  It means you can search the law at Starbucks on your laptop, or from your home office without dragging books around.

Many courts are beginning to make their dockets available online.  Combine this with the availability of electronic forms which are downloadable, and the law becomes much more accessible than it was before.  You still need to have the legal training to properly understand what the law and the forms actually mean, but before this availability everything was more or less cloaked in a cloud of invisibility.  After all, how many people actually go to the courthouse and ask for a file to be pulled from the public archive?  Not many.

Many municipal courts are beginning to accept fax filings.  The federal court system now uses electronic means of filing instead of paper.  The entire system is starting to move to the electronic format.

The downside of all of this is that some larger corporations are beginning to outsource.  Why pay an American lawyer money for document review when you can hire an Indian lawyer trained in U.S. law for a fraction of the price?  While this may work for large scale document review or administrative law, it won't work for state law cases which require personal court appearances by the lawyer.  Also, going to see a lawyer is something like going to see your family doctor.  Being able to know your lawyer and have a long term relationship with him or her based on your own situation helps provide a better outcome.  This is going to be more difficult if your lawyer lives in India.

Given that the law is an information based field, the growth of communications technology and the speed of information exchange has greatly impacted it.  It means lawyers have to keep adapting themselves to the use of new technology to stay at the peak of their game.  Fear of technology can really set lawyers back and keep them from realizing the full potential of their practices.  If anything, we need more continuing education classes for lawyers to become proficient in the use of new information technologies.

Austerity for You, Bonuses for Me (Plucking the Money Tree)

The ruling elites like to use the analogy of the home budget to put the financial crisis into perspective.  Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, said that his state couldn't pull any more money off the "money tree." So he rejected money for a commuter rail that would have put thousands of people to work and improved the infrastructure and economy of his state. He vetoed a number of federal stimulus infrastructure improvements because it was time for everyone to "tighten their belts" and start to learn "personal responsibility."

This metaphor is an interesting one, but inaccurate.  Trying to take something as highly complex and diverse as a nation-state economy and simplify it down to the limited mindset of a six year old fantasy has no correlation to reality.  But, since we seem to like overly simplified answers to difficult questions, let's see what we can do...

Ronnie Reagan liked to talk about the Cadillac driving, lazy, (impliedly black) moocher-based welfare queens who lived off everyone else while self-righteous, hard working whites supported them.  Never mind how this was actually a myth never supported by any kind of real evidence, other than a few minor cases of fraud that occurred here and there.

But finally, we found out there are real, actual, Cadillac driving, welfare queens--Mitt Romney's wife is one of them.  It turns out the welfare queens were hiding amongst us all along, under a Caucasian veil.  Mrs. Romney and her husband receive a direct welfare subsidy from the government--they get free government services like military protection, roads, and other services provided at a discount rate of tax less than what the middle class pays.  Mrs. Romney uses her extra money (to the tune of millions per year), to drive "a couple of Cadillacs."  It turns out the welfare queens are doing much better off than we anticipated.  Meanwhile, the hard working whites and blacks and everyone else must incur more public debt to pay for these extra Cadillacs.  Instead of making Mrs. Romney go without, we must impose austerity on everyone else because she cannot be made to suffer.  This means the equivalent of tax increases for federal workers (aka pay freezes), teacher layoffs, defunding of schools, cuts to Social Security, and the like.  No personal responsibility or austerity for her, thank you very much.  The same year that teachers and firemen were being laid off, Lloyd Blankenfein, the head of Goldman Sachs, the investment banking firm which masterminded the financial meltdown, received a bonus in excess of 12 million dollars.  Goldman Sachs was also paid by the Greek government to hide their mounting debt until the situation got out of control.  Now the people of Greece are forced to pay the costs while the rich get bonuses for masterminding the meltdown.

Getting back to Mr. Christie's example, the current situation is like a family.  Mom and Dad like buying things for themselves, things they don't need, so they start borrowing from their children's college funds (provided by grandma and grandpa) to pay for it.   This means the kids won't have an education in the future, but since we are one big family, that's "their" problem.  They don't want to work any more than they have to, and when they do work, they don't want to pay for the things they actually purchase.  So after the college funds are totally exhausted, they start borrowing on their credit cards and spending their children's inheritance.  After reading Ayn Rand books and learning about the value of selfishness, they get pissed when the children ask for food or expect an education or reasonable health care.  "You are trying to steal from me" they say, when questioned.  "I don't owe you anything, find your own happiness" is their response.  This shouldn't be surprising, given the onslaught of commercials and marketing telling us for a generation that what we buy makes us individuals and unique.  The TV has told us how special we are.  After all, we deserve to "have it our way."  Because they are borrowing on their home and speculating on it as well, their children stand to become homeless and the family is indebted.  This goes on until the children get older.  By now, they have huge college tuition debts and must start working.  But Mom and Dad still refuse to pay their fair share, because, after all, "money doesn't grow on trees."  The children still haven't learned "personal responsibility."  By now, Mom and Dad are up to their eyeballs in personal debt and their home is about to be foreclosed upon.  Using guilt manipulation, they remind their children that they are the "life creators" (aka job creators), and that their children owe everything to them.  Their children need to start giving them a portion of their paychecks.  But instead of paying down the family debt, they go out and buy a new iPad instead.  In this case, Mom and Dad represent the ruling elites of America and the children are everyone else.

Language has real consequences.  In reality, the government ultimately must take from some and give to others if we expect to have roads, bridges, and other public goods.  These things must be paid for, one way or another.  But the language used by politicians to describe these taxes is indicative of how they feel about them.  So, for example, "tax relief" implies that one is already paying too much tax and is being relieved by not paying more.  But in the U.S., there can be no such thing as "tax relief" for the rich because they have already been underpaying on taxes while politicians have been overspending.  The top 1/10 of 1% like Mitt Romney and Warren Buffett pay much less taxes as a percentage of their income than do the secretaries who work for them.  That's why there is a large national debt.  "Entitlements for the rich" would be a better description, but "entitlement" is only a word we use to describe it when poor and working people receive public benefits.  The poor and working class are, it is implied, spoiled brats who expect to get something for nothing after working for 50 years and paying into the system.  The poor, disabled widow who would starve except for Social Security payments has a sense of entitlement.  She needs to learn "personal responsibility" and "market discipline."

 Meanwhile, Mrs. Romney drives by, honks her horn, laughs, and peals out.