Sen. Flake: “…unless something big happens.”

Something BIG Happening!

By Eric Stradford, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired and Stephanie A. Walker Stradford

AMWS, October 6, 2018, Virtual -- Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) announced yesterday that he expected to vote to confirm Kavanaugh, with a caveat, “unless something big happens.”  Sen Lisa Murkowski (R-WA) announced she would vote no.  Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) said he would vote to confirm. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), apparently wrestling to reconcile faith, trust, emotion and intellect, took an hour to explain her Catch-22. But, Flake, in his moment of conscience, may have drawn a few good catholic friends nearer to an all-pervading win-win.

The lower case “c” in the word, “catholic,” admonishes 88 of 100 U.S. Senators to expect “something big” to happen.    A U.S. Senate vote today can confirm an alleged abuser, embolden bullies, leave one “woman with an issue…” bleeding and thousands more “women at a well” unfulfilled.  In deciding who should judge, #WeThePeople need only ponder the question, W.W.J.D.?

“I object to Kavanaugh being on the Supreme Court,” posted one Facebook friend.  “Obviously he was an undisciplined spoiled kid who never learned right from wrong, but please don’t include the entire Catholic Church over Kavanaugh! I am sure most religions have problems but I would Never attach anyone’s evil doers in their religion.” 

 

One friend responds to facts and findings in our October 1, 2018 report, “Here Comes The Judge.” At the same time, our friend inspires the blessed among us to consider, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it.”

One takeaway from current events surround one American catholic nominated by the President of the United States to serve as a United States Supreme Court Justice.  The United States Senate, comprised of some 88 catholics, including 24 Roman Catholics, must weigh a shared inherited value, “so help me God,” against uncorroborated truths, to advise and consent on the nominee’s appointment.

Neither FBI investigations, nor inquiries by catholic or Roman Catholic Church leaders, offer sufficient evidence that young Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge or any other classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, was or was not abused by clergy.  Likewise, no complete investigation by the FBI, State, local law enforcement or the Holy See publishes facts to support allegations that abused children grew up to become abusers themselves. 

No credible investigation by the U.S. Senate or the FBI supports allegations by Dr. Christine Blassey Ford that she was sexually assaulted by the same catholic boy now being considered for the U.S. Supreme Court.  Not all abused children were abused by Roman Catholic clergy. At the same time, we learn that not all catholics are Roman Catholic.  Twenty-four (24) U.S. Senators 24 identify as Roman Catholic but at least 88 present as catholic (with a lower case “c”). 

Our catholic friends who also identify as Roman Catholic might be encouraged or angered after reading Pope Francis’ take away from child sex abuse allegations.  “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Cor 12:26),” he states in his Encyclical Letter on the subject.  And, as a footnote, he writes, “But this kind [of demon] does not come out except by prayer and fasting” (Mt 17:21).  

Our Facebook friend (FBF), Mary Ellen Tauper, offered yet another perspective on Catholic education.  She is a trusted elder, with an opinion that should be heard.  “Being a life-long, practicing Catholic, I cannot fully agree with you equating the Catholic Church with being complicit in the Kavanaugh case,” Mrs Tauper posted.  “I know the church has a major problem with sexual assault and it grieves me more than you will ever know. However, blaming Catholic education for Kavanaugh’s behavior! I attended Catholic Schools for most of my education and my childrens and a grandchild who attended Catholic schools and I had a Nun and a Priest in my family and sexual assault was never performed on any one of us! I object to your comment that Elite Catholic Education should be taken out of the hands of Catholic educators because this privileged rich kid went to a Catholic prep school? Unfortunately drinking is obsessive on all college campuses and prep schools not just Catholic campuses.”

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Dearest Mary Ellen Tauper:                              

I wanted to take the time to reply to your comments.  I pray you will take the time to read our follow-up to your reply.

First, knowing you as I do over the past eight years, I want to thank you for your sincerity.  You should know that I too have family members who belong to the Catholic Church and who attended Catholic schools.  In no way was the article meant to slander any religion, because as you inferred, “we all fall short of the glory of God.”

What you may not know is that both Eric and I have been journalists for more than 30 years.  He received his experience in the U.S. Marine Corps in Public Affairs, as well as the Far East Network.  I started my career at National Broadcasting Company in Washington, D.C.  In 1994, we partnered to establish the American Mentor Wire Service (known as AMWS).  AMWS researches available information via people, the Internet, newspapers, press releases, television and cable, to produce and publish articles, radio blogs, webinars, and videos.

All of the information you read in “Here Comes The Judge” was public information researched from diverse previously reported sources and combined into one article.  Most importantly, we also read the LETTER OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS TO THE PEOPLE OF GOD.  The Pope started his letter with “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it (I Cor 12:26).”  

Our AMWS article was not intended to offend anyone but to encourage “we the people” to take into consideration the many patterns of behavior that may have affected the life of the current candidate for the Supreme Court.

I appreciate your input and encourage others to voice their freedom of speech.  Again, thank you for your perspective.

God bless you!

Stephanie

Here Comes The Judge

CHAOS or COMMUNITY? The needs of the many are greater than the needs of the one?   When a certain spirit causes a religious leader to sexually abuse a child, and that child grows up drinking to forget the abuse, some sexually abuse others because they can. This pattern of slithering through historical protections threatens societal norms, and as such, #NationalSecurity.  #WeThePeople must weight all the facts, history and legacy if we are to know, Where De We Go From here?  #PrayerChangesThings

By Eric Stradford, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired

AMWS October 1, 2018, Virtual – Anyone expecting justice from a week-long FBI background investigation, may need a broader understanding of what a government investigation will and will not uncover.

The word, “justice,” might be defined as the maintenance or administration of what is just, especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims.”  To be just, an institution must also conform to truth, fact, or reason.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  If you hope to administer justice in the courts, hire a good judge -- at a circus, you send in the clowns.   

Investigators of 36-year old coverups may find a 1968 throwback to “The Trial” helpful in framing the long-endured unraveling of America’s dirtiest little secrets.

  

You can lighten up on Matt Damon’s Saturday Night Live testimony or the veiled judicial temperament of Comedian Pigmeat Markham.  In either case, revelations on sex crimes are making a mockery of formal courtroom etiquette.  On the first work day at the U.S. Supreme Court, we find eight justices anticipating the inevitable -- "Here Comes the Judge,"

One might ask, what could Pigmeat Markham possibly have in common with Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge? Investigators may need to examine expunged records of juveniles that never make it before any judge – appointed, elected nor comedic. Church leaders will need to scope parallel investigations for cause and effects of child sex abuse.  It’s not funny, but there is an inevitable choice for U.S. Senators who are not victims of sexual abuse.

Last week, Brett Michael Kavanaugh, a real-life American attorney and jurist who serves as a United States Circuit Judge, responded clumsily to credible sexual-related allegations.  This latest American political saga tests a common understanding of justice amidst diminishing integrity in the legislative and executive branches of government.

At Georgetown Preparatory, an all-boys Catholic high school in Maryland where Kavanaugh was two years senior to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, unchecked patterns of behavior eventually manifested lost memories of unspeakable acts. 

For Catholics, this whole episode raises a disturbing question about the church’s continued involvement in providing elite education to affluent children.  The community, founded on a principle of love for little children, must reconcile inherited values with devastating outcomes for that generation labeled “X.”   It matters that Kavanaugh was captain of the school's basketball team and played as a wide receiver and corner-back for the school's football team.  The evidence suggests that he was a leader.

But, in the years before his 1983 graduation, something was running amuck at Georgetown Preparatory.  Many of Kavanaugh’s classmates, before and since, perhaps sought solace in the spirits.  We’re not talking about the Holy Spirit or even the spirit of the Holy Mother.  We’re talking about the spirit of irresponsible teenage drinking and countless public officials in leadership today who still can’t or won't recall what happened during a blackout..

Getting into this affluent culture has cost parents $50,000 or more in tuition.  But realities of alcohol and sexual abuse were perhaps not the return on investment parents anticipated. By 1990, the Georgetown Preparatory problem had manifested throughout its student body.  According to the Washington Post, large parties involved teenage consumption of alcohol and sexual activities.  Headmasters of multiple schools colluded through "a rare joint effort" to send a warning letter to parents.   

At the start of the 1990 school year, Georgetown organized a public discussion with parents of students to discuss the problem.  The parties reportedly occurred without proper adult supervision. Parents were warned, "It would be hard to devise a better recipe for disaster than a social scene that includes the anonymity provided by an 'open party,' no adult supervision, considerable amounts of alcohol, and teenage hormones which encourage sexual or violent behavior."

How far back, and how deep are federal investigators willing to dig to discover links between confused, abused students, alcohol-emboldened teens and grown-ups inability to recall what happened and when?  Before we get to the pre-1990 Georgetown Preparatory culture through the recovering lens of alumnus Mark Judge, perhaps investigators will consider some institutional causes perpetuating these life-impairing effects.

Irresponsible alcohol consumption, offensive sexual behavior and male jock superiority might all stem from a pattern of sexual abuse.  Cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and members of religious orders in the 20th and 21st centuries are widespread and have led to allegations, investigations, trials and convictions. 

Accusations began to receive publicity from the late 1980s.  Revelations about decades of attempts by the Church to cover up reported incidents are coming to light from beneath a shadow of shame, regret and diffusion.  In many cases, boys and girls, some as young as 3 years old, may have been sexually abused.  The majority of reported victims were between age 11 and 14.

In real life, no one would imagine a Judge Pigmeat Markham holding court over America’s elite.  But, in the aftermath of testimony brought by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, it’s hard not to imagine some deeply repressed effects of abuse in the high school yearbooks of now respected citizens.

Investigators need to travel no further than Suburban MD to examine the tree from which obviously poisonous fruit as fallen.  As good Catholics they’ve learned to, “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.”

Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where the abuse continued.  Many of these involved cases in which a figure was accused of decades of abuse.  Frequently; such allegations were made by adults or older youth many years after the abuse occurred.

Investigators will need to consider advocates as well as the accused in getting to core causes of a rapidly spreading epidemic. #MeToo is but one early outcome to a history of dirty little secrets.  Somebody is going to need a hero.  And, perhaps Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is not one to stand on the maverick shoulders of the late Senator John McCain.  Graham was safe before hijacking protocol established through an unprecedented surrogate interrogator.  It seems that Graham’s rage emboldened Kavanaugh.

But, not even the last Southern Baptist in the U.S. Senate can temper the Tsunami expected from the one-week investigation into sexual proclivities of the last two Supreme Court nominees.  Graham, who has reportedly “denied, denied, denied” being gay, commented about the latest news from the Catholic sex abuse scandal.  “This accusation has to be looked at in terms of our legal system.  It’s too old for criminal trial, it’s 36 years old. You couldn’t bring a civil suit because you can’t tell the court what time it happened and where it happened.” 

September 27, 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified under oath before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. She was “with Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge at a high school party in 1982.” She was “pushed into a bedroom where Kavanaugh pinned me to a bed, groped me, and attempted to remove my clothing against my will,” while Judge watched and laughed.  Judge told The New Yorker he had "no recollection" of the alleged incident.

In context, thirty-six years after the fact, Lindsey Graham and 99 colleagues of the U.S. Senate are called upon to advise and consent on President Trump’s nomination of an alleged sex offender to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.  In the interest of meeting arbitrary deadlines, we’ll want to afford this presentation the same level of seriousness as Senator Graham’s disturbing assessment of 36-year old accusations.

If you can find a copy of Mark Judge’s 1997 memoir about alcoholism, binge drinking, and hookup culture at Georgetown Preparatory School, investigators will want to waste no time binging on the pages of “Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk.”   In it, author Mark Gauvreau Judge recollects his early formative experiences growing up in suburbs of Washington, D.C. under Catholic school education.

The author describes his secondary education at Georgetown Preparatory as filled with heavy drinking and experiences of teenage alcoholism.  The book criticizes Alcoholics Anonymous for its lack of acknowledgement of physiological causes of alcoholism as a disease process. Judge explained his writing process behind the work on Wasted, saying he “wanted to create a frank and comedic book about alcoholism.” He observed that authors of prior recovery coaching books took pity upon themselves, and he wanted to make a book devoid of complaining to appeal to Generation X.

The New York Times characterized Judge's book as a "naive and earnest" work about alcoholism. Buffalo News said the book had, "the drama of a made-for-television movie".  The Washington Times commented that the author had been motivated by loneliness.  Mother Jones placed Judge's work within the genre of books about teenage alcoholism.

Demand for Judge's work significantly increased after reporting by The Washington Post on his books and the statements by Dr. Ford.  Washington Monthly and Arkansas Times concluded that "Bart O'Kavanaugh" in Wasted was likely a reference to Brett Kavanaugh.

Our particular take on current events responds to a revelation by one of our own.  Members of our own YouthUSA community shared insights on sexual harassment in the workplace.  Offenders, be they past victims, sick in the head or just trifling, need to be forewarned.  Your indictment may not come this week, or even before the mid-terms, but rest assured, your secret is out.   "Here Comes The Judge."

Poor People Can Be Less Poor IF...

An Opinion Editorial

by Eric Stradford, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired

AMWS, September 26, 2018, Atlanta –  In the news today, a “gulf of distrust,” once assessed metaphorically, surfeits in the aftermath of an unnaturally man-made disaster.  49% of Americans are wading through the latest news cycle, watching 49% drown in the uncertainty of a manufactured truth.

Today, the often uncounted 2% is admonished to WAKE UP, and get busy hijacking a narrative likened to the air we breathe.  “The American Dream is on life support…” said Stephanie A. Walker Stradford.  The CEO for Youth Achievers USA Institute (YouthUSA) joined like minds at #Goalkeepers2018 to sandbag a surge of unprecedented, unnecessary, and useless information seeping into the national discourse.

Does it really matter that Donald Trump’s lawyer got stuck with $130,000 in hush money paid to a consenting porn star?  What about the sexual proclivities of “justice” be it Bill Cosby’s or the most recent supreme court nominee?  On the downlow, some rich folks have been padding their inherited pockets with favorable public policy while others must discover methods and means to reverse or “deny, deny, deny” their historically bad habits.

Recent polling suggests that people of all ages in low and middle-income countries are far more likely to agree that “my generation will have a more positive impact on the world than my parents” -- (63%) compared with people in higher income countries (39%). In both groups of countries, youth are more likely to agree than older people. 

When it comes to policy priorities, ending poverty (33%), improving education (31%), and access to jobs (27%) are top Sustainable Development Goals for leaders to focus on worldwide.

On Our Street, USA, today is the day to breathe and ask one another, why did it take us so long?  “Is poverty inevitable?” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation echoes the sentiment of a 20th Century Poor People’s campaign with an optimistic twist.  In doing so, the thought provoking, “Where Do We Go From Here?” presented in Dr. Martin Luther King’s last book, arrives at the only clear choice – CHAOS or COMMUNITY.

 

Quoting social justice advocate Hyman Bookbinder, Dr. King wrote that ending poverty in America merely requires demanding that the rich “become even richer at a slower rate.”  But, in retrospect and after a plethora of policy perversions since Lyndon Johnson’s "War on Poverty,” demands on the wealthy tend to fall short of ending poverty.

Global Goals Week is an annual week of action where the United Nations and partners from around the world come together to drive action, raise awareness and hold leaders to account in order to accelerate progress to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals.

Timed to coincide with the UN General Assembly, the week includes many exciting events and activations in New York but also around the world, including the Global Day of Action on September 25th, when people connected to cultivate ideas, identify solutions, and generate meaningful partnerships for the Global Goals.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Youth Achievers USA Institute share a common vision for the future.  Both believe that “investing in young people” is a necessary step towards achieving COMMUNITY.

To support its partnership goals, YouthUSA is recruiting, training and funding Community Asset Managers in 12 economic regions of the United States.  Virtual meetings and on-demand access to collaboration tools promote tech-supported, cost-effective operations.

According to the Gates Foundation, “Today’s booming youth populations can be good news for the economy; if young people are healthy, educated, and productive; and, there are more people to do the kind of innovative work that stimulates rapid growth.” At YouthUSA, “Money-n-the-Bank” supports inclusion. Each youth beneficiary invests seven goals to write a vision of their own future.

Much of the evidence published in Goalkeepers 2018 underscores the need for #EconomicInclusion of economically disadvantaged youth.  Bridging the “Gulf of Distrust” calls for Goalkeepers representing America’s haves and have nots to pursue “opportunities to serve -- catalyzing public and private sectors and civil society to establish and sustain a pathway to a better life for all.

Addressing gaps in economic opportunity ultimately empowers economic beneficiaries to participate in having the greatest impact. Working with partners who have the expertise and experience will be helpful in developing and implementing innovative approaches at scale. However, according to YouthUSA, “engagement of youth and communities will be essential to sustainable long-term solutions.”

Partnerships are as effective as the partners with a seat at the table.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is circling policy leaders around the global partnership through collaborations such as the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty.

“People often frame the problem of poverty as a lack of things, of people not being given what they need.  But, I think it's the people who must be made to feel needed, vital, and productive in our changing economy.  It's about dignity,” said Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, DC.   

#EconomicInclusion calls for an intentional, prosocial approach.  It engages youth where they live, learn, work and or worship in developing their leadership skills.  It calls for caring adults to invest value and positive values toward prosperous futures.  It requires new energy, collective synergy and a shared commitment to make business as usual a practice of the past.  

National LEARN-2-EARN  invests collective synergy with new energy for win-win collaboration between neighbors in need and partners with means.