It occurs to me that if priests can be sued for millions for long past child sexual abuse, then, Johns who patronize child prostitutes can be sued for exactly the same amount for exactly the same crime.
Suing Johns for using child prostitutes actually occurred to me about 1985 after watching a film called “Street Wise” about throwaway homeless children in Seattle. I watched skinny strung-out kids being picked up by fat luxury cars and (I don’t know if it was the cab driver or the faux-lawyer in me, probably both) I thought: sue!
The movie had been out for a year before I was willing to watch it (don’t like upsetting stuff). The same kids had been a LIFE magazine issue a few years earlier – I guess they delayed releasing the movie until the kids grew up for whatever protection that might give them.
I phoned and wrote Louis Lee of Children of the Night in California and Greg Loken of Covenant House in New York with the idea. Louis Lee at first got some bad advice that it couldn’t be done but later wrote me that she had hooked up with the head of Loyola Law School to work on it. Greg Loken said on the first phone call: “I wish I had thought of that.” But a month later he said: “The child would never stick around; we do this.” Typical young lawyer crap: making two contradictory statements separated by a (unpronounced) semi-colon.
Don’t know how it worked out with Louis Lee. Sometimes this kind of thing works better with a couple of heavily publicized, even if ineffectual cases than with the best legal work that nobody hears about. Connecting suing child using Johns to the suing of priests might be just what it takes catch the (prurient?) interest of the media – while more strongly pointing the courts to the corner of the abused children (have an idea courts may be too forgiving of such Johns).
I don’t connect suing for sexual abuse to the kind of thing you see on MSNBC’s child predator program. I think such behavior is blown out of proportion. I think those guys should get a misdemeanor and a year in jail – and not be listed for life as sex-offenders (there are so many categories of so-called sex-offenders that it is like the boy crying wolf; you cannot sift out the so-called from the genuinely dangerous).
Child prostitutes essentially suffer criminal rape for their supper. Here, I would even go easy on Johns who patronize homosexual boys who are not homeless but, again, are essentially consensual. The massive damage done to hungry, homeless kids is incomparable to that supposedly done to consensual boys. I don’t ever count girls as consensual. A girl has to be seriously pathological to be out there selling herself.
Again, linking suing child using Johns with suing abusive priests and teachers, etc., might be just the think to bring child prostitution to a sudden end. Might be a good way to put a big dent to the kidnapping of children for prostitution in Eastern Europe – initially by holding the threat over Americans of losing their house for such behavior (lower proof standards and such travelers have to be affluent with much to lose) and eventually by holding the same civil threat over citizens of other (all?) nations as other nations get the idea of how to permanently discourage child raping Johns.
PS. 1 out of 14 priests being serial molesters of children should wise us up that such predators are targeting the priesthood – not created by the priesthood. You could not design any program, religious or otherwise, that would condition 1 out of 14 participants to become serial rapists of children.
Gay catholic males may see the priesthood as an opportunity to stay in the closet (not have to explain…), have a family (“…more sisters and brothers…”) – and if they happen to be of the “four thou shalt nots and six do the best you cans” outlook, then, after prayers they can sneak down to the Castro or Halstead or Christopher Street; this no way leads to serially raping children. Ditto for celibacy for those who cannot handle it – they just do whatever other (most?) Catholics do who cannot handle it; again, no way this leads to serial rape.
Unfortunately, the only way the Catholic priesthood may be able to guarantee no serial rapists among its numbers may be to bar homosexual prospects or at least take an extremely close look at same. This is only for the operational reason that it is extremely easy to know who is straight and who is gay (where you expect to see the big – time stops until we straighten out whose territory is whose – ego: in males or in females). I’m no pro but I sense that detecting the serial rapists must not very clear cut or they would have been screened long ago.
Heavily taxing the rich may be the last step back to 1973's fairer distribution of income in the twenty-first century -- at least until gradually downsized expectations take over the minds of linebackers, CEOs and news anchors -- a twenty-first century minimum wage could be the first step, twenty-first century style reunionization (legislated sector-wide labor agreements) the in-between.
A couple of years back, I figured that jumping the minimum wage from $5.15/hr to $12.50/hr (the latter being all of 25% above LBJ's 1968 minimum wage, adjusted -- 100% increase in average income later) would add less than 4% to the cost of GDP output -- shifting about the same percentage of overall income to the bottom 40 percent of incomes via increased prices for what they produce ($12.50/hr being the 40 percentile wage).
This 4% would be shifted from those who had kept up better if not completely with average income growth over the past 35 years (40 percentile up to 90 percentile incomes -- see chart derived from Robert Gordon below) as well as from those who did better than average growth through that period (top 10 percentile incomes).
Hopefully, 40 through 90 percentile earners could compensate for the proportion of the 4% shifted away from their pockets -- absolutely, if not relatively -- either, through up pressure from the higher minimum wage, or better yet, due to long overdue reunionization of America -- the near 40 percentile making out better percentage wise from the overall upward shifts than the near 90 percentile.
Ultimately, the bottom 90 percentile of incomes would like to use inflation to finish shifting the missing 12.4% of their incomes back from the top 2-3 percentile incomes (90-96 percentile incomes mostly kept even pace with growth since 1973). But alas, 12.4% higher prices for consumer goods and services wont much shrink the 2500% bloated incomes of linebackers, CEOs and news anchors -- 2500% more than what similarly situated folks earned in the same professions 25-35 years ago.
In my non-professional -- hopefully ball park -- way I would be willing to raise the maximum income tax rate to 75% for incomes above $300,000 and to 90% for incomes above $1,000,000 -- if only until top wages began to fall back in line with the distribution patterns of 35 years ago -- if that is the only way to squeeze the last of the toothpaste back into the top of the tube.
But, I just read in Counterpunch an interview with former Wall Street economist Michael Hudson in which he explains how the rich avoid top income tax levels by putting all their eggs into rent seeking baskets, how in 2005 the US created 227,000 NEW millionaires (almost one for every thousand Americas -- in one year!), how America's millionaires now own $30 trillion dollars worth of equity which allows them to keep and live in their own separate economy. So tax may still be needed for the final leveler, but it may take some intelligent structural changes to taxing wealth to accomplish that goal (don't worry folks; economics really ain't rocket science).
In the long run, if the 2500% bloated incomes of the few are a result of the systemic squeezing of the incomes of many-- a result of American labor's, unique in all the First World, collective inattention to the need to bargain collectively -- then, restoration of bargaining balance in the American labor market is the most fundamental path to restoring that 12.4% to the 90%.
Karl Marx identified what American labor needed, when he was a correspondent for a stateside paper: he said America did not need socialism because we had labor unions. Problem with progressive American economists (and all group/hunter-mentality males?) is that: the more desperately we need to do things differently -- like going the modern route of sector-wide labor agreements -- the less likely it is that capable progressives will ever broach the concept in the national conversation precisely because the subject is so unspoken they fear it impractical (for now -- a now that lasts forever) to be the first to bring it up. Meanwhile, 90% of Americans in the unbalanced labor market go on losing the race to the bottom.
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Dean Baker (in 18th comment on his blog post) reproduced what he called "a slightly altered table from Gordon's paper, showing income shares in 1972 and 2001" -- my percentage changes on the right.
0-20_______2.6%, _ 2.0%________- .6%__ -12.3%
20-50____ 16.0%, _ 11.7%_______ -4.3%__ -11.7%
50-80____ 33.7%, _ 27.2%_______-6.5%____ -7.4%
80-90____ 17.0%,_ 16.1%________ - .9%___ -
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90-95____ 10.8%,_ 11.3%______ +_ .5% __+
95-99.0___12.2%,_ 14.8%______ +2.6% ___+ 3.1%
99.0-99.9__ 5.7%,__ 9.6%_______+3.9% ___+ 7.0%
99.9 -100__ 1.9%,__ 7.3%_______ +5.4%__ +12.4%
4.9% loss of overall share meant 26.3% cut of 0-50 percentile share.