Sanctuary State - Why It's Harder For Trump To Dominate US Than It Was For Hitler To Dominate Germany

Back in February I did a post called Structural Difference Between US and 1930's Germany That Makes It Harder For Trump which recalled the lessons I learned from my mother who grew up in Nazi Germany and how that helped me see, as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, the stark differences between a centralized national bureaucracy and one where each state had significant independence from the capital.

Screenshot LA Times 9/17/17

Yesterday I was reminded of that lesson once again when I saw this headline for an LA Times story:  State to become a 'sanctuary'.




In a centralized bureaucracy like they had in Nazi Germany or have in Thailand, all government is controlled out of Berlin or Bangkok - education, police, health, everything.

But in the US the federal government is in charge of certain things and states have the power over everything else.  The Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

(Article 1 of the Constitution which enumerates the federal powers is not nearly as brief.)


Some of that state independence has eroded as Congress has, over the years, tied federal funding to compliance with the federal mandates.

But individual states, police departments, school districts, can risk the funding if they object strongly enough to the federal demands.  They can, essentially, tell the feds to go to hell.   In this sanctuary case they are telling state employees not to enforce (partially at least*) immigration laws because those are federal, not state, responsibilities.  And in this sanctuary case, it appears that so far, the courts have agreed with the states that the feds can't withhold federal funding to sanctuary cities.  (That's also mentioned in the LA Times story.)

Of course, states rights are a good thing when they protect what you feel is important, but not when they protect things to which you object.  The rights of African-Americans were horrendously violated in the post-civil war south through to Jim Crow and even after the civil rights acts of 1964, on the grounds of 'states rights.'  And the states that have legalized marijuana are improvising a tricky dance with the feds around conflicting laws.

But I'm pleased to see how many Americans are standing up for the rights of immigrants, particularly the DACA folks.  We've come a long way since Japanese-Americans, including US citizens, were incarcerated during WW II, with very little objection from the rest of the population.


*The new sanctuary law in California, the article tells us, does allow some cooperation, mainly regarding immigrants with criminal violations.

The Rule of Law Is Protecting Trump

For the time being anyway.

The Rule of Law is a foundation of our democracy.  It means that we follow the rules, the laws, that are created by our elected officials which are based on the legal foundation of the constitution.  We aren't supposed to take short cuts, but rather follow through the process of administering justice.

The rules for removing a president are laid out in the constitution.  There's impeachment.  From the University of Chicago:

Impeachment Clauses

Article 1, Section 2, Clause 5
The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Article 1, Section 3, Clauses 6 and 7
The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried the Chief Justice shall preside; And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Judgement in Cases of Impreachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgement and Punishment, according to Law.
Article 2, Section 4
The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Article 3, Section 1
. . . The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour. . . .  (emphasis added)

I started this a week ago, and planned to go into each of the grounds for impeachment.  I thought I'd have to abandon this post, because I just don't have the time to complete this properly.

However, today I ran across a Tweet that cites a short 1974 book by Charles L. Black, The Impeachable Offense, which does all the work for me.   And Lawfare blog has excerpted key parts.  Critical  reading for anyone who wants to talk about impeaching the president.

There's also a commentary by Jane Chong that speculates on how this might be applicable today.  (For example, Black dismisses treason as not relevant in Nixon's case, but because the word is being used today, Chong discusses it, though only to show that it is still not relevant, despite the use of the term by some.

For the time being, though, the rule of law protects Trump.  From my perspective, Trump is actively doing damage to our laws and institutions that protect people's safety, health, and even lives.  Just as many people are supportive of taking legal shortcuts during a crisis, I have that instinct now with Trump. But I know we have to take it step by step and do it right.  We'll have to clean up the damage later.  Chong too makes that point, of taking it slowly.

"Last month I made a pragmatic argument against pushing too early for Trump’s impeachment. But as Black makes clear, hasty action on this front is more fundamentally a failure of principle. “Everyone must shrink from this most drastic of measures,” he declares on page one. Acknowledging his own status as a longtime political opponent of then-President Richard Nixon, Black nonetheless expresses 'a very strong sense of the dreadfulness of the step of removal.” Impeachment must be treated like high-risk surgery, he insists, “to be resorted to only when the rightness of diagnosis and treatment is sure.'”

Anchorage Pridefest 5: Fire and Brimstone

The Pridefest was not all sweetness and light.  There were a few folks who were there to pass on their interpretation of God's word, and it wasn't pretty.   I went to the spot to figure out what was going on. There was this big sign, the rainbow flag, drummers, and people dressed like angels.  I asked one of the angels what was happening and why she was there.  Her reply was something like, "I get harassed every day.  I don't need to hear it at Pridefest where I should be safe with welcoming people."

So, the angels and the flag were surrounding the protests, blocking them from view and the drums were drowning out their message.




There are lots of interpretations of the bible.  Many conclude that homosexuality as we know it today is not what the bible refers to.  For example, this evangelical who believes practicing homosexuality is a sin, argues that the sin of Sodom was NOT homosexuality.

"There’s nothing in Genesis 19 that talks about gay people. The main sin committed in Genesis 19 was attempted gang rape. And I don’t know any gay person who’s trying to justify gang rape. In fact, whenever Sodom is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible, the city is usually described as being inhospitable and not caring for the poor — an ironic description of many straight Christians."

I'm not a biblical scholar and don't know Hebrew or Aramaic, so I'm not qualified to interpret these passages.  I can only point out that various Christians (and Jews) have different interpretations about what the bible says about homosexuality.  Another writer I saw claims the opposite of this quote - that Sodom was not about lacking hospitality and it was all about homosexuality.

The woman in the white tee shirt with the microphone was droning on and on.  I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it really didn't make any sense to me.  I'm sure all the drumming didn't help.  Someone told me that this group was from the Valley and they showed up last year and no one was prepared.  This year they were prepared.  They were even passing out earplugs.  [My wife, who wasn't there, thinks the word 'droning' is too judgmental.  Normally I'd try to find another word, but 'harangue' isn't neutral either.  But to my ear, both are good descriptions of lecturing to a crowd of people who simply don't want to hear what you have to say.]

This does, of course, raise free speech questions for some.  As the first woman I spoke to said, "This is the one day I shouldn't have to hear this sort of thing."  I expect 99% of the people at Pridefest don't want to hear this woman.  They've heard messages like hers all their lives.  One could argue she's disturbing their peace.  But Pridefest isn't shutting her down, they're just counter protesting her.  And anyone who wants to know what her message is can come in close and listen.

I'd note the implication of 'real Christians' on the tee shirt would seem to be, "If you disagree with me on this, then you aren't a real Christian."  I've always heard the the most important message of Christianity was: "do onto other what you'd have others to do onto you." That's not something these folks are doing.

If you click on the image, it will get clearer and you can see at the bottom it references Matthew 19: 4-7.

Well, here's Matthew 9 4-7

4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’1 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’2? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 7  “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

Hmmm, good question.

 8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

Leviticus says the punishment for all sexual immorality starting with adultery and including 'a man lies with a man as with a woman' is death.  I haven't heard about anyone picketing the divorce courts.  I did look quickly to make sure and only found reference to people opposing orthodox Jewish men who don't allow their wives to divorce.  I wonder if the picketers at Pridefest voted for the president who's on his third wife and was practicing sexual immorality with his second wife when he was still married to his first wife?

But let's read the rest of this section of Matthew:

10 The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” 11 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

Professor of Theology and Ethical Studies Stephen J. Patterson interprets what "when a man lies with a man as with a woman" might mean in the context of the Middle East 2500 years ago.  He argues it does not mean what we call homosexuality today.  Instead he argues it's a form of dominance by one heterosexual male over another.  He then points out the example Jonathan and Samuel, "“Your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women.” 

I'm not a biblical scholar and I don't necessarily buy this interpretation, but enough denominations of Christianity, not to mention of Judaism, accept gay love and marriage that I have to believe that when reading the original Hebrew and maybe even Aramaic, there's lots of room for interpretation.

I don't have a neat ending for this.  I'm just documenting what I saw and what I've been able to find online to help me interpret the bible passages.  I don't pretend that these interpretations I've quoted are 'right' just that they exist.

John Oliver Challenges Coal Mogul To a Duel, Mogul Accepts

I was going to use a poker metaphor for this, but a reddit discussion suggested the terms I was going to use - call and raise - are problematic.

A fellow Alaskan blogger posted a youtube video the other day of John Oliver calling out a West Virginia coal king Bob Murray on a number of issues.  I thought it was brilliant the way he has mastered a technique of using humor and visuals (in the Jon Steward model) to take complex issues and explain them simply, without losing the complexity.  In this case it involved

• Trump's hypocrisy about promising and claiming new coal jobs
• Murray's hypocrisy over his concern about coal miner safety
• The first amendment 

In the piece, Oliver tells us that HBO got a cease and desist order telling them to not air the segment and that Murray has sued other media, including the New York Times over something they wrote.  It all sounds very Trumpish (It will be interesting how that word will eventually be defined when it enters the Oxford dictionary).

Today we learn that the threatened law suit has been filed in West Virginia  circuit court.

Here's the offending segment.  Judge for yourself.



HBO and Time Warner have deep pockets, but it is troubling when the very rich use libel and defamation law suit threats to shut down media that criticize them.

I've been threatened twice over posts here. One post about the Alaska International Film Festival which has nothing to do with Alaska except the pictures on its website and a post office forwarding service with an Alaska address earned me a threatening letter from their attorney.  The other got me an email that threatened a law suit.

The first was a bit scary as I had to consider the costs of potential lawsuits as a price of blogging.  While I was adamant about not taking down the post, I did have some difficult days calculating what standing by my post might cost me.   I was lucky to have access to a great attorney who ended the threat with one letter, but others who were threatened by them pulled their posts.   These threats are a real danger to free speech.   Gawker was put out of business by a lawsuit.

Murray seems a lot like Trump in that he can't handle any criticism.  John Oliver does come on very strong, but I'm confident - especially since he knew a lawsuit was likely - that he can document all his claims.

Let's see how far this lawsuit gets.  In this case, the defendants have the resources to fight.  In fact, John Oliver says in the segment that he knows such a suit is coming.  My concern is for smaller media, including individual bloggers, who can be much more easily shut down by the threat of a lawsuit.

NOTE:  I've been listening and reading the news lately with an eye to the percent of articles/segments that focus on conflict.  It's clear that conflict is the bread and butter of news.  Even NPR calls their news articles 'stories.'  At last April's Alaska Press Club conference here, NPR reporter Kirk Siegler  talked about how to create a good story and he identified tension as the second factor after a strong character.

But the constant focus on conflict (or tension) leads to a distorted perception of the degree of conflict in human life compared to the cooperation.  News shows will report the car accidents each day, but not the millions of drivers who used their turn indicators, slowed down to let someone in their lane, and did all the other cooperative activities necessary for freeway drivers to negotiate their way to their destinations.  We all hear daily things like "Two people were shot to death today in a robbery."  But how many times have you heard a newscaster say, "6170 people died today of heart attacks." 

Just as stories of murders far outnumber stories of other kinds of deaths, stories of conflict hugely outweigh stories of cooperation.  And in both cases people's perceptions are grossly distorted so they think of terrorists as a far bigger threat than they really are compared to other causes of death, and to think that conflict is far more common than cooperation.  

So when I post a story like this one that does focus on conflict, I ask myself what are the reasons that this story is worth posting.  Here's what I think is important in this story:

• Oliver's skill in presenting the facts of a complex story in a way that retains the complexity yet is compelling to viewers.  He doesn't dumb it down, he raises the level of his viewers.  It's a model to study and emulate, though without the insults.
• The danger to free speech from very wealthy people who don't like to be criticized.  This threat of lawsuits is very real - particularly for smaller scale journalists than those at HBO.  It's a consequence of the great divide between the very rich - for whom $10 million is pocket change - and the rest of us.  

Racism Is Racism Is Alive

[Note:  This is an unpleasant topic, but please indulge me.  The history here helps put today's narratives and actions into sharp focus.]

I've done more reading and listening about racism than the average American.  (No, that's not like Trump saying "I'm the least racist person ever." First, having read more about racism than the average American doesn't take much reading.  But I've been involved with Healing Racism in Anchorage for many years and I've attended many workshops on racism as well.  So my claim is no boast, nor an exaggeration.)

Yet reading White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide makes me feel like I was totally not getting it before.  Even though I know a lot of what Dr. Carol Anderson writes about.  But she puts together the pieces like I've never seen before.  I've already posted about the first chapter which traces how the South basically reestablished slavery after the civil war, but a nastier, meaner form.

  They did this with laws that denied the rights of blacks guaranteed in the then new fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, with the help of US Supreme Court decisions that said the federal government couldn't interfere with states, even if the states were denying those newly won rights such as citizenship and voting.  They also did it with laws that required blacks to have work contracts with white farmers or mine owners.  If they didn't, they could be convicted for vagrancy and then as convicts, leased out to those same employers with no pay and no rights.  Those are just a few of the structural means of denying Southern blacks their rights.

As a friend warned, the next chapters get worse.  This is material most of us want to avoid confronting and our schools, media, and general disposition have made that easy.  I'm asking you to just take another five minutes to do what all American really need to do.  It's the first step of overcoming denial.  And if you're not in denial, the first steps to understanding the enormity of the mistreatment of blacks, not by individuals, but by a corrupt and evil system that established elaborate legal structures to keep blacks in shackles.

Chapter 2 is called Derailing The Great Migration - how blacks fled the South during WWI, enticed by promises of better jobs in the North and how the Southern states did all they could to prevent that exodus. Laws banning newspapers that recruited blacks to the north.  Stopping trains. And how housing discrimination in the North condemned blacks to live in overcrowded poor ghettos.  Part of the problem with our education on these topics is that we've only gotten the most generalized descriptions, like the beginning of this paragraph.  We haven't seen all the mutilated bodies hanging from trees or burnt alive.  If you see this book in a book store, read the end of chapter 2.  In my hard cover edition it starts at the bottom page 56,

"Tired of the cramped living conditions and exasperated with paying exorbitant rents for ramshackle housing that landlords refused to repair, black professionals sought to move away from Black Bottom."

It goes on to relate the stories of two black doctors in Detroit who moved into white neighborhoods.  The first moved out the first day when neighbors mobbed his house.  The second brought friends and guns to protect his property.  The black doctor and his family were jailed for inciting a riot and murdering a white neighbor.  Everyone lied about what happened - the police, the neighbors, etc.  Only because they had Clarence Darrow as their attorney did they win the case, after the first trial ended in a hung jury, but meanwhile his wife and daughter and friend all contracted tuberculosis in prison and died after their release.  And this was in the North.


Chapter 3 is about how, following Brown v Board of Education, Southern (and to an extent Northern) states essentially nullified that decision to integrate the schools by a variety of tactics from using public money to fund private white academies, to simply not funding education for blacks, to enacting a variety of laws that they knew were unconstitutional, but that they also knew would take years to grind through the courts, giving them time to figure out more strategies.  Meanwhile black students were deprived of a their rightful education.

I've rushed through chapters 2 and 3 because chapter 4 offers some insights that cut to the chase about why Americans are ignorant about the magnitude of the Southern mistreatment of blacks and horrific impacts it's had on African Americans.  And why African American mistreatment and abuse continues to this day.

Chapter 4 is called Rolling Back Civil Rights.  It's about 1965 now.

"The impact of this civil rights struggle had been slow but significant.  Inequality had begun to lessen.  Incomes had started to rise.  Job and educational opportunities had expanded.  And just as with Reconstruction, the Great Migration, and the Brown decision, this latest round of African American advances set the gears of white opposition in motion."(p, 99)

How?  First,  those who thought blacks were trying to get their rights too fast,  including Nixon, Reagan, and the Supreme Court, redefined what the civil rights movement was about.  

". . . centuries of oppression and brutality suddenly reduced to a harmless symbolism of a bus seat and a water fountain.  Thus when the COLORED ONLY signs went down, inequality had supposedly disappeared.  By 1965 Richard Nixon asserted, 'almost every legislative roadblock to equality of opportunity for education, jobs, and voting had been removed.'  Also magically removed, by this interpretation, were up to twenty-four trillion dollars in multigenerational devastation that African Americans had suffered in lost wages, stolen land, educational impoverishment, and housing inequalities.  All of that vanished as if it never happened."(p. 99)

To emphasize this point she quotes Patrick Buchanan.

"America has been the best country on earth for black folks.  It was here that 600,000 black people brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known." (p. 100)

So by taking down the "COLORED ONLY" signs, race was no longer an issue.  Sort of like, by electing a black president, race was no longer an issue.  But rather these events merely triggered more backlash against blacks.

"President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and affirmative action, which were developed to ameliorate hundreds of years of violent and corrosive repression, were easily characterized as reverse discrimination against hardworking whites and a 'government handout that lazy black people 'choose' to take rather than work.'" (p. 100)

 Second, was to redefine racism itself.

"Confronted with civil rights headlines depicting unflattering portrayals of KKK rallies and jackbooted sheriffs, white authority transformed those damning images of white supremacy into the sole definition of racism.  This simple but wickedly brilliant conceptual and linguistic shift served multiple purposes.  First and foremost, it was conscience soothing. . ." (p. 100)

Just as after World War II, there were no Germans who knew what had happened to the Jews, or who even were Nazis themselves [this is my insertion into Anderson's discussion],

"The whittling down of racism to sheet-wearing goons allowed a cloud of racial innocence to cover many whites who, although 'resentful of black progress' and determined to ensure that racial inequality remained untouched, could see and project themselves as the 'kind of upstanding white citizen[s]' who were 'positively outraged at the tactics of the Ku Klux Klan.'  The focus on the Klan also helped to designate racism as an individual aberration rather than something systemic, institutional, and pervasive.  Moreover, isolating racism to only its most virulent and visible form allowed respectable politicians and judges to push for policies that ostensibly met the standard of America's new civil rights norms while at the same time crafting the implantation of policies to undermine and destabilize the norms, all too often leaving the black community ravaged."(pp. 100-101)

Between the time I read this today and I started this post I read a couple of Tweets that remind me that this legacy is alive and well and still doing its evil in the United States today. From the Dallas News:

"In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel in San Antonio found that the maps gave Republicans an advantage in elections and weakened the voting strength of minority voters. House Districts in Dallas and Tarrant counties were among those in which the judges ruled minority voters had seen their clout weakened.
The ruling is yet another blow to the state in its six-year legal battle over the redrawing of the maps. Last month, the same court found that the state's congressional maps were drawn with intent to discriminate against minority voters and invalidated three congressional districts. And last week, a federal judge ruled that the state's voter ID law was written with intent to discriminate."

But like the delaying tactics to fight Brown v Board of Education, the redistricting was used for all the elections since 2011 and those candidates won't be unelected and their laws won't be invalidated.  So while this is a setback, there's new redistricting when the 2020 census comes out and so this will only, possibly affect, the 2018 and 2020 elections.  Cheating works.

This disenfranchisement of blacks continues.  And in 2013, the US Supreme Court ruled to end a key part of the Voting Rights Act that required pre clearance from the Justice Department before their redistricting plan could go into effect for a number of states including Texas and Alaska.  The court said the criteria set 40 years ago were out of date.  Just as Anderson tells us, they were arguing that the civil rights abuses had long ago ended.  But this decision - as well as the one for North Carolina  - show they haven't.  Had the Supreme Court NOT invalidating that section of the Voting Rights Act, Texas would have had to get the approval of the Justice Department before implementing their plan.  And that would not have happened under Obama's Justice Department.

But with Trump's Justice Department, would it matter?

The other Tweet was about Attorney General Jeff Sessions who said today,

"I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and Constitutional power."

This language about amazement and 'an island in the Pacific' (the State of Hawaii) is just about right from a man born in 1946 in Selma, Alabama, who was in elementary school when Brown v Board of Education was decided and he grew up in as racist a state as there was.  Where his family was surely part of the outraged Southerners who did all they could to block school integration.  So, the legacy that Anderson writes about is now reincarnated as the highest law enforcer of our nation.  This isn't even about a legacy, Sessions was right in the middle of the most virulent racist state in his formative years.  And he's now our Attorney General in charge of enforcing laws to protect our rights.  Disgraceful!

There's also this story in today's LA Times on neo-Nazi attack on Jewish woman in Montana.  The same kind of harassment, though mostly today digital that Southern blacks and their allies were subject too, though it hadn't gotten to the point of physical violence.  Nevertheless, the result was what all terrorist action wants - to put fear into the hearts of its victims.


A few choice quotes from the book about some of our past presidents (and one of Sessions' teen heroes I'm sure) from these three chapters.

"At the behest of his 'great friend' South Carolina governor James Byrnes, Eisenhower hosted a small dinner party at the White House to explain to Chief Justice Earl Warren that Southerners 'are not bad people.  Al they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside big overgrown Negroes.'"

"During his 1968 presidential bid, Alabama governor George Wallace understood this resentment.[white resentment of black gains]  He had experience a startling epiphany just a few years earlier after trying to blok the enrollment of an African American student in the state's flagship university at Tuscaloosa.  For that act of defiance, the governor received more than one hundred thousand congratulatory telegrams, half of which came from north of the Mason Dixon Line.  Right then he had a revelation:  'They all hate black people, all of them.  They're all afraid, all of them.  Great God! That's it!  They're  all Southern!  The whole United States is Southern!"

"Using strategic dog-whistle appeals - crime, welfare, neighborhood schools - to trigger Pavlovian anti-black responses, Nixon succeeded in defining  and maligning the Democrats as the party of African Americans, without once having to actually say the words.  That would be the 'elephant in the room.'  In fact, as H. R. Haldeman, one of the Republican candidate's most trusted aides, later recalled, "He [Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks.  The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.'"

"The objective [of redefining racism] was to contain and neutralize the victories of the Civil Rights Movement by painting a picture of a 'colorblind,' equal opportunity society whose doors were now wide open, if only African Americans would take initiative and walk on through.  Ronald Reagan breezily shared anecdotes about how Lyndon Johnson's great Society handed over hard-earned taxpayer dollars to a 'slum sweller' to live in posh government-sbsidied housing and provided food stamps for one 'strapping young buck' to buy steak, while another used the change he received from purchasing an orange to pay for a bottle of vodka.  He ridiculed Medicaid recipients as 'a faceless mass, waiting for handouts.'  The imagery was, by design, galling, and although the stories were far from the truth, they succeeded in tapping into a river of widespread resentment." 

Not much different from what we see today, not only about black, but even more so about Muslims.

Eichenwald On Why Democrats Should Block Trump Supreme Court Nominee

 Who's Kurt Eichenwald?

Eichenwald's huge book on Enron, Conspiracy of Fools, was a masterpiece of putting all the pieces of that puzzle together in a page turner of a book that became a best seller.  His book about the FBI, The Informant  was made into a movie.  Here's Wikipedia's description of his most recent book:

"In 2012 he published his fourth book, 500 Days. Also a New York Times bestseller, the book chronicled the events in governments around the world in the 500 days after the 9/11 attacks. It revealed details of the American program of NSA eavesdropping, torture policy, the American government's briefings on the coming attacks before 9/11, and the details of debates within the British government."

This guy is relentless in his investigative reporting and he's an elegant writer.  Again I use  Wikipedia to explain those skills:

"During his first months of college, Eichenwald sustained a concussion, which was soon followed by noticeable epileptic seizures. Diagnosed with epilepsy in November of his freshman year, he continued to attend school despite repeated grand mal seizures.[3]
After having two outdoor seizures on campus, he was dismissed from Swarthmore, in apparent violation of federal law.[3] He contacted the United States Department of Health and Human Services and fought his way back into school,[3][4] an experience that he has credited with giving him the willingness to take on institutions in his muckraking reporting.[citation needed] He graduated with his class in 1983, receiving a degree in political science, with distinction.[3]"

What does it mean to be hypocritical?

From the Cambridge dictionary:

"hypocritical, adjective,  It’s hypocritical for him to criticize her for doing the same things that he does."

One of the things I find most galling is the Republicans' hypocrisy for complaining that the Democrats are doing the very things they began the moment Obama become president.  It would make sense that Republicans think the Democrats are doing this for purely partisan reasons, since this appears to be the Republicans' motive. (Recall McConnell proclaiming the Republicans' top priority in 2009 was to prevent Obama's reelection.)  But they must understand that the Democrats have legitimate grave fears about the future of this nation, because a number of Republicans have already expressed such concerns.

Why Eichenwald believes Democrats must go all out to reject the Gorsuch nomination

I'm offering these excerpts from a Kurt Eichenwald article in Newsweek because he says what I'm thinking, but he does a much better job than I can at tying up all the loose ends.

It's his reasoning why the Democrats should oppose Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court.  He begins that his opposition and this article violate his long held beliefs about how a democratic government should run.  He acknowledges that Gorsuch is well qualified and had he been nominated in the past, he would have supported him.

His objections come from how the Republicans have violated the process of democracy by the way they obstructed Obama's court appointments.

"Gorsuch, unfortunately, must be sacrificed on the altar of obscene partisanship erected by the Republicans in recent years. Temper tantrums designed to undermine the Constitution for naked political purposes cannot be rewarded. Our government cannot survive the short-term games-playing that has replaced fidelity to the intent of the Founding Fathers’ work in forming this once-great nation. 

This goes back to the unconscionable decision of Republicans who refused to consider any nominee put forward by President Barack Obama following the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. Obama nominated Merrick Garland, another eminently qualified candidate, who served as chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the second most important court in the nation. But in a decision that will go down as one of the greatest abuses of the Constitution in this nation’s history, the Senate’s Republican majority, under the leadership of their unprincipled majority leader, Mitch McConnell, declared they would not give Garland hearings, would not examine his qualifications and would not take a vote."

He then discusses the rule McConnell made up about not approving a Supreme Court nominee in the last year of the presidency, saying the slot should be reserved for the next president.  Eichenwald blasts this made up rule as pure partisanship and unrelated to any Senate precedents or tradition, citing 24 such last year nominations, 21 of which were approved.

Then he quotes from several letters written by different groups of legal scholars vehemently denouncing the Senate Republicans' refusal to bring Garland to a floor vote.  He shows the mendacity of the Republicans offering philosophical rules about the last year of the presidency by quoting Sen. Grassley in Obama's first term of office refusing to rule on a nominee for the DC circuit court by making up another rule about not breaking the four-four ideological balance in that court.  He proceeds:

"This might explain why Democrats now say the Supreme Court should remain divided in the same way—four justices appointed by Democratic presidents, four by Republicans—for the rest of Trump’s term. “I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that President Trump puts up,” said Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. 'I promise you.'”

He then cites a liberal think tank, Americans for a Progressive Judiciary, declaration that it would be perfectly honorable and constitutional for Democrats to block every single Trump court appointment. He ends his paragraph on that think tank with this quote:

 “If you truly believe that a particular nominee would wreak havoc on America, why not do everything you can to stop him?” 

I’m sure these words of principle enrage conservatives. I’m sure they believe that the Democrats' allowing the high court to continue in its current hobbled state throughout Trump’s term is un-American and destructive to our country. In fact, these statements have already been roundly condemned on Fox News, with numerous pundits ripping at the Democratic Party (or Democrat Party) for allowing its thirst for partisan advantage to blind it to our constitutional principles. And if you’re a conservative, I hope you seethe at those statements. 

Why? Because it exposes your grotesque hypocrisy. 

You see, I lied. Feinstein never said anything about the Democrats refusing to confirm any Trump nominee for the next four years—that was actually Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, in statements he made when most of the political world believed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was going to be president. As for the comment from the Americans for a Progressive Judiciary? I made up the name; as far as I can tell, no such organization exists. Instead, I was quoting the conservative publication The Federalist, which, once again, was writing at a time when almost no one believed Trump would win, to justify engaging in a blanket refusal to ever confirm any Clinton nominee.
Now if you’re a conservative who was angered by those statements when you thought they came from Democrats—and now that you know they were uttered by your partisan brethren, you’re scrambling to justify them—face facts: You are lying and self-deluded."

His argument against approving Trump nominees?  The Republicans have broken all pretense of respecting the constitutional role of the US Senate to advise and consent on presidential court appointments.  Instead they have simply blocked as many as they could for pure partisan short term gain.  It's a precedent the Democrats cannot let them get away with.  He takes a swipe at Alito as

“'the worst justice in history' ©, as I’ve previously written." 

He argues that Alito's opinions are predictable and he (Eichenwald):

"enjoy[s] trying to predict what assertions of nonexistent fact he will employ in his arrogant effort to reach the outcome he desires."

But this is not a gratuitous swipe at Alito.  It's part of his argument that the Supreme Court is now a partisan body and will be as long as Alito is on it.

Eichenwald's justification for his change of heart is this:

"The Republicans cannot be allowed to reap the rewards of unprincipled obstructionism that sets a precedent that will destroy the last remnant of our country’s constitutional credibility."

He continues:

"So what should the Democrats do? Fight. Recognize the nature of the other party. There is no longer reason; there is no longer fidelity to our history or to the founders’ intents; there is no longer compromise. Republicans cannot be allowed to benefit from their efforts to undermine the intent of the framers of our Constitution. (To give you an idea of how bad this could become if Democrats don’t fight, think of this: That conservative commentator writing for The Federalist who was justifying obstructing every Clinton nominee argued that Republicans, as an option, could constitutionally just let the Supreme Court die if it could be done without paying too high a political price. There is no limit to how far the Republicans may go.)"

He then goes on to explain why, even if the Republicans vote to remove the 2/3 vote for Supreme Court approval, the Democrats should now block Gorsuch.  I'll let you see how he ends his argument over at the Newsweek site itself.  It's not a strategy I would have thought of.

But I do want to put in a plug for understanding the Prisoner's Dilemma problem and the Tit-For-Tat strategy that research suggests is the best way to combat an opponent that refuses to cooperate.  It's a critical lesson that Democrats need to understand and adapt in their strategy.

I've written about the Prisoner's Dilemma before and if you don't know it, or the Tit-for-Tat strategy, I'd strongly recommend you check out the explanations in this earlier post.  It helps explain a lot of what is going on in the world - conflicts that get resolved and those that don't.  Basically it shows that cooperation, in the long run, wins.  Unless your opponent always reneges.  In that case the opponent will always win.  Until you also copy his strategy.  If that leads to mutual cooperation, both will do better.  If both sides continue to renege then both sides go into a downward lose-lose spiral.

American People Are Starting To Fight Back

When FDR called for Americans of Japanese descent to be rounded up and put into camps, most Americans did nothing in protest.  A number took advantage of the situation to take possession of the property of those rounded up.  Though there were exceptions as the movie The Empty Chair documents.

But when Donald Trump ordered a ban on refugees and Muslims, American people went to the courts to file suit against the president, and they went to the airports to protest the holding of refugees and others held in airports from being sent back.

We've had presidents who have done things people disagreed about.  But we haven't had a president who ignores every tradition, every norm, every law, every norm of decency that interferes with his whims.  We've never had a president who has put into place so many people who have no regard for the basic values of the Constitution and the law.

We've watched this sort of thing happen in other countries, but we're only just learning how to handle someone who comes to power and abuses that power every day in his first week as president.  But we're learning.  I'm proud of the people who are finding their voice and their power to stop the illegitimate actions of this elderly child president.

There will be a backlash.  The real test is when people get hurt, even killed.  We all have to stand up and assume the role fate demands we play.  I hope we learn this quickly and well and that Congress sees where the power of the people lies and stops Trump before he carries out any of the orders he got from Putin*.

World, we want you to know we are planning on taking our country back from this madman.**



*If these aren't orders from Putin, they might as well be - take down NATO, take down the EU, weaken the US Intelligence Agencies, destroy US relations with countries like China, and, it appears more and more, take down the USA.

**I don't use this term lightly.  And the man who has called everyone who has opposed him all sorts of disparaging things, has not standing if he protests when people do the same to him - especially when they are close to or right on the mark.

Republican Platform To Restore America To The Good Old Days (TIC warning)

Let's see, so far:

No abortions. Ever.

Climate change is a hoax.  Coal will be a clean energy source again.

Bible in the schools, except for the pornographic parts. Since porn is a 'public menace.'

Gay marriage,  bad again.  The anti-regulation wing stopped the call for extra closets in all housing so gays can return.

Even unmarried hetero partnerships will be bad again.

They aren't finished yet.  Look out for:

Free guns to all white new-borns.

Repeal of the 19th Amendment.  And other laws giving women rights over their personal and financial affairs.

Reopening of WW II Japanese internment camps for undocumented immigrants and their terrorist friends.

Return of segregation (I don't think the pro-slavery folks will have enough votes, but who knows?)

Constitutional amendment to exclude human beings from the 'person' category.

Oh yeah, watch out minimum wage.  And maybe businesses can even get child labor back.


Apparently Trump is being hands-off here.  According to the NY Times article,

"That allowed conservative activists like Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, to exert greater influence. Mr. Perkins’s hand could be seen in dozens of amendments on issues like gun control, religious expression and bathroom use."

I'm beginning to think that Perkins' sharing the name of the actor who played Norman Bates is no coincidence.  Can you say Psycho?

He's giving Clinton a great Republican platform to run against.



TIC- tongue-in-cheek

Being Smart Beats Beating

How necessary is torture to get information from terrorists?  As a teenager I read about the Gulag and Nazi Germany and other settings where people got tortured.  I wasn't particularly looking for torture stories, but they came up in many books I read.  I soon realized that these stories of torture were always written by the people who were tortured, not by the torturer.  But I wanted to know what was going on in the head of the torturer.  How could one human being inflict such horrible pain on another?

It's still one of the questions I keep gathering data on (not in any rigorous manner, but I note things as they come up.)   The debates over torture in the television show "24" (skip down to "This wouldn’t have been a problem. . . in the link) were of great interest to me.  The show was one of the media that popularized the idea that torture was acceptable if the person being tortured knew about a plot that would, say, kill two hundred civilians.  Of course, that begs the question how the interrogators know the suspect knows this.  The issue came up in real life over torturing Guantanamo prisoners and John Yoo's lawyerly defenses of torture.

Stuck somewhere in my brain was the idea embedded in the Fifth Amendment - that one cannot be compelled to testify against oneself.  Our founding fathers knew that torture victimized the innocent and that subjects of torture would tell their interrogators whatever they thought they wanted to hear.

So when I read this article in the LA Times yesterday, I found evidence that supports my view of all this.  (And, of course, I recognize that we all tend to believe what we want to hear, so I'm offering this, as evidence, not proof.)  Here are some excerpts, but it's worth reading the whole thing:

"Hanns Scharff was a master manipulator, but not in the stereotypical Gestapo-like ways that usually come to mind. His tools were kindness, respect, empathy and guile. He told meandering stories, took detainees on long strolls in the countryside and left them alone in his office to read the U.S. military newspaper, Stars and Stripes. He provided hard-to-find cigarettes and even let one captured U.S. pilot take a short flight in a German fighter plane. But all the while, without them even knowing, he was swiping their secrets. .

"He died in 1992, well before the U.S. war on terror commenced. But his methods began getting a second look amid the fierce national debate over the harsh interrogation tactics used by the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks. President Obama and others have condemned some of those methods as torture. 

Former CIA officials have defended the rough techniques as useful, but a 2014 Senate report found that the agency’s use of torture failed to stop any imminent plots. 

Sometimes, it even backfired, the report concluded. At least one suspect “sang like a tweetie bird,” according to a CIA official quoted in the report, before he was tortured. But after being subjected to harsh interrogation, he provided no other useful information, according to the report. Amid the debate, the FBI-led interrogation unit began funding research to scientifically analyze various interrogation practices. It plans to soon release a report detailing best practices. 

Though Scharff’s techniques had been long known to U.S. officials, the research confirmed for the first time that it actually works better."  [Emphasis added]

Writing Honestly About The Death Of A Famous Person

Antonin Scalia has died.  When someone dies who has, in your view of the world, been a force that has made rich people richer, poor people poorer, and inflicted unnecessary suffering on many human beings, how does one respond? 

Edward Snowden retweeted a Glenn Greenwald article about how people should react when Margaret Thatcher died a couple of years ago - conservatives saying to be respectful of the family yet predicting things like,

"Former Tory MP Louise Mensch, with no apparent sense of irony, invoked precepts of propriety to announce: Pygmies of the left so predictably embarrassing yourselves, know this: not a one of your leaders will ever be globally mourned like her."

He points out that while the conservatives wanted liberals to be respectful and not criticize Thatcher immediately following her death, they didn't follow the same rules themselves.

"Tellingly, few people have trouble understanding the need for balanced commentary when the political leaders disliked by the west pass away. Here, for instance, was what the Guardian reported upon the death last month of Hugo Chavez:

 'To the millions who detested him as a thug and charlatan, it will be occasion to bid, vocally or discreetly, good riddance.'"

Greenwald also points out a political, and what I'd call a 'ways of knowing' reason, not to hold off on the problematic aspects of someone's life - it biases the public record and people's emotional record of the person who died.

"[T]hose who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. They are aggressively exploiting the emotions generated by the person's death to create hagiography. Typifying these highly dubious claims about Thatcher was this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama: "The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend." Those gushing depictions can be quite consequential, as it was for the week-long tidal wave of unbroken reverence that was heaped on Ronald Reagan upon his death, an episode that to this day shapes how Americans view him and the political ideas he symbolized. Demanding that no criticisms be voiced to counter that hagiography is to enable false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts, distortions that become quickly ossified and then endure by virtue of no opposition and the powerful emotions created by death. When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms."

Hagiography is on my long list of favorite words and I'm always surprised at how few people know what it means.  Most people at least recognize that the Greek 'graph' has to do with writing (biography, autograph, telegraph) but not hagio which is holy.  Technically, hagiography is the writing of the lives of saints.  but it's also taken on the meaning that Wikipedia describes:

"the term hagiography is often used as a pejorative reference to biographies and histories whose authors are perceived to be uncritical or reverential to their subject."

But I think the problem is not all that difficult.  The key is to write a factual account of someone's life that includes both the positive and the negative.  Very few public figures are simplistically good or evil.  We have the charming fools and we have the arrogant, but effective figures, and many other variations of meshed characteristics.  

David G. Savage seems to have walked the tightrope in his overview of Scalia's life, highlighting the complexity of his subject.

Recognizing that he and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were close friends, gives me pause about my general sense of Scalia voiced above.  I think his basic ideology is wrong, but he was a bright man, so I need to think through this and check up a bit on both originalism and the decisions he supported.  I'm pretty sure I'm right, but he knew he was.  Maybe that's my advantage over him.

So, How About Wrongful Treatment Insurance?

An idea that came to mind as I read Leonard Pitts' column today, that started out, "Let’s stop worrying about people’s rights.” Bear with me as I spin out this quick thought exercise.

The country's all tied up in debates about people being treated wrongly by the government.

Basically, we have competing, important values.  We want security and safety, yet we also believe in individual liberty.  To what extent can we suspend someone's liberty because we feel it's necessary to promote safety and security?  Pitts gives a long list of times when the US has done just that, and lots of people suffered serious harm.

When we fear a big security threat, we get fuzzy about the liberty part.

We've got police who've been shooting unarmed citizens.  Some because they've got personal issues that lead them to abuse their official power.  Others because they are legitimately fearful of their safety and react in fear and haste, but not necessarily unreasonably.

And fear of terrorists leads some politicians and not a few citizens to brush aside the rights of fellow citizens for what they see as everyone's safety.

Aside from these issues, there are innocent people who get arrested after a crime is committed because they look like the suspect or because they're in the wrong place at the wrong time, or any number of other reasons.

At this point, we mostly say, "Sorry, Charlie, that's the cost of justice" and send them on their way.


But what if we just decided that people who were wrongfully treated by the government were automatically entitled to be made whole?  "Hey, sorry we put you in jail for three weeks, here's money to cover the losses you incurred.  That's the price of a just society.  We make whole those who turn out to be the by-catch of our justice system."   It could be back pay for the work they missed.  And if they were fired during that time, support until they get new work.  And whatever physical or mental health treatment they or their family require due to the incident.

Why should a few people have to pay huge personal costs because the police arrested the wrong person or because we want to detain certain people because we think they might be terrorists?

Some of this already happens, but usually because someone sues.  Why did the Americans interned during WW II because they were of Japanese descent have to wait forty some years to get a token compensation?  Why didn't they all get paid for their losses when they left the camps?  And if the government knew ahead of time that compensation would be required, perhaps they would have done more to protect the internees' property while they were interned.

Besides being fair to the victims, I suspect that there would also be much more accountability for individuals who made bad public decisions.  If a city had to pay, automatically, for false arrests, I suspect that slowly, but surely, there would be fewer of them, and the victims would be detained for shorter periods.  And that people who might lose their houses because they couldn't pay the mortgage while in jail, might have those payments made by the government, to keep the eventual reimbursement lower.

And knowing that, say, today, every Muslim who might be interned if some fearful (or pandering)  politicians had their way, would have to be reimbursed for their inconvenience, would mean that not only would we weigh such proposals against the loss of rights, but we'd also weigh them against the cost of future reimbursements.

Would government bodies have to have a compensation fund from which they could compensate victims?  Would insurance companies offer policies?  If they did, they'd also start rating the efficiency and fairness of organizations like police departments so they could set profitable rates.  And those ratings would probably be a better measure of departments than we get now.

Nobody and no agency is ever going to be perfect, is ever going to make mistake-free.  And if they were,  it would mean they weren't pushing hard enough to do what they were supposed to do.  But, why should mistreated individual citizens have to pay an extraordinary price so that all the rest of us are safer?  If it's true that the number of such victims is small, the price for compensating them shouldn't be all that high.  But if we find out that number isn't that low, then the cost of compensating them will be incentive to make sure it's as low as it can be and still allow police and others to do the work of protecting everyone adequately.

See  follow up post.

"Alaska is like a billionaire facing a horrific future as a millionaire."

So said Liz Medicine Crow, the President/CEO of First Alaskans Institute at the Fiscal Forum last Saturday.   I was only able to catch a couple of hours in the morning.  And I only had the back of a Moose's Tooth receipt to take notes on.  I'd also note my quotes are rough paraphrases, not exact quotes.  (I think English needs a paraphrase mark in addition to quotation marks.)  This will just be notes on things that caught my attention.  For an overview of the forum, see Devin Kelly's ADN piece.  And I'll do one more on this covering the legislators I saw at the forum. 

John Havelock, Brad Keithly, Liz Medicine Crow, Gary Wilkin (l-r)

Medicine Crow also said a number of things that don't usually get said at forums on money and budgets.  Some examples:  

I assumed that she was referring to the Alaska constitution's directions in Article VII Section 4

"Fish, forests, wildlife, grasslands, and all other replenishable resources belonging to the State shall be utilized, developed, and maintained on the sustained yield principle, subject to preferences among beneficial uses" [emphasis added]

When she pointed out an oft overlooked resource:

"Preserve the resource of our humanity."   

Not a resource that's calculated too often in corporate annual reports or even most government reports, but certainly the most important factor of all.

She politely reminded us all that the terms sourdough* and cheechako* are relative as she gave a traditional Alaska Native introduction which places the speaker into context:

"My parents and grandparents are Tlingit-Haida from Kake.  . .  We've been here for hundreds of generations."

She also politely reminded us that cooperation offers more hope than conflict. 

 "In hard times we come together to make do, not for our own interests, but in the community interests."

And that rather than fight tribal power as the previous administration did, everyone would be better off working together. 

"Respectful government to government relations between tribes and state.  Tribes have access to resources, such as through the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, which is internationally recognized for how efficiently it provides health care. 

Tribes have access to resources as tribes.  Some examples she gave were for justice and corrections.  Let's look at things differently.  We can find savings, not just cuts."

I found Keith Bradley's comment on multiplier effects interesting, but limited.

"Multiplier effect of spending means while PFD is mostly spent in Alaska, things like construction projects send money outside for things like cement and steel." 

The statement seemed to be an argument for why we should keep the Permanent Fund Dividend in spite of our budget problems.  I thought that pointing out how little money stays in the state when we do construction projects was interesting.  I hadn't thought about that.  But it seems that spending on education and health care and social services do keep money in the state.  Did he use construction as his example because he wants to cut the budget and education didn't support that point?  I don't know.


Gary Wilkin put our dire condition, as did Medicine Crow's billionaire statement, into context:

 "We're the only state with a portfolio of $73,000 per resident."

He got a few chuckles with this analogy: 

"PFD is like a self licking ice cream cone."  

I'm still trying to visualize a self licking cone so I can figure out what he meant. 

*For non-Alaskans, sourdoughs are folks who have lived in Alaska a long time. ("A long time" means generally as "as long as I've been here" and in my mind certainly over 20 years.)  Cheechako's are newcomers. 

Brief Notes On: Unintended Consequences, Gay Doritos, Earthquake Prep, And Corporate Personhood

1.  Talking about changes in rules that were supposed to shorten the Republican presidential selection process as reported in the NY Times:

“You’ve got a set of unintended consequences that weren’t planned for,” said Richard F. Hohlt, a Republican donor and Washington lobbyist."

My problem with this is obvious, right?

2.  From SFGate about rainbow colored doritos:

"Doritos are a product marketed to children, so they make the perfect gateway snack to introduce children to the joys of homosexuality," writes Ed Straker of the ironically named American Thinker website. "What business does PepsiCo have pushing homosexuality on our kids?

 While Straker classifies the different colored Doritos – "green are homosexual, the pink are lesbian" – he fails to tell readers how many chips you have to eat in order to turn gay.  Or turn stupid.


3.  LA Times had what looks like a useful  Earthquake preparation quiz.  Other related articles looked more like a Sharper Image Earthquake special catalogue.



4.  Something for liberals to think about in a January/February 2015 Washington Monthly piece: Let Us Now Praise Corporate Persons.   I haven't totally figured out all the implications of what he's arguing or whether there are other fixes that would solve the problems he raises OR whether the Move To Amend people are, as he implies, using an axe to do brain surgery on the constitution. Here are some appetizers for the rest of the article. 

Citizens United was a bad decision; but the cry of “Corporations are not people!” isn’t helping fix the problem—in fact, it’s making it worse.

By Kent Greenfield

"The American left is notoriously fractious. But one belief that unites more than most is this: corporations are not people. .  .

But the attack on corporate personhood is a mistake. And it may, ironically, be playing into the hands of the financial and managerial elite."

He gives some examples of cases where he claims corporate personhood is important.

"In a legal system without corporate personhood, the channel for that outrage [after the Deepwater oil spill]  would be limited to lawsuits and criminal inquiries against individual human beings responsible—managers, workers, and contractors. That’s important, of course. In any legal jurisdiction worth its salt, the search for culpable individuals has to be part of the settling-up of any man-made disaster. But it should not be all. No human being—except, perhaps, Bill Gates—would have enough money to compensate those harmed by a massive disaster like Deepwater Horizon. Because a corporate entity is also on the hook, there’s a chance for something approaching real compensation or real responsibility. Corporate personhood is thus not only a mechanism for the creation of wealth (by encouraging investment), it is also a mechanism for enforcing accountability (by providing a deep pocket to sue)."

Another example he offers is the NY Times and Washington Post using their corporate first amendment rights to publish the Pentagon Papers (classified RAND studies that disputed what the public was being told about the Vietnam war.)

"In 1971, for example, the government sought to stop the New York Times, a for-profit, publicly traded media conglomerate, and the Washington Post, which had gone public as a corporation only a few weeks previously, from publishing the leaked Pentagon Papers. The Supreme Court correctly decided that the newspapers had a First Amendment right to publish. That was one of the most important free speech decisions of the twentieth century. At the time, no one seriously suggested that the correct answer to the constitutional question was that the Times and the Post, as corporations, had no standing to bring a constitutional claim at all. (And for those of you saying to yourselves, “Well, this isn’t a good example, since the newspapers are protected by the First Amendment’s press clause”: the Court has never given any greater substance to the press clause not already covered in the freedom of speech."

 My reaction is that corporations could have some other kind of identity - say as corporations - that has the kinds of protections he says they need, without giving them access to the rights of human beings.  He points out that corporations can't vote (at least not at the ballot box).  He knows a lot more about business law than I do, so I don't know.  Worth reading, if nothing else, to be aware of his arguments and then develop a credible response.  

American Rights AND Responsibilities

Democracy is a pain in the neck.  

For democracy  to work, we have to work.

I know, we tend to focus on our rights as Americans more than on our responsibilities.  But immigrants who apply for citizenship also learn the responsibilities.  Maybe that's why Republicans want to keep them out of the country. 


From the United States Citizenship and  Immigration Services:

Rights

Responsibilities

Freedom to express yourself. Freedom to worship as you wish. Right to a prompt, fair trial by jury. Right to vote in elections for public officials. Right to apply for federal employment requiring U.S. citizenship. Right to run for elected office. Freedom to pursue “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Support and defend the Constitution. Stay informed of the issues affecting your community. Participate in the democratic process. Respect and obey federal, state, and local laws. Respect the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others. Participate in your local community. Pay income and other taxes honestly, and on time, to federal, state, and local authorities. Serve on a jury when called upon. Defend the country if the need should arise.

A full one-third of the responsibilities they list involve active involvement and learning:

• Stay informed of the issues affecting your community.
• Participate in the democratic process.
• Participate in your local community.

And I could argue that "Respect the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others" is part of this, because when people don't respect others - as we see in Congress these days - they shut out any information that might raise doubts with what they want to believe. 

Voting isn't even listed as a duty, but as a right!  You can't exercise the right to vote if you don't understand the issues or know who the candidates are.  And the media aren't doing a great job at informing us.  The presidential debates this year haven't focused much on the details of the issues.  More on not "respecting the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others."

And some of the issues are simply made up.  From what I can tell, the Planned Parenthood video was a well planned hatchet job.  Something like the Swiftboat character-assassination of John Kerry when he was running for president.  First comes the video, then lickity-split, all the Republicans are using it to trash Planned Parenthood.  They even get a Congressional investigation.  Here's a link that reports investigators say the whole thing has been edited and subtitled to falsely make the message they wanted to make, not what the video actually shows.

So, serious engagement in the issues is necessary for a democracy to thrive.  Citizens have to put in the hard work of getting educated.  Not just to learn the sound bytes of the side they support, but to be able to see past the hype.  To be able to cause their uninformed friends and neighbors to reexamine their positions.

I give this long intro, because Alaska Common Ground and ISER are offering a day long workshop at UAA's Wendy Williamson auditorium this Saturday.  It's a chance to do some serious homework on Alaska's fiscal options for the future.

You don't have to pay (but I'm sure they'll take donations.)
You don't have to start from scratch - they've organized key speakers who know this stuff cold.

You just have to go and engage your brain.

Click to enlarge and focus