Money Don't Buy Everything, It's True....

As chronicled here, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s effort to ensure that Catholic schools remain Catholic has prompted one-hundred San Franciscans who label themselves as “committed Catholics inspired by Vatican II,” to write a letter requesting Pope Francis to force his resignation and appoint a new archbishop committed to “our values and your teachings.”

Francis, who has spoken strongly in the past against gay marriage and transgender ideology, has also called for a church that is “poor and for the poor.” Here Cordileone is more representative of Francis’ vision than are the letter’s signatories. A sampling:

Charles Geschke is the co-chairman of Adobe Systems, which had 2014 revenue of $4.147 billion. He has given over $200,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign and $40,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Reuters reports his basic compensation at $4,129,090 with $5,302,000 in exercisable, $19,993,300 in unexercisable, and $10,993,600 in exercised options compensation.

Louis J. Giraudo is the former chairman of Pabst Brewing and a partner at Coblentz Patch Duffy and Bass LLP, where he “is focused on mergers and acquisitions of companies with revenues of $50 million to $2.5 billion.” He “has negotiated labor agreements for companies with as many as 11,000 employees, as well as acquisitions and sales of hotels and other real property.”

David Grubb is the former president of construction firm Swinerton Inc. After a 240-ton tower crane operated by a subcontractor hired by his firm fell and killed five people in 1989, he told a House subcommittee that “‘we don't deal with safety’ records when it comes to hiring subcontractors.” The company hired by his firm had been cited for fifty-nine violations between 1985 and 1988 with proposed fines totaling $110,000.

Larry Nibbi is CEO of Nibbi Brothers Construction, a company with $199 million in 2014 revenue according to the Engineering News-Record. The company was cited for three serious OSHA violations in 2011 after an inadequately constructed concrete form collapsed, allowing the wet concrete to partly bury three workers. OSHA determined that “the employer overloaded their working platform center support beam that broke in two, causing a catastrophic failure of the platform and the false work above.” The project the injured men were working on was worth $40 million.

Clint Reilly worked on political campaigns for Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, and Barbara Boxerbefore becoming “founder and owner of the Clinton Reilly Holdings, a diversified family of commercial real estate and hospitality businesses” and amassing an “estimated $100 million fortune.” In 2001, a writer for SF Weekly described a visit to Reilly's home: “My leather-jacketed host, Clint Reilly, taps a code into the security system that unlocks the metal gate to his 120-acre estate in Napa County. In his black Mercedes sedan, we climb past hillside vineyards and through a pine forest, emerging on top of Mount Veeder, where we park in front of a chateau.”

Sam Singer, a PR man hired by opponents of Cordileone, did not sign but has done much to promote the letter. He was profiled by SF Weekly in 2014: “When your workspace is engulfed in flames; when your mistress threatens to reveal your illegitimate family; when your restaurant serves up E. coli burgers; when your employees inadvertently kill a young child; when a wild beast rampages through your place of business — you better call Sam Singer.”

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, costs for full-page ads “typically run in the tens of thousands of dollars.”

No man can serve two masters….

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