60 Minutes — Hit Man (John Vesey), disarmingly honest about his “career”
The remaining 5 percent? We could pick up a chunk of that, notes a new Institute for Policy Studies report on inequality and Social Security, if we held CEOs to the same limits on income they can defer from taxes that apply to the 401(k)s of ordinary workers. Good stuff. We have more of it in this week’s Too Much. “It’s easy for CEOs with mega-million-dollar retirement funds to demand cuts to Social Security. They’ll be enjoying their country clubs while America’s already shamefully high poverty rate among the elderly will increase.” Web Gem Bloomberg Billionaires/ The world’s most iconic lists of billionaires still hail fromForbes, but the wealth counters over at Bloomberg have put together a far more fascinating Web presence. Their site tracks global billionaire fortunes on a daily basis and lets users parse billionaires by nation, industry, gender, age, and inheritance. Under the latest budget plan advanced by U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, taxpayers who report over $1 million in 2014 income will save at least$203,670. Average income for these filers: $3.15 million. Economic inequality in America hasn’t been this stark since the 1930s. But back then Americans by the millions took to the streets in protest. Why aren’t millions of Americans out protesting today? Americans aren’t loudly protesting, conservatives argue, because they really don’t care if some people become phenomenally richer than others. Many Americans, progressives counter, simply don’t yet understand how staggeringly unequal the United States has become. With more awareness, their argument goes, would come more resistance to our unequal social order. In 2011 a group of four top-flight academic researchers — including Emmanuel Saez, the world’s top expert on super-high incomes — decided to test this absence-of-information thesis. They prepared a detailed survey instrument and spent over 18 months quizzing a random sample of 5,000 Americans. These researchers have just published their findings, and on at least one key question they probed — can information change attitudes about inequality? — their survey results do offer a clear answer. Information can change attitudes. The information the researchers shared with the thousands of Americans they surveyed compared America’s current distribution of income to the nation’s more equal distribution in 1980. Their interactive survey also helped participants figure out for themselves what they would be making today if the nation’s “economic growth since 1980 had been evenly shared across the income distribution.” Another survey presentation detailed how the incomes of average Americans, over the past century, have grown the fastest during those periods when America’s richest paid taxes at higher rates than they do today. The impact of all this information? The share of survey participants who felt that inequality poses a “very serious problem” rose a robust 40 percent. But this significant increase in awareness, the researchers also found, did not automatically translate into appreciable new support for public policies that could narrow America’s income and wealth divide. The increase in the share of survey participants supporting higher taxes on millionaires, for instance, didn’t come close to matching the 40 percent jump in the number of participants feeling that inequality poses a significant danger. So what’s going on here? Why isn’t more concern about inequality generating more support for government policies that can narrow inequality? One factor: Exposure to more information about inequality, the researchers found, “also makes respondents trust government less.” In effect, quipscommentator Tim Noah, many Americans feel that a government “incompetent enough” to let inequality fester isn’t going to be competent enough to fix it. But another dynamic — economic insecurity — factors in as well. The researchers found that the study participants with the lowest incomes turned out to be the most resistant to more redistributive government policies, particularly to programs that help the poor. What explains this counter-intuitive outcome? A phenomenon known in academic circles as “social-desirability survey bias” could be at play here. Low-income study participants might have feared they would come across as “selfish” if they proclaimed their support for programs that help low-income people. Or somewhat darker motives, the researchers suggest, could be at work. Other research, they note, has posited that status concerns can distort attitudes at the bottom of the economic pyramid. No one wants to be “last.” These status concerns may leave some “low-income individuals wary of certain redistributive policies, lest they differentially help the group below them.” Add racial and ethnic differences into the mix, and you have the kindling for social combustion, a kindling dominant elites have regularly fanned, over the years, to divert attention from their dominance. The researchers behind this new study — and the early egalitarian-mindedcommentators on it — seem distinctly bummed by the study’s results. Only in one area, the research reveals, did more information seem to lead to much more support for greater action against inequality. That one area: the estate tax. Many Americans, the study found, have no idea that the federal estate tax only applies to multi-million dollar fortunes. These Americans quickly become eager estate tax advocates once the fog of misinformation lifts. But even here the researchers can’t hide their disappointment. The estate tax, they lament, “may be a special case of an issue where voters are very misinformed and yet not emotionally attached to their position due to ethnic or socioeconomic stereotypes.” Should Americans who worry about inequality be feeling as bummed about this new research as the researchers behind it? A little historical perspective might help here. If these researchers had conducted their work back in 1928, a previous high point in American income inequality, they would have encountered a quite similar social landscape: a massive divide between the rich and everyone else coupled with little sign of mass resistance. Yet less than a decade later we had resistance everywhere. The American public, pundit Walter Lippmann would write in 1937 after the death of John D. Rockefeller, “has turned wholly against the private accumulation of so much wealth.” In workplaces the nation over, Americans would be challenging plutocratic power, often uniting across racial and ethnic lines. Out of this ferment would come a much more equal United States. In 1928, no researchers could have seen that future coming. Researchers today, even with all their carefully calibrated survey instruments, can’t see the future either. Like this article? Subscribe and get Too Much in your email inbox every Monday. Hamilton Nolan, It Would Be Great if Millionaires Would Not Lecture Us on ‘Living With Less,’ Gawker, March 11, 2013. How windfalls seduce their winners into considering themselves the fonts of all wisdom. Robert Reich, Ryan the Redistributionist, March 12, 2013. The House GOP budget guru is advancing a new budget more breathtakingly tilted to the top than any yet proposed. Dean Baker, What Ryan’s Budget Really Says: ‘I Love Rich People,’ Common Dreams, March 13, 2013. The media do Paul Ryan a great favor when they describe his federal budget proposal as a commitment to free market principles. Ralph Nader, The Cruel Gap Between CEO Pay and the Stagnant Minimum Wage,Huffington Post, March 13, 2013. Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke makes $11,000 an hour. Nicholas Shaxson, A Tale of Two Londons, Vanity Fair, April 2013. The world’s most expensive residential building offers a portrait of the new global super rich. Dean Baker, Capitalism, Steven Pearlstein, and Morality, Beat the Press, March 17, 2013. A top economist demolishes the claim that the upward redistribution of income over the last three decades reflects “natural” market dynamics. Want a taste of Too Mucheditor Sam Pizzigati’s just-published new book? You can read online the intro chapter to The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970. In this brief but potent new paper, Sarah Anderson and Scott Klinger inject real people back into the Social Security discussion: one average American and two staggeringly rich ones. That average American, home health care aide Rhonda Straw, will see her retirement income drop by nearly 16 percent over 20 years if Congress adopts the two cuts to Social Security benefits — the “chained CPI” and a higher retirement age — that CEO groups like the Business Roundtable are now pushing. Two health care CEOs on the Business Roundtable, CVS Caremark’s Larry Merlo and UnitedHealth’s Stephen Hemsley, will see their retirement earnings dip all of 0.3 and 0.7 percent respectively if these same two changes become law. Merlo, Hemsley, and their CEO cohorts insist they want to “save” Social Security. In reality, as Anderson and Klinger so clearly explain, Merlo, Hemsley, and friends are only saving themselves — from the tax hikes on high incomes like theirs that could easily remedy any future Social Security shortfall. Like Too Much?Chronicles of Inequality [March, 18, 2013]
March 18, 2013
THIS WEEK
“Serious” pundits and policy makers on today’s political scene love to wring their hands over Social Security. Woe unto future generations, they intone, if we don’t bring “entitlement spending” under control. Translation: Cut Social Security!Well, whoa on the woe. Social Security is not going broke any time soon. In fact, even over the long term, a simple fix could fill almost any projected shortfall.What sort of fix? Only the first $113,700 of paycheck income currently faces Social Security tax. So a CEO who pulls in $11.3 million pays the same tax as someone who makes $113,700. Eliminating Social Security’s taxable income capwould fill in 95 percent of Social Security’s shortfall over the next 75 years.
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GREED AT A GLANCE
At the SEC, the federal Wall Street watchdog, the revolving door spun a little faster last week. On Capitol Hill, corporate lawyer Mary Jo White, the White House nominee for SEC chair, assured senators that her years advocating for America’s biggest banks and corporations haven’t “changed me as a person.” Meanwhile, General Electric last week announced that the SEC chair the last four years, Mary Schapiro, will be joining the G.E. board, where she’ll help decide executive pay. In 2012, G.E. CEO Jeff Immelt took home $25.8 million. How much more did Immelt make than typical G.E. workers? We don’t know. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act does require corporations to disclose the ratio between their CEO and median worker pay. But the SEC, under Schapiro, never did get around to writing the regulations needed to enforce this disclosure . . .
Most media coverage of the Swiss CEO pay vote earlier this month has zeroed in on a provision in the landmark referendum that mandates shareholder approval for all CEO pay. But global CEOs aren’t losing sleep over shareholder voting. The precedent in the referendum that does have them worried: The Swiss vote bans golden parachutes, the huge windfalls CEOs pocket after mergers. The next U.S. chief exec in line for a golden parachute goodie: William Johnson, the CEO at Heinz, the food giant about to be swallowed up in a $23.3-billion buyout. If Johnson exits Heinz, he’ll pocket $56 million in bonus benefits, on top of $156.7 million in deferred pay. Where’s Johnson headed after Heinz? Not Switzerland. Not likely the Netherlands either. Dutch officials are now drafting rules that ban golden parachutes over $100,000 . . .Gated communities. Safe rooms. Bodyguards. America’s wealthy have been securing their private physical space for some time now. Now the rich are angling for a wealthy-only corner of cyberspace. Welcome to Summitas, a “gated community for data” initially bankrolled two years ago by a billionaire New Yorker. The firm’s clients, notes Summitas CEO William Wyman, hold net worths over $5 million and pony up $7,500 a year for a customized private online space. Summitas guarantees them all “National Security Agency-level encryption.” In other words, observes Businessweek reporter Drake Bennett, the high-enders on Summitas can “post pictures of the yacht without worrying about what people outside the family will think.” Over 4,000 families of means have so far enrolled.
Quote of the Week
Scott Klinger, co-author,Inequality in the Social Security Debate, March 14, 2013
PETULANT PLUTOCRAT OF THE WEEK
Back in 2011, Occupy marchers rallied near the Manhattan home of hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, who didn’t take kindly to their presence. “Instead of vilifying our most successful businesses,” a Paulson flack retorted, protesters ought to be grateful for all the taxes Paulson and his hedge fund were paying. Gratitude time has apparently passed. Native New Yorker Paulson, news reports last week revealed, may soon be moving to Puerto Rico, where a year-old law lets new residents avoid all taxes on capital gains. Hedge fund managers currently take the bulk of their income as capital gains, via a loophole that lowers the tax rate they face from 39.6 to 23.8 percent. But zero beats 23.8 percent any day, and Paulson won’t have much problem finding suitable digs in San Juan. He’s reportedly eyeing a $5-million penthouse.
IMAGES OF INEQUALITY
Photographer Colin McPherson has teamed with local equality groups along the British A41 highway corridor to find visual images that can help raise questions about the inequality we all live amid. An exhibition of these images, prepared with the support of the UK Equality Trust, has just begun a cross-country tour.
PROGRESS AND PROMISE
America’s top education historian, Diane Ravitch, calls them the “billionaire boys club.” These awesomely affluent would-be wonks have been bankrolling a national network of think tanks and politicians devoted to applying “market-driven” solutions — like charter schools and relentless standardized testing — to education’s problems. How single-minded have these billionaires become? They’ve just poured nearly $2 million into a Los Angeles school board race to defeat an incumbent, Steve Zimmer, who dared suggest a moratorium on new charters. But community groups and teachers rallied behind Zimmer and earlier this month scored a pivotal victoryover deep pockets like New York’s Michael Bloomberg and Wal-Mart heir Carrie Walton Penner. Zimmer asked voters to resist Big Money’s “assault on our democracy.” They did.
Take Action
on InequalityWhy are right-wingers in Congress trying to repeal Obamacare in their latest budget plan? Under Obamacare, top 1 percent families will average over $50,000 more annually in Medicare taxes. Tell your rep in Congress to reject any new giveaway to America’s wealthiest.
INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS
Stat of the Week
IN FOCUS
Why Aren’t More of Us Protesting Inequality?Egalitarian-minded academics have just subjected one of the most central political questions of our time to rigorous research scrutiny.Billionaire Warren Buffett is still paying taxes at a lower rate than his secretary. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz last year collected $117.5 million for his labor. The life expectancy gap between Americans of affluent and modest means has widened by five years over the last three decades.
New Wisdom
on Wealth
NEW AND NOTABLE
‘Saving’ Social Security: The CEO ApproachSarah Anderson and Scott Klinger, Inequality in the Social Security Debate: How benefit cuts would impact health industry CEOs versus home health aides, Institute for Policy Studies, March 14, 2013.
Anybody see a real person in the debate over Social Security cuts now raging in Washington? Not likely. Lawmakers aren’t talking much about real people. They’re talking opaque labels — like “chained CPI.”
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Penny Pritzker: Obama’s Likely Commerce Secretary Choice
by Stephen Lendman
![Pritzker: acertifiable plutocrat. With each appointment Obama confirms what kind of government we have: plutocrats or loyal servants of plutocrats.](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Penny-Pritzker-Billionaire30aug07.jpg)
Pritzker: a certifiable plutocrat. With each appointment Obama confirms what kind of government we have: plutocrats or loyal servants of plutocrats. What is that called?
She’s one of America’s most powerful women. For sure she’s one of the richest. Forbes estimates she’s worth $1.85 billion. She’s also heir to the Hyatt Hotels and Pritzker family fortune. It’s net worth exceeds $20 billion. Some think it’s much more.
No one knows for sure. It’s stashed in tax havens. Only little people pay what they owe. Billionaires use money to make more of it. They steal plenty along the way. Balzac said behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Tax Justice Network estimates up to $32 trillion in hidden and stolen wealth stashed in tax havens. Maybe it’s much more. No one knows for sure.
Insiders say Pritzker’s Obama’s top Commerce Secretary choice. Honest observers want her held accountable. She has lots to answer for. More on that below.
Her official bio calls her a “civic and business leader.” She’s PSP Capital Partners founder, chairman and CEO. She also heads Pritzker Realty Group and Artemis Real Estate Partners. Previously she was involved in other family businesses.
In February 2011, Obama appointed her to the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness (PCJC). General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt headed it.
He destroyed jobs at the same time. He offshored them to low wage countries. He pretended to advise Obama on creating them. He faked it. PCJC met four times. It was a sham. It accomplished nothing.
In January 2012, it was disbanded. It never should have been established in the first place. It was smoke and mirrors. It was typical Obama. It did nothing to create jobs.
Pritzker serves on Hyatt’s board. She’s a former Wm. Wrigley, Jr. Company, Marmon Group and LaSalle Bank board member. She chaired credit reporting firm TransUnion.
She’s a Council on Foreign Relations member. She belongs to other elitist groups. They’re international and influential. They’re comprised of likeminded figures. They’re up to no good.
In its August 2008 “Power of Penny Pritzker” article, Bloomberg called her the “billionaire head of Barack Obama’s fundraising machine (and) the person to call when you want to ‘get the job done,’ says Warren Buffett.”
In 2008, she was Obama’s campaign finance team national chairwoman. She raised millions. She shattered fundraising records.
She helped get Obama elected. She organized “the best financed campaign in US history,” said Bloomberg. In 2012, she was a top bundler.
She was up for Commerce Secretary before. She dropped out of the running. She focused on business priorities. She had internal disputes to resolve. Billions of dollars were involved. In 2011, eleven family members settled things.
She’s damaged goods. How that affects her now remains to be seen. She ran suburban Chicago-based Superior Bank. In 2001, it collapsed. It had $2.3 billion in assets.
It was a predatory lender. It was heavily into subprime fraud. Pritzker was one of its originators. Some called her the subprime queen. For others she was the doyenne of predatory lending.
She cost FDIC $700 million. Depositors lost $65 million. She bears full responsibility. With Ernst and Young and Merrill Lynch, she originated subprime fraud.
Superior Bank operated a nationwide origination system. It was founded in 1988. Pritzker family members bought Lyons Savings. It was bankrupt.
They paid $42.5 million. They got $645 million in tax credits in return. They put up $1 million to get it. They got more. Sweetheart deal terms included all federally insured bank deposits.
They took full advantage. They concentrated on subprime lending. In December 1992, they acquired Alliance Funding. It was a wholesale mortgage originator.
In November 2002, In These Times headlined “Breaking the Bank,” saying:
Superior had “a familiar ring. Using a variety of shell companies and complex financial gimmicks, (its) managers and owners exaggerated the profits and financial soundness of the bank.”
“While (it) actually lost money throughout most of the ’90s, publicly it appeared to be growing remarkably fast and making unusually large profits.”
“Under that cover, (it) paid its owners huge dividends and provided them favorable loans and other financial deals deemed illegal by federal investigators.”
It was a “mini-Enron.” When it collapsed, Pritzker and other family members profited hugely. Borrowers and depositors were scammed. Superior’s auditor “doubled as a financial consultant.” He engaged in “dubious accounting practices.” He played fast and loose with numbers.
Pritzker ignored sound risk management principles. She ran a predatory lending operation.
She made money the old fashioned way. She stole it. She got away with grand theft. She settled for pennies on the dollar. No one went to jail. Retired Ameritech manager Fran Sweet lost $100,000. She called the Pritzkers “crooks. “They don’t care anything about people who spent their whole lives trying to save” she said.
Many Superior depositors lost everything they had over the FDIC insured $100,000 limit.
Bloomberg reported controversy surrounding credit reporting firm TransUnion.
At the time, it controlled “the $3.3 billion market in equal shares with Atlanta-based Equifax and Dublin-based Experian Group Ltd.”
“After widespread consumer complaints about shoddy service in the credit checking industry, (Congress) passed legislation in 2003 that allowed people to get free copies of credit reports so they could check for mistakes and block information obtained from identity theft.”
The same year, Klamath Falls, OR-based Judy Thomas won a $5.3 million settlement. She claimed TransUnion took six years to correct a mistake in her credit report. On appeal, it was reduced to $1.3 million. In 2008, Pritzker withdrew her name from Commerce Secretary consideration. Friends say she now wants the job. Subprime fraud taints her. Obama may choose her anyway. He’s in bed with Wall Street crooks. Money power runs things. Pritzker at Commerce fits right in. She’ll be one of the crowd.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached atlendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html//Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour
http://www.dailycensored.com/penny-pritzker-obamas-likely-commerce-secretary-choice/
The Pope and Politics—the innumerable reasons why American television news is garbage
By Peter Hart
He went on:
He is a very, very warm gentleman. I spent an hour with him in Buenos Aires last May. I was touched by his intelligence, by his manifestly deep interior life, his spiritual life. Got a very clear-eyed view of the troubled politics of his own country.
It’s hard to know exactly what Weigel means by the “stress” and “troubled politics” in Argentina. The major political dispute Bergoglio was involved in was his fervent opposition to gay marriage, which he called a “destructive attack on God’s plan.” Argentine democracy thought otherwise, and the senate passed a marriage equality law.
Weigel called him “a reformer his whole life,” saying, “I think the world is going to get to love this man very quickly.”
“Reformer his whole life” is a strange way to describe Bergoglio, given the intense controversy over his actions during the military junta that seized control of the country in the late 1970s. Thousands were killed, tortured and disappeared. According to his critics, Bergoglio–as head of the Jesuits in Argentina–failed to stand up to, or even conspired with, the brutal dictatorship.
A USA Today report (3/14/13) also touched lightly on that history, noting that Bergoglio was known for “tangling with the powerful leftists who have run Argentina for years.” The paper explained that he
never shared the political activism of some of his fellow Jesuits, especially during turbulent times in the ’70s. He fought fiercely against the left-leaning liberation theology movement that swept Latin America
As USA Today puts it, “He tried to repair the reputation of a church that lost many followers by failing to openly challenge Argentina’s former dictatorship.” The paper noted, “Under Bergoglio’s leadership, Argentina’s bishops issued a collective apology in October 2012 for the church’s failures to protect its flock. “
Little more is mentioned. This is striking, because much of the piece comes from an Associated Press report (3/13/13) by Brian Murphy and Michael Warren that thoroughly discussed the accusations against Bergoglio. Right after the preceding comment about the apology, the AP reporters summarized some of the criticism of Bergoglio, including accusations that he refused to support two priests who were kidnapped in 1976, and that he was “accused of turning his back on a family that lost five relatives to state terror”– a story that involves the theft of a baby.
Whatever the specifics, the role of the church was vital in supporting the dictatorship. As human rights attorney Myriam Bregman put it, “The dictatorship could not have operated this way without this key support.”
USA Today omitted this damning information, but did include this characterization from Bergoglio’s official biographer:
Bergoglio almost never granted media interviews, limiting himself to speeches from the pulpit, and was reluctant to contradict his critics, even when he knew their allegations against him were false, he said.
While Pope Francis may be inclined to avoid speaking about his critics, that’s no reason for media not to speak with them. For a critical take, you can check out Democracy Now!‘s March 14 broadcast.
PETER HART is a senior (and founding) editor of FAIR.
OpEds: Questions from a ‘Dirty War’
what did the newly chosen Pope Francis do?
When a military junta seized power in Argentina in 1976, Bergoglio — elected Wednesday by the College of Cardinals as the first Latin American to become pope — was the head of the Jesuit order in the country. His elevation to the papacy occasioned great joy and national pride in his homeland — but also, for some, brought back memories of Argentina’s darkest and most desperate days.
In other South American countries that suffered under military rule during the 1970s, the Catholic Church served as a focal point of resistance. In Chile, for example, the church crusaded for human rights and pressed the government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet to account for the many activists who “disappeared” into custody, often never to be seen again.
The dictatorship in Argentina was the most savage of all. At least 10,000, and perhaps as many as 30,000, people suspected of leftist involvement were killed. Victims would be snatched from their homes or places of work, interrogated under torture for weeks or months, and then executed. Some were dispatched by being drugged, loaded into aircraft and shoved out into the wide Rio de la Plata or the Atlantic Ocean to drown.
The church in Argentina, however, was comparatively passive in the face of this horror — some would say complicit. Church leaders never confronted the military regime the way their counterparts in Chile did; nor did they encourage or even permit grass-roots activism at the parish level, as developed in Brazil. On the contrary, the church allowed Argentina’s ruling generals and admirals to cloak themselves in religiosity and claim that somehow, in their sinister rampage, they were serving God’s will.
Questions about Bergoglio involve an incident that took place in 1976, shortly after the military seized power: Two Jesuit priests under his command were kidnapped, held without charges, interrogated and tortured. They were finally released after five months; several laypeople arrested in the same operation were killed.
Both priests were followers of the left-wing “liberation theology” movement; Bergoglio was not. As their superior, he had told them to cease the work they were doing in a slum neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The allegation is that Bergoglio, knowing the men were in danger of being targeted by the military, withdrew the Jesuit order’s protection from them because of their disobedience — effectively throwing them to the wolves.
This charge was first made in 1986 by Emilio Mignone, one of Argentina’s most respected human rights activists, in a book about the relationship between the church and the dictatorship. Left-leaning journalist Horacio Verbitsky took it up again in his 2005 book “El Silencio.”
Bergoglio has consistently denied the allegation. He told a biographer that the priests left the order voluntarily and that he appealed privately to leaders of the junta for the priests’ release.
Bergoglio also told the biographer that he often allowed people sought by the military to hide on church property. In testimony before an official tribunal in 2010, he said he was unaware of the military government’s worst excesses until after the fact. He specifically denied knowing that babies born to pregnant detainees were forcibly taken from their mothers and given to politically connected families for adoption — although there is evidence suggesting he did know about this practice.
Last year, Argentina’s bishops, under Bergoglio’s leadership, issued a blanket apology for having failed to protect the church’s flock during the dictatorship. That the church was tragically remiss is no longer in question, if it ever was.
Now that Bergoglio is Pope Francis, his record and recollections of nearly 40 years ago are important not so much because of what he did or did not do but because of what lessons he did or did not learn. There were Catholic prelates who openly collaborated with the dictators and those who openly opposed them. Bergoglio was somewhere in the middle. He disapproved, surely. He did what he could. But by his own admission, he didn’t try to change the world.
Now he has more than the duty to lead 1.2 billion Catholics. He also has a chance to atone.