The number one single today in 1956:
Britain’s number one single today in 1960:
The number one single today in 1962:
Today in 1964, a fan at a Rolling Stones concert in Cleveland fell out of the balcony. That prompted Cleveland Mayor Ralph Locker to ban pop music concerts in the city, saying, “Such groups do not add to the community’s culture or entertainment.” Kind of ironic that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ended up in Cleveland.
Dan Benson and Julie Grace tell an ugly story:
Savings that Wisconsin taxpayers could have realized through implementation of Act 10 in 2011 — sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single district — were lost because federal regulations penalize school districts that find ways to spend less money.
The Oostburg School District in Sheboygan County, for example, experienced a huge reduction in expenses for the special education fund followiing the passage of Act 10, says Kristin DeBruine, the district͛s business manager.
Special education programs, however, are funded with federal as well as local tax dollars — and full, ongoing federal funding continues only if local and state funding remains constant or increases from year to year.
In order to avoid a federal funding cut, the Oostburg district spent the Act 10 savings in other ways, including almost $60,000 to install an elevator in its middle school. At the time, and to this day, the school does not have any students who use wheelchairs. So the elevator sits largely unused, DeBruine says.
While installing the elevator also helped the district meet federal disability compliance rules, “We would not have put it in without the required use of the money, as it is only used for after-school activities, and the cost would not have allowed us to do it otherwise,” DeBruine says. That simply just doesn’t make sense at all.”
Maintenance of effort rule
The federal requirement that schools continue to spend at least the same amount of local or state tax dollars year after year or face a loss of federal funding is known as “maintenance of effort,” or MOE.
MOE requirements are “seen at the federal level as a way to make sure that federal funds aren’t displacing state and local funds,” says John Debacher, director of library development for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Critics say, however, that MOE rules commit districts to continually spend large amounts of money, restricting their ability to address changing circumstances and priorities, and emphasize spending and compliance over educational outcomes.
“We tend to budget money just to meet MOE rather than spending it in the most effective, efficient manner,” says Penny Boileau, administrator for the Brighton #1 School District in Kansasville in Kenosha County. “We should be able to prove we are meeting the needs of our students by some other means rather than by comparing funding spent in one year compared to the next year.”
The 257 Wisconsin school districts that responded to a Badger Institute open records request this summer said they had spent more than $1.3 billion on maintenance of effort in 2015-16, an average of $2,559 per student. With 424 public school districts in the state, the total is likely hundreds of millions of dollars higher.
The federal government seems to care less about achieving educational goals than it does about counting dollars and satisfying auditors, said one superintendent, responding to a Badger Institute survey conducted this summer.
“There are no conversations about children with special needs and the intense services being provided,” he said.
“Rules get in the way of innovation and progress. Rules around maintenance of effort hurt education. Paperwork gets in the way of spending time on students,” another superintendent said.
A number of federal grants carry MOE requirements, including those for libraries and school lunch programs. The biggest MOE commitment is to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which funds services for disabled students. Even though the state is required by federal law to provide equal educational opportunity to disabled children, states are not required to accept federal money to pay for it. But if officials don’t take the money, they must provide those services with local funds and explain to taxpayers why they refused to take “free” federal money.
“The public perception of turning down what the public believes is ‘free money’ is an even bigger problem” than taking the money, says Jeremy Struss, business manager for the small Swallow School District in Waukesha County. “They often don’t understand that the labor costs to receive these funds can be significant, sometimes more than the amount we are receiving.”
Jeff Kasuboski, superintendent of the Wautoma School District in central Wisconsin, laments the federal rules that mandate spending. “What is so terribly ridiculous is that maintenance of effort tells you that you must spend at least as much, if not more, on special education as you did the previous year.”
“Who are they to dictate how much money we spend? It’s absolutely ridiculous. If you find a cheaper way to do it, why wouldn’t you?” he adds.
The aftermath of Act 10
Act 10 was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker in 2011 to address a projected $3.6 billion budget deficit. Its most controversial components required most public-sector employees, including teachers, to contribute more to their health care and pension benefits. It also restricted public employee unions͛ bargaining power.
Other savings were realized in some school districts as the new law excluded health benefits from union contracts. That change allowed some districts to shop for health insurance since their previous contracts often required signing with the union-affiliated WEA Trust.
About a third of Wisconsin school districts switched insurers from WEA Trust in the first year after Act 10’s passage, according to news reports. One estimate put the health insurance savings for local districts statewide at $404.8 million.
Local districts could have conceivably saved millions of dollars more if not for running afoul of maintenance of effort rules and being forced to spend that money or have their federal funding cut.
Following Act 10, the tiny Spooner School District in northwestern Wisconsin reduced special education spending by $160,000, mostly due to savings on health insurance. Although special education services were not reduced, the district was penalized for not maintaining the same level of spending, causing its federal funding to be cut by $30,000 the next year.
“We did not change our delivery of (special education services). We just saved money on employee costs,” says Michael Markgren, the district’s business manager at the time. He is now business manager for the Altoona School District near Eau Claire.
“But we were penalized for that. Districts have to be aware of that when they change insurance carriers now. If you have savings, you have to make sure that you still meet” maintenance of effort requirements, he says.
The problem extends well beyond insurance changes.
When some teachers retired following Act 10, many districts saved money by replacing them with younger teachers earning less. One such district was the Mount Horeb Area School District in Dane County, which — rather than face funding cuts for not meeting federal requirements — spent the savings on lower-priority needs such as supplies.
“It’s a waste because if you haven’t cut services, then you just have to find things to buy where you could’ve better reallocated to a different area,” says Wayne Anderson, Mount Horeb’s superintendent at the time.
Matching requirements
Another way the feds control local school spending is through “matching” requirements. These apply to meal programs, vocational training and other purposes. In those cases, the federal government provides funding for a particular project and the state or local district is required to “match” that amount on a percentage basis.
One project is GEAR UP— Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs — meant to increase the number of low-income students entering post-secondary schools. The six-year grant program requires a dollar-for-dollar match. In Wisconsin, the federal government provided $5 million over the six years. The state’s annual match is about $833,000.
Altogether, DPI spends about $6.5 million a year in required matching funds. No statewide data is available on how much local districts spend matching federal grants.
Matching and MOE are requirements of federal funding that many taxpayers and even some school officials are unaware of or don’t track.
“We don’t keep an inventory of (federal) grants” or their related maintenance of effort requirements and other associated costs, says the legal counsel for one large northeastern Wisconsin district, explaining in an email why it could not provide the information to the Badger Institute when asked.
“Those costs are included as line items within each department’s budget and are not made available in a consolidated list to school board members or anyone else,” she says.
“It doesn’t surprise me when I hear that,” one regional school administrator says. Since they’re not required by state law to create a document with that information, “it’s really (local school) board policy that guides their response.”
Even though state and federal auditors review matching and MOE spending, the data is not readily available so it is difficult for taxpayers to get a full picture of the local financial burden that results from accepting federal money.
The Badger Institute survey indicates that, even in districts where administrators and federal regulators keep close tabs on MOE and matching requirements, school board members and their constituents are largely unaware of the fiscal stranglehold forced upon districts by federal regulations.
The survey taken in July and August showed just 17 percent of school superintendents say school board members in Wisconsin pay “very close attention” to how federal dollars are spent. Almost 28 percent of superintendents, say school board members pay “very little attention” to how they are spent. That contrasts with school board members’ attention to local funds —39 percent of superintendents think school boards pay “very close attention” and less than 12 percent think they pay “very little attention” to how local dollars are spent.
MOE rules are a way of getting the state and local school districts to spend their money on priorities set in Washington, critics say.
“There’s no doubt the feds want to control what’s going on at the local level as much as possible,” says state Rep. Joe Sanfelippo (R-New Berlin). “That’s kind of the position you put yourself in when you sell your soul to the devil. You have to dance to his tune.”
Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt (R-Fond du Lac) agrees. “One of the problems with the federal government being involved in education is they tell you to maintain certain levels of spending. But if you have a down year, if you cut back on your dollars, then you’re not going to get your (federal) money,” says Thiesfeldt, chairman of the Assembly Education Committee and a former teacher. “But if they cut back, you still have to maintain your spending” to deliver services.
Sanfelippo concludes, “The best thing would be for the federal government to just lower our taxes and not take so much of our money and then pretend they’re doing us a favor when they send it back with all those strings attached.”
If you needed any evidence that the Department of Education needs to be abolished, this should be it.
Wisconsinites know that the first radio station was what now is WHA in Madison. Today in 1920, the nation’s first commercial radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, went on the air.
The number one British single today in 1956 is the only number one song cowritten by a vice president, Charles Dawes:
The number one song today in 1974:
The number one British album today in 1985 was Simple Minds’ “Once Upon a Time” …
For once, the Twitter speculation was mainly correct. When news broke Friday night that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had obtained an indictment, the smart money pegged former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. After all, the FBI had raided Manafort’s home and widespread reporting indicated that he had complex and lucrative dealings with pro-Russian leaders and entities in Ukraine.
Today, Manafort and his business partner, Richard Gates, surrendered to federal authorities, and the special counsel’s office released its indictment. Hours later the special counsel’s office released a “statement of the offense” indicating that former Trump-campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos pled guilty to providing material false statements to the FBI. Let’s use a question-and-answer format to walk through their scope, meaning, and implications.
No, not on its face. The indictment relates to Manafort’s personal business dealings with the Ukrainian government, former Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych, and a Ukrainian political party called the Party of Regions. It remains to be seen whether Special Counsel Mueller will use this indictment as leverage to pressure Manafort to cooperate fully with his much broader investigation into whether there were “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.”
If the indictment’s not about the campaign, then what does it allege?
The indictment claims that Manafort would, for example, use foreign bank accounts to purchase real estate in the United States, and then take out mortgages on the property to grant him access to tax-free cash. It also claims that he failed to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts and that he failed to register as an agent of the government of Ukraine.
I heard one of the counts was “conspiracy against the United States.” That sounds like treason.
No, it’s not treason. It essentially means that Manafort and Gates conspired together to defeat IRS efforts to enforce tax laws. It’s a common charge under the general federal conspiracy statute, which makes it a crime to “commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.”
So, this indictment has nothing to do with Russia?
Not on its face, but one can’t divorce this case from its geopolitical context. The survival of the pro-Russian Yanukovych regime in Ukraine was a matter of extreme urgency for the Russian government and was considered a matter of vital Russian national interest. Yanukovych’s fall was one of the proximate causes of the Russian invasion of Crimea and the ongoing civil war in southeast Ukraine.
I just heard another Trump-campaign official is in trouble. What gives?
As noted above, just as the nation was digesting the Manafort indictment, the special counsel’s office released a “statement of the offense” against former Trump-campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos. In short, Papadopoulos admitted to making material false statements to the FBI.
What did Papadopoulos do?
He lied to the FBI about his contacts with a professor who had “substantial connections to Russian government officials.” This professor claimed to have “dirt” on Hillary Clinton “in the form of ‘thousands of emails.’” Papadopoulos claimed to have obtained this information before he became a Trump adviser. In reality, the professor told him about the alleged Russian “dirt” only after he joined the Trump team.
The statement of offense also details extensive contacts between Papadopoulos, an unnamed “Female Russian National,” and an unnamed “Campaign Supervisor.” Essentially, Papadopoulos was serving as a go-between to set up a potential meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, a meeting that never happened. It’s in that context that Papadopoulos learned of the alleged “dirt” on Clinton.
So, is this guilty plea proof of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia?
No, but it does raise serious questions, and it does demonstrate how little we truly know about the Mueller investigation. It seems from the statement of offense that the bulk of the contacts between Papadopoulos and his Russian intermediaries involved his efforts to set up the meeting between Trump and Putin, activity that’s certainly legitimate, but he also pushed to set up a meeting between Trump-campaign representatives and “members of president putin’s office [sic] and the mfa [Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs].”
What does all this mean?
This is not the beginning of the end of the Trump/Russia investigation; it’s the end of the beginning. It’s also a reminder that after countless news reports, an indictment, and a guilty plea we are still like the proverbial blind men feeling the elephant. But when you combine the Papadopoulos indictment with previous reports of the 2016 meeting between purported Russian government representatives and Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner, then it appears clear that Russians seemed determined to at least lead Trump-campaign officials to believe that they had negative information on Clinton.
While the Papadopoulos indictment directly bears on the collusion investigation, Manafort unquestionably had greater overall situational awareness of the campaign’s operations, was unquestionably advancing vital Russian national interests, and apparently was operating an illicit operation on a scale larger than we previously imagined. When it comes to Manafort, Trump didn’t drain the swamp. He hired the swamp. If anyone thought Mueller’s investigation wasn’t necessary before today, the revelations from the special counsel’s office should dispel all doubt.
Just in case you didn’t realize, we’re “celebrating” an anniversary.
In 1917, at this time of year, the Bolshevik revolution was occurring in Russia. It resulted in the creation of the Soviet Union, followed in subsequent decades by enslavement of Eastern Europe and communist takeovers in a few other unfortunate nations.
This is a very evil and tragic anniversary, a milestone that merits sad reflection because communism is an evil ideology, and communist governments have butchered about 100 million people.
I’ve written about the horrors that communism has imposed on the people of Cambodia, Cuba, and North Korea, but let’s zoom out and look at this evil ideology from a macro perspective.
My view is that communism is “a disgusting system…that leads to starvation and suffering” and “produces Nazi-level horrors of brutality.”
But others have better summaries of this coercive and totalitarian ideology.
We’ll start with A. Barton Hinkle’s column in Reason.
…the Bolsheviks…seized power from the provisional government that had been installed in the final days of Russia’s Romanov dynasty. The revolution ushered in what would become a century of ghastly sadism. …it is hard even now to grasp the sheer scale of agony imposed by the brutal ideology of collectivism.
…In 1997, a French publisher published “The Black Book of communism,” which tried to place a definitive figure on the number of people who died by communism’s hand: 65 million in China, 20 million in the Soviet Union, 2 million in Cambodia, 2 million in North Korea, and so on—more than 90 million lives, all told. …depravity was woven into the sinews of communism by its very nature. The history of the movement is a history of sadistic “struggle sessions” during the Cultural Revolution, of gulags and psychiatric wards in Russia, of the torture and murder of teachers, doctors, and other intellectuals in Cambodia, and on and on.
Here’s some of what Professor Ilya Somin wrote for the Washington Post.
May Day. Since 2007, I have defended the idea of using this date as an international Victims of Communism Day. …Our comparative neglect of communist crimes has serious costs. Victims of Communism Day can serve the dual purpose of appropriately commemorating the millions of victims, and diminishing the likelihood that such atrocities will recur. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day and other similar events help sensitize us to the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism, so Victims of Communism Day can increase awareness of the dangers of left-wing forms of totalitarianism, and government control of the economy and civil society.
In an article for National Review, John O’Sullivan explains the tyrannical failure of communism.
Those evil deeds…include the forced famine in Ukraine that murdered millions in a particularly horrible fashion; starting the Second World War jointly with Hitler by agreeing in the Nazi–Soviet Pact to invade Poland and the Baltic states; the Gulag in which millions more perished; and much more. …The Communist experiment failed above all because it was Communist. …Economically, the Soviet Union was a massive failure 70 years later to the point where Gorbachev complained to the Politburo that it exported less annually than Singapore. …it is a fantasy that the USSR compensated for these failures by making greater social gains than liberal capitalism: Doctors had to be bribed; patients had to take bandages and medicines into hospital with them; homelessness in Moscow was reduced by an internal passport system that kept people out of the city; and so on.
We’re just scratching the surface.
As an economist, I focus on the material failure of communism and I’ve tried to make that very clear with comparisons of living standards over time in Cuba and Hong Kong as well as in North Korea and South Korea.
But the evil of communism goes well beyond poverty and deprivation. It also is an ideology of mass murder.
Which is why this tweet from the Russian government is morally offensive.
Yes, the Soviet Union helped defeat the National Socialists of Germany, but keep in mind that Stalin helped trigger the war by inking a secret agreement with Hitler to divide up Poland.
Moreover, the Soviet Union had its own version of the holocaust.
I don’t know who put together this video, but it captures the staggering human cost of communism.
Meanwhile, Dennis Prager lists 6 reasons why communism isn’t hated the same way Nazism is hated.
The only thing I can add to these videos is that there has never been a benign communist regime.
Indeed, political repression and brutality seems to be the key difference between liberal socialism and Marxist socialism.
Let’s close with this chart from Mark Perry at the American Enterprise Institute.
All forms of totalitarianism are bad, oftentimes resulting in mass murder. As Dennis Prager noted in his video, both communism and Nazism are horrid ideologies. Yet for some bizarre reason, some so-called intellectuals still defend the former.
Or put another way:
We begin with a non-music anniversary: Today in 1870, the U.S. Weather Bureau was created, later to become the National Weather Service.
Tomorrow in 1870, the first complaints were made about the Weather Bureau’s being wrong about its forecast.
Today in 1946, two New York radio stations changed call letters. WABC, owned by CBS, became (natch) WCBS, paving the way for WJZ, owned by ABC, to become (natch) WABC seven years later. WEAF changed its call letters to WNBC.
Readers will recall that Donald Trump’s path to the presidency got temporarily derailed in Wisconsin because he decided to take on conservative talk radio, and lost.
(Although Trump’s loss paled in comparison to the April 2016 Democratic losses, and things went far worse for the Democrats seven months later.)
Proving that there are n0ne so dumb as those who refuse to learn, National Journal reports:
Steve Bannon has drawn plenty of ire around the country as he wages his “war” on the GOP establishment. In Wisconsin, the president’s former chief strategist—and by extension, his preferred candidate in the 2018 Senate race—has struck a nerve with a uniquely influential group: conservative talk-radio hosts.
One host, Mark Belling, has accused Bannon-backed Kevin Nicholson—one of two major Republican challengers to Sen. Tammy Baldwin—of “polishing Steve Bannon’s shoes with his tongue.” Another, Jeff Wagner, predicted that the firebrand’s endorsement would be “a recipe for electoral disaster.” A third, Jerry Bader, called Bannon “toxic” and “bad for the conservative movement.”
There’s perhaps no other state where conservative talk radio has played as outsized of a role in Republican politics as it has in Wisconsin. Popular hosts, particularly those in the vote-rich southeastern part of the state, have helped lift candidates like Scott Walker, now running for a third term as governor, to prominence, and helped sink candidates like Donald Trump in the state’s last presidential primary.
Now their attention is on the burgeoning Senate race, which will be one of the most hotly contested of next year’s midterms. Many hosts in the state were already partial to state Sen. Leah Vukmir, a strong Walker ally who has been a regular on their programs during her 15 years in the legislature. By contrast, Nicholson, a businessman and former Marine who’s never run for office and was previously a Democrat, entered the contest as completely unknown to them. And a seal of approval from Bannon only adds to their uncertainty about him.
“I can’t imagine this is going to be a net plus for him,” Charlie Sykes, once the leading voice in Wisconsin conservative talk radio, said of Bannon’s endorsement of Nicholson. Vukmir has “a very, very strong base in talk radio. … She’s certainly got the home-court advantage.”
Belling, who hosts an afternoon show on WISN in Milwaukee, has been the most critical of Bannon’s involvement. After he interviewed Vukmir on his program Tuesday, Belling questioned the “bowing and scraping” Nicholson did to win Bannon’s endorsement. Belling said in an interview that Nicholson emailed him right after that day’s show “to touch base.”
“If Nicholson runs as Bannon’s boy, he’s not going to win in Wisconsin. He just isn’t,” Belling said. “I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s just making it real hard to do so right now.”
Asked to respond to the talk radio hosts’ comments on the Bannon endorsement, Nicholson campaign spokesman Michael Antonopoulos said in an email: “Kevin’s mission to bring an outsider’s perspective to the U.S. Senate and demand conservative solutions unites Republicans. His support continues to grow because Kevin’s background as a Marine combat veteran and conservative businessman appeals to conservatives across the state.”
Belling said he doesn’t plan on making an official endorsement in the race, and hopes to have both candidates continue to appear on his show in the coming months. But he’s been effusive in his praise of Vukmir, saying she is “maybe the best Republican member of the entire state legislature.”
Others are ready to pick sides. Bader, of WTAQ in Green Bay, says he’s only waiting to see if Eric Hovde, a Madison investor who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2012, jumps into the race. If he doesn’t, Bader said in an interview, there’s “virtually zero doubt” he’ll endorse Vukmir. “I have no intentions of supporting the Bannon candidate in this race,” he recently said on his show.
Whether other hosts choose to go the route of Belling or Bader, they are at the very least prepared to defend Vukmir from what they see as unfair attacks. Several of them pushed back against a recent article from Breitbart News, where Bannon serves as executive chairman, that lambasted Vukmir for being backed by the “Washington establishment” and for refusing to say if she would support Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader (Nicholson reportedly said he would not). Vicki McKenna, whose radio program broadcasts in Milwaukee and Madison, dismissed the story as a “political hit piece” and brought Vukmir on to rebut it.
For these radio hosts, the term “establishment” doesn’t ring true for Vukmir, despite her relatively long tenure as an elected official. Unlike at the national level, Republican leadership and the grassroots have largely been aligned in Wisconsin. Over the past seven years of statehouse control, they’ve worked together to pass a laundry list of conservative policies, ranging from right-to-work to voter ID to abortion restrictions.
“I think Leah Vukmir—and again, I’m not endorsing anybody—I think she’s a strong conservative candidate, and if people try to come in and say that she’s something other than that, there’s going to be a backlash,” said Wagner, who hosts a morning show on WTMJ in Milwaukee. “Because we know her.”
Trump experienced this dynamic during the 2016 presidential primary when his “drain the swamp” message didn’t resonate in Wisconsin like it did in other states. But he still went on to win the state narrowly in the general election, so there’s certainly upside for Nicholson nabbing Bannon’s endorsement as well. Indeed, Vukmir also spoke with Bannon before he took sides in the race.
Of course, not all listeners will share every opinion of the hosts they tune in to. And while talk radio is an important way to reach conservative voters, it’s only one part of the equation. With the backing of major GOP donor Richard Uihlein and outside groups such as Club for Growth and FreedomWorks, Nicholson will have little trouble getting his message out.
“I doubt someone who hates Bannon is going to completely exclude Kevin from consideration from the rest of the whole primary just because of one endorsement,” said Matt Batzel, the Wisconsin-based director of the conservative group American Majority. “There’s going to be 20 more people that they like more than Bannon that endorsed Kevin.”
More than anything, radio hosts in the state are concerned that Bannon’s involvement will only escalate what was already shaping up to be an expensive and divisive primary, much like the one during Baldwin’s first run for Senate in 2012. A tight four-way contest left the eventual GOP nominee, Tommy Thompson, badly bruised heading into the general election against a well-funded and unscathed Democratic opponent.
“Whatever happens here,” Wagner said, “I hope it’s not a repeat of 2012.”
Rev. Andre Brouilette on an event that took place 500 years ago today:
Martin Luther was a man passionate for God and the Word of God. As an Augustinian monk, a Catholic priest, and a theology professor, he scrutinized and taught the Bible, and was enamored with Scripture.
His intellectual endeavor met with existential questions he was harboring. A central quest for him was that of salvation: What do I need to be saved? This question pursued him as a man aware of his sinfulness; what is the meaning of one’s struggle with evil? How can repentance be achieved?
A spiritual turning point for Luther was the realization that God’s gift of salvation is fundamentally gratuitous, that it is first and foremost an incommensurable gift, in faith. It is neither earned by believers, nor due to them, but bestowed freely by God.
The intimate comprehension of that gift changed his life and ordered anew his theology. Since Paul’s letters were instrumental in this intimate discovery, the centrality of the Word of God became paramount for him; he was given a new life thanks to Scripture. Hence, it is not a surprise that the theological notion of justification and the centrality of the Bible have become hallmarks of the Lutheran faith.
Even before Luther, various reform movements traversed the Western Church of the 16th century. Biblical texts were diffused more widely and even translated in the vernacular. Church authorities encouraged the study of ancient languages, and the University of Alcala, started by Cardinal Cisneros, even produced in due time a polyglot Bible. The excesses of the papacy and the Roman curia were questioned, and many spiritual movements flourished, influenced also by humanistic tendencies. New questions and opportunities arose with the European discovery of America. Change was needed in the Church, and changes were happening. A council had just occurred between 1512 and 1517. Luther, however, would bring a spark.
What started for Luther as an invitation to discussion within the Church in 1517 evolved in a few years into an insurmountable divide. Forces beyond theological reflection were summoned, from Luther’s single-mindedness and passion, to political and nationalistic aspirations from Germanic lands, to burgeoning reformist desires in the Church. Opportunities for discussion among believers were hampered, and divisions grew, leading to the creation of various distinct Christian denominations, each with its own theology and ecclesial structures, apart from the Catholic Church.
The contribution of Luther was not received universally. The reformist movement within the Catholic Church had its day in a subsequent council, at Trent (1545-1563), which clarified the doctrine of justification, introduced various reforms for the formation of the clergy and the exercise of ministry, but it was too late to win over the dissenting groups that had evolved into separate entities.
This state of separation and even conflict — at times bloody — was to last for centuries. On the central theological issue of justification, only in 1999 did the Catholic Church and the World Lutheran Federation issue a “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.” Yet, despite the great progress in ecumenical relationships in the last decades, Catholics and Protestants cannot yet share the same Eucharistic meal. The break in communion endures to our day, a high price to pay for the gifts of the Reformers.
Does the Church need reform today? The Church is always in need of reform, because the women and men who constitute her are always in need of conversion. Yet, even a 2,000-year mammoth institution, stretching across continents and time, can surprise us. After all, Christians believe in a Holy Spirit that gives life, not only in the past, but also in the present. Hence, despite its (heavy) structures, the Catholic Church bewildered the world in the 1960s with the Second Vatican Council, which was not called because of a crisis but in a spirit of modernization of the Church, and led to tremendous changes.
More recently, the unexpected election of Jorge Bergoglio as Pope Francis in 2013 stunned even Catholics, and the world keeps watching a pope who challenges many, inside and outside the Church, by being simply a credible herald of the good news of Christ. Reform is happening, at its own pace.
Does the Church need passionate women and men, who carry with conviction in their flesh the gift of God? Yes! Does the Church need reform? Always. Does the Church need another Reformation? Let us hope instead for greater ecclesial unity in a heartfelt diversity, attentive to the Holy Spirit.
As an ex-Catholic, I can’t say I see that “ecclesial unity” very often within my former church. There are fervent followers of Madison Bishop Robert Morlino, and there is an online petition to Pope Francis to replace Morlino. (As if the church has ever been a democracy.) Unfortunately in politics and anywhere else, “unity” generally means someone has to give up something, and maybe most of what they believe.
Meanwhile, over in the churches Luther helped get created, Jay Cost reports:
Christ Church is a historic religious institution in Alexandria, Va., that has had some very important parishioners. George Washington was a member and regular attendee at the congregation. Most churches, I reckon, would be honored by this, but Christ Church, the Washington Times reported, has suddenly grown embarrassed:
This week the church announced it was pulling down a memorial to its one-time vestryman and the country’s first president, saying he and another famous parishioner, Robert E. Lee, have become too controversial and are chasing away would-be parishioners.
“The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome. Some visitors and guests who worship with us choose not to return because they receive an unintended message from the prominent presence of the plaques,” the church leaders said.
Still, we are likewise free under the First Amendment to criticize this harebrained decision to disrespect the nation’s first president. Christ Church should be ashamed of itself.
For starters, Washington actually freed his slaves after he died, the only major Founding Father to do so. Reverend Richard Allen, who cofounded the African Methodist-Episcopal Church, eulogized Washington in 1799, shortly after his death, as a patron of black Americans:
To us he has been the sympathizing friend and tender father. He has watched over us, and viewed our degraded and afflicted state with compassion and pity — his heart was not insensible to our sufferings.
Washington, of course, could have freed his slaves earlier in his life. He did not, and it is fair to criticize him for this (his posthumous manumission certainly indicates a guilty conscience). But it is awfully punctilious for Christ Church to target Washington’s memory. Moreover, it is fatuous indeed for the church to equate Washington, the father of his country, with Lee, the general who tried to destroy it.
And what of this impulse by some on the left to remove icons of America’s past? Recently, the debate has been over Confederate monuments, but Christ Church’s decision to hide Washington’s memorial plaque suggests there may be larger ambitions at play. And of course, we should not forget the Obama administration’s effort to demote Alexander Hamilton as the sole portrait on the ten-dollar bill, for the sake of gender diversity.
Washington actually freed his slaves after he died, the only major Founding Father to do so.
Like most conservatives, I think the complaints of those who feel “triggered” by some public memorial are too insignificant to demand public action. On the other hand, there is a very strong public interest in keeping most memorials in place.
First, the monuments and public testimonials serve an educational function. You are not going to get the whole story of George Washington by looking at the one-dollar bill, of course. But at least you will learn that he is a person worthy of esteem, which is a first step to taking the time to learn about him. And as I argued last week at NRO, civic education is necessary for good citizenship. We the people need to know our own history if we are going to keep our governing representatives in line.
This is perhaps especially true of our slaveholding Founders, who — despite keeping fellow humans in bondage — nevertheless espoused some very radical views about human freedom. That should remind us of how easy it is to fall short of the ideals enshrined in our founding documents, and thus how fragile it is to maintain a free and equal republic.
Furthermore, memorials promote public tranquility. I’m reminded of a famous exchange of letters between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1789–90, in which Madison offered a very strong case for appreciating the past.
Jefferson was a strident Lockean — he took seriously the notion that government was a contract among citizens. In September 1789, he wrote to Madison:
No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. . . . Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.
Madison, respectful as always, strongly disagreed. He responded:
Would not a government so often revised become too mutable to retain those prejudices in its favor which antiquity inspires, and which are perhaps a salutary aid to the most rational government in the most enlightened age? Would not such a periodical revision engender pernicious factions that might not otherwise come into existence? Would not, in fine, a government depending for its existence beyond a fixed date, on some positive and authentic intervention of the society itself, be too subject to the casualty and consequences of an actual interregnum?
Madison made a similar point in Federalist 49, where he (again, gently) disagreed with Jefferson’s suggestion that constitutional disputes be placed before the people. Madison simply did not have enough faith in the public to handle such matters. “The reason of man, like man himself,” he wrote, “is timid and cautious when left alone, and acquires firmness and confidence in proportion to the number with which it is associated.” He went on to note, “When the examples which fortify opinion are ANCIENT as well as NUMEROUS, they are known to have a double effect.” He therefore worried about “the danger of disturbing the public tranquility by interesting too strongly the public passions.” Notwithstanding the success the United States had had with the Revolution, such “experiments are of too ticklish a nature to be unnecessarily multiplied.”
In these passages, Madison highlighted the social utilityofpublic reverence. If citizens have high regard for their foundational institutions, they will be less likely to alter them. This in turn reduces the chances that public passions will be needlessly riled up, dangerous factions mobilized, and peace itself threatened.
Put another way, it is not good for the people to debate everything. It is useful to have a common tradition that limits and structures political disagreement while offering an agreed-upon framework for resolving our problems. The frailty of human nature being what it is, ancient documents and institutions acquire a certain weightiness that promotes respect and thus provides such a foundation. We should not tamper with this, absent good reasons.
Madison was arguing in favor of a stable constitution, but the logic applies just as forcefully to the icons of our past. Honoring the Founders promotes respect for our system of government, which promotes public tranquility and thus advances the welfare of society. If a handful of people feel offended, too bad.
Does this mean that all monuments should stand? Probably not. Yale University’s decision to rename Calhoun College, for instance, was in my view the right choice. John C. Calhoun was a radical who offered a pernicious reinterpretation of the Constitution. Similarly, we are right to question the status of monuments honoring the Confederate States of America, which was a criminal act of sedition against the Union.
But memorials to men such as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison deserve a place in the public square. They were slaveholders, and no doubt they should be remembered and criticized for that grievous misdeed. But the public nevertheless has a compelling interest in honoring their good works for the United States of America, which far outweighs the psychic discomfort that an oversensitive few might feel.
Christ Church is free to do what it pleases, but we should lament, not celebrate its decision.
Today in 1963, Ed Sullivan was at Heathrow Airport in London just as the Beatles deplaned to a crowd of screaming fans and a mob of journalists and photographers.
Intrigued, Sullivan decided to investigate getting the Beatles onto his show.
Today in 1964, Ray Charles was arrested at Logan Airport in Boston and charged with heroin. Charles was sentenced to one year probation after he kicked the horse.
The confirmation this week that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid an opposition-research firm for a “dossier” on Donald Trump is bombshell news. More bombshells are to come.
The Fusion GPS saga isn’t over. The Clinton-DNC funding is but a first glimpse into the shady election doings concealed within that oppo-research firm’s walls. We now know where Fusion got some of its cash, but the next question is how the firm used it. With whom did it work beyond former British spy Christopher Steele ? Whom did it pay? Who else was paying it?
The answers are in Fusion’s bank records. Fusion has doggedly refused to divulge the names of its clients for months now, despite extraordinary pressure. So why did the firm suddenly insist that middleman law firm Perkins Coie release Fusion from confidentiality agreements, and spill the beans on who hired it?
Because there’s something Fusion cares about keeping secret even more than the Clinton-DNC news—and that something is in those bank records. The release of the client names was a last-ditch effort to appease the House Intelligence Committee, which issued subpoenas to Fusion’s bank and was close to obtaining records until Fusion filed suit last week. The release was also likely aimed at currying favor with the court, given Fusion’s otherwise weak legal case. The judge could rule as early as Friday morning.
If the House wins, don’t be surprised if those records include money connected to Russians. In the past Fusion has worked with Russians, including lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who happened to show up last year in Donald Trump Jr.’s office.
FBI bombshells are also yet to come. The bureau has stonewalled congressional subpoenas for documents related to the dossier, but that became harder with the DNC-Clinton news. On Thursday Speaker Paul Ryan announced the FBI had finally pledged to turn over its dossier file next week.
Assuming the FBI is comprehensive in its disclosure, expect to learn that the dossier was indeed a major basis of investigating the Trump team—despite reading like “the National Enquirer,” as Rep. Trey Gowdy aptly put it. We may learn the FBI knew the dossier was a bought-and-paid-for product of Candidate Clinton, but used it anyway. Or that it didn’t know, which would be equally disturbing.
It might show the bureau was simply had. Don’t forget that it wasn’t until January the dossier became public, and the media started unearthing details. And the more ugly info that came out (Fusion, Democratic clients, intelligence-for-hire) the more former Obama officials seemed skeptical of it. In May, former Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper said his people could never “corroborate” its “sourcing.” In June, Mr. Comey derided it as “salacious and unverified.”
Yet none of this jibes with reports that the FBI debated paying Mr. Steele to continue his work. Or that Mr. Comey was so convinced by the dossier that he pushed to have it included in the intelligence community’s January report on Russian meddling. Imagine if it turns out the FBI was duped by a politically contracted document that might have been filled up by the Kremlin.
There’s plenty yet to come with regard to the DNC and the Clinton campaign. Every senior Democrat is disclaiming knowledge of the dossier deal, leaving Perkins Coie holding the bag. But while it is not unusual for law firms to hire opposition-research outfits for political clients, it is highly unusual for a law firm to pay bills without a client’s approval. Somewhere, Perkins Coie has documents showing who signed off on those bills, and they aren’t protected by attorney-client privilege.
Those names will matter, since someone at the DNC and at the Clinton campaign will need to explain how they somehow both forgot to list Fusion as a vendor in their campaign-finance filings. Some Justice Department lawyer is presumably already looking into whether this was a willful evasion, which can carry criminal penalties. It’s one thing to forget to list that local hot-dog supplier for the campaign picnic. It’s a little fishier when two entities both fail to list the firm that supplied them the most explosive hit job in a generation.
And there are still bombshells with regard to unmasking of Americans in surveilled communications. If the Steele dossier reports (which appear to date back to June 2016) were making their way into the hands of senior DNC and Clinton political operatives, you can bet they were making their way to the Obama White House. This may explain why Obama political appointees began monitoring the Trump campaign and abusing unmasking. They were looking for a “gotcha,” something to disqualify a Trump presidency. Of course, they were doing so on the basis of “salacious and unverified” accusations made by anonymous Russians, but never mind.
No, this probe of the Democratic Party’s Russian dalliance has a long, long way to go. And, let us hope, with revelations too big for even the media to ignore.
Readers of a certain age may remember the 1988 presidential campaign and Willie Horton, a Massachusetts prison inmate let out on furlough to commit more crimes. That was hung around the neck of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. The issue wasn’t started by Republican George H.W. Bush, but by one of Dukakis’ Democratic rivals, Al Gore.
With that in mind, read the Washington Free Beacon‘s announcement Friday:
Since its launch in February of 2012, the Washington Free Beacon has retained third party firms to conduct research on many individuals and institutions of interest to us and our readers. In that capacity, during the 2016 election cycle we retained Fusion GPS to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary, just as we retained other firms to assist in our research into Hillary Clinton. All of the work that Fusion GPS provided to the Free Beacon was based on public sources, and none of the work product that the Free Beacon received appears in the Steele dossier. The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele. Nor did we have any knowledge of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign.
Representatives of the Free Beacon approached the House Intelligence Committee today and offered to answer what questions we can in their ongoing probe of Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier. But to be clear: We stand by our reporting, and we do not apologize for our methods. We consider it our duty to report verifiable information, not falsehoods or slander, and we believe that commitment has been well demonstrated by the quality of the journalism that we produce. The First Amendment guarantees our right to engage in news-gathering as we see fit, and we intend to continue doing just that as we have since the day we launched this project.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 