Watch as Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson (sporting a beard, no less) speaks out against legislation aimed at making it easier for victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue their abusers. Johnson gave his testimony in opposition to the Child Victims Act before a state Senate committee last year.
“I believe it is a valid question to ask whether the employer of a perpetrator should also be severely damaged, or possibly destroyed, in our legitimate desire for justice,”
While Ron Johnson may not support the notion that the church should be held responsible financially for protecting known pedophile priests, I’d beg to differ. The fact that Ron Johnson wants to protect pedophile priests and the church that protected them from being held fully accountable for their actions says a lot about the man.
I realize someone has to argue an opposing view to this issue and I tried to cut Johnson some slack here because it looks he had to defend an unpopular client and opinion.
However, his argument is off in opposition of the bill. He’s arguing that this will shut down all child services ever because if an employee, volunteer, or someone is molesting a child that will shut the whole organization down.
I’m not favor of that possibility but this is a problem of taking no legal action – any other organization in this position should have immediately reported this and fired them and let the law enforcement do it’s job.
He treats it more important the businesses must survive than the well being of children not being molested repeatedly because of these offenders.
Just no.
T, Ron Johnson didn’t have to defend the Catholic church; he chose to.
Holy shit.
That changes a lot then.
Well then.
Did you just assume he was a lawyer? Probably a reasonable assumption for someone running for the Senate 🙂 though obviously wrong.
I don’t think ROJO is even Catholic.
I think he’s Lutheran but was on the Finance Council although I might be wrong?
Well if you all bothered to watch the clip he says that he is a confirmed Lutheran.
I meant “I might be wrong” at the Finance Council bit, not the part he was Lutheran.
So Johnson’s opposition to certain elements of one bill means he is against the issue of child abuse legislation altogether? If that is your threshold then it is perfectly fair of me to say that Sen. Feingold’s opposition to the Patriot Act means he is pro-terrorism.
Not if the Patriot Act itself is an act of terrorism.
The point is not discussing the merits of the Patriot Act. Ok, so you thought it was a terrible bill and Russ was right to oppose it because there are better ways to fight terrorism. Fine. Then why can’t the same be true of this bill?
Why is it different with Johnson?
The reason is because his arguments in that video make no sense. Any company that is doing the right thing would never be penalized under that bill; the only entities that would be penalized would be those that are covering something up.
Yeah right. How can you be sure a company that had no knowledge and didn’t cover anything up couldn’t still be penalized? That’s how it works under sexual harrassment and other laws. A business owner can hire an employee who turns out to be a jerk who harrasses someone and because the owner has the “deep pockets” is automatically liable.
No, Sen. Feingold’s opposition to the Patriot Act means he’s pro-civil liberties.
Again, you and Ben miss the point. We are not debating the merits of the Patriot Act. I used it as an example to show how ludicrious your argument is here. But it’s a nice deflection when you don’t have a rational answer to my question. But it leaves me free to call Feingold a terrorism-loving hippie because that’s the threshold of your argument here Zach.
You can call Sen. Feingold whatever you want….at least until someone takes away your first amendment rights, just like lawmakers eroded our fourth and sixth amendment rights with the Patriot Act.
More deflection. I don’t think it is fair to call Feingold a terrorism-loving hippy because he opposed the Patriot Act. I think he may have had valid reasons for opposing a particular bill, but still thinking national security is a priority. You again miss the point and fail to answer, why Johnson can’t oppose elements of a particular bill and still not think that child sex abuse is a serious matter? Please explain the difference. And for the last time, I’m not debating the Patriot Act, just using it as an example. Surely you are smarter than this.
See that’s a good argument that I would have used – but the problem is he didn’t read the actual bill.
Who didn’t? Russ or Ron? And how do you know?
Ron. This was a classic case of a diocese reassigning a pedophile priest – 14 parrishes in 14 years since I actually live around the Green Bay area and kept up with the news around here which was talked about.
The bill for the most part is just a bunch of issues of employer/institutional responsibility for an employee’s wrongdoing. And if an institution of some sort let abuse happen because they weren’t taking care, they should take the hit.
The Catholic Diocese of Green Bay has a history of this and the fact they knew it instead of taking it to proper authorities of the problem.
Come on people, do you really want this clown making decisions on your behalf? He’s defending Father Feeney, the notorious pedophile that was transferred 14 times in 14 yrs. by the Green Bay Diocese. He wants to limit the yrs. before little boys have time to grow up. Don’t change the subject. Ripping the molding off the door frame in order to search for a suspected terrorist, is unfortunate, but the Patriot Act is written to be “temporary” allowing eventual sunset.