Some lessons gained in Wisconsin

Scott Walker and his ilk can win no matter how outrageous he behaves so long as he can out-spend his adversaries 8-to-1. And where did all that money come from? Certainly not from Wisconsin. There are super-rich people out there (like the Koch brothers) who are buying up political power all over the country.

But money doesn't do everything. Unions have over-stretched their demands and power and now people are down on them. That's a shame because history well documents the fact that unions are necessary in order to give workers a fighting chance against raw Capitalism. Unfortunately, we seem to be in a position of re-living history every century or so because most people do not learn history anymore. Probably half the people alive today were born after the Vietnam War. There is no memory of how labor was treated back in the late 19th Century.

Another fact is that wealthy conservatives are buying up political power in the states. They have not given up on the Federal government but they have realized that they can do a great deal of their damage through control of the states. Look at what has been happening to women's issues around the country, especially in Southern states where this strategy has been successful.

In an odd sort of way, what is happening now is a violation of the old conservative principle of "states rights." Except that it is not the Federal government that is intervening in self-determination of the states. It is big money from out-of-state. What would have happened in Wisconsin had the people of the state been able to exercise their own political choice without the intervention of foreign economic and political power?

Lying in Public

Why do people (so-called journalists) in the media allow politicians to make complete lies in their interviews? In effect, members of the media become accessories to this lying by allowing it to go through without question. Are they supporters of the lying camp? really, not always.

I think the answer is that they know they won't get more interviews if they call candidates out on lying. So they let it pass. Their reputations depend on landing the interviews with big candidates and politicians. So they sell their souls to advance themselves. And, meanwhile, the listening/watching public gets nothing but falsehoods and no intelligent criticism. 

That's really evil. How can democracy survive in a system like this?

Another One for the "Birthers"

After all this time, the "birthers" are still alive and well (if you can call anyone of that persuasion "well"). I know because one of my friends is one of them and he recently informed me that one of his kind had discovered an obscure Supreme Court decision that absolutely proved that Obama lacks the qualifications to be President. 

The decision in question is Minor v. Happersett (1875). It is actually a very interesting case in which Mrs. Minor, a native born US citizen and resident of Missouri, sued Mr. Happersett, a registrar of voters, for not allowing her to register to vote because she was a woman. Attorneys for Minor argued that she had a right to vote guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. But the Supreme Court argued that the US Constitution, even as amended, does not prohibit states from denying suffrage to women. Indeed, it was not until the 19th Amendment (1920) that Federal law prohibited states from discriminating on the basis of sex in determining the right to vote.

Since the 14th Amendment deals with citizenship and states that "no State shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," the Court dealt first with Minor's citizenship rights as such. The birthers claim that language in the Minor v. Happersett ruling defines the class of "natural-born citizens" in such a way that Obama could not qualify. In fact, if this were true, large numbers of people would not qualify as natural born citizens, including John McCain, Mitt Romney, and my own step-daughter.

What the 14th Amendment says is that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." This is surely true; however, what this statement does not do is define the class of natural-born citizens. The class of citizens under the 14th Amendment includes persons born in the US of foreign citizens or visitors --- something the birthers do not like --- and excludes persons born outside of the US even though at least one parent is a US citizen. So the birthers cannot depend on the 14th Amendment for their ammunition and, instead, look to the language of the 1875 decision.

So here is the first part of the paragraph that the birthers like. "The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners." This, the birthers claim, defines the class of "natural-born citizens." Of course, what it actually says is merely that no one ever doubted that children born in the US of US parents belonged in that class. That does not define the class; it merely designates an undoubted member of the class. 

What is interesting is that the same paragraph continues: "Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens." In other words, the Court acknowledged that there are other routes to membership in the class of "natural-born citizens" but saw no need to argue those issues since Mrs. Minor was clearly a citizen without going into any of those other arguments. 

Further into the opinion, it states that legislation "as early as 1790, . . . the children of citizens of the United States that might be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be considered as natural-born citizens." The generally accepted membership of the class of "natural-born citizens" is indeed children born in the US (and certain territories) to US citizens, children born in the US to foreign citizens (excluding diplomats), and children born outside of the US to at least one US-citizen parent. Admittedly some people argue with one or another of these members, but the opinion of Minor v. Happersett does not make any judgment about such arguments.

The American Dream

We hear a great deal about "the American dream" and I know pretty well what people these days mean by that. However, I am equally unsure what "the American dream" really means. What dream and whose dream are we talking about? If we are talking about the original immigrants or colonizers of America, I suppose that the dream was life without religious persecution and land that was free for settlement. They did, of course, begin to persecute themselves; and there was the little matter of clearing off indigenous people in order to settle. Not too clear in retrospect how virtuous any of that really was. 

Perhaps the first great vision of an "American dream" was Jefferson's vision of a nation of landed citizens. Democracy made sense in that situation even though I am skeptical that real democracy ever existed in the US. Anyway, the Industrial Revolution removed people from the land. The US Census does not even track the population of small farmers anymore; the number is too tiny compared to the general population (less than 1%). Even farming is industrialized today. What that means is that no one has a natural path to survival anymore. Everyone must "work the system" in some way in order to survive. So, in a Capitalist world, that means that almost everyone is a "surf" in the new system of "corporate capitalism." You take the wages that you can get and you make do with what you have.

So I suppose that, having been dropped into a struggle for survival off the land or without any other free supporting body, we imagine "the American dream" to be this: that everybody has a reasonable chance at succeeding if they apply themselves. But this is where we encounter the great rift in American political thought. Those of a Democratic persuasion focus on "everybody has a reasonable chance" and those of a Republican persuasion focus on "apply themselves." Thus, for Democrats the failure of the American dream is the fact that only a few have a reasonable chance while many have no chance at all. For Republicans, on the other hand, the failure is the fact that people are lazy and just do not apply themselves. Democrats tend to ignore the fact that many people really are lazy and or conniving and take advantage of gifts. Republicans tend to ignore the improbability of reasonable chances. But since no one is willing to talk intelligently across this ideological divide, there is little chance of moderating the rift. Elections stack up to being almost 50/50 match-ups between diametrically opposite tendencies. There is, of course, one other important dimension to this rift. Democrats believe that government is uniquely situated to help the people achieve the dream, and Republicans do not want government to interfere. Taxation is theft and the government should be stripped of most of its powers. What Capitalists want is protection of property --- hence, a police presence and large military budget.

As we work our way toward the election of 2012, the real issue before us is what kind of society we want. When it comes down to basics, that is what government is really about. Government is the way in which a people (commonwealth) exercises its collective power to shape its own destiny. The choices before us are in stark contrast to each other. Democrats believe that part of the aim of government is to "promote the general welfare" of society as expressed in the Constitution ("We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."). In this respect, they believe that parents should be given aid in rearing their children to become good citizens, that young people should be provided the benefits of education, that workers should receive reasonable compensation for their labors, and that everyone should have the benefits of adequate health care.

What Republicans seem to want is a tax policy that enormously favors extreme wealth and withdraws all Federal programs for promoting the general welfare. I confess that I do not understand what this means as a "vision of a desirable society" except that it would seem we should simply watch people starve and die in our cities and ignore the whole thing as much as we can. If this is not the Republican ideal, then how do they really see this policy working out?

The Price of Gas

Well, as expected, the Republicans are now blaming the price of gas on Obama. The real question, though, is whether anyone wants to explore the facts about why gas prices are where they are.

First of all, the Federal government does not own gas production. In our thoroughly revered system of free-market capitalism, the production of gas is owned by hugely wealthy oil capitalists. (Actually, these are the people who probably own the Federal government rather than vice versa.)

Second, the price of crude oil is largely controlled by the world market and the market, presently, is dominated by major speculation about the supply of oil coming out of the Middle East. Without much control, the major producers of gasoline will have to set prices based on the price of crude oil, speculation or not. The US is far from the only consumer in the marketplace. China and other countries are becoming aggressive consumers of oil.

Third, US producers of crude oil (oil pumped out of US territories) are currently exporting part of their production. Get it? US both imports and exports oil. The gas price has nothing to do with the current supply in the US and, hence, nothing to do with more drilling on and off shore. (But they are always eager to use any excuse to push us to allow more drilling!!) "Drill baby drill" will do nothing to gasoline prices in the US.

What nobody wants to talk about is the fact that if the US producers who presently export crude were to sell their oil in the US and, consequently, elevate the supply in the US, the price of gas would drop. But, naturally, the wealthy owners of our oil production have no interest in dropping the price of gas in the US when they can sell to countries where the price of gas is $5 or even $6 per gallon. Our revered capitalists simply have no interest in lowering American gas prices. As always, their great interest lies in making as much money as possible.

More War??

One of the most frustrating things about American government today is that it really does not matter which party is in office when it comes to our compulsive war mongering. We are just out of the mess in Iraq and we are only just beginning to talk about maybe being willing to leave Afganistan, and now we are waving our rifles and bombs in the air in threatening motions toward Iran. Meanwhile, we blame the whole national economic crisis on Big Government and totally ignore the bizarre reality that America spends more on its military than all other countries of the world combined! Why? Is this what Eisenhower meant when he told us to "beware the military-industrial complex?"

Well, today, we are told that Israel may well attack Iran this spring. Oh, great. Where will we stand on that? We will, of course, get totally sucked into that war so there we will be, fighting yet another war in the Middle East. We will not, of course, reflect upon the expense of lives (either ours or theirs) nor will we bother to reflect upon the expense of yet billions more dollars. When it comes to our war machine, we really don't care how much we spend or where the money comes from. (Debt, what is that?)

Is there any rationality connected with this militarism at all? Actually, I think not. What is the track record for actually "winning" wars? Well, in some sense we "won" the Second World War in both Europe and the Pacific. We did, of course, manage to withdraw from both regions and we wound up realizing that we had to re-build both enemies in order to secure any meaningful peace. In Korea, the war is actually still on. We just agreed to stop shooting at each other. In Vietnam, we foolishly decided to take over a failed French colonial policy and look what happened. We lost that war because it was an un-win-able war. Exercising some intelligence could have saved us, but we are short on intelligence when it comes to our military engagements.

In 1991 we pushed the Iraqis out of Kuwait. As we all said back then, we probably would never have bothered if the chief product of Kuwait had been broccoli. The elder Bush stopped the military from going all the way to Bagdad so, later on, his wild son Bush II had to spend billions of American dollars and destroy thousands of lives to show off to his daddy that he could face down Saddam Hussein. Who ever thought that we could wage a war on Iraq and do what? We're going to change Iraq? Ridiculous. So now we have finally left (more or less) and nothing has really changed. It's the same society and it will go its own way.

Afganistan! Did we ever bother to study what happened to the Russians in Afganistan? Why did we believe that the results would be any different? For that matter, why do we seem to believe that we can storm into any country, bomb the shit out of their population, land our forces in their towns and farmlands, and utter things about forming democratic governments, and expect that change will occur? If some country did that to us, we would be in the streets and alleys fighting tooth-and-nail. We would be planting IUDs, car bombs, etc. We don't seem to understand that what we face is just plain human nature.

So now we are waiving our weapons in front of Iran. Why? Well, largely to protect Israel. Yes, this time (and for the last many decades) we are picking up on a failed British colonial problem. Why do we seem compelled to solve European failures?

Ah, election year!

Well, it is 2012 and it is the year of national elections. The media will blast us with commentaries, predictions, interviews, and debates. But how much truth will come to us versus out-and-out falsehoods?

Barak Obama will be blamed for everything wrong with the economy and will be painted as a wild-eyed Socialist and (probably) a Muslim who wants to convert us all to Sharia Law. No problem that almost everything wrong with the economy began with --- and was caused by --- George W. Bush. Democrats, like me, certainly wish that Obama had been able to do more to solve our economic problems in his first three years, but I don't think anyone else could have done better. Then, look what he has been up against in the last year!

To me, the most depressing part of the political spectacle that we will be witnessing during the coming year is how antithetical it is to the spirit of democracy. Sound contradictory? Isn't the right to vote what democracy means? Well, no. The issue about voting is that we have genuine choices. Then, we need to be well and truthfully informed about the choices we are making. And finally, we need to have honest follow-up to see what our elected officials are doing with our votes.

Instead, our government is founded on money --- significant money. Candidates with significant money behind them get in front of the people and get elected. The critical issues that might make a real difference in the country's future are so protected by money that they never find a voice. Money-laiden candidates invent a variety of shallow issues to offer the appearance of choice. After election, the big donors who financed the candidates take over the governing process. This is happening in both parties so no one really offers much of a choice.

So sit back and watch, but you won't see much that really connects with reality.