Friday, April 23, 2010

Catholic Church Sex Abuse; why is church getting away with it ..?

Is it just me or did the whole society lost all its sanity and stopped worrying about catholic church sex abuse victims.

Imagine a registered sex offender moving into your community. And think about it from a parent's perspective. Yeah, we'll be worried. There are many laws restricting the housing opportunities for these sex offenders. It's understandable that there're laws restricting their location, movement et al.

What's really bothering me or making me angry is, why's not society treating these child molesting priests with the same law. Why didn't District Attorneys arrest these priests yet? Why's is Catholic church is getting away with this? Is it cause of the religion? We don't even let an average sex offender move into your community, how can you let these priests get away who had molested many kids for many years at multiple churches.

Could you imagine any other Business establishment get away with this kind of child abuse and sexual abuse? No. Any person who had attended HR training about Sexual Harassment would know how law can be used against them even if they're not guilty. But why can't the same law be used on these child molesting priests and church Cardinals who had failed to report them to police?

Here's a hypothetical scenario. Few kids're abused at a Day care center and once the news goes out, Police and Human Services will crack down on the facility and close it down. I don't anticipate that kids will be sent back to that school unless it's run by different people. But after all these years of child abuse, these churches are in operation and no arrests were made. (as much as I recall from reading)

I understand that all these victims who came out for justice in the last decade were kids when sex abuse happened. These abuse complaints go back to 1950s also. what I failed to understand is, why're these not reported to police at that time? Why're chruch bishops and cardinals looking for Vatican approval or action to move forward on these issues. You don't need to hear from God or superior voice to tell you that any sexual act committed on a child is a grave sin and heinous crime. And when the job you took is to pass the God's message to the people, aren't you committing crimes by not stopping these crimes?

Putting the Law Enforcement part aside, catholic church didn't take any action to prevent these repeat offender priest from interacting with kids. If a priest was get caught abusing kids he was sent to some therapy program and wasn't posted near to kids. But that's just for time being. Umpteen times these priest were sent to another archdiocese where they started interacting with kids again.

Now to the role of Vatican. Forget about punishing these Priests or reporting them to local authorities. Vatican even refused to defrock few accused priests. Vatican mostly remained silent about all the allegations that present Pope didn't act on complaints from churches in USA. Pope isn't responding to the issue. I'd short stop of advising Vatican on this. But if the whole catholic faith in the world looks for his word on religion, he better stand up to it and clean up this mess.

If you're not feeling angry and disturbed yet, read about this priest from Wisconsin who got away. He sexually abused deaf kids for almost 25 years. And he died as a priest. How heinous human being are you, if you had abused innocent deaf children for 25 years. And I wonder how did his superiors sleep every night with knowledge of him being around children.

Being a theist, this is a very uncomfortable position to be in. All these priests and fake Sadhus in India are escaping. This ain't good for Society or religion.

Here's wikipedia article.

Peace.

P.S
It's a strange society, we live in today. Circa Feb'09 whole USA got outraged and angered that Chris Brown assaulted and wounded his girl friend Rihanna. Facebook and social media decided. "Chris Brown is a douchebag". But every day hundreds of domestic violence incidents happen all around us. Hundreds of ordinary females get assaulted by abusive partners. No body gives shit about them. Most likely, society wouldn't really care about this scandal until a child celebrity come out as a victim or something similar happens. I hope I'm wrong.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Warning went unheeded

The more we look back into our lack of oversight and regulation, it becomes more clear how many warnings we missed and how much our leaders, economists pushed us into this turmoil. After all, hindsight is 20 20.

I watched this Frontline Documentary, and it clearly showed us a whistleblower who wanted to regulate derivatives trading. Like many whistleblowers, she was crushed. She got pummeled in senate hearings. Since she couldn't pass the reform she resigned from her office. Exactly after 10 years, wall street crashed burning away the savings and retirement money of millions of Americans.



for those who couldn't watch the whole 55 mins, here's the overview.

Brooksley Born was the chairwoman of CFTC in Clinton administration. In 1998 she looked at the lack of regulation on OTC derivative trading and tried to put a leash on it. She was pushed back by the trio of Alan Greenspan, Robin Rubin and Larry Summers. After senate and congress committee hearings Free market proponents prevailed. Brooksley left her job.

Soon, a big Hedgefund LTCM went under and Fed orchestrated a bailout with the help of big banks. This is the exact scenario which Broosley warned the congress about. Policy makers missed this big warning. And we all know the rest of the story.

But if we had acted on this warning we could've avoided (wishful thinking) this implosion. But trio didn't want our free markets hindered by regulation just for the sake of regulation.

Actually, except the tail end of last decade, Laissez-faire worked flawlessly. Atleast seemingly. Greenspan's low interest rates, Housing bubble kept everybody happy. Larry kudlow said that there's no such thing called hosuing bubble. (He's an Epic failure, I wonder why he's still employed) And then the Bear Sterns bankruptcy, Lehman's brothers bankruptcy. Financial system fell into fear and Panic. I wonder, what's the Free Market's proponent's response for this.

Being a fan boy of Frontline, I can go on and on about their Journalistic virtues and how they're the torch bearers' of the Fair journalism. But I've to appreciate their story telling style one more time. I liked the way they end their story.

Robin Ruben went to lead Citibank and it got 100Billion Tax payer money as a bailout. Alan Greenspan is every where from Senate hearings and Think tank meetings defending his tenure as Fed chairman. Some how people are not buying it.

What bothers me is the same people who caused this meltdown are in Obama administration. Larry summers is chief advisor for Obama and Tim Geithner is the Treasury secretary. These two are the proteges of Robin Ruben and now these are the people who're gonna protect us from another meltdown. Hmm, I guess this isn't the Change we're expecting.

Alan Greenspan got too much credit for the last two decades. He's called as wizard, maestro, rockstar for the booming 90s and 2000s. Bush even presented him with Presidential Medal of honor. But now truth is slowly emerging and his legacy is at risk now. He agreed that he's partly to blame for this meltdown but also blamed greed of bankers for this. But hey, Regulation is used to control greed and prevent people from doing stupid things.

I have some beef with Ayn Rand philosophy which I'm dying to write for the last few months. I didn't read any of her books yet but I got the gist of her work. She's a libertarian and wouldn't want a bit of regulation on Market. For all those ardent worshipers of Ayn Rand, this is my question. Last two decades of US Market is what Ayn Rand asked for, and we ended up in this Abyss. How exactly are they gonna defend her objectivism.

Ayn Rand's work gained popularity and creed cause of the times she lived. Fear of communism made Libertarianism glamorous. But all good things will come to an end, same with the Ayn Rand's Libertarianism influence. No follower of'er is more powerful/influential than Alan Greenspan. And he couldn't prove that her principles actually work.

Anything is moderation is good, either free market or Regulation.

Now, how can we prevent another turmoil? Even today Wall st is minting billions with derivatives trading. And here's the kicker. This time they're using TARP funds for that. That's tax payers money. Some thing is seriously wrong.

Chris Dodd, since you decided not to run for another term of senate, please pay back to American public at least once. Try to pass a real financial regulation reform. Not a toothless one which is before Congress now.

And yes, please bring back Glass-Steagall act.

Peace.

P.S. As economists and historians are questioning Greenspan's Legacy now, could they also question Milton Friedman's theories. It wouldn't hurt.