Thursday, November 17, 2011
The Coach and the Pope
There is only one religion although there are a hundred versions of it.
George Bernard Shaw, Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant
Penn State and the Vatican have some things in common (although there’s been no talk of shutting down the Vatican whereas a few curmudgeons suggested Penn State shut down its football program for a year; nor is there any talk at the Vatican of firing its head coach, Benedict XVI, whereas Penn State fired both its president, Graham Spanier, and its head coach, Joe Paterno.) The Vatican and Penn State each has formal reports describing the errors of the institution’s ways. Penn State has a grand jury report detailing sexual abuse by Jerry Sandusky and the Vatican has four formal reports detailing multiple accounts of sexual abuse by assorted priests in Ireland (to mention only one of many countries with such reports.) The last two pertaining to Ireland were the Murphy Report in 2009 and the Cloyne report in 2011.
The Murphy Report examined more than 300 abuse claims in the Archdiocese of Dublin between 1975 and 2004. (The Murphy for whom the report is named is not Father Lawrence Murphy who abused more than 200 deaf children in Wisconsin between 1950 and 1974. Father Murphy did not write a report detailing his activities and those who did, did so in letters describing his activities to top Vatican officials including Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now known as Pope Benedict. The letters were ignored.) The Murphy report said that rather than being concerned about the children, the Church was concerned about “the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of its assets.” In response to the Murphy report, Pope Benedict sent out a pastoral letter on March 19, 2010. In that letter he said he shared “in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them. . . .”
The Murphy report was followed by the Cloyne Report that was released in July 2011. That report said that from 1996 to 2009 the clergy in Ireland’s Cloyne Diocese ignored complaints about 19 priests. In response to the Cloyne report the Vatican said enough contrition is enough contrition and recalled its ambassador, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, the Papal Nuncio, to the Vatican, for consultation. Vatican Spokesman, Fr Ciro Benedettini said: “The recalling of the Nuncio, a measure rarely used by the Holy See, denotes the seriousness of the situation, and the desire of the Holy See to deal with it (with) objectivity and with determination, as well as a certain note of surprise and regret regarding some excessive reactions.” In referring to “excessive reactions” the spokesman may have been referring to the speech to Parliament given by Ireland’s prime minister four days earlier in which he referred to the Church’s dysfunction, disconnection and elitism” in failing to deal with child sex abuse. He said: “The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation.’” On November 3, 2011, Ireland closed its Vatican embassy. Dublin’s foreign ministry said the closure occurred because the embassy “yields no economic return.” Presumably it has nothing to do with the Vatican recall of the Ambassador 4 months earlier.
Happy Valley is a lot like the Vatican except that football is its religion. Instead of the Murphy Report and the Coyne Report, folks in Happy Valley have the Grand Jury report. Its substance is not that different from the Irish reports, however. According to the Grand Jury report those in charge of the institution have been willing to overlook sexual abuse of children by one of its high priests, Jerry Sandusky, the high priest whose high jinks have disgraced the institution.
Mr. Sandusky is not only alleged to have abused children over an extended period. He set up a non-profit foundation called Second Mile the goal of which was to provide programs for troubled youth. The kinds of conduct in which Mr. Sandusky allegedly engaged in with troubled youth is not the kind of conduct contributors to the foundation thought they were supporting.
In response to the Grand Jury report, some suggested that as an expression of penance Penn State should forfeit its last home game against Nebraska. That would be like suggesting that the Vatican cancel Sunday services to show that it really cared about sexual abuse of children. It would never happen. After all, Sunday services are a time when the offenders can formally seek forgiveness and so was the last home game against Nebraska. The occasion of the final home game was marked by many as the time to move forward and the beginning of the healing process since the university has now had more than a week to flagellate itself.
Although there are many similarities between the church and Penn State there is one significant difference. The era of sexual abuse of children at Penn State has almost certainly come to an end. That cannot be said for the Church.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Immigrants, Visas and Congress
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Part of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty
They are not only stunningly simple. They solve a vexing problem that has divided the country in an ugly way. They are humane and the only surprising thing is that no one thought of them before. Illegal immigrants would not be fleeing Alabama but would instead be buying houses, starting new businesses and enrolling in universities. They would validate the motto on the base of the Statue of Liberty that greets the poor as they arrive on our welcoming shores and invites them to feel at home.
Of several proposals that have been introduced in Congress that will ameliorate the problems of the illegal immigrant, two promise a visa and another, easier access to a green card. One was proposed by Senators Charles Schumer (D.NY) and Mike Lee (R.Utah). Their proposed legislation is part of a major immigration overhaul and has the catchy name of “Increasing Home Ownership by Priority Visitors.
The Increasing Home Ownership Bill provides that a foreigner (who would be an illegal immigrant but for this piece of legislation) can get a visa by the simple act of spending $500,000 on residential real estate anywhere in the country. The immigrant would not have to buy one $500,000 house. He or she could buy a $250,000 house and a rental property for another $250,000. Since the legislation does not permit the immigrant to work, the visa holder would still have to get a work permit but if the illegal has rental income, he or she would no longer need to work and could instead live off the rental income.
When I first read about this I had hoped the banks could get involved as well. Although many illegal immigrants do not have the income to qualify for a $500,000 loan, if the banks applied the same criteria to help qualify unqualified borrowers for loans they cannot afford that they were applying a few short years ago, the illegal immigrant earning $10 to $20 an hour would have no trouble getting a loan. Sadly, even if banks were willing, the legislation would not permit it. This particular piece of legislation is not intended to help the tired and the poor. It is for wealthy foreigners, many of whom probably already have nice houses in their home countries. It requires cash payment and most illegal workers will not be able to come up with the cash. That’s a shame.
Another piece of “but for this you would be an illegal immigrant” legislation has the catchy title of the StartUp Visa Act of 2011. That bill was introduced in March of this year by John Kerry (D- Ma.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind). It authorizes the issuance of visas not to farm workers who might solve the agricultural industry’s problems of not being able to find workers to harvest crops, but to a qualified immigrant entrepreneur. According to the Congressional Research Service Summary, the Act provides a StartUp visa for a “sponsored alien entrepreneur: (1) with required amounts of financial backing from [certain individuals or entities] and (2) whose commercial activities will generate required levels of employment, revenue or capital investment.” There are other requirements as well but the foregoing gives the reader an idea of what a wonderful thing this law will be. It will make up for the fact that, as the Republicans constantly remind us, Americans are not starting new businesses because of onerous tax laws.
The foregoing are not the only immigrants who would be illegal but for the assistance of Congress. Another group is the highly educated foreigner. This has become increasingly important as states and the federal government cut back on funding for education making it harder for Americans to get educated. Raol Labrador (R-Id) has proposed “The American Innovation and Education Act of 2011.”
According to the Immigration Law Center, that bill would “focus on granting green card access to foreign students who earn advanced technology and science degrees in the United States.” That makes sense since there are many foreign students in this country earning advanced degrees. In Arkansas, for example, Miehael Gealt, the dean of the University of Arkansas’s College of Science and Mathematics, says 70 to 80 percent of the students in his doctoral program are foreign students. If these students can get jobs in this country, our advances in science and industry will not be hindered just because cuts in education funding have reduced the number of Americans getting advanced degrees. Wealthy foreign students who come here to study can take the jobs that would otherwise have gone to American students had they been able to afford the necessary education. Of course, none of the above is going to help the illegal immigrant who is being run out of town or the agricultural industry that relied on the immigrant’s services. I guess Congress can’t help everyone.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Texas Censors Science
Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on the subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain.
— John Tyndall, Professor Virchow and Evolution
Just when you think that science may have a fighting chance in Texas, its governor’s protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, something comes along to suggest, once again, that science may be happier finding a home in a different state.
Its struggles to be recognized in textbooks have been well documented. One of its recent struggles involved evolution, a concept taken by some Texans to be more theory than fact, a position with which it is difficult to argue when examining its proponents. When the 10-year review of science textbooks that was concluded in 2010 was taking place, evolution was a hot topic. The Texas Board of Education said that students must examine all “sides of scientific evidence” when it comes to evolution, including the scientific evidence that the earth is only 6000 years old, give or take a few years. The Discovery Institute that promotes “intelligent design” rather than evolution, said the revised standards were a “huge victory for those who favor teaching the scientific evidence for and against evolution. When the Board of Education agreed to include both sides of the evolution debate in text books the president of the school board said: “Our science standards are light years ahead of any other state when it comes to challenging evolution.” The Board of Education’s successful challenge to evolution, as it were, has now been joined by a less noted, but nonetheless Texas sized challenge, to global warming. Not that Texas is stopping it. It is just keeping it out of a recent scientific study.
The recent and successful assault on global warming (not its cause but its concept) came from an agency with the promising name of The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ.) The uninformed would think with a name like that it would have a lot going for it. The uninformed would be disabused of that notion upon learning that all its members were appointed by presidential hopeful, but climate change (and evolution skeptic), Texas governor Rick Perry. Members of the commission share his skepticism about global warming.
In 2009 TCEQ’s Galveston Bay Estuary Program commissioned a scientific study entitled “State of the Bay 2010 ” the purpose of which was to focus on the health of the Bay of Galveston. TCEQ retained the Houston Advanced Research Center to produce the report and the Center asked John Anderson, the Maurice Ewing professor of oceanography at Rice University to write a chapter for inclusion in the report dealing with rising sea levels. Dr. Anderson completed his report and gave it to the commission. Then a strange thing happened. In the part of the report that includes Dr. Anderson’s chapter, the Commission deleted references to climate change, the rise in sea level and the effect of humans on the environment. When Dr. Anderson learned of this he shared the chapter he had written with reporters. His conclusions, including references to the human causes of climate change that had been censored, were reported by assorted media outlets. In response, the Commission deleted his entire chapter from its report. This does not, of course, alter his conclusions. What it does is plant the Commission squarely in the camp that does not believe climate change is attributable to human activities or that climate change has caused a rise in the sea level.
Two Texas state senators wrote to the chairman of the Commission to determine why it had censored Dr. Anderson’s work. In response the Commission’s spokesman, Andy Saenz,, the spokesperson for the Commission, said the commission did not want what it described as “controversial implications” about global warming included in the report. It did not like the fact that Dr. Anderson stated that the level of the water in Galveston Bay had risen. In addition, Mr. Saenz was shocked that the report had been leaked to the press, saying it was “premature and unprofessional.” Addressing the charge that the commission had censored the report, Mr. Saenz said that if Dr. Anderson’s conclusions were included in the official report they would be attributable to the commission. “Why”, he asked, “should we include questionable information we don’t agree with.”
Dr. Anderson has a slightly different take on the subject. He was particularly troubled that the commission removed sections that link sea level rise to global warming. “Sea level rise is hard to deny. You can debate climate warming, but sea level is going up, it’s measured globally, with satellites. For them to be so bold as to remove it-they actually omitted whole sentences that mentioned sea level rise.”
There is, it turns out, a perfectly valid reason for the censorship. It comes from Mr. Saenz who said: “It’s no secret that our state and our governor and our agency have taken positions different than our professors.” Put in that context the censorship makes perfect sense. The disagreement is nothing more than politicians versus professors, rather than as one might first think, ignoramuses versus scientists. On the other hand, maybe that’s simply two sides of the same coin.