I Hardly Recognize my Neighborhood

My typically quiet and quirky neighborhood is transformed this morning by 30,000 do-gooders in running shorts, by helicopters, police and army cadets, and former Mayor Rudolph Guiliani. The bombast, jumbo screens and loud speakers are part of the annual Stephen Siller Tunnel To Towers run, taking place in more than 35 cities this year (I learn this from the announcer whose voice is carried right to my desk through my open windows). The starting line is marked with a piece of metal scavenged from the WTC site. It's an event founded to commemorate the life of Stephen Siller, a firefighter who ran through the Battery Park Tunnel (which leaves Brooklyn only a few blocks from where I live) to the World Trade Center on September 11 to help evacuate occupants of the towers and died. This run and the "In the Name of Love" and "In the Line of Duty" programs were set up by the foundation to raise money to support those in the fire department, police department or armed services who have lost their faculties or loved ones in service. In short, my cozy neighborhood, full of independent-thinking shop-owners, restauranteurs, carpenters, writers, architects and ne'er-do'wells is overrun with a class of Americans it has moved here to be separate from. It feels like an invasion. An inescapable version of Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" echoes off the warehouses and brick buildings that abut the Red Hook fire hall. Now the national anthem. "Rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air." Deafening cheers to the long note held with "free." And bells rung for those who died.

Behind all the sentiment extended to "heroes and victims" is an undercurrent of American nationalism that is inseparable from any 9/11 event, a wave of self-love that masks and prevents the necessary self-examination the US should be undergoing right now. Barricades block the roads, buses come and go, firemen in full dress walk in hordes, American flags bob in the air. A beach ball bounces above the crowd. "We're a country that comes together to 'never forget' those who died in service. We take care of our heroes and their families. We're strong enough to weather any storm." It's a powerful idea, that we are a cohesive nation that knows how to love the most vulnerable, to protect our own, to remain an isolated bastion of peace and hope" in the midst of 21st century turmoil. But it's a myth. A powerful one that really only serves the purposes of the state and it's structures: the police department, homeland security, corporate entities, the existing gridlocked political system. It scares me.

And it scares my neighbors. As I sit on the corner of Van Brunt and Dikeman reading the Sunday paper and drinking a cup of deli coffee, unwilling to give up my Sunday morning routine, hundreds of Army cadets ran past in crisp rows. Their grey shirts and shorts emblazoned with "ARMY." A german friend joins me on the corner as they all trot past. "What is this, a fascist state?" he blurts. The announcer thanks CBS News for its coverage.

The "Tunnel to Towers" event starts in the Ikea parking lot here in Red Hook and travels past the Wall Street squatters, past the World Trade Center site, and ends at the UPS shipping facility near West and Greenwich streets. It costs $50 dollars to register for the run, $75 if you do so late. The announcer tells us, the participants and the residents alike, at a giant decibel, that the organization is building 38 homes for victims' families. "Couldn't they just rent?" I think.

What does this outpouring of charity and sentimentality mean amidst discussion of a bankrupt nation (we're not bankrupt, we've got plenty of money, we just spend it unwisely)? Amidst failing schools and disintegrating infrastructure? Against the backdrop of a political discussion about how to best care for the "most vulnerable." One block away from the hoopla stand the Red Hook Houses, an extensive project complex that along with the BQE divides Red Hook from the rest of Brooklyn. The juxtaposition of thousands who have paid $50 dollars to build homes for soldiers' families and scream at the world "free" to the systemic impoverishment (financial and more) of so many minority others is stark. Who defines "vulnerable," "hero," "victim?" Who is entitled to this outpouring of emotion, to both give and receive such attention and care?

If you call it charity it deserves canned Michael Jackson and cheering shoppers. Consumers of sentimentality. If you call it a social service, it's a beast that deserves to be starved. That's our current "home of the brave."

Hospice Does End of Life Planning.

It's a simple but obvious point that surely needs repeating: Hospice can help with end of life planning. If doctor's don't get reimbursed for those long conversations and families don't know where to start, perhaps we should think of hospice as the best resources for preparing for end of life care, as Sean Morrison, president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Care, reminds us in a letter to the NYT editor, below. Don't know how to get that defibrillator turned off? Don't know what planning resources are available? Your local hospice does.

Re “Lifesaving Devices Can Cause Havoc at Life’s End” (Business Day, May 14):

As a doctor who specializes in hospice and palliative medicine, I see more patients and families facing critical decisions about advanced technologies near the end of life each day. People should consider hospice not only to assist with pain and symptoms, but also to facilitate decision-making around goals of care and advanced technology devices like defibrillators.

Hospice teams have the knowledge, skills and resources to guide patients and families through these difficult decisions.

R. Sean Morrison
President, American Academy
of Hospice and Palliative Medicine
New York, May 15, 2010

Catholic Charities: San Francisco v. the Christians.

From Bread on the Water, a (hilarious and amazingly "sheltered") article about the challenge in San Francisco to Catholic Charities, which refuses to allow gay couples to adopt from its agency.

The article is worthwhile because of how it perpetuates a number of conservative and fundamental myths: the Church is under attack; gays have sex by fisting; exaggerating crowd sizes is a legitimate way to inflate public support of the church; children need a mother and a father to have "normal" lives; only a godly household is conducive to parenting; the separation of church and state means the state can't regulate the church; religious freedom means churches are free to impose their discriminatory doctrine via social services on a diverse society.

I say the article is hilarious because it is all emotional - fear and hatred, specifically - and has little regarding the facts of the case or any studies showing how children fare in gay households. In other words, it is indicative of the anti-intellectualizing that is rampant in media: go for the outrageous; justice, truth, science, rational thought be damned. As though any member in society is justified in making up their mind about a legal case based on an unprovable idea (gays are perverse) and not on the facts (children fare as well in secular and even gay households as they do in Christian households, perhaps better if you consider education a good thing.) And then there's the photo used to represent those hideous gays!

But the writer is wise in some ways. By painting religious discrimination as just and decrying the persecution of religious, traditional, patriarchal beliefs, the Christian right is able to rally it's core believers. Their brand of faith teaches them to find glory in condemnation, to fight on against their (contrived) enemies, that opposition and challenge makes them more Christ-like and holy.

This view of others as opposition is entrenching, sustaining. As fundamental beliefs have shaped our laws over the past 50 years as activists for minority groups have risen up in search of their own rights, fundamentalists have declared that any reclaiming of personal rights by these groups is encroachment (see abortion). The church has moved so far beyond its proper boundaries in society that pushing it back out of social services (funded by federal funds which, of course, can't be used for necessary women's health care but are necessary for the spread of religious ideology), out of bedrooms and private lives, out of medical care and marriage is looked at as aggression by the church and even by non-religious, conservative by-standers. If you're not gay or don't know much about the gay community you could easily see this kind of issue as perhaps unimportant. Why would perverts want to raise children? So what if those facilitating adoption deem the gay community unworthy?

But as a member of a pluralistic, diverse society, as a voter and a citizen who's duty it is to demand and enforce the rights of minority groups, we are responsible for your own ignorance and wrong assumptions, particularly when they perpetuate the kind of hilarious drivel below for the sake of continued hatred, ignorance and discrimination. Being passive in the face of the church, or even reverential, as is society's general approach, is allowing such ignorance, stereotyping and discrimination to continue.

Religious freedom doesn't mean much to many people who don't practice a religion, but it cannot be denied that defending freedom of religion, at the very least, defends one's ability to choose one's own values and then act on them, provided that those actions don't deprive others of the same ability.

The City of San Francisco is presently governed by a body of legislators who have chosen to believe that same-sex couples are entitled to all the benefits of heterosexual couples, including parenting children.

As in all things, Nature has something to say about that. To parent children, same-sex couples must introduce a member of the opposite sex into the equation at some point. For some same-sex couples, the answer is adoption. However, Catholic Charities in San Francisco has refused to place children in their care into same-sex households.

Scandalized, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in early 2006 passed a resolution (Resolution 168-06,click here) condemning the Catholic Church's refusal to offer children for adoption by gay couples. A week later, the Board officially condemned a rally of 25,000 Christian teenagers gathered to oppose a popular culture that glamourizes violence and sex, including abortion and homosexuality.

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors labeled the Catholic Church's refusal to require parentless children to be raised by homosexuals as "hateful," "discriminatory," "insulting," "callous," and "showing a level of insensitivity and ignorance which has seldom been encountered by this Board of Supervisors."

As opposed to (one cannot help observing) the tact, sensitivity, and enlightenment displayed by San Francisco's answer to the traditional religious community, namely, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (shown) whose motto is, "Go and sin some more." (I am not making this up.) It should be noted that San Francisco's Catholic churches do not prevent the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from participating in Catholic religious services. But the Church is not putting little babies into their hands.

Catholic doctrine teaches, for example, that allowing children to be adopted by homosexuals would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development," the center explained. "Such policies are gravely immoral and Catholic organizations must not place children for adoption in homosexual households."

And what did San Francisco's elected legislature think of that rally of 25,000 Christian evangelical teenagers eager to follow that antique guideline known as the Ten Commandments? The Board of Supervisors called their rally a "fascist mega-pep rally" of "virtue terrorism." Got that? San Francisco feels "terrorized" when faced with non-fisting adolescents.

At present, the 9th Circuit Court is considering a challenge to San Francisco's resolution condemning the Catholic Church for its moral teachings. The challenge was brought by the Thomas More Law Center, which presented oral arguments to the Court on December 17, 2009.

The Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution does not permit government hostility toward religion. Robert Muise, who argued the case before the eleven-judge panel, said, "If the full court allows this government attack on Catholics to stand, it will likely further embolden anti-Christian attacks by government." Bill Donohue, speaking for the Catholic League, pointed out that Board of Supervisors' "invective and bigoted comments" tell "what will be happening under the 'hate crime law' recently signed by President Obama."

On the other hand, according to Muise, "Should the full court ultimately render a decision in our favor, this case will establish much needed precedent for claims alleging government hostility toward religion."

Those in Need Are Lazy. Systemic Poverty Is Not Our Fault.

Yes, I once worked for the woefully dated Investor's Business Daily. In marketing. But that was in the early 90s. I see their philosophy is still recklessly dated and discriminatory. If this doesn't wake you up this morning - should you have an ounce of moral justice in you - I don't know what will.

By Yaron Brook and Don Watkins who ignore facts, logic, the benefits of privilege, social structures, quality education and systemic inequality; and therefore this screed plays on the mythic and fallacious American idea of "all men are equal." By denying that government favors some races and classes over others, they've continued to feed their own - and their reader's - self-righteous ideas of superiority. Assuming that "the needy" are in need because they are lazy or inferior is blatant discrimination.

It is a prime example of ideological unreason. Factless. Hateful. Privileged. The result of poor thinking, and poorer reasoning. Ignorant of how society actually functions. That this sort of 80s and 90s argument can still be made is astounding to me, after "trickle down" and "entitlement" talk has been so disproven by the decimation of the middle class, continued poverty, joblessness, and other unsolved social ills.

But if one is committed to proclaiming this is the greatest country in the world without questioning why or how, without examining statistics that prove otherwise, how will this country continue as such? The superiority of a class or race in this country has been kept by such ignorance of facts - and to our detriment. Only when the underprivileged are able to contribute to society does stability grow. By usurping the "patriotic" mantle, those who work to oppress and demoralize only do damage. Because they fear losing their privilege, the benefits they and their families have generationally received at the expense of "the needy."

In the run-up to the Senate's passage of the health care bill, opponents of ObamaCare denounced it as an unprecedented expansion of government control over medicine.

They warned of the proven consequences of government medicine, pointing to the rationing that occurs in Canada and Europe.

They pointed to the low cancer survival rates in places like Britain. They cited statistic after statistic showing that ObamaCare will raise costs and lower health care quality in America.

They were right — yet it looks like Obama will get his bill. And even if the Republicans are able to pull off an upset, there is no question that over the coming years government control over health will continue to grow.

Why? Consider the history of government involvement in health care.

In the 1960s there was a perception that some elderly were not receiving adequate health care. To meet this need, Congress passed Medicare. The same concern was voiced about the poor. To meet their need, Congress passed Medicaid.

The same concern was voiced about those too destitute (or too irresponsible) to buy health insurance, and in the '80s Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, forcing emergency rooms to treat anyone who needed medical attention, regardless of their ability to pay.

The same concern was voiced about parents who were too well off for Medicare, but who nevertheless couldn't meet their children's health care needs, and in the late '90s Congress passed the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

The message is clear: If you have a need, you are entitled to have it fulfilled at others' expense.

The reason we continue to move toward socialized medicine is that everyone — including the opponents of socialized medicine — grants its basic moral premise: that need generates an entitlement.

So long as that principle goes unchallenged, government intervention in medicine will continue growing, as each new pressure group asserts its need and lobbies for its entitlement, until finally the government takes responsibility for fulfilling everyone's medical needs by socializing the health care system outright.

Some believe you can stop this process midstream: The government will intervene only to help those in dire circumstances while otherwise leaving people responsible for their own health care. But that's an illusion. If need entitles one to the wealth and effort of others, then there is no logical reason why the government should restrict help to some small subset of the "needy," and refuse to help the rest.

Homosexual Adoption and the Catholic Church.

For some reason, gay rights seems to get more traction when up against the Catholic Church than, say, women's rights. I'm not complaining. Any time citizens rights trump the teachings of the Church over federally funded social services, I'm happy to see discrimination addressed.

From the Cathlolic Right LifeSiteNews, an update of the issue of Catholic adoption services in San Francisco not complying with non-discrimination laws there - and screaming religious persecution.

You can hear yesterday's oral arguments here.

A panel of eleven judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sitting in San Francisco will hear oral arguments tomorrow, December 16, concerning the constitutionality of the San Francisco Board of Supervisor's resolution attacking the Catholic Church for its teachings against homosexual adoptions.

The en banc panel, consisting of all the judges of the court, will review the earlier opinion of a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit that upheld the resolution.

The anti-Catholic resolution, adopted March 21, 2006, was challenged by the Thomas More Law Center, a national Christian legal advocacy group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on behalf of the Catholic League and two Catholic residents of San Francisco. The challenge was made on the grounds that the resolution expresses government hostility toward the Catholic Church and its moral teachings in violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

The city Board's resolution was issued in response to a directive from Cardinal William Levada, in which he instructed Catholic Charities of San Francisco to follow Church teaching and not begin adopting children to homosexuals.

The resolution refers to the Vatican as a "foreign country" meddling in the affairs of the city and proclaims the Church's moral teaching and beliefs on homosexuality as "insulting to all San Franciscans," "hateful," "insulting and callous," "defamatory," "absolutely unacceptable," and says that Church teaching shows "insensitivity and ignorance."

The Board's resolution makes reference to the Inquisition and it urges the Archbishop of San Francisco and Catholic Charities of San Francisco to defy Church directives.

A lower federal court's dismissal of the case based on the pleadings was later affirmed by the three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit.

However, on November 5, 2009, a majority of the Ninth Circuit judges voted to grant the Law Center's petition for an en banc (full bench) rehearing.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel for the Law Center, remarked, "It seems the only bigotry and prejudice these so-called liberal politicians tolerate is anti-Catholicism. To them the only good Catholics are the bad Catholics who ignore the teachings of their Church."

"Our constitution plainly forbids government interference in, and hostility toward, religion, including the Catholic faith. And we are fully committed to fighting homosexual activists who seek to promote their personal political agenda at the expense of our constitutional freedoms."

According to Catholic doctrine, allowing children to be adopted by homosexuals would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment not conducive to their full human development.

"Such policies are gravely immoral and Catholic organizations must not place children for adoption in homosexual households," the Law Center argued.

According to the Law Center, the "anti-Catholic resolution sends a clear message to Plaintiffs and others who are faithful adherents to the Catholic faith that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message that those who oppose Catholic religious beliefs, particularly with regard to homosexual unions and adoptions by homosexual partners, are insiders, and favored members of the political community."

The full text of the San Francisco City Board Resolution.

The full text of the Thomas More Law Center's Petition for Review.

Krauthammer, Global Warming, and "The New Socialism."

I usually stay away from Charles Krauthammer's columns, finding them often the skilled work of a spoiled child who wants more chocolate and has refused the fact that the colorful box is empty - because he's eaten them all.

But his December 11 column make unfounded claims that can't be ignored; his display of willful ignorance regarding international politics, empty phrases like "socialism," denial of global warming, and blatant adherence to disproven policies (and historical analysis) is an enormous disservice, via syndication, to a nation that is once again trying to find its way in the world with conscience.

Before I get to the krapola he asserts, I think it's worth noting that Krauthammer is from another era, like the sweet old lady who still uses the word "gay" to mean happy and romanticizes, for instance, a time when society was moral and just. The world has gone to heck, he asserts. People just aren't good and honest - like Thatcher and Reagan - any more. No matter than they never were; no matter that ideologies the individual adheres to have been disproven by time and history.

Krauthammer represents the Cato Institute ideologues of the 1980s and 90s. Though they still spew out their dated concepts in a contrived "fresh" fashion, their simplistic positions are obsolete, disproven and meaningless in a world that has proven to be more complicated than the one they want(ed) it to be. Quoting Ayn Rand is not even quaint any more; it is self-deceptive, and destructive at that.

Because Krauthammer is, in this latest blinder, discussing what one could call world entitlements, let me quote a hideous article from the Cato in 1998 by David Kelley. I think it demonstrates what I'm getting at:

...human beings have only recently, in certain parts of the world, taken definite actions to create wealth. Against the backdrop of millennia of human history, it is wealth that stands out and calls for explanation. Poverty is simply the absence of wealth. It is the natural human condition, which persists in the absence of efforts to overcome it.

Kelley asserts that the West has essentially won the wealth race because those in the developing world have been lazy, coddled, become accustomed to hand outs. And like others on the deluded Right, unwilling to acknowledge the privilege from which he makes this observation. Now hear Krauthammer:

The idea of essentially taxing hard-working citizens of the democracies in order to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early '80s). They put a stake through the enterprise.

But such dreams never die. The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

That environmentalism is a ruse (a religion) to suck as much wealth out of the West as possible, "the new Socialism," is a new Right saw. It denies the existence of damaging climate change and ignores why that change has come about. It demonizes non-Western countries for being subject to Western excess - essentially blaming the victims. Statistically, the West continues to suck resources out of undeveloped countries (uh, that was the purpose of colonialism, constructed by empires and now maintained by corporations) and gives back pollution, paternalistic dictates, guns for more violence, and ignorance.

"Third world kleptocracies" indeed have worked to capitalize on Western aid - and why not? Often non-relief aid is offered in ways that are benign and meaningless to populations ravaged by war, corrupt governments, and monopolization. What incentive does a dictator have to educate his population, to manage incoming aid, to develop "wealth-creating" industry, or to distribute wealth (beyond the vote-culling goat now and then) when money flows in and keeps him fat?

And because of the corrupting effects of capitalism, his subjected people admire the accumulated wealth at their expense. Oh he has two Mercedes Benz, he has been so smart to get so much from the West. He's a big, rich man who deserves his wealth.

The West has pursued and instated dictators for its own purposes - easy control, access of industry, even "insurance" against the spread of communism, markets for second rate products and other regulated items like weapons - with little consideration for the rights of citizens. Instead of blaming foreign policy for the poverty and lack of development in these countries, Krauthammer ignores their modern history and the West's role in it.

He's an egregious mouth-piece for the excesses, privilege, and discriminatory paternalism that have guided Western foreign policy for more than two centuries. Arguing that some cultures contribute more to world society - nee, our Western society - is to see the world from a shoe box, having never moved out into it. Unfortunately, Krauthammer speaks to an audience that as well is susceptible to such rantings. As the national economic crisis squeezes more Americans and encourages them to look for a bogeyman, "the other" has always been a good target. Isolationism has been proven a disaster, but it continues to rebound. The "free-market" has delivered none of it's promises and, without necessary regulation, has proven a perpetrator on individual freedom and wealth both here and abroad, yet some still scream for deregulation. And socialism, as Krauthammer uses the term, stands for communism; yes a failed system but as performed, never socialistic in any way.

I'm actually surprised that he continues to get leverage for the Socialism claims any more. As he uses the term, it never existed. As the EU enacts the term, it has proven a superior form of raising quality of life for even "the least of" citizens. Application of the term to both Communism and, say, Medicaid, is a stretch beyond understanding. But socialism is an old straw man for the myopic Right, bound to get a rise out of those who don't know better.

In short, the governing structures that Krauthammer hangs the flaccid skin of his rant on are hollow definitions, emotionally disturbing to those who don't know better and are under economic constraints, looking for a source of blame.

This column is an excessive example of irresponsibility. Ignore the horrors and damaging legacies of colonialism (by both empire and industry); deny the watershed of facts about global change that will, of course, destroy first those living unprotected in developing countries; pretend that those dirty little countries have no influence on the global environment nor economy; forget the discriminatory role the West has played in installing and supporting corrupt governments around the world; and prey on the insecurities of challenged Americans.

It's a win, win, win, win argument, unless you wish to exert a proper and honest analysis of Western foreign policy and science. And that's, well, beyond Krauthammer's reinforced and small-minded objective. He's got a column to write and emotions to stir, facts be damned.

What About Separation of Church and State?

Carole Joffe has a great post up at RHRealityCheck about the assertion of Catholic and evangelical groups that they have a justified role in delivery of social services. Her piece gets to the heart of the issue I've been ranting about for days: that these groups wish to continue the imposition of their ideological values while maintaining tax exempt status and receiving federal funding. Their argument is that they do so much for the nation that they can't possibly be ordered to comply with patients' rights. Joffe writes:

Most fundamentally, however, the Church’s recent political activism on both gay marriage and abortion raises disturbing issues about the current state of play regarding church/state separation in the United States. The U.S. is neither a “Christian nation” as fundamentalists like Pat Robertson have long-declared it to be, nor one where its citizenry should be ruled by Catholic teachings, as the Bishops appear intent on achieving. But evangelical Protestants have long been tied to the Republican party. With Democrats in power, the Catholic Church is inevitably more influential at this moment, given its historical support of many of the issues favored by Democrats (with abortion being a glaring exception). As if the coming deliberations in the weeks and months ahead over health care reform were not complicated enough, these negotiations also challenge the Democratic Party to reaffirm a strong commitment to church/state separation.

It's a great little reminder of how the Catholic Church is working to assert the myth that theirs is the moral position; that they do more charity work and more for the poor than anyone else. There's no ground for this when you're talking social services, particularly hospital care. Allowing them the moral argument gives them more credibility than they deserve and only enforces their continued encroachment on patients' rights.