Down and Out in Milwaukee

Damn, I feel bad about it. I mean, I know how it is to be broke, having lost my job a couple years ago. Sure, I get by with a few teaching gigs, selling some (very few) books, and the occasional odd job—but job security? Insurance? Paid vacations? 401K plans? Ah, happy days….

So I sympathize, I really do, with the Archdiocese of Milwaukee because guess what? They’re broke, too! And not only that, but they’ve had to pay a cartload of money in attorney fees—the Miami Herald says the tab adds up to 12 million bucks just to declare themselves broke. Think that’s bad? WISN.com puts the figure at 19 million.

So they’re scrounging—just getting by, those good guys in the Roman collars up there in cold Milwaukee. Had to take out a mortgage in 2006 on the Lake Michigan headquarters. Tried to find you a picture of it, but all I could find was Google Map. Take a look!

Well, they got the mortgage to pay off ten pesky victims of sexual abuse in 2006—settlement was almost 16.7 million. And now the headquarters is underwater—no, not the lake, but the debt is higher than the value of the property.

So of course the then archbishop of Milwaukee, Timothy A. Dolan—now Cardinal of New York, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and everybody’s favorite—had to do a smooth move, which he did. He wrote off to Rome in 2007 asking permission to transfer almost 57 million dollars to a cemetery fund. And—as revealed last summer…well, here’s The New York Times:

“I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.” The Vatican approved the request in five weeks, the files show.

OK—let’s take the tongue out of the cheek. Five weeks? FIVE FRIGGING WEEKS! When I, following the several cases of misconduct, have routinely seen correspondence about abusive priests between bishops and the Vatican that extends for DECADES! One of the worst abusers in the Catholic church, Marcial Maciel—a guy who actually had six children by two women, suffered from morphine addiction, and abused at least nine boys—never got thrown out of the church at all. Nor, by the way, did he ever apologize. So five weeks to approve a money transfer in 2007? That’s fucking outrageous.

Well, they may have acted so swiftly because of words that Dolan had written to Ratzinger in 2003; were the words still ringing through the chambers of the Vatican?

“As victims organize and become more public, the potential for true scandal is very real,” he wrote in such a request in 2003 to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican office charged with handling abuse cases until he became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

So almost 57 million bucks were transferred to a fund for cemeteries. And then what happened? Predictably, in 2011, the archdiocese declared bankruptcy, joining ten other dioceses around the country to have done so in the last ten years.

But that settlement for the 16.7 million-buck settlement back in 2006? It was just for paying off the victims of two priests. The real scope of the problem was much bigger:

At least 45 Milwaukee priests face sex abuse accusations. One priest in particular was accused of personally molesting close to 200 deaf boys.  

So all of those victims—well, some of them—got together and filed a civil suit. And then what happened. Here’s The New York Times again:

Since then, negotiations between the two sides in Milwaukee have broken down: the church has argued that about 400 of the 575 cases are invalid, while lawyers for the victims have accused the church of hiding assets.

Hiding assets would mean that transfer to the cemetery fund: very logically, the victims of abuse went to court, alleging that the transfer was—in legal terms—a fraudulent conveyance. At first, they got a bankruptcy judge to agree that it was, then a U.S. District judge—Rudolph T. Randa—came out in July of 2013 and said the deal was kosher, citing the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. Obviously, liberal minds were appalled: here’s thinkprogress.com:

Randa concludes that the church has a constitutional right to shield its funds. By raising his opinion to constitutional status, Randa effectively strips Congress of its ability to correct his sweeping interpretation of the law.  

(Oh, by the way, Randa’s parents and many relatives are buried in Milwaukee Catholic cemeteries—but that wasn’t, he felt, a cause for recusing himself…)

OK—so we’ve gotten up to last summer. Today? Well, the archdiocese came up two days ago with a plan to pay 4 million bucks to the 125 victims that it admits were abused. Right—so where is this relatively trivial sum coming from? Here’s Yahoo News:

The archdiocese will raise $2 million in a loan from a cemetery trust fund created under New York Cardinal and former Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

Yup, Dear Reader, the archdiocese is proposing to pay two million dollars out of the same fund into which they had transferred 57 million dollars seven years earlier.

It is a brazen as it is depraved. And both the depravity and the brazenness have been taken to astronomical, never-before-heard-of, proportions.

Anybody Got 70 Billion Out There?

I know that I was reading it at 3:45, because that’s when I sent it off to myself in an email. Bloggers do that, since a large part of my day now is spent wondering what, if anything, there might be to write about. The problem? Much of what seems perfectly splendid in the middle of the night looks a bit different in the colder light of day.

And you don’t really want to know, do you, that Puerto Rico is on the brink of financial doom? Why? Because for decades, every governor of either party has followed essentially the same strategy: hire as many people as you can, pay them marginally, allow them to do as little as possible, and borrow money to pay for it all. So what happened?

Well, the chicken came home to roost, and the Washington Post reported yesterday we’re 70 billion bucks in debt. Cancel that—I just checked the headline, and it’s not even “70 billion,” it’s “at least 70 billion.” That makes us number three in the nation—behind California and New York. We do, however, easily trump little Detroit, who went bankrupt at a mere 18 billion. Pikers, obviously.

Nor is that the only problem for today—everybody is leaving the island; in the years from 2006 to now, we’ve lost 138,000 people, most of them to the mainland, and most of them professionals. And why not? Salaries are low, crime is high, and the quality of life? Well, the Post also reported that our murder rate is six times higher than the national average.

Right—so what’s the solution? Well, here’s what we can’t do—go bankrupt, since apparently cities can but states cannot. Nor can we simply say “screw you” to the investors that have bought all our bonds, since the constitution stipulates that investors get paid before retirees and public employees. So what to do? Here’s the Post on the subject:

The situation is being closely monitored by the White House, which recently named an advisory team to help Puerto Rican officials navigate the crisis.

How bad are things on the island? Worse, apparently, than I thought. Here’s Caribbean Business:

The GDB-EAI (Government Development Bank—Economic Activity Index) had returned to growth in December 2011 for the first time since Puerto Rico’s recession began in 2006. It showed small but consistent year-over-year gains for nearly a year before beginning to retreat again last October. Since then, it has been on a steadily steepening decline: falling 0.7 percent in November, 2012, 1.3 percent in December, 2012, 1.8 percent in January, 3.1 percent in February, 3.1 percent in March, 3.5 percent in April and 3.4 percent in May, 4.5 percent in June, 5 percent in July, and 5.4 percent in August.

So our projection for the local economy in 2014? Instead of the minute growth projected originally, it’s now predicted that we will shrink by .8% next year. And if that’s not gloomy enough, consider the statement made by somebody at Moody’s—one of the three credit rating firms that has us one step from junk status:

“Further weakening of economic growth could result from the additional corporate and sales taxes, as well as increased tax compliance and enforcement measures,” Moody’s said. “Despite the increase in much-needed recurring revenue for the commonwealth, weaker economic conditions would also increase negative pressure on the rating.”

A friend who was the press secretary to two governors told me a story, once, about the governor who charged his cabinet to go home, think long and hard about the situation on the island, and come back the next day with a plan of action. So they all did, and returned with in-depth analyses and ideas. At the end, only one man was left who hadn’t spoken.

“Governor,” he said, “I thought about it a lot, and I came to one conclusion….”

“And that is?” asked the governor.

“Estamos jodidos,” the advisor replied.

We’re screwed.

And that was in the good old days!