Catholic Bishops, Contraception and the Right: An Unholy Alliance

"The bishops have totally failed to convince their own faithful that birth control is a moral evil and now appear to be trying to get the federal government to do the job for them. "

--Gail Collins

Gail Collins, that peerless columnist for the New York Times has a tough job. She has to spend her days reading the rantings of the Republican right.

It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Before we get to the really spectacular part, let me point out a little googling reveals nearly 30 states have laws which require institutions run by the Catholic church, hospitals mostly, to provide insurance coverage for contraception when they provide other sorts of health care insurance for their workers, who are, after all, by no stretch all Catholics.

So President Obama has fashioned a compromise to meet the objections of those who say if the Catholics don't want to support contraception, they shouldn't be made to support it. So Obama says, "Well, you don't have to pay for it, but the insurance companies, who make money from the contract you have with them, they have to pay for it." Nifty compromise.

Actually, I worked at a Catholic hospital for 30 years. A Jesuit hospital, it's true, but Catholic. The Jesuits have always been a very open minded order. There were times I was reminded there was a picture of the Pope in the lobby, but for the most part, they did not smack you in the face with the Catholic part. What they wanted to do was provide healthcare, and they weren't going to make you genuflect to get it. If you thought better of them after they had saved your life, well, maybe down the road, you might come to mass.

But the Catholic church I am seeing now I can hardly recognize.

And here's how the Right has reacted:

Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) says the President "will use force, coercion and ruinous fines that put faith-based charities, hospitals and schools at risk of closure, harming millions of kids, as well as the poor, sick and disabled that they serve, in order to force obedience to Obama's will."

Oh, that bad Obama, forcing the Catholic Church to bend to his will.
Or, Rick Santorum, decries the White House folks for "trying to impose their values on somebody else." Certainly, something Rick Santorum would never do.
hen there is Paul Rondeau, of the American Life League--don't you love the name?--speaking of President Obama: "This man is totally addicted to abortion and totally addicted to the idea that not only is he the smartest man in the room, he is the smartest in the nation and taxpayers will fund his worldview whether they like it or not."

Oh, yes, the poor right to lifers victimized again by that dictatorial Kenyan socialist who wants to use the world wide conspiracy with its black helicopters to force abortions on the nation's womanhood.

Those Democrats think they are so smart.

But wait, I don't understand. How did we get from contraception to abortion? I would have thought effective contraception would prevent abortion. Isn't abortion what you get when you don't have contraception?

I am obviously not the smartest person in the room.

That Interfering Government

Watching the first episode of Mad Men re runs last night, I had to laugh out loud at the scene where tobacco company executives meeting with the creative staff of the advertising agency. The tobacco company CEO is fuming (both figuratively and literally--everyone smokes all the time on Mad Men--it's 1959). The government has forbidden the makers of cigarettes from advertising the health benefits of cigarettes. A plethora of studies have linked smoking to lung cancer and heart disease. But the CEO of the cigarette company does not want to believe those studies. He wants to believe the studies coming out of his own research institute. "We set up that whole research institute, funded it, it cost us a lot of money," said the CEO, "To prove cigarettes are good for you, or at least not bad."

As Upton Sinclair once observed: "It is difficult to bring a man to understanding, when his salary depends on not understanding."

Same is probably true in the global warming debate today.

Which is to say, the company funded research to find the results which would be good for business.

Those government "intruders," are intolerable, he says. It's going toward communism, right here in the USA, all these government regulations to prevent profitable companies from making profits.

It was all vaguely reassuring, to think big business rich people have been complaining about government regulators cutting into their profits for decades. The song Mitt Romney and Ron Paul and Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are singing has been sung for decades.

But that doesn't make it any truer.

Win/Lose or Win/Win

The basic dispute between the two parties during this election cycle is whether or not the "success" of the upper one percent comes at the cost of the success of the other 99%.

Of course, the question is more nuanced than this. We are really talking about the success of the upper 10 or 20 percent, which is where the huge slice of the pie is eaten.

Watching Downton Abbey, it is very clear that when an aristocracy controls so very much of the economy, the castle, the town, all the cottages, and even the churches, there is very little left for the common folk, who are then grateful to grovel for menial jobs, brushing their masters' shoes, making their ladies' beds and driving their masters about in their masters' cars.

And we can see even the most benign overlords, like the Earl of Downton, is still part of what keeps the vast majority in servitude.

We have the Republicans and those who support them, from Joe Sixpack to the local garage owner, who say the rich have made their money fair and square and their being rich has not made my life harder, except it reminds me, watching them drive by in their fancy cars, watching them at play or driving by their mansions, how far I am from having made it. But I realize, that is, as Romney says, the politics of envy.

And if the pie were infinitely expandable, or expanding, then the rich could have all the pie they want, as long as there is enough left for the rest of us.

But, it is beginning to look as if the way the rich get that way almost always means their gain is our loss. They don't pay taxes, and they accumulate so much wealth the national economy begins to look like a board game of monopoly, where the winner has so many hotels and so much property, the rest of the players find themselves struggling to just get round the board, watching their own supply of money depleted, paying for every space they land on, then money making the rich richer and preventing the poor from buying a single hotel to set down on Park Place.

But financial finagling is a slippery and arcane subject. Joe Sixpack cannot appreciate how it works. I know I can't quite get a handle on it.

I do know that when Mitt Romney does not have to draw a salary, when he can live on a source of income I didn't even know there was a word for--special dividends or what not, I've got a problem.

And you know when the Republicans cling to the line that there is no way they are willing to raise the taxes on the rich, if only back to the Clinton era level, despite the obvious black eye that gives them, despite being unable to justify it, they must be bought and paid for. It means all our suspicions about the phoniness of their howl about the danger of the deficit is just so much deception, because if the deficit really were so dangerous, the Republicans would be willing to do anything, even taxing their patrons, to get the country out of it.

A Simple Question

In the 1980 Presidential debate, Ronald Reagan looked into the camera and summed up his argument for why he ought to be President. Actually, it was an argument not for why he ought to be President, but for why Jimmy Carter should not be allowed to continue being President.

Reagan said, "When you go into that voting booth, ask yourself one simple question: Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?"

Thus began the validation of simple minded political discourse. It was perfectly appropriate, fair, incisive and legitimate to boil things down to a simple one sentence question.

The American people loved it. As H.L. Mencken observed: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

So Barack Obama had better have an answer ready for Mitt Romney, when he stares into the camera and asks the same question.

I am hoping Barack Obama will pre-empt this attack with a question of his own: "You had better ask yourself, are you better off now than you were in the year 2000? That is the year when the Republicans effectively seized power of the government and started running the economy. Even my own election has afforded only a two year respite from the onslaught of Republican trickle down, voodoo economics. What you've got is basically Republican winner take all politics, with the richest one percent protected at all costs, and the 99% spurned."

"Or you could ask yourself a more interesting question: What would have happened if the Republicans had got their way and we had not bailed out General Motors, or the banks, much as we hated doing it? What sort of Depression would we be in now? And what would you have to look forward to, if the Republicans had the votes to vote through Coupon Care instead of Medicare, as they tried to do, but were prevented by the slim majority of Democrats in the Senate?

"If you like simple questions, here's one for you? Are you now among the one percent? I'm not asking whether you think you will be some day or whether you think the one percenters are the job creators or are a benign aristocracy looking out for the other 99%. I'm asking you, are you now among the one percent? Just remember, if you're not there now, the Republicans have cooked the tax books so you never will be."

Or Words to that effect.

Wouldn't you love to see President Obama look into the camera and throw those punches?

Oh, if pigs could fly.

The Politics of Anger

Whenever I hear the pundits speak with much gravitas about how polarized our politics have become, shaking their heads at the depths to which our democracy has sunk, I think about the times when Presidents faced entrenched opposition just as deep and paralyzing and intransigent as what we face now, and deeper.

The paralells to the 1930's and the opposition Franklin Roosevelt faced are obvious and many have commented on them. FDR was accused of instigating class warfare when he spoke of the greed which had led to the Depression. He was vilified by his opposition, who insisted the best action for government was to continue to cut taxes for the wealthy so the wealthy would hire workers and restore the economy.

But for sheer petulence and obstinancy, you have to go back to the 1850's.

John C. Calhoun, in some ways the Newt Gingrich of his time, said, "Nothing can be more unfounded and false than the prevalent opinion that all me are born free an equal for it rests upon the assumption of a fact which is contrary to universal observation." Some were born to be slaves, and that's the way God meant things to be.

There was no give in this man, nor in Jefferson Davis, nor John Wilkes Booth nor Preston Brooks, who beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a heavy gutta-percha cane on the floor of the Senate chamber, attempting to murder the senator for a speech against slavery. Senators Douglas and Robert Toombs of Georgia watched without intervening as Preston reigned blows upon Sumner's head until the cane was splintered.

Sumner's injuries disabled him for three years and blinded one eye.

"Bully" Brooks became a hero in the South. From across the South, his fans sent him dozens of canes and even a gold handled cowhide whip which they urged him to use on other abolitionists.

If any of this echos in your mind with the Congressman from the South who shouted out, "You Lie!" during President Obama's State of the Union speech in 2011, or with Gabby Gifford's head injuries, I'm sure you are not alone.

We have faced intransigence before. In the 1850's, it led to Civil War.

It came as a President who fervently wished to compromise and to douse the flames of discord took office and tried to appease and negotiate.

It has taken three years for President Obama to get past his own denial and to see his opposition, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Jim DeMint, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney for what they are.

Once the Civil War began, Lincoln turned out to be a masterful commander in chief.

He realized his primary job was to find the right generals. This took him several years, but he finally identified Grant, Sherman and Sheridan.

Let us hope President Obama has found his generals for this upcoming fight, and I'm not talking about Afghanistan.

Pundits

Ryan Lizza, writing in the New Yorker (1/30/12) about President Obama and the Washington cauldron into which he has been thrust provides enough detail to illuminate why any American President is, as Lincoln once said, more controlled by events than controlling them.


Like Lincoln, this man from Springfield, Illinois came to his office with a very clear intention. Lincoln's bedrock conviction was it was his primary job to preserve the union. He knew there were powerful forces he would not be able to control, mostly spewing forth from the volcanic emotions underlying the fight between slave states and abolitionists. But he was determined to save the union despite all that. He said to the slave states the decision to tear apart the union was their's to make. Lincoln did not want to separate; he admonished the slavers not to destroy the marriage, which he believed, despite all their differences could still be saved. Even after those frothing slavery advocates in Charleston pounded Fort Sumter into submission and the union forces had to withdraw, even after two years of bloody, bitter battles, Lincoln said, "If I could save the union by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; if I could save the Union by freeing none of the slaves, I would do it; if I could save the union by freeing some of the slaves and leaving others in bondage, I would do that."


In the end, he chose the last option. His famous Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves only in territory in rebellion against the federal government. Slaves in the border states, like Maryland, Kentucky and Tennessee were not freed. Even at the moment of what is often remembered as Lincoln's boldest move, he compromised.


Lincoln had to have war forced on him, and ultimately it was and he had to react.


Obama came to Washington with the same determination to compromise, to get past the passions and divisions of the two sides and to unite through reason. His favorite phrase is E Pluribus Unum, which appears on our paper currency, one out of many.


But, like Lincoln, Obama had to be pounded over the head with the intransigence of his opposition. Jim DeMint, the Republican, called his effort to deal with the economic crisis, "The worst piece of economic legislation Congress has considered in a hundred years." Not since the creation of the income tax, "has the United States seriously entertained a policy so comprehensively hostile to economic freedom or so arrogantly indifferent to economic reality."
Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, when asked whether he would support a bill which might mitigate the financial crisis asked why he should be asked to support a bill which might help re elect Obama. As if it would be non sensical for him to support something which might help the economy, help his own nation, if that solution also helped Obama.


Six conservatives met with Obama for dinner at George Will's house, a week before his Inauguration. They must have felt quite important. After all, here was the President of the United States coming calling to have dinner with them. Their opinions must matter in the highest reaches of government. One can only imagine the patter and the repartee and the warm feelings of self importance among these "opinion makers."


Before his first term was half old, Will described Obama as a "floundering naif," who advocates Lenin-Socialism. Charles Krauthammer, also at the dinner, described Obama as "sanctimonious, demogogic, self-righteous and arrogant"--now there is a clear case of "takes-one-to-know-one"--another guest (Kudlow someone) accused him of being a "crony capitalist," and someone else (named Michael Barone) came up with the cute Republican marketing phrase, "Gangster Government," and another said Obama was the "whiniest president ever."
But the most withering line, predictably, came from one of the smartest, most psychopathic conservatives, Peggy Noonan: "He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist,"--see how cleverly she sets this up--I am more reasonable and less hyperbolic than my conservative brethren. I am clear eyed and can see the essential core of the man. She proclaimed: "He is a loser."


Remember that scene from My Fair Lady, where the sophisticated linguist analyzes the central guest at the party, Liza Doolittle, who is a flower girl dressed up as a lady and this analyst divines she is no lady at all, but a fraud. Of course, she is masquerading, but the analyst gets what she is entirely wrong. He thinks she is not less than what she pretends to be, but more--she is a princess! Such is the judgment of the sophisticates of the court.




But what this really reminds me of is the time Lincoln took his secretary of war down to the rooming house where the diminutive general in command of the Union Army, George McCellan, was staying. The general remained in his upstairs room and did not deign to come down to speak with the President, or his secretary of War. He left them there with their hats in their hands until they finally realized he was not coming down. So he showed them.


That's how important George McCellan thought he was. People cheered George McCellan when he rode by on his great stallion. They stood up and cheered when he entered a room. He was a very important man.


Few American school children or their parents even know his name today.


The same, I dearly hope, will be true of these self important, oh so clever detractors. Peggy Noonan has never had a shot fired at her in anger and has never bet her job on a stealth operation by Navy SEALS carried out at night half a world away. She, like George Will, is the essence of a sissy--people who are oh so good with words, but cannot hit a fast ball, not to mention a curve. Nobody much, outside Washington, or devotees of Sunday talk shows knows who George Will or Peggy Noonan are--a blessing there. And certainly, 10 years from now, nobody even insider Washington will know who these dessicated authorities are.


I knew people like this in high school. There were boys who knew my record as a varsity wrestler and knew my statistics, how many take downs, how many pins, things I never bothered to record, never cared about. They followed me around with advice. They were important, they thought, because they analyzed my performance. They knew things I did not know.


But I knew a different sort of thing: What it felt like to step out on the mat, heart pounding, facing the hundred forty pounds of testosterone driven animosity across the mat.


And, remember one more thing about Peggy's loser: The night before the Osama Bin Laden take down, he delivered a cool-as-you-like comedy routine for all the professional talkers at the National Press Club.


Who you calling a loser, chump?

HyenaCapitalism

James Surowieki, writing in the January 30 New Yorker, has finally shown me how the very rich manage to scarf up the lion's share of the pie and to leave nothing but slivers behind.

I knew they had to be gaming the system, just by looking at the results, but I did not know enough about the details of the game to really appreciate how they accomplish their win. Now, in one page, Surowiecki illuminates the scam.

A typical scheme is to buy a company which is doing pretty well, but starting to lag, as Wasserstein & Company did to Harry and David, the fruit retailers. The private equity guys then borrow a ton of money which becomes Harry and David's debt. Before that borrowed money can help improve the company, the private equity guys (Wasserstein&Co) pay themselves "special dividends" in this case a hundred million dollars. (The special dividends by dint of a very sweet tax provision are taxed at a very low rate.) Then the PE guys charge Harry and David "managment fees," (several million.) Six years later, after the PE guys had sucked Harry and David dry, it defaulted on its debt and dumped its pension obligations. Its workers were out of a job and out of the pensions they had labored years to earn.

Harry and David was sucked dry, a husk, but the PE guys had made millions and moved on.

These are the sorts of shenanigans Mitt Romney played at Bain Capital, but with other companies.

It's all legal, because Republican "job creators," entrepreneurs, don't you know, have enough senators and Congressmen in their pockets--in our case the Frank Guintas and Kelly Ayottes of the world to make this predation legal.

Rick Perry called it "vulture capitalism," but that strikes me as entirely too civil. Vultures, as far as I can tell only pick clean the carcases of animals killed by others. Hyenas, however, actually swarm around living creatures, and bring them down, and then tear them apart.

That's a more apt description of how the private equity nasties at firms like Bain Capital play the game.

But as Mitt Romney has said, he has no apologies to make for his "success."

After all, it's all perfectly legal.