Answering The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi?

January 10, 2017

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This week’s Tuesday’s With Trump, not to be confused with Tuesday’s With Morrie…

Carl Nicholas Karcher (January 16, 1917 – January 11, 2008) was an American businessman, founder of the Carl’s Jr. hamburger chain, now owned by parent company CKE Restaurants, Inc.

Carl’s Jr. CEO Andy Puzder has earned kudos for turning around a troubled CKE after he linked up with its founder, Carl Karcher, in 1991 and where he has been CEO since 2000. – LA Times

“The new management team had ended the longtime practice of starting every executive meeting with the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi and the pledge of allegiance to the flag…[Circa May 1992]

On March 1, 1993,CKE’s board voted five to two to fire Carl N. Karcher.

Eight weeks after being locked out of his office in 1993,Carl engineered a takeover of the company.Through a complex series of transactions, a partnership headed by financier William P. Foley II assumed some of Carl’s debts, received much of his stock in return, and took control of CKE. Foley became the new chairman of the board. Carl was named chairman emeritus and got his old office back. Almost all of the executives and directors who had opposed him subsequently left the company.” – Fast Food Nation

Karcher was an active member and Knight of SMOM – the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Karcher was a lifelong supporter of Conservative causes. Karcher Enterprises made contributions to the anti abortion “terrorist group” Operation Rescue. The restaurant chain has also been a major donor for Conservative Super PACs and the Republican Party.

Karcher was an early supporter of John Schmitz, a Republican and member of the John Birch Society, who represented Orange County in the California State Senate and later Congress. Schmitz was the presidential nominee of the American Independent Party in 1972. Source Wiki

Lauren Kelley, the activism and gender editor at AlterNet, pulled together a list of five food companies run by radical right wingers.”who’ve spent significant money opposing gay rights, abortion rights, and other important causes and funding attack ads against left-leaning politicians.“

Carl’s Jr. (Hardee’s) founder Carl Karcher, who died in 2008, writes Kelley, had been a supporter of anti-abortion causes, like Operation Rescue, for decades. He also had a mean anti-gay streak as well, she says, and…

“gay rights groups dubbed his hamburgers ‘bigot burgers‘ after Karcher supported a 1978 proposition that would have allowed school boards to fire teachers who were gay or advocated homosexuality.” – Source Yahoo World Politics

In 1978, Karcher contributed US $1M to California’s Proposition 6 initiative, also known as the Briggs Initiative. He was the initiative’s biggest financial supporter.

The failed Briggs initiative would have banned gays and lesbians, and possibly anyone who supported gay rights, from working in California’s public schools. The Briggs Initiative was the first failure in a movement that started with the successful campaign headed by Anita Bryant and her organization Save Our Children in Dade County, Florida, to repeal a local gay rights ordinance.

So how is any of this remotely related to Tuesday’s with Trump? Carl’s Jr. CEO Andy Puzder is Carl Karcher’s protege, and Donald Trump’s pick for US Secretary of Labor.

[automated restaurant machines are] “always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case.” - Andy Puzder - Interview with Business Insider

Above the actions of a mentor and the words of his protege, who would be the US Secretary of Labor. And now, as we may be in need of it, the Prayer Of Saint Francis of Assisi which our new SOL’s mentor took solace in before every board meeting….

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace! That where there is hatred, I may bring love.That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness. That where there is discord, I may bring harmony. That where there is error, I may bring truth. That where there is doubt, I may bring faith. That where there is despair, I may bring hope. That where there are shadows, I may bring light. That where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort, than to be comforted. To understand, than to be understood. To love, than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life. —Saint Francis of Assisi—