NO MAN IS AN ISLAND UNTO THEMSELF - SEEMS MOST WISH THEY WERE.

Once in this nation our leaders expressed the philosophy that when anyone anywhere in the world wasn’t free than no one anywhere in the world was free.  When Americans have fought their wars those that the population has sustained at least in the twentieth century were those that people believed were being fought to protect the freedom and liberty of other people.  World War I to secure Democracy “Over There”; World War II to defeat the scourge of Nazism, fascism and militarism; Korea, to save the peaceful people of South Korea from the Communist hordes to their north; and the Gulf War to free the people of Kuwait from the Iraqi madman Saddam Hussein. The 45 year struggle against Communism was supported by most Americans of differing political persuasions because of a common antipathy to the totalitarian nature of the “evil empire”.

But today it seems that burdened with the Great Recession; the challenges to our public education system, domestic violence and a culture war between those who approve of the societal changes of the past generation and those who don’t, Americans have retreated again into themselves.  Not only do we seem to care little about what goes on in other countries in the world, we seem to care little about what goes on in other states and counties and even communities - other than our own.  And, it can be argued that many people care little about what occurs even in their own neighborhood unless it directly affects them.  People don’t care if the streets are kept clean unless the municipal street sweeper skips their road. 

In Syria today a brutal fascist dictator, Al Assad, is terrorizing and massacring his own people (especially the 80% who do not belong to his religious and ethnic minority the Alawites). And, while Russia and China see this as a way to return to the geopolitical power politics of the Cold War era the western nations pontificate.  In the 1990's it took a courageous American president, Clinton, to rally Europe to end the war in Bosnia but not until after the slaughter of thousands in Srebrenica.  The ethnic cleansing in Rwanda was ignored.   And while the west aided the rebels in Libya (whose democratic election has resulted in victory for moderates) all the Syrian rebels seem to be worth are words.  They may win on their own and if they do we will see the self fulfilling prophecy of radical takeover of their revolution.

But it is not just in foreign affairs that this new isolationism rears its head.  Here at home those without children of school age now listen to the yahoos who would have us undo and cripple the public school education system that helped build the great America of the second half of the twentieth century.  And those who have no elderly relatives on Medicare or Social Security listen to the shouting of the nihilists who proclaim that there will be nothing left for them when it is their turn.  The rich who are rich because the government of this nation is free and its economy is free complain that they pay too much in taxes although they pay the lowest portion of their income since World War II (ended 67 years ago).  The millions of Americans who have some form of health insurance seem not to care about the 40 million who do not. Though that 40 million has access to health services and the rest of the population pay for that in higher premiums for their insurance they fall for the lies and distortions of those who claim that Obamacare, a centrist moderate proposal to get insurance in the hands of that 40 million, is socialized medicine.

Many Americans now see themselves as under siege from some imaginary radical left-wing cultural elite that seek to effeminize and corrupt the American culture by importing “European ideas”.  Of course they don’t know what those ideas are and can’t explain them because they pay almost no attention to what goes on in Europe or any other continent. And if that weren’t enough their fear of the unknown has now sparked a resurgence of the McCarthyism of the 1950's in the efforts by Bachmann and other tea party radical right wing Republicans to demonize Muslim-Americans.

In the twentieth century America became the leader of the world -- by 1990 the only superpower and the symbol of liberty and justice for all.  What are we now?  We seem to have lost our way. We no longer seem committed to building a tolerant, multi cultural, middle-class nation of literate healthy young people whose parents and grandparents can live their “golden years" in financial security and not be a “burden” on their children.   Instead we have become a nation of homophobes - unless of course you know a gay or lesbian person and then you support their right to choose their own lifestyle.  We have become a nation of those who support unlimited rights to gun ownership not just rifles needed for hunting or guns for shooting at ranges. We have become intolerant of both the so-called pro-life and the denominated pro-choice positions on abortion - unless of course a family member or friend finds themselves with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy.  We have become a nation that believes that government is the problem and not one that saw the need for a transcontinental railroad, and airports for aviation, and an interstate highway system and so many programs sponsored by Presidents of both parties to help people achieve the American dream.  (Our people, who don’t know their own history, forget that even the pioneers were able to go west because the federal government sold the land to settlers' dirt cheap.)

So what happens now in the twenty-first century?  Do Americans go back to caring about others in their country and their world?  Or, do we wait out the Great Recession and when our economy returns to better times we bemoan what we have let fall apart and try to renew and rebuild?  Or, do we become just a parody of what we once were - like the Roman Empire in the 5th century or the Holy Roman Empire in the 18th (when it was neither Holy, Roman nor an Empire)?    

At every time of crisis in our history since 1607 Americans have risen to the occasion and been guided as Lincoln put it by the “better angels of our nature”. So, it can be again!  So, it must be again!  And how ever many bumps in the road may cause us to land in a ditch we will pull this country out and up and become again that shining city on a hill that the English religious dissidents yearned for and Ronald Reagan resurrected as a national slogan.

27 July 2012

The Fox in the Hen House: No More Rich Behind the Throne Now Rich on the Throne.

There was a time when being rich in America meant having much land or owning a mercantile business in a city ‑ accumulating wealth and leaving it to one's offspring so they could enjoy a good life if they continued to work at the business or maintain the farm.  Now being wealthy means accumulating vast fortunes of  money by investing and using money to make more  money ‑ producing nothing of intrinsic value and then leaving vast fortunes to your children who proceed often to simply spend it and do little productive, perhaps continue to invest and financially back others hard at work.

There was a time when the most respected Americans were those who worked as teachers, public servants like the policeman, the firefighter, the librarian ‑ the proverbial people in your neighborhood.  They performed services for the many who worked at producing goods or growing things.  They educated our children and protected us from criminals and catastrophes.

That America now exists only in the history books; it is "gone with the wind" as much as the mythical old south is. And, today America is one in which two classes struggle, not the age old haves and have-nots, but, the me‑first vs. the society first.  Those who feel that they belong to the village and those who see the village as a place to reside in while making one's fortune.

This year in America is a Presidential election year.  These quadrennial exercises in choosing the national leader often reflect where America is. In the 1820's Jackson stood for the "man on the make" the young farmers and the mechanics and craftsmen of the cities vs. those who represented old money (Southern planters and northern bankers). The Republican party was founded in the mid-1850's not  only on the platform of no extension of slavery but also the expansion of the economy into the west,  cheap sale of government land and the federal government supporting a transcontinental railroad. The 1932 election was a contest between those conservatives who believe that doing nothing would solve the nation's economic problems and liberals who believed they could reform capitalism in ways that would preserve a free economy in America at the same time as protecting the livelihood and the quality of life of all our citizens. FDR, the liberal Democrat, saved the New Deal while most of the western world fell under the rule of dictators.

This year the new Republican party ‑ the tea party radical right wing Republican party‑ advocates a combination of the better to do nothing philosophy and the help the rich and let what may trickle down.  Republicans offer American not a mouthpiece of the super rich classes but an actual robber baron himself in Mitt Romney.  I guess the superrich believe that rather than just controlling the President it’s time they had one of their own in the office.   And the Democrats offer for re‑election Barack Obama, a centrist Democrat, who accepts the basic tenets of capitalism but also adheres to the injunction of Abraham Lincoln (also of Illinois) that the function of government is to do the things that people can’t do for themselves.

It appeared in the 195o’s and 1960's that both parties had accepted the basic role of the federal government to protect the economic and civil rights of all our citizens.  Even the Reagan revolution now appears as a modest effort to curtail some of the more liberal aspects of the post-New Deal years.  But now we begin a new era - Republicans would put in the White House the fox to guard the chickens of America.  At the turn of the 20th century when America faced a serious economic crisis President Theodore Roosevelt speaking softly from his bully pulpit faced down J. P. Morgan.  The President if the one elected official who has the moral authority to speak for the entire nation and now the radical right wing tea party Republicans would put a J. P. Morgan in the White House to face down all the Theodore Roosevelts.  A President of the 1% will misgovern and mislead the 99% unlike FDR who was called a traitor to his 1% because he proposed programs to benefit the 99%.

14 July 2012

ObamaCare: A Tax is a tax - is a Tax - is a Tax - Except when it's a Penalty

The Republican right wing Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States has thrown a curve ball into the national confusion over the Affordable Care Act (known popularly as Obamacare.)  The SCOTUS determines the constitutionality of federal laws ever since when Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans defeated the Federalist property owner regime (an alliance of southern planters/merchants and northern bankers) the Supreme Court responded by the chief  judge, a long-time political rival of President Jefferson, asserting the right of the Court to declare laws unconstitutional - he had to use a footnote in a case to declare it - but nevertheless it stuck.

Unlike the US Senate it takes a majority of the Supreme Court to make a decision. So as expected, the four Democrat justices ruled that the law was constitutional under the federal constitution's commerce clause and the necessary and proper clause.  Four Republican justices voted to throw the whole law out and declare it unconstitutional.  Along comes Judge Roberts,  he decides to vote with the four Democrats and he gets to write the decision and say why - so he declares the Republicans are right this law violates the commerce clause but it contains a tax  - the individual mandate - and under the taxing power the law is constitutional.  Now the tax Robert's is talking about is the penalty someone pays if they can afford health insurance (and under the ACA they can buy it without going through their employer) and they don't.  If they are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid then of course they don't have to pay for private insurance.  It is not a Tax it is a Penalty.  And the only way to confirm whether someone can afford health insurance is to look at their federal tax return and at that point determine (voluntarily noted by the taxpayer) whether they have health insurance. Everyone in this country who pays for health insurance is already paying a tax - increased higher premiums to pay the health care at emergency rooms of those who don't have insurance.  This penalty will actually shift the burden of that alleged "tax" to those who should pay it rather than all those who shouldn't.

So in typical dysfunctional American governmental tradition the Supreme Court makes the correct decision for the wrong (compromised) reasons.  The right declares war on the tax and continues its' crusade for the repeal of Obamacare.  The left must now give up its' dream of universal single payer Medicare for All and settle for defending Obamacare. And simply because some of us, myself included, are not unhappy with the ruling on Obamacare does not mean we should now place a halo around Chief Justice Roberts and be quick to bow in reverence to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court of the United States, except for a brief three decades after World War II when great liberal jurists like Hugo Black, William Douglas and of course Earl Warren attempted to establish an absolute interpretation of the Bill of Rights and incorporate those rights onto the states through the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, has been a wall impregnable to people oriented laws.

In 1856 the Court issued the Dred Scott decision, immoral in it’s very wording, it declared that the constitution was for white people only and Negroes could never be truly free in the United States.  It wrote a color line into the constitution and most historians feel it made the Civil War inevitable.   Forty years late in Plessey v. Ferguson the Court having to live with the emancipation of slaves enunciated the “separate but equal” theory and applied it to all public institutions and accommodations.(even though the equal part of the equation was never enforced)

As the Congress of the United States attempted to deal with the depression of the 1930's (which other countries responded to by installing dictatorships) with sensible legislation that tried to save manufacturing and farming in America and at the same time protect the workers, the children and the elderly, the Supreme Court struck down major legislation passed overwhelmingly by the Congress. During the early years of the New Deal the Supreme Court almost made itself a third house of the national legislature.

And with Citizens United the court has handed the government of this country over to those with the billions and unlimited funds to control it.  A restoration of the robber baron corruption of the Gilded Age is coming about as we witness this years' Presidential election.  In the state of Montana which suffered control by the cattle barons and the railroad magnates one hundred years ago the people of Montana adopted controls on campaign financing.  The same Supreme Court which gives false homage to states rights says No you couldn’t do that one hundred years ago. The government of Montana is not of, by and for the people - it will, like the rest of our governments, be owned lock, stock and barrel by the ultra-rich.

A democracy is based on the rule of the majority of the citizens of a polity with respect for and guarantees of the rights of the minorities.  It establishes a form of government, in our case a federal representative republic, which assures those rights and preserves them from one generation to the next. The Supreme Court is the only branch of the federal government that is not elected. The Justices are appointed by the President (who in a second term is not answerable to the people since he cannot run for another term) for life. And to these unelected nine people we give more power than we give the chief executive or the members of either house of Congress. When adopted at the Constitutional Convention it was assumed it would be just the top level of a federal court system.  None of the founding fathers saw it as what it became a coequal branch of the government.  It was the President’s veto that was supposed to save the nation from unconstitutional laws and even that could be overridden by 2/3 of the people’s representatives. Now with super majorities required in the Senate, and with unlimited and hidden expenditures of money  by the ultra rich in election campaigns; and with the Supreme Court of nine deciding who our President will be (Bush v. Gore) and what laws, even if they get through the labyrinthine processes of the federal legislature and are signed by the President, will be allowed to take effect we have undermined all the promises of democracy that were so nobly proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. 

30 June 2012

WHAT KIND OF SOCIETY ARE WE BECOMING - DOES ANYBODY CARE?

America today is not the society of my youth (the 1950's) nor of my young adulthood (the 1970's). Those were times when people seemed to care about more than just themselves. In the 50's there were still so many who had fought in WWII and felt proud that this nation had saved the world from Nazism and Fascism. Though it took much struggle as that decade merged into the 1960's the majority of Americans decided to care about the injustices that this nation had imposed on citizens of color for the prior one hundred years.  White Priests and Rabbis marched with black Pastors in the demonstrations for voting rights.  And young white teenagers joined in the sit-ins at lunch counters and in voting registration drives. There was violence and blacks died but so did whites who supported equal rights. Ultimately what was just prevailed and our society became more open and more equitable.

What of today?  A recent poll shows that since most Americans have some form of photo ID they support making every voter have photo ID even though they know it will discriminate against minorities, young people and elderly people.  But if you have an ID evidently you don’t care.

And, what of our economy?  People who have someone in the family collecting unemployment or out of work want to see the government create jobs and do the kinds of things that FDR did in the thirties.  But the majority seems to support drifting along hoping it will get no worse for them and seeing no need for government programs to help others. It would appear that unlike the 1960's & 70's when Americans declared war on poverty today the majority wants to declare war on the poor.

Look at the issues of women’s reproductive freedoms - of access to abortion and contraception.  Many of those who oppose access do support it - for themselves.  Those who for religious or personal reasons oppose such processes oppose access for anyone.  Again, the needs of Me take precedence over the needs of others.

Even neighborliness has taken a hit.  In the days of yore if someone went into the hospital neighbors would offer to cut the grass.  Today those neighbors call the local government and demand that the hospitalized resident be given a ticket for high grass. Of course we all want to see our properties kept tidy and clean but neighbors could pitch in and help those who for health reasons can’t take care of the property themselves.  Not today - because it seems they only care about the impact upon their own property.

Somewhere in the past three decades our society changed.  From a nation and a people who prided themselves on helping others we became a ME society.  Even in our politics where once political candidates ran as teams now we see again and again candidates worrying only about themselves and their chances of getting elected - one of the reasons today's winners often can’t govern.

We were once a society that believed that education was the best thing we could give our young people.  So we created the best public schools and opened our colleges and universities to all regardless of income levels.  Now in state after state those who can prefer private for profit education are reducing aid to public schools; and as college loans become unbearably expensive those same people advocate cutting access to loans.  Our society seems to be headed back to education for those who can afford it, rather than education for all, and our society cannot afford that shortsighted attitude. But those who can afford education and those who don’t see the value of it don’t seem to care.

We believed that 'no man was an island unto himself'.  Today isolationism as far as the rest of world goes is again on the upsurge.  Not the isolationism fathered by the drawn-out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that we fought for too long, but an isolationism that even rejects economic help to those who need it or economic sanctions as a non violent way of helping others gain their freedoms. 

Americans may negotiate treaties like the Law of the Seas and put forth ideas like an International Criminal Court but those agreements languish in the U. S. Senate with little popular support because like in the 1920's (the last great ME decade) it seems no one cares.

History of public policy often goes in cycles.  If that holds true than the generation of my grandchildren who are growing up in the first decades of the 21st century may look back upon all we tried to do in the middle of the 20th century and say “We can do that and we will do that better.”  They may recognize the value of justice for all, of economic opportunity for everyone and a world at peace based on installing principles throughout the globe.  I certainly hope they will.  I hope they will be a generation that cares about all the people in the land just as their grandparents cared about them.

14 June 2012