#andrew pudzer

[s-leary]

Fascism Watch, January 11

(@cuffymeh tweet)

Trump

BBC News says there's audio and video of Trump's Russian misadventures, and more than one source.

Based on the dossier released yesterday, "James Comey’s intervention in the election last October — controversial at the time — looks completely indefensible now."

Lots going on in Trump's press conference. First off, he had it packed with staff applauding him. Not normal. Every two-part question let him dodge the more uncomfortable half.

Then he ranted about Buzzfeed's "fake news," said they would "suffer the consequences," immediately compared and conflated CNN with Buzzfeed, and refused to answer a CNN reporter's question. (CNN's statement afterward.)

(@LordRavenscraft tweet)

After the press conference, Sean Spicer told the reporter in question that he'd be thrown out if he continued to "harass" Trump.

(@davidfrum tweet)

For context, here's Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen threatening the Daily Beast last year for reporting Ivana Trump's claim that her then-husband raped her in a rage. (Trigger warning: the article discusses her claims in graphic detail.)

I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”

“You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet… you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it,” he added.

Trump said today that he had no relationship with Russia. In this interview four years ago, he said, "I do have a relationship [with Putin], and I can tell you he's very interested in what we're doing here today."

Trump admitted during the press conference that Russia interfered in the election. He said the RNC wasn't hacked by Russia though they tried. It was.

Trump's lawyers were just awarded Russia Law Firm of the Year.

Trump says he's going to donate the profits from foreign governments' hotel stays to the US Treasury. If you're familiar with Hollywood accounting practices, you know how that's going to work.

Trump's plan to resolve his conflicts of interest does nothing of the sort. The Director of the Office of Government Ethics gave an extraordinary statement saying that Trump's plans to avoid conflicts of interest did not even come close to meeting the standard.

Elizabeth Warren has introduced a bill that would require the President of the United States to sell his or her assets before taking office.

Peter Thiel is still using some batshit logic to support Trump, in case you were wondering.

When I remark that President Obama had eight years without any ethical shadiness, Mr. Thiel flips it, noting: “But there’s a point where no corruption can be a bad thing. It can mean that things are too boring.”

Transition Team & Cabinet Appointees

We need some subheadings up in here...

Jeff Sessions, day 2

Sen. Cory Booker: "The arc of the universe does not just curve toward justice; we must bend it."

Rep. John Lewis: "We need someone as AG who's going to look out for all of us. Not just for some of us."

NAACP President Cornell Brooks: "The NAACP firmly believes that Senator Sessions is unfit to serve as attorney general."

(@ACLU tweet)

Rex Tillerson

(@RepMcGovern tweet)

On climate change: "I don’t see it as an imminent national security threat but perhaps others do." Like maybe the Department of Defense? And John Kerry, on Monday?

Tillerson contradicted Trump's positions on climate change.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) asked Tillerson about reporting from the Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News that Exxon Mobil had internally acknowledged climate science while publicly waging a campaign to undermine it. Tillerson demurred. "Since I'm no longer CEO of Exxon Mobil, I can't speak on their behalf," he said. "You'll have to ask them." Asked if he was refusing to answer or simply lacked the knowledge to do so, Tillerson quipped, "A little of both."

Exxon Mobil was ordered today to hand over documents related to a state investigation into whether it misled the public about the impact of fossil fuels on the climate.

Tillerson may have lied under oath when he said, “To my knowledge, Exxon never directly lobbied against sanctions.”

Tillerson refused to blame Putin for the murders of his political opponents, saying, "These things happen." He also refused to condemn the Philippine president's murderous war on drugs, despite being grilled on it by Marco Rubio, of all people.

"I'm not familiar with that program," he said about NSEERS.

Others

James Mattis canceled his hearing with the House Armed Services Committee scheduled for Thursday. House Representatives are not happy.

Unlike other nominees, Mattis needs a waiver approved by both the House and Senate before he can proceed to a confirmation vote. Following the cancellation news, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Democrats in his chamber may oppose the waiver if Mattis doesn’t testify before their lawmakers to answer questions about his views on civilian control of the military.

Andrew Pudzer (labor secretary nominee) had his confirmation postponed to next month. Apparently his ex-wife once appeared on Oprah (?) in disguise (???) as a victim of domestic violence.

"Dina H. Powell, who runs many of Goldman Sachs’s philanthropic initiatives, will soon leave the company for a new role as adviser in the Trump White House" working with both Kushner and Ivanka Trump (who supposedly will have no official role).

[thenib]

From Jen Sorensen.

[raimagnolia]

Managers at a Hardee’s restaurant in Alabama scrubbed workers’ hours from the logbooks in order to avoid paying them overtime. Hardee’s workers in Pennsylvania were required to pay 10 cents per hour for the privilege of wearing a Hardee’s uniform. Workers at a Georgia Hardee’s were told to clock out and sit in the parking lot when business slowed down. When it picked up again, they were told to clock back in and work. Managers at a Hardee’s in Missouri had money deducted from their paychecks whenever the cash register came up short. Adult workers at a Hardee’s restaurant in Iowa were paid a “sub-minimum wage” that was legal only for minors, while minors worked so late that their hours broke child labor law. In each of those cases, Labor Department investigators found that Hardee’s restaurants had violated federal wage-and-hour regulations and workers were entitled to thousands of dollars in backpay. Throughout this time, the Hardee’s brand has been overseen by Andrew Puzder, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next labor secretary. If he is confirmed by the Senate, Puzder would be responsible for enforcing the same worker protections that his company and its franchisees were caught violating, sometimes repeatedly.

[danithebelcher]

Dear Members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions,

We are a collection of current and former career civil servants at the U.S. Department of Labor (the “Department”). We write in our capacity as private citizens to express our serious concerns about Mr. Andrew Puzder’s nomination to serve as the Secretary of Labor, and to request that the Committee vote against Mr. Puzder’s nomination. None of us has joined a letter like this one before; we feel compelled to do so now because of our serious concerns as to whether Mr. Puzder would be able or willing to serve as a conscientious steward of the statutes that the Department is charged with enforcing and the precious rights that the Department is responsible for protecting. We believe that three specific factors disqualify Mr. Puzder from serving as the head of an agency whose primary mission is to protect America’s workforce: (1) Mr. Puzder’s own business practices; (2) his derisive public comments about his restaurants’ employees and other low-wage workers; and (3) his equally troubling public comments and behavior towards women.

First, we are alarmed that Mr. Puzder has presided over a company, CKE Restaurants, whose franchises have repeatedly been found responsible by the Department for violating employment laws—namely, the Fair Labor Standards Act and Occupational Safety and Health Act. It is true that there may be worse offenders in the fast food industry. Nonetheless, conducting business in an industry where others routinely violate the law is no license for engaging in similar conduct. The Secretary of Labor should be someone who exhibits exemplary behavior as an employer, not someone for whom violations of employment laws is routine.

In the anti-discrimination context, Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. have had more federal discrimination lawsuits brought against them since 2000, when Mr. Puzder took over, than any other major hamburger chain. At least one of these cases has resulted in a consent agreement with CKE itself, not merely with its franchisees, implicating Mr. Puzder’s failure to take the necessary steps to eliminate CKE’s discriminatory practices. Although the Department does not enforce Title VII, the Department does enforce anti-discrimination law in other contexts, such as in our review of federal contractors’ compliance with anti-discrimination mandates. The Secretary of Labor should be a leader in opposing employment discrimination, not the head of a company that is a leading defendant in discrimination lawsuits.

It is also true that many of the violations at CKE restaurants have occurred in facilities operated by franchisees rather than by CKE itself. However, our experience as the guardians of our nation’s employment laws has taught us that such violations often occur as the result of incentives or practices created by the franchisor. We were therefore unsurprised to see a recent report that CKE corporate has apparently sent a memorandum to its franchisees setting forth a company policy that workers are prohibited from speaking to the press. When franchisors wish to impose policies on franchisees and take a strong stand against violations committed by their franchisees, they have the means to do so: most franchise agreements require franchisees to comply with the law and not to generate negative publicity. We are not aware of any instances in which Mr. Puzder elected to use such provisions to curb the unlawful behavior of his franchisees. Notably, the franchisor of the world’s largest restaurant chain has done so.

Regardless of whether CKE, as a franchisor, is legally liable for the violations perpetrated by its franchisees, it has a moral obligation to use its considerable power over its franchisees to ensure that they are complying with the law. A Secretary of Labor who has experience in business could well provide a valuable perspective that would help inform the policy decisions the Department makes every day. However, such an individual should be a leader in his or her own industry in complying with the law—not someone who has benefited from violations of the law, even if formal legal structures protect him and his company from liability.

Our concerns about Mr. Puzder’s business practices are magnified by his public comments that demonstrate hostility to the laws that the Department enforces. We are particularly disturbed by Mr. Puzder’s widely publicized comment that replacing employees with automated machines would be desirable because machines are “always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case.” Our concern about this comment is not the acknowledgement that work is becoming more automated—the rise of automation is a reality that it is proper, even wise, for a Secretary of Labor to acknowledge.

However, Mr. Puzder’s remarks reveal insensitivity to employees’ rights, their needs as human beings, and the importance of protections against discrimination. We fear that Mr. Puzder’s comments evince hostility to the enforcement of workers’ rights that is antithetical to the public-facing role that the Secretary of Labor must play. The Secretary of Labor is the highest public official tasked with protecting workers against employers who discriminate against them, fail to maintain a safe workplace, or deny employees statutory rights to take leave. Many of us regularly interact with workers as part of our duties, and those interactions have taught us that workers listen to what the Department’s leaders say and take cues from them when deciding whether and how to exercise their rights. Having a Secretary of Labor who has publicly complained that his own workers demand vacation, compensation for injuries, and the right not to suffer discrimination would send a terrible message to workers considering whether to turn to the Department for protection and to vindicate their rights. That message, if associated with the Secretary of Labor, would undermine the Department’s mission.

We are similarly concerned about Mr. Puzder’s comments about his restaurants’ employees as being (at varying times) either “the worst of the worst” or “the best of the worst.” We find extremely troubling Mr. Puzder’s degrading tone towards his own restaurants’ employees and other low-wage restaurant workers. No individual deserves being described as “the worst” merely because he or she is employed in a low-wage industry or lacks education or job training. Such descriptions further stigmatize a struggling subset of workers in ways that are harmful and hurtful to them and those of us who care about them. Such comments also express a lack of empathy for and understanding of the struggles and challenges faced by large numbers of vulnerable American workers. We believe that such empathy and understanding are critical qualifications in a Secretary of Labor, regardless of what policy solutions that Secretary may choose to offer to address the problems that low-wage workers face.

We are also extremely concerned about Mr. Puzder’s comments about women. Striving for equality for women in the workplace is central to the efforts of the Department. Mr. Puzder’s enthusiastic embrace of the sexualized advertisements his company has run makes us worried that Mr. Puzder is ill-fit to grapple with the subtle ways that perceptions of women in the workplace affect their everyday working experience. (One of us once heard a colleague ask, quite seriously, whether it would violate workplace rules of civility and prohibitions against sexual harassment to view Mr. Puzder’s ads on a government computer. We think the question is a good one.) Mr. Puzder has proudly embraced those sexualized advertisements. He not only said that, “I don’t have a problem with our ads,” but even went so far as to boast that his brand has taken on his own personality. Mr. Puzder unapologetically declares, “ugly ones [i.e., women] don’t sell burgers.” A nominee to become the Secretary of Labor should be ashamed of having made such a statement.

Our concerns about Mr. Puzder’s attitudes towards women are exacerbated by the allegations we have heard regarding his personal involvement in acts of domestic violence. Although Mr. Puzder’s ex-wife has subsequently withdrawn her allegations, the fact that she aired them anonymously on “The Oprah Winfrey Show”—something she would have no incentive to do if her charges were being made falsely for personal gain—gives us pause about Mr. Puzder’s personal conduct. These allegations, combined with Mr. Puzder’s sexualizing comments about the women in his commercials, make us worry that Mr. Puzder is incapable of fostering a supportive and fair workplace for the thousands of women who work at the Department and the millions of working women across our nation.

Because of his business practices and his degrading public comments about low-wage workers and women, we strongly urge the Committee to vote against Mr. Puzder’s nomination as Secretary of Labor. Our concerns about Mr. Puzder are not premised on any policy disagreements some of us may have with him. Rather, we firmly believe that this nominee has not demonstrated a sufficient commitment to, or faith in, the laws that the Department is charged with enforcing. We do not take this step lightly; we take it because America’s workers deserve better. We thank you for considering our views.

[wtfhastrumpdonenow-blog]

February 15th: Time for a Hump Day Treat

1)  Apparently Flynn isn’t Putin’s only American bestie. Yesterday, it was disclosed that multiple members of the Trump campaign were in contact with Russian intelligence officials.

What can I do?

Read this overview from Vox to get a clearer grasp of all of Trump’s possible scandals with Russia.

Especially if you’re in Utah, give the Chair of the House Oversight Committee (Jason Chaffetz) a call and tell him it’s imperative that he investigate. This shit is crazy. 

2) POTUS said he “can live with” a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We’re terrified that this ambiguous, off-the-cuff remark will inhibit us from reaching a solution and finally seeing peace. More notably, it’s a grave departure from the US’ longtime position on the issue.

What can I do?

Now’s a good time to organize and learn the facts. New York: Today, February 15th, 7:30-9pm EST, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, 131 E 10th St., Real Politics 101 Workshop 

3)  Yesterday, the Senate quietly voted to roll back protections that kept guns out of the hands of people with mental illnesses that make them a danger to themselves and others.

What can I do?

Donate to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. 

4) The Administration’s pick for labor secretary, fast food aficionado Andrew Pudzer, withdrew his nomination today after old footage from the Oprah Show resurfaced of his wife discussing allegations of spousal abuse against him. Not okay.

What can I do?

Call your Republican Senators and urge them to confirm a Labor Secretary who cares about workers and supports a minimum wage. 

New York: Today, February 15th, 7pm EST, Tele-Town Hall with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. You can RSVP here.

Los Angeles: Saturday and Sunday, 10am-12pm PST, Organizing for Resistance Town Halls with Rep. Karen Bass

Support your local worker’s rights organizations. In New York, check out Make the Road. Fight for $15 almost definitely has a local chapter near you.

5)  The status of the not-a-ban Muslim ban remains unclear. Rule to remember: when Trump looks right (cough at Pudzer), we should look left. Plus, there are rumored, ICE raids happening across the country.

What can I do?

New York: Tomorrow, February 16th, 5:30pm-8:30pm EST, Brooklyn Borough Hall, Brooklyn Stands Together: March & Rally 

New York: Tomorrow, 5pm-8pm EST, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 201 Varick Street, US Department of Homeland Security (NYC Office), Rally to #FreeDaniel 

New York: Today, February 15th, 6pm-8pm EST, The Stonewall Inn, 53 Christopher Street, NOW NYC Activist Happy Hour 

Los Angeles: Saturday, 11am-5pm PST, Pershing Square, Free the People Immigration March 

Positive News: It’s Hump Day! Time for a hump day treat.

What can I do?

Open up cupboard and take out ingredients for everyday chocolate cake.

Mix up cake. Try to not to eat half of the batter.

Pour glass of ~everyday~ cabernet.

Sip while you wait.

Remove from oven 

#TreatYoSelf 

[tabihe]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign maintains a page of anti-endorsements: denunciations from billionaire ghouls and their enablers

Bernie Sanders wants you to know who hates him: billionaire sociopaths like Andrew Pudzer, Kenneth Lagone ("This is the antichrist!"), Lowell McAdam ("contemptible"), Lloyd Blankfein ("dangerous"); Alan Greenspan; Third Way ("an existential threat"), Bernard Marcus ("the enemy"), and more! (via /r/LateStageCapitalism)

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/10/an-existential-threat.html

[politicoscope]

USA POLITICS: Trump's Labor Secretary Pick Andrew Puzder Employed Illegal Immigrant

Andrew Puzder chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants, is one of Trump nominees who faced strong opposition from Senate Democrats and progressive groups.

Visit Politicoscope for "USA POLITICS: Trump's Labor Secretary Pick Andrew Puzder Employed Illegal Immigrant": http://politicoscope.com/2017/02/07/usa-politics-trumps-labor-secretary-pick-andrew-puzder-employed-illegal-immigrant/

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

#BirtherInChief #CorpMedia #Idiocracy #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity

Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign maintains a page of anti-endorsements: denunciations from billionaire ghouls and their enablers

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/10/an-existential-threat.html

Bernie Sanders wants you to know who hates him: billionaire sociopaths like Andrew Pudzer, Kenneth Lagone ("This is the antichrist!"), Lowell McAdam ("contemptible"), Lloyd Blankfein ("dangerous"); Alan Greenspan; Third Way ("an existential threat"), Bernard Marcus ("the enemy"), and more! (via /r/LateStageCapitalism)...

[chicagotribune]

In the hours leading up to Puzder's withdrawal, 12 Republican senators "at a minimum" were withholding support, according to one GOP senator, who asked for anonymity to avoid political retribution.

Pudzer, a restaurant executive and Trump campaign supporter, had attracted widespread criticism regarding his business record and personal background. Additionally, a prominent conservative publication announced its opposition to the pick on Wednesday, saying that Puzder's support for more legal immigration is at odds with Trump's position. Democrats who opposed Puzder were vowing to show racy images of bikini-clad models eating hamburgers that appeared in television commercials run by his restaurant chains. His supporters were planning to eat biscuits from Hardee's - one of Puzder's burger chains - for breakfast while tracking the hearing from a makeshift war room.

[tammymazzocco]

NPR News: Capitalism's Comeback: Making America Great Again?

Capitalism's Comeback: Making America Great Again? Former fast food CEO Andrew Pudzer says the Trump administration is good for capitalism. And capitalism is good for all. Read more on NPR

[wtfhastrumpdonenow-blog]

February 6th: National Super Bowl Hangover Day

1) Trump’s White House is a mess: POTUS reportedly didn’t read the Executive Orders he was signing, Trump watches every single media briefing live, and aides ~literally~ can’t find light switches.

What can I do?

They’re usually right inside the door. Spread the word. 

Urge your representative to co-sponsor/support Rep.Stephanie Murphy’s bill to keep political operatives off the National Security Council.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security is also taking calls: 202-224-4751.

New York: Do the opposite of the White House and actually get organized! Today, 6:30 PM EST, Congregation Beth Elohim, 274 Garfield Pl, Brooklyn: Get Organized Brooklyn’s Full Meeting

2)  Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s SCOTUS nominee, apparently fabricated his involvement with nonprofits while at Harvard Law School. Sean Spicer’s doppelganger probably has some words for him.

What can I do?

Call your Senators and ask them to oppose Gorsuch’s nomination.

If you’re sick of calling your own Senators, call members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and urge them to ensure “extreme vetting.” Members of the committee can be found here: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/members.

3)  In an interview with Bill O’Reilly, Trump said that America isn’t “so innocent” either when compared to Putin’s Russia (in case you forgot, Putin regularly throws journalists into prison - or hires hit men to do worse).

What can I do?

Try not to murder any journalists today.

4)  Betsy DeVos could become our Secretary of Education any day now. Democrats are currently filibustering, but the vote is expected to happen midday Tuesday. The vote is still out on if public education or bears will suffer more (and bears are cute! It’s a lose-lose!).

What can I do?

Attention North Carolinians: North Carolina’s Thom Tillis’ office says he’s undecided and wants to hear from people. Call him at 202-224-6342.

5)  Speaking of terrible cabinet pics, Andrew Puzder’s (fast food exec who opposes worker’s rights) nomination to serve as Secretary of Labor is stalling, and rumor has it he barely has the support he needs to be confirmed. His hearing has been postponed four times, his testimony has been put off indefinitely, and he hasn’t submitted the required paperwork. Sounds like someone is playing hard to get (way to be coy pre-V-Day).

What can I do?

Call your Senators on the HELP Committee and express support for their request for Pudzer’s filing with the Office of Government Ethics, and of course, tell them to pick someone else. 

Positive News: In case you missed it, Melissa McCarthy played Sean Spicer on SNL this weekend, and she nailed it.

What can I do?

Load video.

Pour wine.

Drink wine.

Watch video. (for best results, repeat at least twice)

[tabihe]

[wolfcinema41-blog]

The Ethics of Abortion The Pluralism Project



The Pluralism Project

For more than three decades, Americans have been deeply polarized over the issue of abortion. While the debate on abortion involves secularists as well as people of every religious tradition, the issue has become particularly acute among Christians because of strong views on both sides. Generally, the debate has been cast in terms of “pro-life” views and “pro-choice” views, but it is clearly a much more complex issue for Christians.

The legality of abortion was confirmed in 1973 when the United States Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute that prohibited abortion procedures, no matter how medically urgent they might be. This decision, commonly referred to as Roe v. Wade [410 U.S. 113 (1973)], is the most important legal milestone in the debate. In its decision, the Court acknowledged that it cannot rule as to when life begins, since even those in medicine, theology, and philosophy have no consensus on this matter.

Christian pro-life advocates insist that all human life is sacred and that human life begins at the moment of conception. From the point of view of pro-life Christians, America’s aborted fetuses are unborn babies who are killed through the process. As Pope John Paul II put it, “The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves.” The most vocal opposition to abortion has come from the Roman Catholic Church and from evangelical Christians, including activist groups such as Operation Rescue. The presumption is that there should be no abortion at all, a general principle to which some liberal pro-life advocates might carve out a series of exceptions, such as in the case of rape, incest, known deformity, or grave danger to the life of the mother.

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights (formerly, the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights) brings together Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Unitarian Universalists, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists who want to make clear that pro-life voices are not the only religious voices in the abortion debate. Describing their position as people of faith, the RCRR seeks to “support individuals in making their own moral decisions and stand with them as they struggle with the very real complexities of life.” The Coalition acknowledges that, “while people of all religions anguish over abortion, most feel this is a moral decision, one a woman must make for herself in keeping with her faith, beliefs, conscience, and her own personal situation.” Another voice in the debate is Catholics for Free Choice, an organization of Catholics who are both pro-choice and involved faithful Christians in the life of their parishes and communities. Catholics for Free Choice, founded in 1973, lobbies for women’s reproductive rights in Congress and legislatures. Results from a 2012 survey conducted on behalf of the organization showed that 60 percent of Catholic voters think abortion should be legal.

At the extreme, pro-life activists have included people who have engaged in a series of violent attacks on abortion clinics and doctors. In 2009, Dr. George Tiller, one of only a few doctors in the United States to perform abortions into the third trimester of pregnancy, was killed inside Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas where he was a member. Tiller had been shot before, in 1993, and his abortion clinic had been bombed in 1986. Another physician, Barnett Slepian, was killed in Buffalo in 1998, preceded by two other doctors in northern Florida and abortion clinic workers in Boston between 1993 and 1995. Despite these incidents, the vast majority of people and organizations within the pro-life movement do not condone the use of violence. Many are vocal, however, about the violence associated with abortion procedures, especially in the case of partial birth abortion.

In a decision that presumably involves a woman and a man, a doctor, and a fetus, the question of whose “voice” counts is highly charged. Pro-life activists often suspect the pro-choice movement of treating abortion lightly in the context of a so-called “sexual revolution” that takes sexual encounters all too lightly and where abortion is considered a method of birth control. According to this view, pro-choice advocates do not to grant any recognition or moral status to fetal life at all, effectively leaving the life of the fetus completely out of the process of ethical decision-making. The pro-choice side, however, often sees pro-life advocates as concerned only with the life of the unborn and callous about the lives and opportunities of those same children from the moment they are born. Pro-life advocates appear to give virtual sovereignty to the fetus, blind to the stark realities of poverty and human hardship, while ruling out abortion regardless of the circumstances of the pregnancy or the well-being of the mother.

Abortion is one of many difficult ethical decisions today involving human judgment on the line between life and death: expensive medical treatments, organ transplants, birth control, and “death with dignity” initiatives. Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is also a topic of great debate in the larger context of what Chicago’s Cardinal Bernardin had framed as “a consistent ethic of life.” A 2005 statement from the U.S.. Conference of Catholic Bishops frames the issue of capital punishment in a way similar to that of the abortion debate: “Ending the death penalty would be one important step away from a culture of death and toward building a culture of life.”

There have been some efforts to find “common ground” between pro-life and pro-choice advocates. In a 1996 Christian Century article titled “Pro-life, Pro-Choice: Can We Talk?,” Frederica Mathewes-Green documents the Common Ground Network which began in Missouri in the late 1980s when Andrew Pudzer, a pro-life lawyer, and B.J. Isaacson-Jones, the head of one of the largest abortion clinics in St. Louis began to have conversations. The two “enemies” met privately face to face for several months before appearing together to discuss the issues on a local television show. While they had diametrically opposed views on abortion, they found that there was indeed much “common ground” between them. For example, they agreed that both sides should seek more aid for women below the poverty line and for their children, both born and unborn.

Those involved in these dialogues say the discovery of some overlapping areas of common commitment is important. Mathewes-Green described one such discovery at a dialogue in Washington D.C. “In one small group, an aggressive pro-choice lawyer was talking passionately about the protection of abused children. She spoke about children’s helplessness before their adult attackers. ‘They’re so small and vulnerable, and they have no one to defend them.’ A pro-lifer in the group said softly, ‘You know, that’s the reason a lot of people give for being pro-life.’” At the same time, those who participate in these efforts are often criticized for talking with the “enemy.” Mathewes-Green wrote about one pro-life leader who characterized the discussions as “seeking common ground with proponents of murder.”

Through the process of face-to face dialogue, each side is challenged in its stereotypes about what the other actually believes. Efforts to find common ground continue, as evidenced in the October 2012 broadcast of “Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, Pro-Dialogue,” a Civil Conversation Project event at the University of Minnesota hosted by Krista Tippett and the American Public Media program On Being. Dr. David Gushee, a Christian ethicist, and Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for Choice, demonstrated the kind of nuanced conversation not heard in this often deeply polarized public discussion.

All contents copyright ©1997–2018 • President and Fellows of Harvard College and Diana Eck. All rights reserved.

[multicurrency]

[NEWS] Capitalism’s Comeback: Making America Great Again? https://t.co/ZVKPlv0TCJ Former fast food CEO Andrew Pudzer says the Trump administration is good for capitalism. And capitalism is good for all. April 26, 2018 at 03:06PM Business Capitalism's Comeback: Making America Great Again? Former fast food CEO Andrew Pudzer says the Trump administration is good for capitalism.