Thursday, August 4, 2011
Papal Critics
— Thomas Hobbes, LeviathanThe Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.”
Lots of people think they know how the Pope should be running the show. That explains the abundance of suggestions he’s received in the last couple years. First it’s a bunch of women trying to tell him what should be done about celibacy and then it’s a couple of renegade clerics supported by assorted priests. Collectively they are all thorns in the Pope’s crown.
On March 28, 2010, a Lettera aperta a Benedetto XVI was published in Il Dialogo in Italy. The letter was signed by forty women who were speaking out against the Church’s insistence that priests be celibate. The letter was apparently precipitated by a brief exchange between Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna, and Vatican spokespeople. In his archdiocesan magazine in early March 2010 the Cardinal said that the question of priest celibacy and the question of personality development needed to be looked at by the Vatican. The Vatican said that the Cardinal’s comment had been misinterpreted and the Cardinal’s spokesman said the Cardinal was not “not any way seeking to challenge the Catholic Church’s celibacy rule“ The women were uniquely well suited to comment on the rule since all of them were in relationships with non-celibate priests. These relationships, like the relationships many priests have had with children, are equally disapproved of by the Vatican. The letter was very respectful.
The women began by identifying themselves as women “from all parts of Italy, who have lived or are still living in a relationship with a priest. . . .” They said that the rule of celibacy “is being maintained without addressing the fundamental rights of people. . . The contempt with which they have attempted for centuries and in recent statements to silence the cry of men and women who have suffered in the already tattered shroud of mandatory celibacy hurts us.” Celibacy, they said, has nothing to do with the “scriptures in general, or with the Gospels in particular, or with Jesus, who never spoke about it.” They said that economic interest and expediency motivated the church in introducing celibacy into the priesthood and subequently it was “marinated in a certain amount of misogyny and hostility toward the body, psychological drives and its primary needs.” An online search does not disclose whether the Pope had the time or inclination to respond to the letter. He probably didn’t. But the annoying problem of women’s relationship to the church continues.
In May 2011, William Morris, the Bishop of Toowoomba, Australia was forced to resign his post, a post he had held since 1992. What was described as his forced resignation was the result of having addressed the shortage of priests in his diocese in an Advent letter he wrote in 2006 in which he said, among other things, that in order to increase the number of priests available to serve congregants, the church should consider ordaining women and married men. The Pope told Bishop Morris that the ban on ordaining women was infallible and gave Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, Colorado an all expense paid trip to Australia to investigate Bishop Morris. (Bishop Chaput was an excellent choice to conduct the investigation. He was the prelate who during the 2004 presidential election said anyone who voted for John Kerry was committing a sin for which he/she would have to confess before receiving communion since Senator Kerry supported a woman’s right to choose. He is now the Archbishop of Philadelphia where he has a bigger pulpit from which to preach his brand of Christian tolerance.) The results of the investigation were not surprising and Archbishop Morris was removed in May.
Father Bourgeois is a priest who is a member of the Maryknoll religious order. In 2008 he participated in the ordination of a woman conducted by a group known as the Roman Catholic Womenpriests. In response to his participation he received a letter from the Vatican telling him to recant or face excommunication. (The women were automatically excommunicated.) He responded to the Vatican in a lengthy missive to which he, like the writers of the a lettera received no reply. In late 2008 he was excommunicated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith but not dismissed from the Maryknolls. However, in 2011 the Maryknolls sent him the first, of two required demands, that he recant or face dismissal from the order. He has not recanted. He has found support.
In July, 157 Roman Catholic priests sent a letter to the superior general of Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers supporting Father Bourgeois “and his right to speak from his conscience.” (The National Council of Priests of Australia were more outspoken in complaining of Bishop Morris’s dismissal. They said it was influenced by people who “have limited pastoral experience.”)
When first confronted by the Vatican following his participation in the ordination, Father Bourgeois said: “Who are we as men to say that we are called by God to the ministry of priesthood, but women are not.” Now that he’s been excommunicated he has the answer- the Pope. He should let Bishop Morris know.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Principle Justifies Penury
It ain’t by princerples nor men
My preudunt course is steadied-
I scent wich pays the best, an’then
Go into it baldheaded.
— James Russell Lowell, The Biglow Papers
A Politician’s Dictionary:
Principle. n. Something to stand on.
Government. n. Something to shrink.
It is impossible for a simple columnist to put himself into the minds of some in the Republican Party. That explains the dilemma that confronts this writer as he tries to explain the most recent example of Republican House members refusing to increase federal revenue by taking steps that cost the taxpayer nothing.
An earlier example of this kind of thinking involved the IRS and took place over a period of 5 years. It started in 2006 when, at the urging of the Bush administration, the IRS turned over 12,500 delinquent tax accounts of $25,000 or less to private collection agencies. According to the New York Times, the expectation was that the private debt collectors would collect $1.4 billion over ten years at a cost of twenty two to twenty four cents on the dollar for each dollar collected. When turning delinquent tax payers over to private collection agencies was first proposed in 2002, then Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Charles Rossotti, told Congress that if it hired additional IRS employees to handle collections, the employees could collect delinquent taxes at a cost of only three cents per dollar collected. Notwithstanding Mr. Rossotti’s cautionary tale, private debt collectors were hired in 2006. At first blush one thinks that given the reduced benefit to the government, such hiring made no sense. Then one realizes that the increased cost of collection benefits the much admired private sector whereas hiring more agents, even though economically efficient, has the lamentable side effect of increasing the size of the much disliked (by Republicans) federal bureaucracy.
In 2009, after Congress had been taken over by Democrats, it was announced that the IRS had concluded that what Mr. Rossotti had said 7 years earlier was correct and the private debt collection practice would end. Senator Charles Grassley (R. IA) was outraged. He said the IRS was caving in to “union-driven political pressure.” (If there’s anything Republican hate more than taxes it’s unions. That’s why on midnight July 22, 2011, the Federal Aviation Administration had to lay off 4000 workers and the government is, as this is written, losing $200 million a week in airline ticket taxes. Congressional Republicans refused to extend the FAA’s operating authority because the Democrats refused to include a provision that would make it harder for airline and railroad workers to unionize.) Mr. Grassley may have been outraged when the IRS quit using private debt collectors, but, as it turns out, he and his colleagues had the last word.
In March of this year a budget compromise was reached. The White House had requested an increase in the IRS budget of approximately 9%. With that money an additional 5000 personnel could have been hired. In testimony before Congress, Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, said: “Every dollar invested in IRS yields nearly five dollars in increased revenue from non-compliant taxpayers.” Abhorrence of big government prevailed. A release from John Boehner’s office in early April said the IRS would not receive its requested increase in funding.
The more recent example of denying an agency increased funding even though the increased funding would generate additional revenue for the government, is offered by the House Appropriations Committee. When the Securities and Exchange Commission submitted its FY 2012 budget proposal to the Committee it requested $1.407 billion, an increase of $264 million over its FY 2011 appropriation. In explaining its request for increased funding it said the money sought would “support the agency’s work to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.” It said: “It is important to note that the SEC’s FY 2012 funding request will be fully offset by matching collections of fees on securities transactions.” It pointed out that under the Dodd-Frank Act the fees it collects from financial institutions must “match the total amount appropriated for the agency by Congress” and “under this mechanism, SEC funding will be deficit-neutral, as any increase or decrease in the SEC’s budget would result in a corresponding rise or fall in offsetting fee collections.”
The House Appropriations Committee refused to increase the SEC’s budget. A New York Times report says that in denying the budget increase the Committee referred to the agency’s “troubled past” and “lack of ability to manage funds” and further said it “remains concerned with the S.E.C.’s track record in dealing with Ponzi schemes.
According to the NYT, in 2010 the S.E.C. “turned over $2.2 billion to victims of financial wrongdoing and paid hundreds of millions more to the Treasury, helping to reduce the deficit.” Such figures did not impress the Republicans. They stood on principle thus proving that unlike many people, when Republicans say “it’s not the money, it’s the principle of the thing” they actually mean it.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
The Tax Burden of the Very Rich
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
— Plato, The Republic
The purpose of this piece is to identify for readers how an unjust tax system treats the very wealthy. Once that is understood it is easy to understand Senator Orin Hatch’s recent comments.
In a little noted speech the Senator said that the poor need to “share some of the responsibility” for lowering the deficit and observed that the rich are paying too much in taxes.” In his remarks he observed that “The top 1 per-cent of the so-called wealthy pay 38% of all income tax, the top 10 percent pay 70 percent of all income tax and the top 50 percent pay almost 98 percent of all income tax.” Those were facts of which many, including this writer, were unaware and it immediately created feelings of compassion for those paying that much. Of course, compassion is slightly tempered when one learns that in 2007 the top 1 percent received between 21 and 23 percent of all U.S. income depending on what studies you read. It is also slightly tempered when one realizes that the bottom 50 percent earned only 12.3 percent of all U.S. income. Nonetheless, the rich are obviously paying too much and that explains why Republicans don’t want them to pay more.
IRS statistics released in May of this year reflect that in 2008, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the average income among the top 400 Americans was $270.5 million. In 2008 someone with that income would have paid about $50 million in taxes. (The effective rate on that income is about 18.1%.) Of course, if you are someone who has net taxable income of $60,000, after deductions and exemptions, and are, therefore, in the 25% tax bracket on all your income in excess of $34,500, you may wonder why you are in a much higher bracket than someone who earns $270.5 million. There is a perfectly logical explanation for this seeming (but not actual) inequity.
The main reason that the tax rate in the United States for the rich is low is that being rich, many of the rich do not need to work. It has long been accepted by Republicans in Congress, among others, that unearned income should receive more favorable treatment than earned income. According to the IRS, in 2008 only 8 percent of the income of the top 400 earners in the country came from salary and wages. Close to 10% came from dividends and about 56% came from capital gains. Happy to help those who have prospered, either through their own efforts or through a wise choice of ancestors, Congress decided that people who receive dividends should only pay 15% tax on those dividends. Similarly, Congress thinks that capital gains, subject to a few non-onerous rules, should only be taxed at 15%. There is another group with very large incomes that also pays tax at the 15% rate. Those are hedge fund managers.
Like the VERY RICH, among whom many hedge fund managers find themselves, money that hedge fund managers get from investors for managing their money is treated like capital gains and is taxed at only 15% even though to the unsophisticated observer money paid to them looks for all the world like the sort of money that the typical wage earner gets, except for its considerably larger amount than what most wage earners receive. (One commentator pointed out that if hedge fund managers paid taxes like the people earning $50,000 or even $100,000, the national deficit would be reduced by $44 billion in the next 10 years. In 2008 the top 25 hedge fund managers “averaged”: $1.01 billion in annual income. )
In 2011, the only worker who will pay as low a rate as the folks described above is the worker whose taxable income is less than $34,500. Workers with taxable income between that and $69,675 will find themselves in the 25% tax bracket and from there the rates go up to 35% which is more than twice as much as the rate at which the person with $1.1 billion in dividends and capital gains is taxed. There are, of course, many adjustments made in calculating taxable income and the actual percentages vary taxpayer by taxpayer. But the long and the short of it is that the taxpayer who wants the satisfaction of paying taxes at the same rate as the really rich should keep his or her taxable income under $34,500. For many, that will not be difficult.
It is possible that readers of this column will not understand why Mr. Hatch thinks the poor should do more. It is even possible that they will not find the foregoing an adequate explanation for why Republicans do not think taxes on the wealthy should be raised. They are not the only ones who are puzzled.