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Sunday, 16 October 2005
Marijuana Prohibition has Failed
Topic: War on Drugs (and kids)
Three Nobel Laureates, American Enterprise Institute,
others call for a new approach
Six recent reports -- from the American Enterprise Institute, Citizens Against Government Waste, Taxpayers for Common Sense, The Sentencing Project, a Harvard University economics professor, and the U.S. Department of Justice -- point out the failures and steep costs of marijuana prohibition and call for a new approach.
Ending Marijuana Prohibition Would Save $10-14 Billion Annually ... Report Endorsed by Milton Friedman and More Than 500 Economists
In "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition" (released June 2, 2005), Dr. Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University, estimates that replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year.
More than 500 distinguished economists -- led by Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Milton Friedman and two additional Nobel Laureates -- endorsed the report and signed an open letter to President Bush and other public officials calling for "an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition," adding, "We believe such a debate will favor a regime in which marijuana is legal but taxed and regulated like other goods."
Using data from a variety of federal and state government sources, Miron concludes:
Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of legal regulation would save approximately $7.7 billion in government expenditures on prohibition enforcement -- $2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels.
Revenue from taxation of marijuana sales would range from $2.4 billion per year if marijuana were taxed like ordinary consumer goods to $6.2 billion if it were taxed like alcohol or tobacco.
The full report and its full list of endorsers are available here.
Citizens Against Government Waste: Government Anti-Drug Programs Don't Work
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s (ONDCP's) expensive drug control programs have failed to produce any meaningful results after 17 years, finds a May 12, 2005, report from Citizens Against Government Waste, a national organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.
"Up in Smoke: ONDCP's Wasted Efforts in the War on Drugs" shows how ONDCP wastes millions of dollars annually on media advertising and combating state-level legislation. The report's findings include:
ONDCP "has morphed into a federal wasteland, throwing taxpayer money toward numerous high-priced drug control programs that have failed to show results ... Instead of curbing America’s drug problem, ONDCP has wasted $4.2 billion since fiscal 1997 on media advertising, fighting state legislation, and deficient anti-drug trafficking programs."
Since Arizona and California passed medical marijuana laws in November 1996, ONDCP began campaigning against state medical marijuana ballot initiatives, which is "an infringement upon states' rights, a blatant misuse of tax dollars, and in contravention of ONDCP’s original mission. The White House’s drug office should use its resources to root out major drug operations in the U.S. instead of creating propaganda-filled news videos and flying across the country on the taxpayers' dime."
"ONDCP burns through tax dollars by funding wasteful and unnecessary projects. Partly to thwart state efforts to regulate marijuana, the drug czar created a $2 billion national anti-drug campaign, produced expensive propaganda ads that failed to reduce drug use among America’s youth, and in the process, violated federal law. Furthermore, the office wastes federal resources by opposing any legalization of marijuana, including medicinal use, which has nothing to do with the war on drugs."
The full report is available here.
War on Drugs has Become War on Low-Level Marijuana Users
During the 1990s, the “war on drugs” was transformed to a “war on marijuana,” with law enforcement officials shifting their focus to arresting increasing numbers of low-level marijuana offenders, finds a Sentencing Project report released on May 3, 2005.
"The War on Marijuana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs in the 1990s" finds that between 1990 and 2002, 82% of the national increase in drug arrests were for marijuana offenses, and nearly all of this increase was arrests for possession. Marijuana arrests now constitute 45% of the 1.5 million drug arrests annually.
As a result, significant policing resources have been dedicated to low-level offenses, with only 6% of marijuana arrests resulting in a felony conviction. One-quarter of people in prison for a marijuana offense are low-level offenders.
Despite the billions of dollars being spent annually on marijuana law enforcement, use and availability have not declined, while cost has dropped.
The full report is available here.
American Enterprise Institute: Prison is not an effective drug policy
American drug policy should focus on expanding treatment options and not on prison, says a new book from the American Enterprise Institute, one of the country's most respected conservative think tanks.
In An Analytic Assessment of U.S. Drug Policy (published in February 2005), Peter Reuter, a professor at the University of Maryland and a
senior economist in the Drug Policy Research Center at RAND, and independent consultant David Boyum use a market framework to assess
the effectiveness of anti-drug efforts ... and conclude that they have failed.
The authors note that while there is little evidence that tougher law enforcement reduces drug use, drug policy has become increasingly punitive -- the number of drug offenders in jail and prison grew tenfold between 1980 and 2003. They recommend the following changes:
Law enforcement should focus on reducing drug-related problems, such as violence associated with drug markets, rather than on locking up large numbers of low-level dealers.
Treatment services for heavy users need more money and fewer regulations, and programs that coerce convicted drug addicts to enter treatment and maintain abstinence as a condition of continued freedom should be expanded.
The full report is available here.
Taxpayers for Common Sense: Effectiveness of billions spent to stop marijuana use remains unknown
Despite the federal government spending tens of billions to combat marijuana use over the last three decades, use and perception of the drug has barely changed, according to an economic study released by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a national budget watchdog organization that targets wasteful and ineffective federal spending.
"Federal Marijuana Policy: A Preliminary Assessment," released June 28, 2005, finds that efforts to reduce marijuana use and supply cost federal taxpayers billions, despite no evidence that the programs actual work. "Despite sky-high deficits, taxpayers continue to watch their money go up in smoke funding expensive but ineffective government programs intended to reduce marijuana use," said a Taxpayers for Common Sense spokesman.
The report assesses the cost of the nation's anti-marijuana efforts and the effect those efforts have had on marijuana use and finds the program to have been a failure, noting that increased federal spending on marijuana has accompanied increased use.
The report singles out as particularly wasteful and ineffective marijuana arrests (which have not stemmed marijuana usage rates), the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's youth anti-drug media campaign, and student drug testing programs.
"The ultimate measure of the drug war's worth is its impact on drug usage," concludes the report. "By this standard, the federal marijuana program has fared poorly. Rather than continue to spend billions of dollars on the problem, it would be better for the U.S. government to get out of the marijuana business entirely."
The full report, which the MPP grants program helped to fund, is available here.
U.S. Department of Justice: Top cops say drug war is on the wrong track
The Justice Department's 2005 "National Drug Threat Assessment" concludes that not only is the war on marijuana a failure, but police officers overwhelmingly see methamphetamine as a much greater threat than marijuana. Asked to identify the greatest drug threat in their communities, only 12 percent of local law enforcement agencies named marijuana -- a figure that has been declining for years. In contrast, 36 percent named cocaine and 40 percent cited methamphetamine as the greatest threat -- despite the fact that marijuana use is massively more common and despite what the report describes as "marijuana's widespread and ready availability in the United States."
The report explains, "Such data indicate that, despite the volume of marijuana trafficked and used in this country, for many in law enforcement marijuana is much less an immediate problem than methamphetamine, for example, which is associated with more tangible risks such as violent users and toxic production sites." (Despite this, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has focused heavily on marijuana. In November 2002, ONDCP sent a letter to the nation's prosecutors declaring flatly, "Nationwide, no drug matches the threat posed by marijuana.")
The report also finds "no reports of a trend toward decreased availability" anywhere in the country ... Indeed, reporting from some areas has suggested that marijuana is easier for youths to obtain than alcohol or cigarettes."
Posted by springbrooke
at 11:29 PM PDT
Updated: Sunday, 16 October 2005 11:34 PM PDT
Saturday, 15 October 2005
couldnt have said it better
Mood:
 on fire
Topic: Clergy Abuse
The Catholic Church is at it again
By Riggs Fulmer
October 14, 2005
On Wednesday, the New York Times ran a front page article detailing the release of yet another garish laundry list of 75 years of deception, obfuscation, buggery and rape, this time in Los Angeles. Again we see a systematic cover-up of predatory sexual abuse, hidden behind semen-stained velvet curtains and sententious demands for forgiveness. It's the same sick, old story.
As I read the article I grew angrier and angrier. Many of my friends, teachers and co-workers are Catholics and are intelligent, honest people. Unlike their church "leaders," real Catholics use their faith as a base, a moral guide, a community with which to unite and celebrate the Divine. The Catholic Church as a temporal entity, on the other hand, uses its "faith" as a loophole, an abutment to crouch behind, a justification for the worst, lowest types of violence and dishonesty. To call this hypocrisy borders on euphemism. It's long past time that the Vatican live up to the ideals they promote.
Now that these acts and their concealment by Church administrators have been exposed, the same priests, bishops, and cardinals who turned a blind eye to the chronic rape of defenseless children, at the hands of those whom they should have been most able to trust, now ask us to do the same. Utterly and disgustingly unconcerned with the physical well-being of the least among their flocks over decades of sexual coercion, they now rush to guard the coffer doors when these selfsame victims rightfully demand that things be made right.
Understand that my anger is in no way directed towards Catholics, or even against Catholicism, although many of the tenets of that faith are, to me, insupportable. I'm angry with the Pope and his lackeys in the Vatican. The leaders of a religion whose deity said, quite explicitly, "It is easier for a camel (or rope, according to the Peshitta text) to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven," are living in wealth so opulent that it would make Paris Hilton blush, and their flock is supposed to accept it. After waiting almost half a century to apologize for their refusal to stand up and condemn the Holocaust, they turn around and elect an ex-Nazi as pontiff. And while AIDS and starvation move like a brush fire through the ranks of the poorest, these "celibate" aristocrats refuse to condone the use of condoms. Friends, come on now, is it really more sinful to fuck your wife while wearing a rubber than to rape little boys in a palace?
All right, I'll calm down. I have no doubt in God's capacity for infinite forgiveness, and it might surprise you, given this article, to find that I pray many times every day. However, I'd suggest that in this case, we leave the forgiveness to God, and take care of the accountability our own damn selves. There's a Sufi axiom to which we should take heed: Trust God, but tie up your camel. God gave you hands and an asshole; don't expect him to hand you the TP as well.
I'd propose two radical reforms to help alleviate this situation: allow priests to marry and allow women to be priests.
The first addresses a number of points. One huge impact would be on the role of priest as counselor in matters involving marriage and sexuality. It's ludicrous to think that a person who's been celibate for thirty years could substantively comment on such matters. But of equal importance would be the release of testosterone, and I'm not kidding here. An intense focus on sexuality while denying its release even through masturbation? Who could ever think this a healthy situation? We might as well appoint 13-year-old boys to guard the girls' locker-room showers!
And allowing women into the priesthood would not only rectify 2000 years of baseless sexism (maybe we can thank the first Letter to Timothy, 2:9-15 for that bullshit), but it would put those vastly less likely to succumb to impulses of pederasty and rape at the reins.
God is good, God is great, but her representatives at the Vatican and its subsidiaries are often neither. It's time the world's Catholics demand that their church look more to the spiritual and physical health of its congregation, and less to slavish obedience to archaic, bass-ackwards dogma or the turning of an indulgent blind eye when grotesque crimes are committed again and again.
When the Catholic Church honestly focuses on righteousness rather than self-righteousness, it will at last become the immense force for good, which has always been its potential.
Posted by springbrooke
at 9:50 PM PDT
Saturday, 14 May 2005
Take the Bishop Michael Driscoll Pedo-Quiz!
Mood:
on fire
Now Playing: Why isnt this guy in jail?
Topic: Clergy Abuse
by GUSTAVO ARELLANO (O.C.Weekly)
Driscoll
On May 6, Diocese of Boise Bishop Michael Driscoll apologized for his role in Orange County’s Roman Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal. Driscoll—who was in charge of priest personnel affairs for the Diocese of Orange from its 1976 inception until leaving for Idaho in 1999—made the stunning admission in a letter printed in the Idaho Catholic Register, stating he was “deeply sorry that the way we handled cases [in Orange County] allowed children to be victimized by permitting some priests to remain in ministry, for not disclosing their behavior to those who might be at risk, and for not monitoring their actions more closely.”
What’s with the mea culpa? Two words: damage control. On May 17, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge will issue a ruling determining which priest personnel files will become public as part of the record-breaking $100 million settlement reached earlier this year between the Orange diocese and sex-abuse victims. Church sources say Driscoll’s name is all over the documents, which molestation survivors claim will show the various cover-ups Orange diocesan officials executed while Driscoll served as chancellor and auxiliary bishop.
But why wait until May 17? Take the following quiz and discover for yourself Driscoll’s role in the rape of innocents!
1. Of the 21 priests the Orange diocese classifies as having “credible” molestation allegations, how many worked under Driscoll’s watch?
a. Half
b. Eight
c. All but one
d. 13
2. How many molestation lawsuits did the Orange diocese settle during Driscoll’s term?
a. None
b. Six
c. 30
d. Unknown
3. What famous county pedophile once testified that Driscoll asked him to stop molesting girls?
a. Gerardo Tanilong
b. John Lenihan
c. The president of the local NAMBLA chapter
d. Ted Llanos
4. After the diocese settled a 1991 lawsuit filed against John Lenihan, what disciplinary actions did Driscoll take?
a. Made Lenihan go to psychological counseling
b. Transferred him out of St. Boniface in Anaheim to another parish
c. Nothing
d. Defrocked Lenihan
5. When Siegfried Widera transferred to Orange County from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in 1976, Milwaukee Bishop William Cousins told Driscoll that Widera once had “a moral problem with a boy.” What was the moral problem?
a. Just a mix-up, sir—the boy’s shorts accidentally fell to his ankles
b. Showed him pornography and gave him alcohol
c. Was arrested on a molestation charge
d. Told him the Freemasons and Jews kept Pope Paul VI in a Vatican basement
6. In a 1991 deposition for a civil trial against Eleuterio Ramos, Driscoll claimed he had only heard secondhand complaints about Ramos molesting boys. During that trial, who testified under oath that they went directly to Driscoll with their concerns about Ramos?
a. A priest
b. A church librarian
c. A parochial teacher
d. All of the above
7. When a parent revealed to Driscoll in the mid-1980s that Father Robert Foley had molested her boy on a Boy Scout trip, Driscoll:
a. Sent Foley to an Indian reservation as he did three other pedo-priests
b. Sent him to Liverpool, England, along with a letter to church leaders across the pond that the parent “has threatened to go to the police” and Foley “is in jeopardy of arrest and possible imprisonment if he remains here.”
c. Sent him away on vacation until things cooled down as he did Andrew Christian Andersen
d. Sent him to Tijuana as he did Ramos
8. After Boise diocesan officials found child pornography images on a priest’s computer in 2002, Driscoll:
a. Suspended the priest
b. Transferred him to a clinic
c. Sent him to Orange County
d. Upgraded his connection to DSL
Answers: 1. c, 2. d—six are known, but the Orange diocese has a habit of settling suits sub rosa, 3. b, 4. c, 5. c, 6. d, 7. b, 8. c
Posted by springbrooke
at 12:53 AM PDT
counter
Posted by springbrooke
at 12:43 AM PDT
Monday, 21 February 2005
Foxes make good henhouse guards and reporters!
Mood:
 don't ask
Now Playing: Good news! less than a thousand new abuse cases this year (reported!)
Topic: Clergy Abuse
More than 1,000 people reported to civil or church authorities in 2004 that they had been sexually abused as children by Roman Catholic priests, the second-largest number of allegations for any year on record, the U.S. bishops' conference said yesterday.
During 2004, the church spent $157 million on legal settlements and other costs related to sex abuse. It received allegations against 756 priests and deacons, half of whom had previously been named in similar accusations. It temporarily removed more than 300 clergy members and permanently defrocked 148, church officials said.
Kathleen L. McChesney, head of the Catholic Church's child protection office, and Bishop William S. Skylstad present a report on sexual abuse cases. (Adele Starr -- AP)
The new statistics, which appeared in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' second annual report on the sexual abuse crisis in the church, showed the heavy toll that the four-year-old crisis continues to take on the church's finances, its clergy and the trust of its laity.
The figures released yesterday bring the total number of alleged victims since 1950 to 11,750, the number of accused priests to 5,148, and the church's expenses to more than $840 million. Three dioceses have declared bankruptcy.
But the 2004 figures do not fundamentally alter the patterns found last year in a major study of sexual abuse in the church from 1950 to 2002. As in the past, about 80 percent of the 1,083 victims who came forward in 2004 are male, and the majority said they were between the ages of 10 and 14 when the abuse began. Most of the alleged incidents took place in the 1960s and '70s.
Also as they have in the past, victims' advocates and church officials disagreed on how to interpret the figures. Kathleen L. McChesney, a former FBI official who is leaving this month as head of the church's Office of Child and Youth Protection, said at a news conference that 22 incidents, or 2 percent of all the allegations reported last year, were fresh cases involving abuse of minors that occurred in the previous 12 months. She hailed that as evidence that the number of new cases "is declining."
David Clohessy of St. Louis, national director of the support group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, told reporters outside the church's news conference that 22 fresh incidents is hardly "cause for joy." In fact, he said, it is probably just a small fraction of the true number, because last year's major study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice found that child victims typically suffer in silence for 20 to 30 years before reporting clergy abuse.
Interpretation of the statistics was also complicated by a lack of data for 2003. That is because the John Jay study compiled statistics for each year from 1950 to 2002. Then the bishops voted to update the study annually beginning in 2004.
The peak number of allegations reported in any prior year on record was in 2001, when the abuse scandal erupted in Boston. More than 3,300 alleged victims came forward that year. In 2002, the number of allegations dropped to about 750, about the same number that was reported annually in the mid-1990s.
McChesney also said yesterday that 96 percent of the 195 U.S. dioceses were found in a second annual round of audits to be fully in compliance with the sex abuse policy, known as the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and adopted by the bishops in Dallas three years ago. The archdioceses of Washington and Baltimore and the dioceses of Richmond and Arlington were among those in compliance.
McChesney said the church spent $20 million in 2004 on efforts to prevent sex abuse, including police background checks on 32,073 priests and more than 750,000 lay people who work with children in Catholic schools and parishes.
Barbara Blaine of Chicago, president of the Survivors Network, said that the audits are largely irrelevant because they focus on whether each diocese has strict policies in place, rather than determining how well the policies are carried out.
"Every diocese in America last year was cited, even praised, by auditors for three examples of ineffective steps: employee codes of conduct, formal communication plans and having a point person to take incoming abuse allegations," Blaine said. "Is there one priest who molested one girl because he'd never read an employee code of conduct telling him child rape is wrong?"
Blaine and other advocates said the most effective step bishops could take would be to release the names of all priests who face credible allegations, which has been done in fewer than a dozen dioceses.
They also accuse some bishops of trying to evade the core promise in the Dallas Charter, which required permanent removal of any priest who has committed sexual abuse involving a minor. According to the report, at least 42 priests "remain in active ministry pending a preliminary investigation" of abuse charges.
McChesney acknowledged that the church has no policy on how long a preliminary investigation should take or how it should proceed. "Many victims/survivors, accused clergy, review board members, and the laity remain confused about the exact procedures that are to be followed," the report said.
The president of the U.S. bishops' conference, Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., said he would not "second-guess the decisions of individual bishops" but that, in his opinion, "if there is a credible allegation of abuse, the priests [should be] immediately removed."
The figures on abuse allegations released yesterday included no breakdowns by diocese and no names of priests or victims. More than 90 percent of all U.S. dioceses voluntarily reported their abuse statistics for 2004, but 71 percent of the 158 Catholic religious orders in the country, such as Jesuits and Franciscans, provided their data.
Posted by springbrooke
at 12:04 AM PST
Sunday, 20 February 2005
Statement Regarding Bishops' Report on Diocese Surveys 2005
Mood:
on fire
Now Playing: RC Spin - Jesus would freak!
Topic: Clergy Abuse
CONTACT
David Clohessy of St. Louis MO, SNAP National Director 314 566 9790
Barbara Blaine of Chicago IL, SNAP Founder and President 312 399 4747
Janet Patterson of Conway Springs KS, SNAP Natl. Board Member 316 772 6537 cell
Peter Isely of Milwaukee WI, SNAP National Board Member 414 429 7259 cell
Mark Serrano of Leesburg VA, SNAP National Board Member 703 727 4940 cell
Friday, February 18, 2005
Part 1
Our message today is very simple.
First, prudent people will wait for proof before assuming these so-called reforms are working.
Second, much of what's being touted as reform is irrelevant or ineffective
Third, the crux of this crisis fundamentally remains unaddressed.
Before we talk specifics, take a minute and remember how all this came about.
Bishops have devised the rules of play, hired the umpires, chosen the players, and in about an hour, will declare that they're winning.
They wrote the Charter, they hired their own so-called watchdogs, they decide who gets interviewed and who gets heard.
This is crucial - prior to January 2002, each bishop was in charge of handling sex abuse in his diocese. Today, each bishop essentially still is.
Now, to our first message:
A lot of time and effort has been focused on abuse in the church in the last two years. A lot of time and effort went into the bishops' presentation you'll soon see.
There's one obvious question: Is all this making a difference?
The frank answer is: It's way too soon to tell.
The prudent answer is: We should assume, for now, it has not.
We owe it to innocent children and vulnerable adults to insist on hard evidence and solid data before determining progress is being made. Given what we now know about the complicity of bishops in the cover up, to do anything else is simply reckless.
We owe it to innocent children and vulnerable adults to remember that motion doesn't equal progress, and that activity doesn't equal change.
(The bishops themselves admit they have no idea if their efforts are effective. On the USCCB web site, in an FAQ section, it asks: Does the Charter mandate an effectiveness or quality measurement? Their answer: the Charter does not require an effectiveness or quality measurement at this time. Whatever they're doing, they are NOT measuring effectiveness.)
Our position may seem odd. Again, a lot of energy has been focused on this horrific scandal. There have been mountains of paperwork, policies, procedures and press releases.
Has this affected performance? On the whole, we will assume not. We hope Catholics will assume not. And we beg you to assume not, we beg you to be cautious
Keep in mind that it wasn't a lack of paperwork, policies, procedures and press releases that caused thousands of priests to rape and sodomize tens of thousands of kids. So it won't be paperwork, policies, procedures and press releases that solve this crisis.
How can we claim that little has changed? Because history, psychology, common sense and daily anecdotal evidence are on our side.
History is on our side. History tells us that institutions change very slowly. This is especially true of very old, rigid, secretive, hierarchical, male-dominated systems. Only the most naive would believe that decades-old, maybe centuries-old patterns could possibly be dramatically changed overnight.
Psychology is on our side. Psychology tells us people change when they experience unpleasant consequences for their behavior. Bishops tell us that on the whole, donations aren't down, mass attendance isn't down, and seminary enrollment isn't down. We've seen not a shred of evidence that bishops are fundamentally suffering or being forced to change their lifestyles or are losing their power.
Common sense is on our side. Common sense tells us that if the upper management of an organization remains essentially intact after an enormous scandal, little will change. One or two bishops have fired their hardball defense lawyers. A few bishops have fired their PR person. Some bishops have died or retired. But the stability within the upper ranks of the church is remarkable. Basically, the same men are in charge now that were in charge 3, 5, even 10 years ago. How can anyone really believe things have changed much.
Daily evidence is on our side. Every day, we hear from survivors who continue to be treated insensitively. Every day, we see bishops parsing phrases and splitting hairs and playing word games, rather than just telling the truth. Every day, we see church leaders doing the bare minimum, instead of doing what Jesus would have us to, to reach out to the lost and wounded sheep. Every day, we see Catholic officials using Catholics' donations to keep long-secret documents about cover ups hidden from public view.
(This isn't, by the way, anecdotal evidence. It's hard evidence. It's in the newspapers nearly every day. Read the Abuse Tracker. You'll see it.)
There have, of course, been many bad headlines. A few dozen dioceses and their insurers have paid settlements. A few criminals have gone to jail. In the corporate world, the non-profit world, or the government world, this scenario often produces change. But the church, remember, is a monarchy. For the most part, monarchs are unaffected by bad press, some financial losses, and a few underlings being sent to jail.
So to lay Catholics today, we say withhold judgment, don't assume, be skeptical, stay vigilant, safeguard youngsters and demand reform.
Part 2
Our second message today is that much of what's being touted as reform is irrelevant or ineffective.
Let's start with the ineffective. There have been plenty. Putting windows in confessionals is one of my personal favorites. Is a window like this bad? Of course not. Is it effective at stopping a child molester? Of course not.
Every diocese in America last year was cited, even praised, by auditors for three examples of ineffective steps: employee codes of conduct, formal communications plans, and having a "point person" to take incoming abuse allegations.
Is there one priest who molested one girl because he'd never read an employee code of conduct telling him child rape is wrong?
Is there one bishop who covered up abuse because he'd never read a formal diocesan communications plan telling him to be honest.
Is there one father who kept quiet about his son's victimization because he couldn't determine who the proper church "point person" was who handled abuse allegations?
If we pause to really consider these seemingly positive steps, many of them are revealed as largely superfluous.
Now let's look at relevancy. Much of what's being praised as reform is, in fact, largely irrelevant.
Fingerprinting employees is good. Doing background checks is good.
But 99% of the people these affect aren't part of the crisis. They aren't now and never have been. They are lay people.
The crisis involves abusive clergy and complicit bishops, not lay people.
So literally 99% of those being fingerprinted and checked have never been part of the problem.
Consider this: because molesters are shrewd, laws are archaic, statutes are rigid, prosecutors are timid, and bishops are secretive - because of all this, very few priests are criminally charged. Even fewer are prosecuted. Even fewer are found guilty.
So a tiny number of priests will ever have criminal backgrounds that a background check or fingerprinting might detect.
If these steps - fingerprinting, doing background checks, training staff - if these steps had been in place ten or 15 years ago, would they have prevented kids from being molested or bishops from covering up the crimes? In a few cases, certainly. In most cases, they would not.
We're not saying these steps are bad. We're saying the opposite. These steps are good. But they are largely irrelevant to the crisis in the church.
These steps will no doubt prevent a few molesters from becoming parochial school teachers or bus drivers. But, again, they are peripheral, not central, preventing abusive clergy and complicit bishops from causing more pain.
Look at today's AP story. This is the lead, quoted verbatim: "The Boston Archdiocese has begun running annual criminal background checks on more than 60,000 priests, employees, volunteers to prevent recurrence of the clergy sex abuse scandal."
Think about this. Again, literally 99% of those being checked are NOT clergy. So how does this "prevent recurrence of the clergy abuse scandal."
It will prevent some abuse. It will have little effect on clergy sex abuse.
Fundamentally, our beef is not with some of the measures being taken. Our beef is with how church leaders are deliberately overselling these measures. They are washing the Pinto, vacuuming the Pinto, adding a CD player and an air freshener, and saying "Viola, now it's a Cadillac."
That's wrong. That's designed not to prevent abuse, but to prevent worrying. That's designed to bring complacency, not to bring reform.
But what about the Review Board and their "big stick," this once a year report on how bishops are doing? Isn't that a deterrent to backsliding?
Let's be real. After enduring dozens of scandalous media reports about horrific abuses, is any bishop going to change his behavior because he fears a headline that says "Diocese abuse training program is only 75% finished?"
The crux of the so-called accountability mechanism -- the Review Board and the so-called "audits" - is all carrot and no stick.
Here's the bottom line:
Even the best of these steps are belated, begrudging, and too premature to be called effective at this point.
Some of these steps help, but help just a little.
Some of these steps help, but almost strictly with lay people, not with priests and bishops.
Other steps don't help, and are distractions.
They can be dangerous distractions, especially when they are depicted as substantive reforms and thus lead to premature complacency.
Do these steps take away the power of bishops? No. That's what remains to be addressed -- the power and accountability of bishops.
Part 3
Our third message today is that the crux of this crisis fundamentally remains unaddressed.
At the risk of oversimplification, here's why all these crimes and cover ups happened. In five simple words: bishops have too much power. Period. They rebuffed victims, hid secrets, transferred predators, warned no one, evaded prosecution, and decieved their flocks . . . because they could get by with it. They have too much power. That has not changed.
And today - despite the lawsuits, the bad headlines, the flurry of activity, the policies, the procedures, and the paperwork - bishops still have too much power.
Does anyone in this room really think that Cardinal Egan's power to deceive has been curtailed because the Charter tells him he must have a diocesan communications plan that pledges openness?
Does anyone really think that Cardinal Rigali's power to ignore victims has been curtailed because the Charter tells him he should be more compassionate?
Does anyone really think that Cardinal Mahony's power to hide secrets has been curtailed because the Charter talks of transparency?
Does anyone really think that Cardinal George's power to keep an admitted perpetrator in active ministry around teenagers, as he did until we exposed him last week, does anyone really think that Cardinal George's power to reassign this predator has been curtailed by the Charter's vague assurances of zero tolerance?
So if the issue is power, and power hasn't shifted, what can be done?
How, in a monarchy, can power be taken away from men who abused and continue abusing it?
There are two simple, proven ways.
The first is legislation. We don't let Enron police itself. We can't let America's bishops police themselves. And the most important legislation is reforming the archaic, rigid and dangerously restrictive statutes of limitations. When sex crimes are handled by the independent professionals in law enforcement, not by bishops, everyone is safer.
The second is getting the names of the predators. Knowledge is power, and when we gain the knowledge of who's dangerous and who's been harboring the dangerous, then we can protect our families.
We in SNAP firmly believe that this is where the focus needs to be. If real change will ever happen, it will be because bishops lose the power to handle sex crimes in house and lose the power to keep the names of molesters secret. That's where our prevention efforts have been and will continue to be focused.
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
www.snapnetwork.org
Sorry for the lenght but it pretty much says it all
LASURVIVOR
_________________
Bring No Harm !
Posted by springbrooke
at 12:01 AM PST
Monday, 3 January 2005
The harm caused by Drug abuse
Mood:
on fire
Now Playing: Government promisess drug impacts
Topic: War on Drugs (and kids)
The reasons oft cited for choosing against casual drug use are loss of family, loss of income, damage to self respect and medical impacts.
If you are prosecuted for even a tiny amount of arguably harmless possession, the government will guarantee that these come to pass. They will isolate you and stigmatize your family, you will loose all economic status until the end of your trial / punishment, then you will be required to identify yourself as unemployable to any potential employer. You will be demeaned, humiliated, dehumanized and castigated as a debtor to society and exposed to the most violent and unmanagable cauldron of disease found anywhere on theis planet while incarcerated.
Risks of drug use? your government guarantees them! Rethink the cost of the inept "War on Drugs" who is benefiting?
Posted by springbrooke
at 9:37 AM PST
Tuesday, 13 July 2004
the RICO Petition
Mood:
on fire
Topic: Clergy Abuse
We are asking you to join thousands of other Americans and raise your voice. The Rico Campaign for Survivor Justice Petition http://www.petitiononline.com/qd3dvoo/petition.html will bring the Roman Catholic Church in the United States to accountability through a Federal RICO investigation. Please forward this information to your mailing list, colleagues, associates, family and friends.
The Rico Campaign for Survivor Justice Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/qd3dvoo/petition.html
Press Release
"Ex-Nun Calls for Rico Investigation of Catholic Church"
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/6/prweb134840.htm
Thank you.
Pauline Salvucci
CONTACT:
pauline@voicesofoutrage.com
Voices of Outrage: Where's the Justice?
http://www.voicesofoutrage.com
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing - Edmund Burke
Posted by springbrooke
at 10:51 PM PDT
Tuesday, 25 May 2004
Economics of the Drug War
During alcohol prohibition (1920-33) the United States changed from a beer and wine society to a bourbon and gin society. The reason? Alcohol prohibition created incentives for bootleggers to smuggle the most potent form of liquor possible. Like modern day drug traffickers, risk-taking criminal organizations were compelled to traffic in products that provided the most bang for the buck. Why risk smuggling a keg of beer when a case of whiskey brings higher profits without incurring additional risk? This phenomena explains why consumers in drug producing countries like Peru and Afghanistan typically use illicit drug crops in their natural form as they have for centuries (chewing of coca leaves and smoking of raw opium), while Western consumer countries consume drugs in their most potent form available.
In addition to promoting the smuggling of illicit drugs in their most potent form possible, the drug war's distortion of basic supply and demand dynamics renders otherwise worthless crops extremely profitable. Marijuana is a weed and grows like one. If legal, growing marijuana would be less profitable than farming tomatoes. Yet in major urban areas marijuana is worth its weight in gold at the retail level. The drug war essentially provides price supports for organized crime. Forcibly limiting the supply of drugs while demand remains relatively constant only increases the profitability of drug trafficking. Street level dealers and occasionally drug kingpins are routinely busted and incarcerated, but the long-term impact on drug availability is negligible. The obscene profits to be made trafficking and selling illegal drugs guarantees replacement dealers.
Ironically, the self-professed champions of the free market in Congress are either incapable or unwilling to apply basic economic principles to drug policy. This ignorance of economic forces, deliberate or otherwise, is not sustainable over the long-term. Despite a steady decline in violent crime throughout the 1990's, the U.S. now has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with drug offenses accounting for the majority of federal incarcerations. The enormous cost associated with maintaining the world's largest prison system is often cited by drug war bureaucrats as reason to throw more money at the problem.
In January 2002 the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) trumpeted the release of a study titled The Economic Costs of Drug Abuse in the United States. The study tallies the cost of incarcerating drug offenders, supply-side eradication, the HIV epidemic, and prohibition-related violence. The total is then presented as "costs of drug abuse." Consider the HIV epidemic. Centers for Disease Control researchers estimate that 58% of AIDS cases among women and 36% of overall cases are linked to injection drug use or sex with partners who inject drugs. This easily preventable public health crisis is a direct result of zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean syringes. Yet government bureaucrats would have the public believe that, like the cost of incarcerating record numbers of drug offenders, this unintended consequence justifies more of the same harmful policies.
Using new accounting procedures in 2003, the annual ONDCP Drug Strategy, for the first time ever, concealed billions of dollars spent on incarceration, military activities and other costs of the drug war by excluding these categories from the budget and including inflated expenditures on treatment services. Through this ONDCP was able to bring their enforcement to treatment ratios more into line with public sentiment (two-thirds of Americans want treatment, not incarceration, for nonviolent drug offenders). In reality, however, America's drug policy uses millions of tax-payer dollars to perpetuate the same failed reliance on law enforcement and interdiction with relatively minor focus on education and treatment.
Posted by springbrooke
at 5:06 AM PDT
Wednesday, 19 May 2004
Survivors of sexual abuse by priests in living hell
IT consumed her entire life, the priest's hand on her body creating a permanent tattoo that penetrated deeply into her soul.
She couldn't concentrate on her work, and her business regularly faltered. Her sleep fragmented routinely under the weight of her nightmares. Memories of being sexually abused by a revered member of the local clergy haunted her, and they formed barriers between her and the church doorway, between her and relationships with men.
She developed headaches, muscle pains, stomach distress and chest pressure that defied repeated diagnostic divinations for physical causes. Well into her 40s, she felt that her life had been stolen from her decades earlier by the popular priest who repeatedly violated her young body.
The woman who told me this story is but one of thousands of adults living with the trauma of childhood sexual abuse suffered at the hands of Catholic clergymen in the United States. Two studies reported in the Washington Post on February 26 indicated that this current epidemic of child sexual abuse has involved at least 4 percent of all Roman Catholic priests who, between 1950 and 2002, allegedly victimized 10,667 children. And although already alarming, these numbers are considered to be underestimates because they depended upon self-reporting by American bishops.
Like many other victims of this pedophilia scandal, this woman bore her trauma in silence, unconsciously forcing her body to express the suffering she could not voice. The shroud of silence that characteristically drapes over this traumatic experience is a complex weave, but a central thread is the tendency of these victims to blame themselves. Victims often bear the stigma of shame, and they fear being rebuked and discredited if they dare to criticize priests for ungodly acts.
The health care system often fails these victims as well. Despite multiple presentations to the medical establishment with undiagnosable conditions, this woman never divulged her history of abuse with a doctor. No health care professional had inquired about that possibility until a gynecologic nurse practitioner presented her with a standard questionnaire soliciting Information about prior sexual trauma.
This deplorable pedophilia scandal should remind us all about the devastating long-term consequences of childhood sexual abuse in general. It should rouse in us a compassionate awareness about the myriad difficulties that its victims may experience. As the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology points out, adults with histories of sexual abuse often manifest a host of psychological, behavioral, and physical symptoms. Physical complaints commonly include chronic pain syndromes, various gastrointestinal or musculoskeletal symptoms, sleep and eating disorders, and sexual dysfunction. Prevalent psychological and behavioral dysfunctions include depression, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, self-injury and dissociative states.
In the medical setting, I would argue in favor of all patients being queried about any prior sexual abuse and trauma. If we limit our screening only to people with symptoms that defy medical diagnosis, we will miss a great number of opportunities to identify victims of abuse who might benefit from therapeutic interventions. In fact, a study published in 1993 in the Journal of the American Board of Family Practice revealed that, when proactively screened, about 40 percent of women in a primary care setting reported having experienced some form of childhood sexual contact, and 1 in 6 of those women had been raped as a child.
Counseling and psychotherapy can prove to be a godsend for adult survivors of childhood sexual trauma according to Rosemary Ehat, a psychotherapist in Berkeley with an interest in the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. She reports that such survivors typically feel shame, guilt, self-loathing, and depression. She says that "rather than realizing that the shame belongs to the perpetrator, the survivor feels bad and somehow tainted. Consequently, some wait 10, 20, or even 50 years before breaking the chains of silence that kept them locked in isolation."
In addition to the physical and psychological expressions of their abuse, "these people also lose their religious and spiritual home" and "they go on with their lives but feel burdened by the secret and the feelings of betrayal and abandonment."
She also suggests that a healing and supportive environment may be found through participation in support groups like SNAP (Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, Web site: http://www.survivorsnetwork.org/
The alarming magnitude of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic priests as revealed in the new studies and the known high prevalence of abuse within the general public recommend that we vigorously speak out against this appalling and widespread crime. That we lend our voices to the victims, to help them break the silence that insulates them from opportunities for healing. That as health care workers we assume a proactive stance in remaining mindful of the ways that their suffering can be expressed, physically and psychologically.
As Ms. Ehat reminds us, "Lifting the veil of secrecy and cover-ups is the first step in bringing about both private and communal healing.
Kate Scannell practices medicine with Kaiser Permanente and authored the book, "Death of the Good Doctor."
Posted by springbrooke
at 12:19 AM PDT
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