Two (OK, three) simple ways to fix U.S. politics

Sometimes I fear people don't get the point of my sarcasm.  So I'm going to say something very important, very simply.

Two reforms would solve most of the political problems in our federal government. If these reforms were employed at the state level they would work, too, but not as well:

1. Public financing of campaigns, and shorter campaign seasons.  Actually, this one reform by itself would solve just about every intractable political problem in America the natural, non-invasive way.  The way conservatives say they like to solve problems: by letting nature take its course.

Publicly financed campaigns would immediately neutralize the power of Wall Street, the NRA, Big Coal, Big Oil... but also much of the political power of labor unions.  On balance though it would be good for our country, and good for progressive ideals, to get all the money out of politics and let a real contest of ideas -- and People Power -- determine the political winners.  I'd graciously accept the outcome of a stand-up fight like that, win or lose.  

Also, shortening campaigns and taking money out of politics would free up about 90 percent of our elected officials' time.  They would have time to actually think about governing, instead of who's nest they should feather, whom to pay back, avoid pissing off, etc.

Conservatives always hark back to the time of our Founding Fathers.  Well, the Founding Fathers didn't have to start running for office 2-3 years ahead of time by forming "exploratory committees" whose main job was to test their electability with the media and big-money donors. Our founders didn't have to spend all their time in office raising money, or drop out of a close race because their opponent managed to raise more money.  

If we went back in time and tried to explain these present-day realities to Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, they would probably have a stroke after tearing up the Declaration of Independence.

Enough said on that.

2. Make Congressmen accessible.  If reform #1 were passed then #2 would probably not be necessary, it would happen naturally, but just in case, Congress could pass a law making congressmen accessible to any of their constituents, including lobbyists.  Yes, lobbyists!  I'm not against lobbyists.  I'm all for them. But a lobbyist's effectiveness and his access to power should not be determined by the size of his wallet, that's all.  

Thanks to the Internet, it's more than possible to set up a normal online appointment system to meet with one's congressman, even if you had to wait a few weeks.  Heck, we could even mandate that Congressional offices should operate like the DC DMV: visitors get in line before office hours start, take a number, wait their turn, and if they don't get called they come back the next day.

If you don't know what I'm talking about then try to get a personal meeting with your elected congressman or senator.  Go ahead.  Even if you voted for him, even if you kicked him a few bucks last election, chances are the best you'll do is a meeting with his chief of staff.  In most cases you'll get an unpaid, pimply faced intern in an ill-fitting suit.  Because you simply cannot talk to congressmen in most cases unless you are a big-money donor or political insider. Objectively speaking, congressmen would be crazy if they spent most of their time listening to their constituents; that's no way to get elected nowadays.  

3. And if we really wanted to slam the door on corruption and conflicts of interest, then Congress could pass a Non-Revolving Door Act to forbid congressmen or their staffers from working for any lobbying firm, or any company that directly benefited from legislation that the congressman voted for while in office, for a period of 5 to 10 years.  

Thoughts on fighting terrorism

I would like President Obama and Congress to lay down a few markers for U.S. citizens and the rest of the world, because the "Great War on Terrorism" (GWOT) is hopelessly muddled and prone to overreach.

First, in operational terms, the most important marker is that any terrorist group that we take action against must present a clear and present danger to the United States, because that is the measure by which we decide whether to take military action against other sovereign states. And as a practical matter, we must look where such terrorists are based. If they are acting in a sovereign state -- as they are most likely to do -- then we must act only with the permission of that state. Failure to act militarily without that state's permission would be a violation of that state's sovereignty. There is hardly any act more serious that the United States could undertake. Violating another country's sovereignty should never be done lightly, and never without clear consultations with said state. And again, as a practical matter, we should be extremely wary of violating any country's sovereignty, since they are prone to take the most extreme actions against us in response. The United States would do no less if the shoe were on the other foot.

Second, we must always make a clear distinction between state-sponsored terrorism and non-state-sponsored terrorism.

Bitter experience has taught us that non-state terrorists flourish in failed or failing states, like maggots in a rotting corpse. Such groups present a novel and special challenge to the United States.  We know now that terrorist groups often hope that the U.S. will choose to put boots on the ground in failed states. Such groups flock to failed or failing states; in the first case for refuge and operational freedom; in the latter case often to foment total state failure to secure such operational freedom.  

Furthermore, terrorist groups know that our presence in such states will provide them with ready and abundant targets in confusing environments where our rules of engagement are muddled and lead to the killing of combatants and innocent non-combatants alike. Terrorists do not care about non-combatants. Indeed they hope that innocents will be killed by indiscriminate use of American force, since such killings tend to bolster their recruitment and win over public opinion to their side.

State-sponsored terrorism, by contrast, is war by other, indirect means by our adversaries in other sovereign states.  Where we can make a solid connection between the actions of terrorists against the U.S. and the states who sponsor them, then the U.S. should have the right to respond appropriately, up to and including military force against the sponsor state.  The U.S. has made it fairly clear that it will hold state sponsors accountable. So this is not the real problem. 

The main condition is that we must avoid conflating the two types of terrorism.  The second condition is that our government should never fail to provide evidence of a clear and present danger to the United States (or its allies) before authorizing military force against non-state or state-sponsored terrorists, or the states who sponsor terrorists.  

The U.S. Constitution makes no reference to terrorism. Terrorism did not exist in the late 18th century.  It is a modern phenomenon. Nevertheless, the principle set down in the Constitution that the President must seek permission from Congress to declare war should still apply in the case of terrorist organizations.  Our Founding Fathers' fear was not that the U.S. would make war against private individuals as opposed to other sovereign states; rather, our Founders were afraid that the Executive would deploy U.S. forces indiscriminately and non-judiciously. The same fear, the same likelihood, exists with regard to traditional warfare as it does with non-traditional counter-terrorism military operations.

NRA's latest lie: More silencers keep us safe

I learn something new everyday. Today I learned there is actually something called the American Silencer Association, supported by that other famous firearms association, the NRA.... Because the Founding Fathers obviously would have wanted to keep their muzzle-loaded powder-and-ball muskets quiet when fighting King George's lobster backs. 

Again, the only good use I can think of for silencers is in case of a zombie apocalypse, because we all know that zombies are attracted to gunfire.

Got flashlight? Got silencer.

Silencers: The NRA’s latest big lie

Silencers could give the next Adam Lanza even more time to kill -- but to the NRA, they protect kids' hearing

By Alexander Zaitchik

December 30, 2012 | Salon

URL: http://www.salon.com/2012/12/30/silencers_the_nras_latest_big_lie/

Our Founding Fathers: No fun at all

Get to know your Founding Fathers -- those prudish elitists who despised the majority of their fellow Americans and thought the nation was going to hell in a hand basket:

But what the Founding Fathers called corruption, depravity, viciousness, and vice, many of us would call freedom. During the War of Independence, deference to authority was shattered, a new urban culture offered previously forbidden pleasures, and sexuality was loosened from its Puritan restraints. Nonmarital sex, including adultery and relations between whites and blacks, was rampant and unpunished. Divorces were frequent and easily obtained. Prostitutes plied their trade free of legal or moral proscriptions. Black slaves, Irish indentured servants, Native Americans, and free whites of all classes danced together in the streets. Pirates who frequented the port cities brought with them a way of life that embraced wild dances, nightlong parties, racial integration, and homosexuality. European visitors frequently commented on the “astonishing libertinism” of early American cities. Renegades held the upper hand in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Charleston, and made them into the first centers of the American pleasure culture. Rarely have Americans had more fun. And never have America’s leaders been less pleased by it.

But the Founding Fathers invented a way to make Americans think fun was bad. We call it democracy.

And for those of you who think we tipple too much today, check this out:

During the War of Independence, Americans drank an estimated 6.6 gallons of absolute alcohol per year—equivalent to 5.8 shot glasses of 80-proof liquor a day—for each adult fifteen or over.

And that included drinking on the job, paid for by the boss!:

It was not only accepted but also expected to mix drinking with work. Laborers of all sorts drank beer throughout the workday and took frequent breaks for liquor and lounging. Construction workers and shipbuilders expected employers to provide them with beer at breaks. According to the historian Peter Thompson, even highly skilled artisans, the managers of early American manufacturing, “jealously defended heavy drinking as a right and a privilege.”

Bars and taverns were in more abundance then than today; and they were the first racially integrated public spaces:

Lower-class taverns were the first racially integrated public spaces in America. Black, white, and brown Americans came together through mutual desire centuries before the federal government brought them together by force. Although the law in all the colonies barred blacks from public houses, the law was often ignored by tavern keepers, white patrons, and by free blacks and even slaves. Early court records tell of drinking establishments across the colonies that disregarded the color line.

America's "Founding Fathers" Detested the Paradise of Delightful Debauchery and Freedom That Was 18th Century America

By Thaddeus Russell

December 23, 2012 | AlterNet

URL: http://www.alternet.org/books/americas-founding-fathers-detested-paradise-delightful-debauchery-and-freedom-was-18th-century

McConnell filibusters his OWN proposal after Reid calls his bluff

You know, America's Founding Fathers wanted the Senate to do a few things. They wanted it to be a check on the power of bigger/more populous states, a great leveler in Congress. And, by having states appoint U.S. senators (before Progressives passed the 17th Amendment in 1913 to have the American people elect them), the Founding Fathers wanted senators to be above the noise of "mobocracy," and deliberate, debate and make decisions based on the best long-term interests of the country.  

Well, thanks to abuse of Senate filibuster rules -- the terms "filibuster" and "cloture" are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, by the way -- our senators don't do much debating or deliberating anymore: merely the threat of a filibuster means a bill cannot be brought to the floor of the Senate for debate. That means that all the real talking our senators do, if any, happens behind closed doors in smoked-filled rooms. Unfortunately, our senators spend a lot more time posturing in front of the media than they do talking to each other, or heaven forbid, actually putting their views on the Congressional record on the floor of the Senate!

That's why Harry Reid wants to reform the filibuster rule.

Dems Look on in Wonder as Mitch McConnell Filibusters His Own Proposal

Quite a moment in Senate history.

By Martin Longman

December 7, 2012 | Booman Tribune

URL: http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/dems-look-wonder-mitch-mcconnell-filibusters-his-own-proposal

Lowry: What U.S. did in 200 years, Egypt must do in 2

NRO's Rich Lowry is not utterly stupid so let me use his latest op-ed as an emblem of right-wing wrongness. His criticisms of President Obama's policies vis-a-vis Egypt suffer from several Amero-centric, neo-con fallacies. Namely:

-  Events abroad happen quickly, in cause-and-effect timelines that correspond neatly to U.S. Presidential policies and tenures;

-  The U.S. has the power to shape events abroad; the exercise of that power is simply a function of U.S. willpower and determination, usually in the form of military action; and

-  America's agreeing to talk to foreign leaders = commiseration with those same foreign leaders = a "man crush."

Next, I don't want to compare Egypt to America, but... let me compare today's Egypt to America.  The American Revolution took 8 years.  It was a country of about 2.5 million, not counting slaves and Indians, a majority of which was loyal to King George throughout.  After that we had the destined-to-fail Articles of Confederation that lasted 8 years before being replaced by the U.S. Constitution.  It could be argued that many disputes left unsettled by the Federalists and Anti-Federalists festered and resulted in the American Civil War 72 years later.  That civil war was followed by Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and eventually the Civil Rights movement, culminating in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, adopted 188 years after the Declaration of Independence.

And that all started in a podunk colony on the ass-end of nowhere in the 18th century.  Compare that to today's Egypt, the most populated Arab country in the world with 84 million people.  What Lowry and other conservative pundits are doing is expressing disappointment with Egypt's failure to transition smoothly and non-violently in the span of 2 years from a brutal dictatorship of 30 years to a simulacrum of U.S. republican democracy that was  perfected over some 200 years.

So let me make obvious the absurdity of the criticism laid at President Obama's feet: that in a mere two years since Mubarak was forced to step down during peaceful protests, the failure of Egypt to transform itself into a peaceful, multi-ethnic, multi-confessional state with tolerance and free speech for all, represents a FAILURE of PRESIDENT OBAMA.  Meanwhile, in fact, liberals and non-Muslims in Egypt have been withdrawing from the constitutional convention in protest of the mangled process of its drafting and approval by referendum.  Still, it's Obama's fault that things aren't turning out ideally, now, immediately.

Folks, it doesn't get any more partisan, Amero-centric and short-sighted than this... and all from the editor of the most "intellectual" conservative media outlet around.  So you can imagine what dumber conservatives are saying about U.S. policy vis-a-vis Egypt.  It's completely unmoored from reality.

America needs a huge dose of humility, chased with a swig of its own long and tortured history for study.  Hell, I don't know how things are going to turn out there.  But I sure as hell know that we Americans can't determine the outcome.  That fact may drive many neo-cons and pundits nuts to the point of denial, but that's just the way it is.  

The Brotherhood Delusion 

Morsi consolidates his dictatorship while the Obama administration tells itself bedtime stories.

By Rich Lowry

November 30, 2012 | National Review

URL: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/334475/brotherhood-delusion-rich-lowry

Zogby: U.S. is a work in progress - NO WAY, JOSE!

Apparently, prominent pollster James Zogby is a fellow card-carrying member of the Blame America First crowd.  He wrote:  

America is, we are told, the exceptional nation: the greatest democracy, the greatest producer of wealth, the model nation that is envied by the world, a people destined to lead the world. In the language of those on the right, America becomes an idol, infused by the Creator with blessings and qualities so self-evident, that to question this article of faith is akin to heresy.   

I wonder why we are so insecure that we need to engage in endless self-praise. And I can't help but wonder what the rest of the world thinks of all this in the face of policies and behaviors that make such a wildly different statement.

He actually cares what the rest of the world thinks about us!...  That's a dead giveaway he feels guilty about American power and secretly despises its providential responsibility to lead the world, just like all liberals do.

Nevertheless, Zogby maintains that "America does have a good story to tell," which consists of U.S. liberals and progressives fighting and winning all the good fights: ending segregation; defending civil rights; establishing gender equality; the peace movement; consumer and environmental protections, etc.

"The American story is not one about a country that was born great. It is the story of a country that is struggling to become better," concludes Zogby.  Well, that just can't be squared with our Founding Myths.  If we were always great -- if indeed we were at our greatest at the time of our Founding Fathers -- then there is no getting better, only decline as we abandon their first principles.  Therefore, even though I still Blame America First, I must reject Zogby's hypothesis. 

Love it or leave it! ... Unless you hate America's gays, atheists, Muslims, minorities, labor unions, public education, Hollywood, intellectuals, NOW, the ACLU, the IRS... then you can stay.

America Has a Good Story; But It's Not the One Politicians Tell

By James Zogby

August 18, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/S7rIsn

Robert Parry: Founders couldn't have stopped Obamacare

All you "strict constitutionalists" out there better make sure you're not reading revisionist history. Robert Parry quotes the Founding Dudes and a Reagan-appointed conservative judge. It's case closed.

Ron Paul's False Founding Narrative

By Robert Parry

January 13, 2012 | Consortium News

Exclusive: Rep. Ron Paul and other right-wingers have lured many average Americans into their camp by creating a false narrative about America's Founding, claiming that the drafters of the Constitution wanted a weak central government. But that's not the real history, Robert Parry writes.

URL: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/13/ron-pauls-false-founding-narrative/

Tea Parties want 'death by 1,000 cuts' for Constitution?

The truth is that nobody is perfectly happy with the U.S. Constitution, especially those conservatives who claim to love and cherish it.

It's always been that way: the Constitution was a compromise document from the start. Just look at the Bill of Rights, and the Federalists and Anti-Federalists' debates. From its birth the document was always a bit ugly, a bit misshapen. I would argue that over time it has become more beautiful. To really love the U.S. Constitution is to love the principle of rational compromise required to preserve the union and ensure the general welfare.

Off Balance

The Balanced Budget Amendment would make the Framers weep.

By Doug Kendall and Dahlia Lithwick

July 15, 2011 | Slate

For a group that claims to revere the Constitution, the Tea Party appears pretty determined to deal it a death by a thousand cuts. Its latest attack involves a nasty little piece of constitutional revisionism, complete with a "How can you be against that?" title: the "Balanced Budget Amendment." Putting aside the political questions about whether such a law is wise or practical, it also crashes headlong into the very constitutional principles the Tea Party purports to cherish. Not only that: Now there comes word that Republicans will hold a vote on this amendment next week before even considering raising the debt ceiling. So as part of their misguided effort to undermine the Constitution, they also plan to hold hostage the full faith and credit of the United States of America.

First, a little context. Shortly after the November 2010 election, Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, released a poll showing that 80 percent of Republican voters wanted America to "return to the Constitution." That was funny, since so many Tea Party candidates also demanded changes to important parts of the Constitution, supporting either outright repeal or odd mutations of the 14^th, 16^th, and 17^th Amendments. Respectively, these amendments, among other things, guarantee citizenship to everyone born in this country; allow the progressive taxation of incomes to fund the government; and allow "the people" of each state, as opposed to its legislature, to select senators.

[I've also heard some Tea Partiers who are against the principle of universal suffrage; they pine to return to the 18th century when only those who owned property could vote. The obvious goal of this tactic is to prevent poor people from voting, ostensibly to allow the rich landowning class a free hand to abolish the welfare state and tear up the social safety net. -- This is "paleoconservatism" at its most ancient! - J]

The question is the same today as it was last fall. Which is it, Tea Partiers: Do you want to "return to the Constitution" or to some pulpy version of it you have clubbed in your own image?

Noteworthy as the earlier amend-and-repeal efforts have been, none is being pursued with the vigor devoted today to the Balanced Budget Amendment. Introduced in the Senate by Tea Party favorite Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, it requires that revenues equal expenditures each year, and that they not exceed 18 percent of the gross domestic product in any given year. Only if two-thirds of Congress agreed could these limits be exceeded, and any bill that would "levy a new tax or increase the rate of any tax" would also need approval of two-thirds of both Houses.

A balanced budget amendment sounds like a great idea—until you read a little U.S. history and count all the times America spent more in a fiscal year than it raised in taxes and why that was necessary for our very survival. Debt helped fund the War for Independence, complete the Louisiana Purchase, and preserve the Union during the Civil War. Debt not only helped us weather the Great Depression; it also gave us the tools we needed to emerge victorious from two world wars.

This new version of the Balanced Budget Amendment also includes provisions—requiring a supermajority to override its rules or to raise taxes—not included in the version of the Balanced Budget Amendment passed by the House (but rejected by the Senate) in early 1995, during the height of the Contract with America craze. These new "Crazier than Gingrich" provisions would remove huge swaths of lawmaking power from majority rule and arbitrarily limit the size of government to a level not seen since the 1960s. Under the guise of promoting fiscal responsibility, we would be creating a government that could not govern.

But beyond all these questions lies one that should give pause to every member of the Tea Party with a pocket Constitution: What would the Framers have thought of this amendment?

It's fairly certain that George Washington and the other Founders gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 would be appalled by the Lee amendment. It is not an accident that the first two enumerated powers the Constitution vests in Congress are the power "to lay and collect Taxes … to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States" and "to borrow money on the credit of the United States." The Constitution's broad textual grant of power was a direct response to the Articles of Confederation, which had imposed crippling restrictions on Congress's power to borrow and tax. These restrictions plagued the Revolutionary War effort and made a deep and lasting impression on Washington and other war veterans. Lee and the other proponents of shrinking the federal government to restore freedom misapprehend that the Constitution recognized there would be no freedom without a strong federal government to promote it.

Moreover, in creating a supermajority requirement, the sponsors of the Balanced Budget Amendment do violence to another central tenet of the framer's project: The need for majority rule. The Founders made majority rule the default rule for our democratic Constitution. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, majority rule "is the natural law of every assembly of men, whose numbers are not fixed by any other law." The Constitution specifies a handful of departures from this default rule, but each exception warrants a particular justification that is consistent with the Constitution's democratic structure. Nowhere does our Constitution burden a substantive enumerated congressional power with the leaden weight of a supermajority.

Finally, in a Constitution filled with broad principles of governance, the amendment's arbitrary spending limit of 18 percent of GDP—an awkward and unworkable figure—would stick out like a sore thumb. Contrary to Chief Justice John Marshall's warning in the landmark decision of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), Lee's arbitrary spending limit "partake[s] of the prolixity of a legal code," and would be out of place in a document that is designed to "to endure for ages to come … to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."

We face a high duty when amending the Constitution: to match the Framers' maturity and foresight. By every measure that would have mattered to the Founders, Lee's proposed amendment easily flunks this test. Sen. Lee fancies himself a friend to the Constitution and an originalist. So why is he pushing for the ratification of an amendment that would take us back to the days before the Constitution was even ratified? The framers trusted in the wisdom of future legislators. The Balanced Budget Amendment represents a betrayal not only of our future but of our past as well.

What 18th century American economy was really like

Git yerself edumacated about the glorious golden age of America's founding:

Tea Party history insists ordinary, hard-working Americans of the founding era wanted nothing more than to reduce government and keep it out of economic markets. But what those Americans really wanted can be gleaned from their terminology. The rich called them rioters. The people called themselves regulators.

Tea Partiers Have a Very Mixed-Up Notion of What the American Revolution Was About

By William Hogeland

March 1, 2011 | AlterNet

[...]

The only real money in 18th-century America was metal — silver and gold coin from England, Spain, and Mexico — and for long, terrible periods, money was rarely seen by ordinary people. Small farmers and artisans, wanting to survive and improve their lot, had to borrow. Merchants, gaining access to metal through imperial trading networks, used their money to make money, becoming lenders. Well before the Revolution, Americans defined themselves in practical terms either as "debtors" — poor and working people in small-scale enterprise — or "creditors" — well-heeled merchants growing their money by lending it.

Workings of the debtor-creditor relationship will sound unpleasantly familiar. Merchants had the money supply conveniently sewn up. Small farmers and artisans had to post the land and shops they hoped to develop as collateral for the credit they needed. Merchants might set interest rates as high as twelve percent — per month. Default, often predictable at the loan's outset, subjected borrowers to foreclosures, which in bad times were epidemic. Families became indigent while their land, tools, and homes were snapped up at bargain prices, often by the merchants themselves, who speculated in land as well, and were building immense parcels. The rich got richer.

Is it any wonder that ordinary people viewed this disastrous economic predicament not as some incidental fallout from vigorous free-market competition, but as an egregious, systemic injustice with political, moral, even spiritual implications? They were being held back, exploited, and even ruined by a monopoly on money and credit. And unlike today's populist right, founding-era Americans did not imagine that government's simply leaving markets alone would create new and exciting opportunities for them. They believed their governments should make laws to restrain the overwhelming power of the creditors' metal and protect those who labored and produced goods from those who planned dynasties of descendants living in luxurious idleness.

And remember: unless people had property in excess of certain amounts, they couldn't vote. Whig elites — the ones who became patriot leaders, lionized today — axiomatically equated the right of representation with property. It took even more property to run for office. Legislatures erected counties to ensure that representation favored the rich and the cities. They placed cash fees on every imaginable transaction, paralyzing working people's efforts to pursue legal recourse and enriching lawmakers' friends and families appointed as collectors and administrators. Roads and other infrastructure built at public expense (and by coerced labor taxes) served the merchant interest, not the people's. Hardly an embryonic American democracy, representative colonial governments were monopolized by forces that small-scale debtors and tenant farmers could only view as a creditor conspiracy to exploit their labor, prevent their participation, and take what stuff they had.

So they organized in vociferous protest. "Mob" is a loaded term; "crowd" is perhaps more fair, and early American crowd action should be understood as a tactic, in the absence of access to the franchise, for pressuring and even changing government. One of the most famous outbreaks occurred in the 1760's in North Carolina, when ordinary people briefly had a few champions in the legislature. They forcibly closed courts, tore down corrupt officials' homes, and finally went to war against the provincial government. Royal Governor William Tryon put that rebellion down — but the King's appointee was more sympathetic to the people's plight than upscale American legislators and merchants were.

Crowds could be flamboyantly scary and even violent, but they did not run amok, merely venting. In carefully organized disruptions, people moved en masse into courthouses where debt cases were heard, shutting down a judicial process they considered unjust. They felled huge trees across roads to prevent sheriffs from repossessing homes. They enforced no-buy covenants when foreclosed property went up for auction. They staged daring rescues of prisoners held on debt charges. Serving on juries in debt cases, they refused to convict. Well before the famous Stamp Act riots and other acts of resistance to new British trade laws, American life involved orchestrated crowd actions to prevent financial injustice and push government to act on behalf of ordinary people. After the Revolution, the event known as Shays' Rebellion became only the most famous of the debtor uprisings that continued the people's struggle in a new political context.

While emulating Shaysite and other debtor crowd actions today would pose an interesting counter-demonstration to Tea Party efforts, the question this history really raises has to do with what Americans want from their government. Do we really want to roll back "nanny state" protections like RESPA, for example, under which an ordinary citizen like Patrick Rodgers was able to interrogate his bank? RESPA is but one detail in a program — and a power — that our ancestors painfully lacked.

Tea Party history insists ordinary, hard-working Americans of the founding era wanted nothing more than to reduce government and keep it out of economic markets. But what those Americans really wanted can be gleaned from their terminology. The rich called them rioters. The people called themselves regulators.

W. Williams: 'Republics' for Republicans, 'democracy' for mobs

Then call us a "constitutional democracy," Professor Williams. Same thing. So there, I solved the "problem."

Actually, with the exception of Britain, I don't know of any Western democracies without a constitution. (And the last time I checked, the mob hadn't yet taken over Britain and voted themselves rich.) So when we say "democracy" it's the same as saying "republic" or "constitutional democracy." When America was founded that wasn't the case, but thanks to the success of the U.S. model, it is today.

I'm not entirely sure why some U.S. conservatives insist on these semantics, but I think it has to do with their basic disdain for and distrust of ordinary people -- just like our Founding Fathers despised and feared the lower classes and called democracy "mobocracy." Elitism and classicm are alive and well among today's Founder-fawning conservatives, despite all their Palin-esque airs of Average-Joe folksiness to the contrary.

Case in point, Williams intentionally provocative opening sentence: "It is truly disgusting for me to hear politicians, national and international talking heads and pseudo-academics praising the Middle East stirrings as democracy movements."

Williams tries to qualify this statement in his op-ed but a sentiment this ugly really can't be redeemed or clawed back.

Whatever the outcomes of these protests may be, they certainly are democracy movements, where the people want more of a say in who runs their government and how it operates. The elitists, er, republicans, are showing their true stripes in light of the 2011 Mideast democracy uprisings.

Democracy Versus Liberty

By Walter E. Williams
February 22, 2011 | Townhall.com

URL: http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2011/02/23/democracy_versus_liberty

Founding Fathers funded public schools? (Well dump my tea!)

This here article learned me something about the history of U.S. public education:

"Federal involvement began more than 225 years ago, even before George Washington was president, when Congress passed two laws -- the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 -- to create and maintain public schools in the expanding United States.

"Back then, educational opportunities for most children depended on churches, charities, and paid tutors -- and on gender, race and income levels. The founding fathers recognized this problem and emphasized the need for a more educated citizenry in the new democracy.

"Over the next two centuries, these two ordinances led to establishing public schools in the 30 new states created out of the territories west of the original 13 colonies. The specifics of federal land grants were outlined in each of the federal acts for admitting these states."


Get the Federal Government Out of Education? That Wasn't the Founding Fathers' Vision
By Jack Jennings
February 7, 2011 | Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-jennings/federal-government-education_b_819814.html

Restore honor, restore bucket brigades

The Great Recession is forcing us back to basics, forcing us to restore our honor and traditions. And that means cutting back on wasteful luxuries like fire departments.

Yes, I'm saying we must restore good ole fashioned bucket brigades. Instead of relying on Big Gubmint to put out your fires, rely on your neighbors (and their buckets) just like our Founding Fathers did. They knew and will always and forever know best!

Struggling Cities Shut Firehouses in Budget Crisis

By Michael Cooper

August 26, 2010 | New York Times

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/us/27cuts.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Strict cafeteria Constitutionalists

I suppose a real hardcore throwback to the 18th century would argue that the Framers -- all of them holy geniuses -- got it 100% right the first time, (including their, uh, package of amendments in the Bill of Rights), and all amendments since then have subverted the Framers' true intentions.

And yet, the Framers included the means in the Constitution to amend it. Why? They were such geniuses they knew they might have gotten something wrong, or at least couldn't foretell the future.

SPIN METER: Republicans hot, cold on Constitution

By Ben Evans

August 23, 2010 | AP

Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia won his seat in Congress campaigning as a strict defender of the Constitution. He carries a copy in his pocket and is particularly fond of invoking the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

But it turns out there are parts of the document he doesn't care for — lots of them. He wants to get rid of the language about birthright citizenship, federal income taxes and direct election of senators, among others. He would add plenty of stuff, including explicitly authorizing castration as punishment for child rapists.

This hot-and-cold take on the Constitution is surprisingly common within the GOP, particularly among those like Broun who portray themselves as strict Constitutionalists and who frequently accuse Democrats of twisting the document to serve political aims.

Republicans have proposed at least 42 Constitutional amendments in the current Congress, including one that has gained favor recently to eliminate the automatic grant of citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

Democrats — who typically take a more liberal view of the Constitution as an evolving document — have proposed 27 amendments, and fully one-third of those are part of a package from a single member, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill. Jackson's package encapsulates a liberal agenda in which everyone has new rights to quality housing and education, but most of the Democratic proposals deal with less ideological issues such as congressional succession in a national disaster or voting rights in U.S. territories.

The Republican proposals, by contrast, tend to be social and political statements, such as the growing movement to repeal the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship.

Republicans like Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the lead Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, argue that immigrants are abusing the right to gain citizenship for their children, something he says the amendment's authors didn't intend.

Sessions, who routinely accuses Democrats of trying to subvert the Constitution and calls for respecting the document's "plain language," is taking a different approach with the 14th Amendment. "I'm not sure exactly what the drafters of the amendment had in mind," he said, "but I doubt it was that somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen."

Other widely supported Republican amendments would prohibit government ownership of private companies, bar same-sex marriage, require a two-thirds vote in Congress to raise taxes, and — an old favorite — prohibit desecration of the American flag.

During the health care debate, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, D-Mich., introduced an amendment that would allow voters to directly repeal laws passed by Congress — a move that would radically alter the Founding Fathers' system of checks and balances.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who founded a tea party caucus in Congress honoring the growing conservative movement that focuses on Constitutional governance, wants to restrict the president's ability to sign international treaties because she fears the Obama administration might replace the dollar with some sort of global currency.

Broun, who is among the most conservative members of Congress, said he sees no contradiction in his devotion to the Constitution and his desire to rewrite parts of it. He said the Founding Fathers never imagined the size and scope of today's federal government and that he's simply resurrecting their vision by trying to amend it.

"It's not picking and choosing," he said. "We need to do a lot of tweaking to make the Constitution as it was originally intended, instead of some perverse idea of what the Constitution says and does."

The problem with such a view, says constitutional law scholar Mark Kende, is that divining what the framers intended involves subjective judgments shaded with politics. Holding up the 2nd Amendment as sacrosanct, for example, while dismissing other parts of the Constitution is "cherry picking," said Kende, director of Drake University's Constitutional Law Center.

Virginia Sloan, an attorney who directs the nonpartisan Constitution Project, agreed.

"There are a lot of people who obviously don't like income taxes. That's a political position," she said of criticism of the 16th Amendment, which authorized the modern federal income tax more than a century ago. "But it's in the Constitution ... and I don't think you can go around saying something is unconstitutional just because you don't like it."

Sloan said that while some proposals to alter the Constitution have merit, most are little more than posturing by politicians trying to connect with voters.

"People are responding to the politics of the day, and that's not what the framers intended," she said. "They intended exactly the opposite — that the Constitution not be used as a political tool."

The good news, Sloan and Kende said, is that such proposals rarely go anywhere.

Since the nation's founding, just 27 have survived the arduous amendment process, and 10 of those came in the initial Bill of Rights.

Only two have come in the past 40 years, and both avoided ideology. One, ratified in 1971, lowered the voting age to 18; the other, ratified in 1992, limited Congress' ability to raise lawmakers' salaries.

Ames: America's persistent problem is too much democracy

You may not like Ames but he is devastating. You teabaggers ignore him at your own moral peril. The GOP "braintrust" is anti-democratic at its core, just like our Founding Fathers were: Their greatest fear wasn't British tyranny, it was "mobocracy" by the unpropertied uncouth underclass. As the self-proclaimed true inheritors of our founding traditions, elitist Republicans hate democracy and majority rule.

Check it out, you beigists!

"What about the $23 trillion Republican bailouts? Well, again, we're too stupid to understand. The thing is, those bailouts had to be done their way in order to save us from the Road to Serfdom. It's hard to explain, but basically, the anti-government conservatives in the Bush Machine saved us from that Road to Serfdom by turning us into serfs. You see, all along it was the Road that they warned us about, not serfdom — that road is really treacherous, and government funded, and just a bad place to be. We weren't rational or strong enough to wean ourselves off of big government. So they saved us with their tough love, and stole the $23 trillion bailout for themselves before we could get our hands on it — which no doubt we would have done. In their hands, that $23 trillion debt makes us serfs, which is not as bad as the other alternative: we take the $23 trillion ourselves, leading us down the road to serfdom. Confused? If we were capable of studying economics, we'd understand the scientific logic of this reasoning."

And here's what Ames has to say about Tom Tancredo, keynote speaker at the Tea Party Patriots convention, who alongside Sarah Palin dvocated a return to Jim-Crow era voter literacy tests:

"*Note: In 1969, when Tancredo was finishing his four-year stint as pro-war College Republican campus activist, he received a note in the mail from the Draft Board calling him up for duty in Vietnam — so the wobbly-kneed invertebrate ran screaming and crying to the draft board appealing for an exemption from the very same war told everyone else to die in. After making a total abject ass of himself squirting into his underwear before the draft board, they finally gave in and handed Tancredo the yellow-striped coward's exemption he begged for — ruling him mentally unfit for duty due to "anxiety bouts" and "panic attacks." It was the only government job he ever turned down — he believed that "sacrifice" meant sacrificing other people's money and lives, not his own. After squirming out of the war, Tancredo spent the rest of his life sucking on the taxpayer teat, first as a junior high school teacher, then a state legislator, then a Department of Education federal employee (where he spent most of his time firing his colleagues), then Congressman, and finally, a Republican Party foundation-welfare queen."

Just like Cheney, Limbaugh, Dubya -- all of them actively avoided combat, although they're perfectly fine with "projecting American power" in every godforsaken desert and primitive sh**holte on Earth from the comfy environs of power.


Royal Tea Party Rebels: The Heroic Billionaires' Struggle To Overthrow The Tyranny Of Democracy
By Mark Ames
February 12, 2010 The Exiled

URL: http://exiledonline.com/royal-tea-partiers-the-heroic-billionaires-struggle-to-overthrow-the-tyranny-of-democracy/#more-17899

Rush: 'Freedom is coming out of its coma'

Let me ask you: do you feel freer after this Supreme Court decision? Do you feel, like Rush said, "that the muzzle is off the American people now?" Do you seriously feel, like he does, that "freedom is coming out of its coma" thanks to this ruling? Does anybody seriously believe, as the SC majority argued, that the American people are going to make better informed political decisions now that the cap on corporate campaign spending has been ripped off? Is there some vital information we have been lacking about the candidates that corporations are just dying to tell us, but couldn't because 100 years of legal precedent and statutory law have kept them muzzled? We'll soon find out. (Lord save us.)

Corporations have been free to make issue ads; they have been free to inform the public to their heart's content. But they weren't allowed to make the connection between issues and candidates. They were not allowed, under statutory law, to advocate for political candidates without spending and time restrictions. So this ruling is not about free speech; it is about political influence. And now, thanks to Justices Kennedy, Roberts, et al, we have less influence and rich corporations have more.

You know, the right likes to say our Founding Fathers were all geniuses and masters of the English language, so if they had meant for money = speech, why didn't they just say so? If they had meant for corporations = people with all the same rights, why didn't they say so? (Modern limited liability corporations didn't exist in the 18th century, but their forebears, called charter companies, did.)

Even arch-conservative former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist once warned that treating corporate spending as the First Amendment equivalent of individual free speech is "to confuse metaphor with reality."

This is not to mention that corporations are global; they do not have U.S. "citizenship" like you and I do. Foreign ownership of U.S. corporations more than doubled between 1996 and 2005. So now Islamist oil sheiks and Chinese billionaires will be free to play the ponies and place their bets on their favorite U.S. political candidates. (And you siwwy Wepubwicans thought Charlie Trie, Johnny Chung, Huang and Riady were a threat to our national security!)

What's more, as Justice Stevens in the minority noted, "corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires" like real human beings do; and "they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

Anyway, it's no surprise Rush is ecstatic about this decision, because it's a fact that corporations donate more to Republicans. Contributions from unions and not-for-profits are a drop in the bucket. We're all screwed.

Freedom Awakens from Coma
January 21, 2010 | Rush Limbaugh

RUSH: Freedom is awaking from its coma today because of a huge, huge, huge Supreme Court decision -- huge. I cannot tell you how big this is. It's a 5-4 decision. The decision was written by Justice Kennedy. And what it does, it removes limits on independent expenditures that are not coordinated with candidate's campaigns. Meaning corporations and not-for-profits can spend any amount of money they want running ads and there's no limit as to when those ads can be run.

So McCain-Feingold takes a huge hit today. Now, the question of campaign contributions directly to candidates was not part of this decision because it was not before the court. So the issue was issue advocacy ads by nonprofit corporations, the Citizens United in this case, but it covers all nonprofits and all for-profit corporations. I'm going to go through it here pretty much line by line just to show you how profound this decision is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, I want you to hear this from Jeff Toobin. He is the legal analyst at CNN. The left is just agog, they are beside themselves that freedom is coming out of its coma today, is awakening from its coma with this Supreme Court decision, which I'm going to get into after the break. But I want to show you how upset that Toobin is and the left really are. Toobin is in crisis here.

TOOBIN: It's really not just the 20-year-old ruling from 1990, it's more like a hundred years of regulation of the way corporations are prohibited from being involved in the political process. It's really bigger than 20 years, it's more like a hundred years of precedent being overturned. It basically says money is speech and corporations are people, both of which are debatable propositions but both of which seem to be, you know, popular at the Supreme Court at the moment.

RUSH: What's debatable about corporations are people and money is speech? Those two things are inarguable, that's what the court said by 5-4 with Kennedy, who is the swing vote. He wrote the opinion here. That is significant. He's right, by the way. This turns over 100 years of precedent. You know how anti-corporatist the left is; you know how they hate corporations. This, folks, is causing ulcers. I can't tell you what this decision is doing today to these leftists who just a year ago, they had such high hopes that they're going to have every CEO in jail and every soldier in jail and it's just in one year, because the people of this country are not socialists. The people of this country still have roots to freedom and entrepreneurism and liberty, and nothing -- the left, Obama -- nothing can snuff that out.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The Supreme Court decision is a defeat. I'll tell you, it's a defeat, ladies and gentlemen, for the fascists, the statists who seek to control our property, our bodies, and our speech. It is a defeat for Senator McCain. The muzzle is off the American people now because they, in fact, can spend the money on advocacy ads prior to the general and primary elections. It is a 100-year-old precedent that has been overturned. It is solid in that respect.

Citizens United produced an advocacy commercial about Hillary Clinton, which they wanted to run before the primaries. The question was whether it violated McCain-Feingold's ban as some kind of a political commercial. The Supreme Court said such advocacy by Citizens United and other groups is protected constitutional speech, but the opinion addresses more than that. The court says, "The law provides an outright ban backed by criminal and civil sanctions, including nonprofit corporations to either expressly advocate the election or defeat of candidates or to broadcast electioneering communications within 30 days of a primary, 60 days of a general election." These would be felonies and the court struck these down. The court struck down all the limits on where you can advertise, when you can advertise, and how much you can spend on this advertisement.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

[...]

You gotta understand, folks. See, I know liberals -- I know these cockroaches -- and I'm telling you, this just has them boiling today. You add the fact that everything's falling apart and going wrong for Obama. I mean, you go back one year ago almost to the day. Hell, it is one year ago to the day. No, it's one year plus a day. Nevertheless, they thought they were in power in perpetuity. Forever. They had their messiah and it was going to change this country forever -- and now the American people have said: No way. They've learned what this was all about and they're saying: No way. This court decision has these people fuming. "The government may not impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers based on the wealth or lack thereof of speakers. The public has the right..." The court said, "The public has the right to obtain all kinds of information from the widest number of sources."

[...]

Liberalism itself has just been struck down, this whole notion of "fairness" based on who has more than somebody else or who has less than somebody else, who's bigger than somebody else. There is no precedent for advantaging certain corporations and disadvantaging others respecting speech. Speech is speech. There's the First Amendment. It doesn't matter how much money you have or how big you are, there is no restriction permitted on it. They are really hammering away here, folks. This is pretty sweeping. This is landmark, I would call it. "The law's purpose and effect is to prevent small and large corporations, for profit and not-for-profit, from presenting facts and opinions to the public. There is no constitutional support for this." Struck down. "The law's purpose..." This is McCain-Feingold they're talking about.

McCain-Feingold's "purpose and effect as to prevent small and large corporations, for profit and not-for-profit, from presenting facts and opinions to the public. There is no constitutional support for this." You know, I think back. One of the things that Senator McCain always said was, "You know, money corrupts the system. These good people come to Washington and money corrupts them." We have perhaps the most corrupt presidential administration I've seen in a long time. What does money have to do with it? Is it not their ideas? Is it not their desires that are corrupting them? Is it not who they are that's corrupt? By the way, another reason you know this is a great, great piece of Supreme Court reasoning is that Chuck-U Schumer is livid. Chuck-U is beside himself over this. Chuck-U doesn't like the Constitution. Only his endless speeches are worthy of protection.

[...]

There's a lot more to this, ladies and gentlemen. But the important thing here is it's a 5-4 decision, and Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion for the majority, which is significant. It's as good a decision as anybody could have hoped for. It's sweeping, and it is landmark.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You gotta hear this. Chuck-U Schumer is livid, livid over the Supreme Court decision which takes away all the bans on whatever amount of money corporations want to spend on advertising in political campaigns. He just hates it.

SCHUMER: The Supreme Court has just predetermined the winners of next November's elections. It won't be Republicans; it won't be Democrats. It will be corporate America. Our system of government's the best in the world due to the ability of average citizens to participate and engage their elected officials without the belief that there are corrupting influences at play. I have not seen a decision that more undermines campaign finance and is probably one of the three or four decisions in the history of the Supreme Court that most undermines democracy. We will regret the day that this decision has been issued.

RUSH: Quite the contrary, Chuck-U. Freedom is awakening from its coma today. This does not "undermine democracy." It strengthens it.

Is America addicted to war?

The answer to this article's rhetorical title is an obvious "yes."

But my fear is, even if most Americans recognized this fact, would it bother them? Probably not. Even America's liberals don't seem very concerned. They advocate cutting the Pentagon budget, sure -- the same way conservatives vaguely advocate cutting "welfare," (which is mostly Medicare and Medicaid). Even liberals don't seem to realize how extensive the American Empire's reach is, how deeply it is committed to so many sovereign nations' security architecture, and how far and freakily our generals are looking into the future of war -- not to ensure America's security, but to create total global U.S. military dominance with things like untouchable orbiting space weapons and killer robots.

As for the conservatives, I'm even more afraid, because their conception of patriotism is so inextricably linked to a muscular, activist, "kick-ass" U.S. military. Arch-neoconservative William Kristol famously asked, in advocating a preventive war against Iraq, what good is having the strongest military in the world if we're not going to use it? Use is the operative word here. What's the use of our military -- I mean, what should it be used for?

Most Americans would probably answer, "For national defense." But the most imminent threat we face is from terrorists, against whom conventional weapons are expensive and useless. Much less likely, but much more dire, is the threat of nuclear war -- most likely, a rogue missile launch, but perhaps also a suitcase nuke. And yet a U.S. military buildup is clearly not the best way to prevent nuclear attack either. (Don't even get me started on missile defense, which is a bad joke). Anti-proliferation efforts like Nunn-Lugar, the ABM treaty (which the Bush Administration voluntarily opted out of), and universal customs screening of all imported goods for nuclear materials are the most cost-effective and plain effective ways to mitigate the nuclear threat, and yet we don't hear about them. Nor do we hear about Russia not having enough money to secure its nuclear stockpile, which could lead to suitcase nukes on U.S. soil, or about Russia's old and failing radar early-warning and control systems, which could lead to an accidental nuclear missile launch.

This quote from Engelhardt is a call to return to true American conservatism. Those who look to venerable dead white men (our Founding Fathers) as the repository of America's eternal governing wisdom should especially take note:

"The early Republic that the most hawkish conservatives love to cite was a land whose leaders looked with suspicion on the very idea of a standing army. They would have viewed our hundreds of global garrisons, our vast network of spies, agents, Special Forces teams, surveillance operatives, interrogators, rent-a-guns and mercenary corporations, as well as our staggering Pentagon budget and the constant future-war gaming and planning that accompanies it, with genuine horror."

Is America Hooked on War?

By Tom Engelhardt

September 17, 2009 | The Nation

URL: http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ruSmQ2JPGkRjYXKsIAHcNrovcjXceAGY