Category Archives: Constitution

The Government Of Me.

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As the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party continues to express outrage at our federal government, it becomes increasingly clear that the Tea Party simply does not understand the concept of a democratic republic. Its members ignore the fact that the Articles of Confederation were replaced by a Constitution that created a strong, centralized federal government. They ignore the fact that the power of the federal government versus the power of the states was thoroughly debated by our Founding Fathers, and the Federalists won. They quote the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment while ignoring all of its original Articles that gave the federal government sweeping powers to “provide for the general Welfare of the United States.”

Indeed, they even seem to ignore the “United” in United States!

At the heart of the Tea Party anger seems to be a misunderstanding of what constitutes a democracy. By its very nature, a democracy is based on majority rule. That means a minority, sometimes a significant minority, is often unhappy with the direction of our government. And, as the result of a quirk in our Electoral College, following the 2000 presidential election, a significant majority of our citizens were unhappy with the outcome, having voted for another candidate.

The Tea Party members refuse to acknowledge that President Obama was elected and re-elected by significant majorities of voters. They ignore the fact that the 2012 election was, in essence, a referendum on support for the middle class; for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; for the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).

They continue to claim that Obama was born in Kenya and should, therefore, be disqualified from holding the office of president. They continue to howl that financial and environmental regulations are “job killers.” They consider his signature accomplishment of making health care affordable to all Americans a socialist government “takeover.” And, instead of accepting majority rule, they seem determined to take away the voting rights of African-Americans, Latinos, students, women, and the poor – anyone who might vote against the Tea Party agenda.

In other words, as they wave the American flag and their pocket copies of the Constitution with only the Second and Tenth Amendments highlighted, they are attempting to cut out the very heart of our democracy…that of majority rule.

The Tea Party refuses to accept that our nation is evolving; that the minorities of brown and black are the majorities of the future. The “I’ve got mine, you can’t have yours” crowd can’t bear the idea of change; of giving power to others. I believe that is what’s behind their animosity toward President Obama.

They can’t accept forward-thinking ideas such as investing in our failing infrastructure while interest rates are at all-time lows. They can’t understand that a tax policy that punishes greed and rewards corporate investment in our nation benefits the vast majority of our citizens. They can’t grasp that jobs paying a living wage are necessary to the health of our nation and benefit us all. They can’t see that an environmental policy that conserves the health of our planet benefits everyone. As long as they have theirs, they refuse to accept the notion that affordable health care and a comfortable retirement are rights, not benefits.

Our Founding Fathers had the wisdom to create a government “of the people, by the people and for the people” – the majority of people.

If you want a government “of the people, by the people and for me” you’re in the wrong place. You should find a remote, uninhabited island where you can become supreme dictator. Otherwise, it’s time you learned to accept majority rule.

The New American Royalty?

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Last week, Liz Cheney announced that she is running for US Senate from the State of Wyoming. If elected, she will likely walk the same dark path as her father, former Vice-President Richard “The Dick” Cheney. Liz has long been her father’s most outspoken defender and apologist. Like her father, virtually every word that escapes her mouth oozes with hatefulness and contempt for others.

At the same time, some Republicans are clamoring for Jeb Bush to run for President of the United States. If he does run, and wins, he will be the third Bush to be president. In addition, his grandfather Prescott Bush was a US Senator.

On the other side, the presumed presidential nominee of the Democratic Party is Hillary Clinton. Although I very much like Hillary and I think she would be a wonderful president, I’m troubled that she already spent eight years in the White House. Wouldn’t it be better if another popular candidate, especially a woman, stepped forward?

Is this the future of our nation? Are we so enamored with celebrity that we vote for the name instead of the person? Are we more interested in genetics than ideas? Were the last Bush and the last Cheney such great leaders we can’t wait to have another set in power?Politicians are not like software. As we learned from “W”, the succeeding generation is not necessarily version 2.0, 1.5 or even 1.0.

Nepotism is banned in most successful organizations, why not in government?

If this trend continues, how long before we simply proclaim a royal family or families and do away with elections altogether? Then we, too, could breathlessly await the birth of a new monarch.

I may not be an expert on history, but I seem to recall that we fought a war to get away from royalty.

What’s Wrong With The US? Connect The Dots.

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It’s probably self-evident, but our government is no longer of the people, by the people and for the people. A more accurate description would be of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations.

But how did we get here? How have a few powerful multinationals and one percent of the population usurped power from the vast majority of the people? In order to fully understand this, all you need to do is connect the dots.

  • We have allowed a few large corporations to create virtual monopolies, often with the help of government subsidies. These corporations buy out, squeeze out and drive out small businesses.
  • The CEOs of these corporations sit on each others’ Boards and approve each others’ compensations.
  • A portion of CEO compensation is based on the companies’ productivity and share price. That means the CEOs strive to cut costs (employee benefits and salaries) while increasing the price of products and services.
  • Once corporations achieve maximum productivity and profit with US employees, they are encouraged to offshore jobs in order to further reduce labor costs and employee benefits.
  • As corporations expand around the world, it becomes easier to stash profits offshore in order to reduce their tax burden and further increase profits.
  • These increased profits and compensation allow corporations to “invest” millions in the political campaigns of those who will support corporate interests.
  • The campaign contributions by corporations and corporate leaders leads to a massive increase in the cost of running for office, driving away those who might represent ordinary working people.
  • Corporate-financed Political Action Groups and associations, such as the US Chamber of Commerce spend additional millions to support corporate-friendly candidates.
  • Once the corporate-friendly candidates are sworn into office, they pass legislation that benefits their contributors.
  • Corporations and industries finance large lobbying efforts to further impact legislation resulting in large government contracts and subsidies.
  • Eventually, the corporate-friendly politicians nominate and approve judicial appointments that make the courts more friendly to corporate interests (see Citizens United v FEC, Buckley v Valeo and Bowman v Monsanto).
  • Politicians, with help from the courts (see Shelby County v Holder), undermine the voting rights of minorities and others who oppose them. At the same time, they wage war against the poor by cutting education, unemployment benefits and food stamps. They allow corporations to steal their savings, even their homes without repercussions.

We can take back our government, but it won’t be easy. It starts with election finance reform that takes the massive amounts of money out of political campaigns. It ends with politicians who, in the interests of ordinary people, are willing to break up “too big to fail” corporations as President Theodore Roosevelt once did.

A Divided Nation.

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I began this blog several years ago with a post “Why We’re Divided.” The point was that our political divide is not merely the result of differing ideologies. It’s the result of differing “facts.”

Never has that been more clearly demonstrated than by two competing advertising campaigns running on this Independence Day. In my state’s largest newspaper, there is an ad bearing the headline “In God We Trust.” Paid for by a company that is owned by a religious zealot, the ad uses a variety of quotes from our Founding Fathers to support the claim that our nation was founded on Christianity.

A few pages later, there is an ad bearing the headline “Celebrate Our Godless Constitution.” Paid for by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, it, too, uses a variety of quotes from our Founding Fathers to support the claim that our nation was built on the principle of separation of Church and State.

This is a classic example of proof-texting – selectively choosing quotes that support a particular point of view. This technique is often used by the religious to justify actions or beliefs. Religious leaders use verses from the Bible to justify war, to rationalize genocide, to discriminate against gays and others, to ignore – indeed blame – the poor for struggling as the result of policies they didn’t create, etc.

No matter how ugly your point of view, you can find a verse in the Bible, the Torah or the Qur’an to justify an action or inaction.

The same is true when it comes to quotes by our Founding Fathers. As Michael Austin writes in his book That’s Not What They Meant! Reclaiming the Founding Fathers from America’s Right Wing, the Founders were so diverse, you can find a quote from one of them to support almost any point of view. Among the Founders were Protestants, Catholics, Quakers, Jews, Deists, Agnostics and Atheists. There were idealists and slave owners. There were farmers, plantation owners, printers, attorneys, inventors, ship owners and many others.

There were Founders in favor of a strong central government and those who believed the power should reside exclusively with the states.

So which ad is correct? Both of them. And neither of them.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, who authored our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, strongly believed in separation of Church and State. The majority at the Constitutional Convention agreed. However, many of the Founders spoke of “divine providence” and the “principles of Christianity.”

More important, the ads demonstrate the growing divide between Americans; between the Federalists and those who believe in states’ rights; between the devoutly religious and the agnostics; between science and religion; between those who trust government and those who despise it; between the wealthy and the poor; between red and blue; between black, brown, red and white; between the educated and the uneducated; and between those who believe the US is the greatest nation on Earth and those who recognize its faults and intend to change them.

I think it no exaggeration to write that our nation is at a crossroads, more divided than at any time since the Civil War. Independence Day is the perfect time to consider the consequences of such a divide. Committing to compromise and finding common ground are imperative to the future of our nation.

It’s Difficult To Disprove A Negative.

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Whenever someone accuses the government of a scandal, it’s almost impossible to disprove it. That’s because the accusation makes headlines. The truth doesn’t.

Nobody understands this principle better than Teapublicans.

When Bill Clinton was elected to the White House, he was forced to disprove a constant wave of scandals created by the GOP. Now it’s President Obama’s turn. That’s why we’ve seen a flurry of scandalous accusations about Fast & Furious, drones, Benghazi, the IRS, and NSA.

The headlines have been damning – based on outrageous claims by Rep. Darrell Issa, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Speaker John Boehner, Sen. Mitch McConnell and others. The truth has been less interesting.

For example, Issa made claims that Fast & Furious was a large scale gun-running operation overseen by Attorney General Eric Holder. The reality is that it was a small localized operation by a unit of the ATFE frustrated by Arizona’s lax gun laws and the inability to prosecute straw buyers.

Issa and others made the sensational claim that the president and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ignored the danger to diplomats in Libya then covered up their failures. The reality is that Ambassador Stevens twice rejected increased security and the talking points released by Susan Rice were crafted by the CIA and mid-level State Dept. officials.

Teapublicans claim that IRS scrutiny of Tea Party organizations seeking nonprofit status was orchestrated by the White House and President Obama. The truth is, the IRS director was a Bush appointee and, according to testimony by an IRS supervisor in charge (who is, incidentally, a self-described conservative Republican), the scrutiny of Tea Party groups was not ordered by the administration and was not politically motivated.

Teapublicans and many Democrats claim that NSA collection of data demonstrates that President Obama is an authoritarian fascist operating in defiance of the 4th amendment of the Constitution. The truth is, the NSA program began immediately following 9/11 and the Obama administration reigned it in, eliminating warrantless wiretaps and clearing the collection of data through the FISA court and Congress. Interestingly, the people of Europe were aware of our program long before Snowden’s revelations and the overwhelming majority approve of it.

All of this proves that, now that our press is driven by ratings and sensationalism rather than a desire to inform, unscrupulous politicians can take advantage of it. And no politicians are more unscrupulous than today’s Republican Party.

Marketing Guns To Kids.

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For many years, I’ve used mock guns to teach disarms to martial arts students. Some time ago, government agencies banned the sale of such items if they too closely resembled a real gun. They dictated that they be colored red, orange or yellow, and that they not include any detail so that no reasonable person would mistake them for a gun.That meant that they pretty much resembled a colored block of rubber or wood with a handle. The fear was that, if they were too realistic, criminals might use one of these training aids to hold up a convenience store.

Yes, I know, it never made much sense to me, either.

Now gun manufacturers have made such restrictions pointless. It seems that bluing, silver and black are not exciting enough to attract women and kids to the shooting “sports.” So, the murder-for-sale industry is now marketing guns in a variety of colors. This trend began when they began offering pink guns to women, presumably so that attackers wouldn’t know whether to back off in fear or simply curl up in laughter.

Not satisfied to stop there, the gun industry decided to offer guns in a full range of candy-like colors, such as red, blue, green and yellow. Of course, the new colors made them much more attractive to young children. And since they look like toys, when a young child discovers a colored gun in mommy’s or daddy’s nightstand, the child is almost certain to play with it.

What did the gun industry do when it was made aware of the potential danger of these guns? Did they immediately stop marketing them? Did they recall the lethal “toys” already on the market?

Of course not.

These upstanding Second Amendment absolutists simply encouraged parents to give guns to kids so they could start shooting them at targets (and each other) at ages as young as 5! Thanks to the NRA and their Teapublican supporters, there is virtually nothing that can be done to stop them.

On the other hand, it’s still illegal to sell or own a rubber or wooden “gun” that appears too realistic.

The Real IRS Scandal.

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The IRS should be embarrassed by revelations that it singled out Tea Party Patriot groups for extra scrutiny after they applied for 501(c)4 status. Not because scrutinizing these groups was wrong. But because the IRS did not deny them such status.

That’s right. None of these groups deserve to be considered 501(c)4 organizations. Neither do liberal groups. As Lawrence O’Donnell has pointed out on his show, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, that designation is supposed to be reserved for groups that promote the social welfare. In fact, the tax code describes qualifying organizations as “civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.”

What in that code describes the Tea Party?

Tea Party groups that have received the designation have almost entirely devoted their money and time to attack President Obama, Democratic candidates, progressive issues and the federal government. How does that meet the criteria of promoting social welfare?

Amazingly, despite the increased scrutiny, not a single Tea Party organization was denied 501(c)4 status. The same cannot be said for progressive groups. During the same period, numerous progressive groups were also asked to submit more information (I was involved with one), and, unlike the Tea Party, some progressive groups were denied non-profit status!

Congress and the IRS need to revisit the tax codes governing political groups. They should also take a serious look at the tax-free status of churches.

The Constitution states “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” The tax-free status of churches flies in the face of this clause by forcing those who do not choose to belong to a church to indirectly subsidize religion through taxes. Indeed, it was because some states forced residents to subsidize churches that James Madison included the establishment clause in his Bill of Rights.

By declaring all church property (including church-owned hospitals and other income-producing businesses) tax-exempt, the rest of us have to make up for the lost revenue through increased taxes. And this amount is not insubstantial. Some reports claim that as much as 25 percent of all US property is tax-exempt for religious purposes.

If this public subsidy of churches is not bad enough, many churches intentionally involve themselves in politics contrary to IRS codes governing their tax-free status. In fact, hundreds of churches have not only campaigned from the pulpit. They have recorded their political rants and sent the videos to the IRS to show their contempt for the codes. During the last election, many churches (the Catholic Church primary among them) even told their members that they would “go to hell if they voted for President Obama.” Yet the IRS refused to enforce its own codes.

Now that’s a real IRS scandal!

The Austerity Fraud.

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For more than 30 years, conservatives have pushed for smaller government. Their battle cry is to “Starve the Beast,” the beast being our federal government. They have demanded more and more tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, and they finally got them under President George W. Bush. Yet, when the tax cuts led to large deficits, Richard “The Dick” Cheney and other conservatives famously stated that “deficits don’t matter.”

Of course, when President Obama took office, their attitude suddenly changed.

Despite having driven our economy off a cliff, conservatives demanded that the new administration cut spending in order to bring the deficit and debt under control. To prove their point that these were the biggest challenges facing our nation (bigger than rampant unemployment, the housing crisis, losses by pension funds and the depressed stock markets), conservatives cited a Harvard University study by Reinhart and Rogoff which stated that economies suffer whenever a nation’s debt surpasses 90 percent of GDP.

This study was cited over and over by conservative politicians and conservative media.

Unfortunately for conservatives, it was recently debunked by a graduate student who found numerous statistical and computational inaccuracies which completely altered the study’s conclusions. Turns out, there were numerous exceptions to the Reinhart-Rogoff rule.

As for the effects of austerity measures, one need only look to Europe to see what happens when concern over deficits and debt trump job creation. Following strict austerity measures in both Greece and Spain, unemployment among young people now exceeds 60 and 50 percent, respectively. Both countries are facing major upheaval as the unemployed have taken to the streets to riot. In England, France and Italy, the effects of austerity have been less dramatic. Nevertheless, austerity has pushed their economies back into recession.

Had President Obama followed the advice of conservatives, we, too, could be struggling through another deep recession. Despite conservative claims to the contrary, the economic stimulus worked. For the past 3 years, we have not only recovered the jobs lost as the result of the Bush recession. We have added 1.5 additional jobs, and we would have added many more if not for layoffs in the public sector forced by Republican-controlled state houses.

We might well be back on the road to full recovery had the Teapublicans not taken  control of the House in 2011.

Virtually every economist has stated that the budget restraints imposed by our Teapublican Congress have hampered our economic recovery. Indeed, a recent article in The New York Times states that deficit reduction has already cost our economy at least 2 percent growth and 1 percent employment. And the budget cuts forced by sequestration have yet to fully take hold!

But don’t look for conservatives to give up on austerity any time soon. Despite our fragile recovery, they’re still demanding severe cuts to federal programs. They have proposed cuts to “entitlements” such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They want to eliminate or severely reduce unemployment insurance, SNAP (food stamps), Pell grants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They even want to cut or eliminate the United States Postal Service!

During the last election, Teapublican candidates said they would target entire departments for elimination, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives. Some want to get rid of the Federal Reserve and return to the gold standard.

Given a limited (and false) understanding of history and our Constitution, today’s conservatives believe that the only constitutionally-allowed functions of the federal government are defense, homeland security, border security and highway construction. For everything else, you’re on your own.

It’s easy to see what these policies would do to our nation. Just look at Somalia.

A Message To Tea Party “Patriots.”

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There’s simply no nice way of saying it. You are a bunch of self-serving, gun-toting, conspiracy promoting, anti-intellectual, anti-education, anti-evidence, anti-American nitwits.

You call yourselves Tea Party Patriots, but you’re neither patriotic nor even a party. You are the lunatic fringe. You wrap yourselves in the flag and spout quotes from a select few of our Founding Fathers all the while undermining the very principles they stood for. You say you’re strict Constitutionalists, but it’s apparent that the only part of the Constitution you’ve read is the Second Amendment (and you can only quote half of that). The other principles you attribute to the Founders are actually from the Articles of Confederation, the document our Constitution replaced.

You didn’t have the guts to stand on your own, so you decided to backdoor the Republican Party. Your angry rhetoric and Koch brothers’ millions managed to drive most moderate Republicans from office. As a result, you and your wealthy supporters have destroyed the party of Lincoln.

Now you’re trying to destroy our nation.

Your economic theories not only defy economics, they defy logic. They’re hurtful to children, the elderly, the poor, even veterans. You claim to be worried about the national debt, yet you sat idly by while the previous administration ran up enormous deficits through two ill-conceived wars and the collapse of our economy. Then you blamed President Obama for our economic ills. You watched as President Bush expanded the size of government by creating the government’s second-largest agency, the Department of Homeland Security, then screamed about the growth of government when the new administration took office.

You ignored the bailout of “too big to fail” banks, which saved the jobs of Wall Street millionaires and the assets of billionaires. But you howled in disgust when President Obama loaned money to US automakers, saving tens of thousands of jobs for middle class workers. You whined that you are “Taxed Enough Already” and blamed President Obama for raising taxes, even though tax rates were at a 60-year low.

You claim that you’re not racists, yet every single one of your rallies includes blatantly racist depictions of our democratically-elected president. You call him a Muslim, a socialist, a communist, a fascist and worse. You compare him to Hitler. You have even called him the leader of al Qaeda.

When you’ve failed to win elections, you’ve tried to change the rules. You have tried to suppress the votes of minorities and your political opponents. You have tried to deny women the right of equal pay for equal work. You have tried to deny women the right to control their own bodies. You have held our economy hostage in order to get your way. You have undermined democracy through use of the filibuster and gerrymandering. As a result, our nation now suffers from tyranny by the minority.

Thanks to your tactics, Congress has been turned into a venomous body devoid of compromise. Thanks to your representatives, the approval rating of our duly-elected Congress is lower than that of cockroaches. Thanks to your policies, the very wealthy have become wealthier while the rest of our citizens have suffered. Thanks to you, our nation is on the verge of becoming a plutocracy.

All of that is bad enough. But your real “triumph” is that you have made millions of Americans fearful of their government and of each other. Thanks to you, according to a new poll, 44 percent of Teapublicans now believe that an armed revolution against our government may be necessary…our own democratically-elected government!

Your entire movement is based on lies and meanness.

That said, it’s difficult to determine who is most at fault…you…or those who tolerate you, especially the media that give you undeserved credibility. One thing is certain…your movement would be more accurately called the Tea Not-Really-A-Party Traitors.

Creating A Separate Justice System For Terrorism Is A Very Slippery Slope.

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Some Teapublican leaders are calling for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to be treated as an “enemy combatant”, removing him from our traditional justice system and subjecting him to a military tribunal. Although this may be tempting to some, it is the slipperiest of slippery slopes.

Tsarnaev is an American citizen. He has the same right to a trial by jury as other accused terrorists and murderers, such as Timothy McVeigh and Jared Loughner. To treat him otherwise is to say that some American citizens are worthy of trial by a jury of their peers, and that other American citizens are undeserving of their constitutional rights.

This is the ultimate class warfare.

If we are to start down that path with Tsarnaev, where do we stop? Should all those accused of mass murder be denied a jury trial? Should jury trials be reserved only for natural born citizens? Should all naturalized citizens accused of crimes be turned over to the military?

The very act of declaring Tsarnaev an “enemy combatant” would undermine the bedrock of our justice system – that all citizens are equal, and that all citizens are innocent until proven guilty.