How We Treat the Least of These

From Matt Talbot at Vox-Nova.com comes this story taken from an investigative report produced by the Government of Ireland.

In Ireland, there is a system of Catholic-run schools for the children of the poor, and these schools were the scenes of utter depravity between the 1930s and 1990s.

One victim’s memory of sadistic torture at the hands of a nun:

I was hit for having red, curly hair. You had to have straight hair like Our Lady. This sister was a monster. She’d drag you into the office and take her long cane and just beat you and beat you. She had a bamboo cane four feet long. She’d be frothing at the mouth. She’d say, “You curled your hair last night,” and when I’d say, “Yes, I curled it,” she’d stop. She had castor oil, she would press it into my head, to make my hair straight. My face would be swollen from the beatings, the oil would be running down my face.

This next testimony is especially appalling:

I was an animal lover. There were wild cats and kittens going around starving, and I used to sneak them into the dormitory. i had a kitten. This nun called me one night. She said, “You see that kitten you have there?” She got me out of bed by the hair and brought me down, they had one of those stoves that you put coal in the top. She said, “Take that top off.” I had to go up on my knees. I had to put the cat in there and put the lid on it — and the screams. Then she said, “Go back to bed.” The next morning, she got me out of bed and she made me rake that fire out. I think I was about twelve at the time.

I am used to praying for God’s mercy on the souls of sinners, especially me. I prayed that God may be merciful to the man who paralyzed, and ultimately killed, my late older brother.

There are, however, some offenses that make such prayers very, very hard to offer. For a representative of Mother Church, a person whose job it is not just to teach the faith, but to model in some way God’s loving relationship with his children, to force an animal-loving, born-into-poverty little girl to burn her kitten to death is definitely in that fucking category. It would have been bad enough for the sister to kill the kitten; for her to make the little girl do it…like I say: incandescent rage.

Like others, I am left speechless. I am aware that the Catholic Church has no monopoly on such evil. As a member of the Body of Christ, however, I feel compelled to respond to this. These children and the world desperately need to witness a church leadership publicly admit complicity and seek forgiveness. And we all need to shine a light on this; evil only flourishes in darkness.

Maybe more important, I have to examine my willingness to quite often look the other way, keep quiet, offer excuses or simply not see what I do not want to see, both for myself and others. Yes I must forgive or ask for forgivenness, as impossible as that may often seem. But I cannot forgive, or seek forgiveness for, that which I do not acknowledge.

Barlow about 9/11 on 9/11

Via today's BoingBoing comes a statement by John Perry Barlow made on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, which says, in part

This morning's events are roughly equivalent to the Reichstag fire that provided the social opportunity for the Nazi take-over of Germany. I am *not* suggesting that, like the Nazis, the authoritarian forces in America actually had a direct role in perpetrating this mind-blistering tragedy. (Though their indirect role deserves a much longer discussion.) Nevertheless, nothing could serve those who believe that American "safety" is more important than American liberty better than something like this. Control freaks will dine on this day for the rest of our lives. Within a few hours, we will see beginning the most vigorous efforts to end what remains of freedom in America. Those of who are willing to sacrifice a little - largely illusory - safety in order to maintain our faith in the original ideals of America will have to fight for those ideals just as vigorously.

And rather than pointing at the U.S., we should remind ourselves first that our Prime Minister in waiting has spoken and written extensively on his approval of what followed and that both his party and the Conservatives have participated in 9/11 inspired horrors such as the Arar affair.

Those who would trade freedom for security get neither.

Captain Jack, Deficit Hawk

If you need proof that when it comes to Canadian politics there is no there there, look no further than the NDP's dear leader.

In the face of news that the Harper tories plan to raise the EI payroll tax, the most regressive tax in the federal government toolkit, to fight the deficit, the NDP leader is criticizing the government on the higher than expected deficit. Earth to Jack, in the face of last years economic cataclysm, every major economy is facing higher than expected public sector deficits. Canada is in fact in better shape than most.

The key question moving forward is how, as the economy improves, deficits will be reduced and who will bear the cost of doing this. Raising EI premiums by billions places the burden squarely on those who were worst hurt, people with incomes under $40 thousand per year -- i.e. the working poor. Way to be tories. Way to be Jack.

A 21st Century Priesthood

Frank Furedi has a very perceptive piece in The Australian, examining the role of experts. For Furedi, the problem is not the role of expertise or its dominant role in addressing technical problems. It is instead the politicization of expertise or the privileging of a particular type of knowledge and of individual over all others.

Key quote

The exhortation to defer to experts is underpinned by the premise that their specialist knowledge entitles them to a higher moral status to the rest of us. For example, Ken Macdonald, former director of public prosecutions in Britain, pushed for the right to use expert witnesses to help boost the low conviction rate in rape trials. Former Home Office minister Joan Ryan, a junior Home Office minister at the time, backed him, arguing that expert evidence in court could "address myths about rape and its victims". The assumption seems to be that ordinary jurors lack the intelligence to grasp how rapists and their victims behave, which is why courts need the expert psychologist to put them right.

In previous times, pronouncement about who was evil or who had sinned was the prerogative of the priest. With the end of deference to the church such mystical powers have become associated with the authority of the professional expert witness. The call for ordinary jurors to ignore their intuition and subjugate themselves to the superior insight of the expert is seldom characterised as what it really is, a new form of non-traditional deference. According to this perspective, the prejudices and myths of ordinary jurors need to be overcome through the intervention of the enlightened views of the expert.

It is necessary to state at the outset that any civilised 21st-century society is likely to take expertise seriously. The efficient functioning of such a society depends, to a significant extent, on the quality of contribution made by its experts. Anyone who is ill or confronted with a technical problem will turn to an expert.

The problem is not the status of the expert but its politicisation. All too often experts do not confine their involvement in public discussion to the provision of advice. Many insist that their expertise entitles them to have the last word on policy deliberation. Recent studies indicate that in public debates those whose views run counter to the sentiments of scientific experts find it difficult to voice their beliefs.

Interestingly, I have just finished reading Terry Eagleton's Faith, Reason and Revolution, which looks at the complex interplay between secularism and faith. It is impossible to to his argument justice in a short blog post, but his work certainly suggests that far from overturning the power of an established priesthood we have in so many ways merely replaced it with another.

Challenging the Medical Guild: Speaking Truth to Power

Kudos to Matt Yglesias for being one of the very, very few to suggest that the root of problems with publicly provided health care is the monopoly power of doctors.

It is inconceivable that we will achieve real patient centred care or cost containment until we wrest power and the rent-seeking incentives that go with it from the medical profession. Doctors have no more right than any other group to control over their clients lives or the public purse.

Douthat on the Slippery Slope of Assisted Suicide

NYT wunderkind and infrequent columnist Ross Douthat has a worthwhile take on voluntary suicide as a segue to much more egregious practices. As Douthat argues

What’s at stake is the right to voluntary euthanasia, not the sort of involuntary plug-pulling that some Republicans have claimed is concealed in the finer print of the current health care reform proposals. But you don’t have to share Sarah Palin’s death panel fears to see perils lurking at the intersection of physician-assisted suicide and health care reform.

Consider the words of a prominent oncologist, bioethicist and health care wonk, critiquing assisted suicide in 1997, just before a Supreme Court ruling on the issue. “Once legalized,” this writer warned in the pages of The Atlantic, “euthanasia would become routine. Over time doctors would become comfortable giving injections to end life and Americans would become comfortable having euthanasia as an option.” From there, it would be an easy slide to euthanizing the incompetent: “Comfort would make us want to extend the option to others who, in society’s view, are suffering and leading purposeless lives.”

Comfort — and budgetary constraints. Euthanasia would be much more likely to pass from an exception to a rule, the bioethicist argued, “in the context of demographic and budgetary pressures on Social Security and Medicare as the Baby Boom generation begins to retire, around 2010.”

And of course in Canada, where the publicly funded healthcare system is already overwhelmed, this is much more likely to be true.

The real fear, of course, is that an unaccountable medical guild will increasingly make these decisions on their own. Witness events in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Perhaps the most important and least understood of needed changes in health care delivery is the need to hold physicians to far more effective account, both for decisions made and resources used. Few if any politicians have the courage to take on the medical establishment. Until they do, efforts to take control of our health care system will remain largely cosmetic.

The Fat Lady Hasn't Sung Yet

From Bloomberg today comes a report that some key hedge funds are suggesting that far from being over, recent market gains represent a temporary uptick in what remains a bear market and lingering recession. Key for these influential players is the remaining problems with bank balance sheets resulting from changes to fair value accounting rules earlier this year.

As the report notes

The Financial Accounting Standards Board voted in April to relax fair-value accounting rules. The change to mark-to-market accounting allowed companies to use “significant” judgment in gauging prices of some investments on their books, including mortgage-backed securities that plunged with the housing market.

Banks are reporting better earnings because they haven’t been forced to account for their losses yet . . .

It seems that the downturn and underlying factors driving it are not so much resolved as forgotten. The news cycle has moved on but the problem remains.

A New Beginning

While I have been either away or busy for much of the summer, I will be resuming work on this blog over the next week or so.

When I started this blog six months ago, my goal was simply to start writing again after a ten year hiatus. At the time, one of my goals was to incorporate faith into a discussion of economics and public policy. And while I commented on faith issues from time to time, events (particularly the economic near death experience of the past year) and distractions in my own life seemed to steer this blog inexorably toward the low hanging fruit of comment on economic events and policy.

Hopefully, this will change over the coming weeks and months. While it is clear that catastrophe has been avoided, the ethical issues raised by the crisis remain, perhaps stronger than ever. For those whose faith is at the centre of their lives, these issues are particularly poignant.

If we can afford to subsidize the wealthy to the tune of trillions, it is surely now unconscionable to ignore the plight of the most vulnerable among us. This raises the question of what an economy is for and what role justice must play.

Stay tuned.

They're Back

If you want evidence that nothing has changed in the U.S. financial sector, you can do no better than Paul Krugman's column in this morning's NYT. For Krugman, Wall Street is once again serving a socially corrosive function by using inside information and superior technology for private profit. It is worth quoting this at length

Americans are angry at Wall Street, and rightly so. First the financial industry plunged us into economic crisis, then it was bailed out at taxpayer expense. And now, with the economy still deeply depressed, the industry is paying itself gigantic bonuses. If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention.

But crashing the economy and fleecing the taxpayer aren’t Wall Street’s only sins. Even before the crisis and the bailouts, many financial-industry high-fliers made fortunes through activities that were worthless if not destructive from a social point of view.

And they’re still at it. Consider two recent news stories.

One involves the rise of high-speed trading: some institutions, including Goldman Sachs, have been using superfast computers to get the jump on other investors, buying or selling stocks a tiny fraction of a second before anyone else can react. Profits from high-frequency trading are one reason Goldman is earning record profits and likely to pay record bonuses.

On a seemingly different front, Sunday’s Times reported on the case of Andrew J. Hall, who leads an arm of Citigroup that speculates on oil and other commodities. His operation has made a lot of money recently, and according to his contract Mr. Hall is owed $100 million.

What do these stories have in common?

The politically salient answer, for now at least, is that in both cases we’re looking at huge payouts by firms that were major recipients of federal aid. Citi has received around $45 billion from taxpayers; Goldman has repaid the $10 billion it received in direct aid, but it has benefited enormously both from federal guarantees and from bailouts of other financial institutions. What are taxpayers supposed to think when these welfare cases cut nine-figure paychecks?

So in the face of the largest financial meltdown in eighty years and the most progressive administration in fifty, the financial sector has quickly once again set a socially destructive course. Or as Krugman suggests

Neither the administration, nor our political system in general, is ready to face up to the fact that we’ve become a society in which the big bucks go to bad actors, a society that lavishly rewards those who make us poorer.

We Can Stop Patting Ourselves on the Back

One of less endearing features as a country is our habit of looking south, feigning horror, and telling ourselves that no matter the problems here we are not that bad. A case in point is the economy.

We have been hearing for months that while our economy is experiencing a mild downturn (that is now over) we have not seen the cataclysm here that was seen in the U.S.. Unemployment rates are lower, housing prices steadier and our financial sector the apparent envy of the world.

Yet as the Economist noted toward the end of last week, Canada's manufacturing sector in Ontario, the heart of the Canadian economy, is in deep trouble. And it is about more than GM. As they note

Ontario’s problems go wider than cars. Recession has curbed demand for its minerals and forest products. Nortel, a telecoms firm that was once Canada’s leading high-tech company, recently entered bankruptcy. Bits of it are being sold off piecemeal. Two-thirds of the 370,000 jobs lost in Canada between October 2008 and June 2009 were in Ontario, most of them in manufacturing.

Ontario’s economy is still the biggest in Canada. But it is no longer the richest. Indeed Ontario is now classified as a have-not province, making it eligible for handouts from a federal fund to equalise public spending across the country. It has even been granted its own federally funded economic development agency.

And, according to uber-pessimist Garth Turner, our financial sector is again handing out zero down long term mortgages to people with little ability to pay, a practice that led to the EFF initiative in the last budget and a $65 billion dollar buyout of troubled mortgaged back asset from our supposedly sterling banks.

So while the recession may have ended with surprising quickness (if it has indeed ended) it leaves not only devastating damage to workers in its wake, but seems to already set the stage for the next one.