Showing posts with label Constitution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Constitution. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Where are the civil libertarians?
America is shamed that only Rand Paul is talking about drone executions
Where are the civil libertarians in the president's party that we must rely on a Tea Party Republican to champion this issue?
Amy Goodman
Thursday 7 March 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/07/america-shamed-rand-paul-drone-executions
You could say that a filibuster occurs when a senator drones on and on. The problem with the US Senate was that there were too few senators speaking about drones this week.
President Barack Obama's controversial nomination of John Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency was held up Wednesday afternoon by a Senate filibuster. The reason: Brennan's role in targeted killings by drones, and President Obama's presumed authority to kill US citizens, without any due process, if they pose an "imminent threat". The effort was led by Tea Party Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky, joined by several of his Republican colleagues. Among the Democrats, at the time of this writing, only Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon had joined in the genuine, old-fashioned "talking filibuster", wherein the activities of the Senate floor are held up by a senator's speech.
Members of Congress, tasked with oversight of intelligence and military matters, have repeatedly demanded the memoranda from the White House detailing the legal basis for the drone program, only to be repeatedly denied. The nomination of Brennan has opened up the debate, forcing the Obama administration to make nominal gestures of compliance. The answers so far have not satisfied Senator Paul. Nearing hour six of his filibuster, Senator Paul admitted:
"I can't ultimately stop the nomination, but what I can do is try to draw attention to this and try to get an answer … that would be something if we could get an answer from the president … if he would say explicitly that noncombatants in America won't be killed by drones. The reason it has to be answered is because our foreign drone strike program does kill noncombatants. They may argue that they are conspiring or they may someday be combatants, but if that is the same standard that we are going to use in the United States, it is a far different country than I know about."
The issue of extrajudicial execution of US citizens, whether on US soil or elsewhere, is clearly vital. But also important is the US government's now-seemingly routine killing of civilians around the world, whether by drone strikes, night raids conducted by special operations forces or other lethal means.
Rand Paul's filibuster followed a curious route, including references to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and quotes from noted progressive, constitutional attorney and Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald and blogger Kevin Gosztala of Firedoglake.
US Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Senator Paul, 4 March, writing:
"It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States."
Holder noted that Paul's question was "entirely hypothetical". So, on the Senate floor, Paul brought up the case of two actual US citizens killed by drone strikes, Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, Abdulrahman. Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen on 30 September 2011. Two weeks later, also in Yemen, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, a Denver native, was also killed by a drone strike. Paul asked during his filibuster:
"If you happen to be the son of a bad person, is that enough to kill you?"
As Senator Paul filibustered, Will Fitzgibbon wrote from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London:
"Last month, we launched a new drones project: Naming the Dead. The aim of this project is to identify as many of the more than 2,500 victims of US drone strikes in Pakistan as possible. Given we currently do not know the identities of 80% of those killed, we believe this is a crucial and missing step to having a more transparent drones debate …
"With all the attention being recently paid to American citizens killed by drones and with the drone debate growing, we thought it would be a good time to remind ourselves of the individual human stories of drone victims. Those we know about and those we don't."
Barack Obama and John Brennan direct the drone strikes that are killing thousands of civilians. It doesn't make us safer. It makes whole populations, from Yemen to Pakistan, hate us. Senator Paul's outrage with the president's claimed right to kill US citizens is entirely appropriate. That there is not more outrage at the thousands killed around the globe is shameful … and dangerous.
• Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column
Monday, November 5, 2012
Amendment Needed to Protect the Right to Vote
New Constitutional Amendment Needed to Protect the Right to Vote, Advocate Claims
Khalil Abdullah
Oct 09, 2012
http://newamericamedia.org/2012/10/new-constitutional-amendment-needed-to-protect-the-right-to-vote-advocate-claims.php
The struggle over state-sponsored legislation limiting or redefining how and when citizens can vote has generated contentious debate. Judith Browne Dianis, Co-Director of Advancement Project, a non-partisan organization dedicated to civil rights and racial justice, has been a vocal opponent of state photo-ID laws and other restrictive measures. In an interview with New America Media’s Khalil Abdullah, Browne Dianis explains why she has concluded a new amendment on the right to vote to the U.S. Constitution is necessary.
New America Media: Why do you feel a new Constitutional amendment on voting is needed, given there are a number of amendments that already guarantee voter protection?
Judith Browne Dianis: We don’t have explicit, affirmative language, as does the South African Constitution, for example, that every citizen who is over the age of 18 years old has the right to vote. Constitutions in most of the world’s democracies have that language; ours does not. The U.S. Constitution never explicitly or affirmatively ensures the right to vote, though it has many clauses and amendments detailing ways people cannot be denied the right to vote. For example, you cannot preclude voting rights on the basis of race or gender. Voting cannot be predicated on paying a poll tax. In other words, once having granted the right to vote, those amendments say governments may not take it away on the grounds of certain discriminatory criteria.
NAM: Why aren’t current state laws sufficient to guarantee voting rights?
Browne Dianis: Voting in the United States is currently based on state and local law but largely, as a result, we have close to 13,000 separate sets of rules and regulations across the country about who can vote and how. State and local governments can – and do – disenfranchise individuals and groups of citizens. Many ways of denying voting rights are entirely legal under the existing but limited federal laws that touch on voting. The current voting system is separate, unequal and confusing.
NAM: Among the raft of state legislation seeking to redefine how and when Americans can vote, new photo ID laws, arguably have received the most media and public attention. Sponsors explain they are addressing voter fraud. Is there merit in that claim?
Browne Dianis: The myth of voter fraud is not supported by the data that show that those instances are rare. Besides, voter photo ID laws focus on voter impersonation, which is already illegal. Fines and penalties currently on the books can deal with those cases. But take a broader look at what’s happening. All of these [state] laws are designed to make voting inaccessible, not only the voter photo ID laws, but attempts to purge voters by using inaccurate citizenship data bases, roll-back and cut-backs to early voting; and laws that make it harder to conduct voter registration campaigns. We have states, like Florida, that have limited early voting by reducing the number of days available. The inevitable result will be a lower overall turnout because of fewer opportunities to vote, particularly for employed individuals. These are not the methods one would use to expand democratic participation.
NAM: Who would want to restrict an expansion of democracy and why?
Browne Dianis: At the moment, this is driven by partisan politics. Republican legislatures, primarily, have enacted the new provisions using model legislation developed with assistance of the American Legislative Exchange Council. The money to support these initiatives has come from deep-pocket sources, like the Koch brothers. These laws, as even stated by some of their proponents, are intended to purge African-American, Latino, and young voters -- many of whom vote as Democrats -- from the rolls before November’s election. I’d like to note that the elderly and those with disabilities are also disproportionately affected, often regardless of political affiliation. A constitutional amendment would level the playing field so that the right to vote would not be subject to the whim of any political party.
NAM: Are you saying there’s no financial counterweight to support voting rights advocates?
Browne Dianis: Not at this point, and the need for monetary support is greater than it has been in the recent past. Proponents of expanding access to the ballot in the United States are receiving less monetary support than in the 2000 election. Organizations that are on the ground and actively engaged in protecting voters’ rights are stretched thin.
NAM: Setting financing aside, why not rely on the federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve voting rights’ disputes?
Browne Dianis: Over the last several years, the Supreme Court has been moving slowly but surely farther and farther away from treating the right to vote as a fundamental right that is owed the highest degree of respect and protection. It has also grown less deferential to Congress’ ability to protect voting rights. The Court is threatening to use a stricter standard to such congressional acts than has been used in the past in order to determine whether or not those acts exceed congressional authority.
NAM: So how would this new amendment read and what are its key elements?
Browne Dianis: We need more research on the exact language, but we retained a firm to conduct focus groups across the country with diverse participants regarding the right to vote and related issues. Here are a few of the “must-haves” we heard from a majority of participants, things that would sway them to support a constitutional right to vote: all citizens over the age of 18 can vote easily or conveniently; the voting rules are the same all over the country so it is no harder to vote in state A than it is in state B; and persons with felony convictions -- but who have served their time -- can vote. There also was a demand for modern, accurate, verifiable voting machines.
We are also reviewing the state constitutions that more explicitly and affirmatively guarantee the right to vote than does the U.S. Constitution and there have been other voices calling for this amendment. Rep. Jesse Jackson [D-Ill.] has proposed an amendment, H.R. 28, as a start.
NAM: To get a Constitutional amendment proposed requires two-thirds of the state legislatures or two-thirds of Congress to approve. Ratification for it to become part of the Constitution has even a higher threshold. You would have to go through the same state legislatures or Congresspersons representing the very states that are passing restrictive voting laws. How realistic is it that a right to vote amendment could succeed?
Browne Dianis: It is possible, but it will take a national movement. It will be up to the American people to fight for the right to vote. They will have to decide whether their democracy is worth fighting for.
NAM: Until that movement arises, what keeps you up at night? What are your most urgent concerns only a month out from the election?
Browne Dianis: I wonder, what’s the next barrier? Even when legal victories are secured, opponents of expanding the voting franchise continue to devise ways to limit it. Right now, we are concerned about robo-calls and other techniques used to disseminate misinformation about voting registration and precinct information, and we have to prepare for voter intimidation by so-called poll watchers. As I said, if the American people really believe that the right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, they’re going to have to fight for it.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
The Market Has Spoken: Austerity Is Bad for Business
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25916
Ellen Brown
Global Research, August 6, 2011
Web of Debt
It used to be that when the Fed Chairman spoke, the market listened; but the Chairman has lost his mystique. Now when the market speaks, politicians listen. Hopefully they heard what the market just said: government cutbacks are bad for business. The government needs to spend more, not less. Fortunately, there are viable ways to do this while still balancing the budget.
On Thursday, August 4, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 512 points, the biggest stock market drop since the collapse of September 2008.
Why? Weren't the markets supposed to rebound after the debt ceiling agreement was reached on Monday, avoiding U.S. default and a downgrade of U.S. debt?
So we were told, but the market apparently understands what politicians don't: the debt deal is a death deal for the economy.
Reducing government spending by $2.2 trillion over a decade, as Congress just agreed to do, will kill any hopes of economic recovery. We're looking at a double-dip recession.
The figure is actually more than $2.2 trillion. As Jack Rasmus pointed out on Truthout on August 4th:
Economists estimate the "multiplier" from government spending at about 1.5. That means for every $1 cut in government spending, about $1.5 dollars are taken out of the economy. The first year of cuts are therefore $375 billion to $400 billion in terms of their economic effect. Ironically, that's about equal to the spending increase from Obama's 2009 initial stimulus package. In other words, we are about to extract from the economy - now showing multiple signs of weakening badly - the original spending stimulus of 2009!
As others have pointed out, that magnitude of spending contraction will result in 1.5 million to 2 million more jobs lost. That's also about all the jobs created since the trough of the recession in June 2009. In other words, the job market will be thrown back two years as well.
We're not moving forward. We're moving backward. The hand-wringing is all about the "debt crisis," but the national debt is not what has stalled the economy, and the crisis was not created by Social Security or Medicare, which are being set up to take the fall. It was created by Wall Street, which has squeezed trillions in bailout money from the government and the taxpayers; and by the military, which has squeezed trillions more for an amorphous and unending "War on Terror." But the hits are slated to fall on the so-called "entitlements" - a social safety net that we the people are actually entitled to, because we paid for them with taxes.
The Problem Is Not Debt But a Shrinking Money Supply
The markets are not reacting to a "debt crisis." They do not look at charts ten years out. They look at present indicators of jobs and sales, which have turned persistently negative. Jobs and sales are both dependent on "demand," which means getting money into the pockets of consumers; and the money supply today has shrunk.
We don't see this shrinkage because it is primarily in the "shadow banking system," the thing that collapsed in 2008. The shadow banking system used to be reflected in M3, but the Fed no longer reports it. In July 2010, however, the New York Fed posted on its website a staff report titled "Shadow Banking." It said that the shadow banking system had shrunk by $5 trillion since its peak in March 2008, when it was valued at about $20 trillion - actually larger than the traditional banking system. In July 2010, the shadow system was down to about $15 trillion, compared to $13 trillion for the traditional banking system.
Only about $2 trillion of this shrinkage has been replaced with the Fed's quantitative easing programs, leaving a $3 trillion hole to be filled; and only the government is in a position to fill it. We have been sold the idea that there is a "debt crisis" when there is really a liquidity crisis. Paying down the federal debt when money is already scarce just makes matters worse. Historically, when the deficit has been reduced, the money supply has been reduced along with it, throwing the economy into recession.
Most of our money now comes into the world as debt, which is created on the books of banks and lent into the economy. If there were no debt, there would be no money to run the economy; and today, private debt has collapsed. Encouraged by Fed policy, banks have tightened up lending and are sitting on their money, shrinking the circulating money supply and the economy.
Creative Ways to Balance the Budget
The federal debt has not been paid off since the days of Andrew Jackson, and it does not need to be paid off. It is just rolled over from year to year. The only real danger posed by a growing federal debt is the interest burden, but that has not been a problem yet. The Congressional Budget Office reported in December 2010:
[A] sharp drop in interest rates has held down the amount of interest that the government pays on [the national] debt. In 2010, net interest outlays totaled $197 billion, or 1.4 percent of GDP--a smaller share of GDP than they accounted for during most of the past decade.
The interest burden will increase if the federal debt continues to grow, but that problem can be solved by mandating the Federal Reserve to buy the government's debt. The Fed rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs, making the money nearly interest-free. The Fed is already doing this with its quantitative easing programs and now holds nearly $1.7 trillion in federal securities.
If Congress must maintain its debt ceiling, there are other ways to balance the budget and avoid a growing debt. Ron Paul has brought a creative bill that would eliminate the $1.7 trillion deficit simply by having the Fed tear up its federal securities. No creditors would be harmed, since the money was generated with a computer keystroke in the first place. The government would just be canceling a debt to itself and saving the interest.
The Trillion Dollar Coin Alternative
The most direct solution to the debt problem is for the government to fund its budget with government-issued money. One alternative would be for the Treasury to issue U.S. Notes, as was done in the Civil War by President Lincoln.
Another alternative was suggested in my book Web of Debt in 2007: the government could simply mint some trillion dollar coins. Congress has the Constitutional power to "coin money," and no limit is put on the value of the coins it creates, as was pointed out by a chairman of the House Coinage Subcommittee in the 1980s.
This idea is now getting some attention from economists. According to a July 29th article in the Johnsville News titled "Coin Trick: The Trillion Dollar Coin":
The idea just started to get serious traction the last few days as the debt stalemate has grown more intense and partisan. Yale constitutional law professor Jack Balkin floated it as an option in a CNN op-ed yesterday (July 28th).
Today the idea has gone mainstream. It is covered by NY Magazine, CNBC, and The Economist. Even Nobel economist Paul Krugman of the NY Times has weighed in. Annie Lowrey of Slate discusses it as one of several gimmicks the government could use to resolve the debt-ceiling debacle. Krugman added:
These things [like coin seigniorage] sound ridiculous - but so is the behavior of Congressional Republicans. So why not fight back using legal tricks?
The debt ceiling itself was a legal trick, a form of extortion based on a century-old statute that conflicts with the Constitution. However, said the Johnsville News article, "coin seigniorage is not a scam. It is legal . . . . This plan looks like it might be Obama's ace in the hole . . . ."
The article cites Warren Mosler, founder of MMT (Modern Monetary Theory), who reviewed the idea in a January 20th blog post and concluded it would work operationally.
Scott Fullwiler, associate professor of economics at Wartburg College, also did a comprehensive analysis and concluded that the trillion dollar coin alternative was unlikely to result in inflation. Comparing it to Ron Paul's plan, he wrote:
This option is much like Ron Paul's proposal-actually identical in terms of the effect on the debt ceiling and the Treasury-except that his proposal would destroy all of the Fed's capital (and then some), which is a potential problem politically . . . though not operationally, and which the Fed is therefore very unlikely to agree to.
On the inflation question, just because the Treasury has money in its account doesn't mean it can spend the funds. It needs the usual Congressional approval. To keep a lid on spending, Congress just needs to be instructed in basic economics. They can spend on goods and services up to full employment without creating price inflation (since supply and demand will rise together). After that, they need to tax -- not to fund the budget, but to pull excess money back in and avoid driving up prices.
Spending More While Borrowing Less
In an economic downturn, the government needs to spend more, not less, as history shows. This can be done while still balancing the budget, simply by taking back the government's Constitutional power to issue money.
The budget crisis is an artificial one, and the current "solution" will only guarantee a deeper recession and more widespread suffering. Rather than obsessing over deficits and debt, the government needs to turn its focus to jobs, sales and quality of life.
------------------------
Ellen Brown is president of the Public Banking Institute and the author of eleven books. She developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.
Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Please support Global Research
Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers.
Your endorsement is greatly appreciated
Subscribe to the Global Research E-Newsletter Spread the word! Forward to a friend!
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: publications@globalresearch.ca
http://www.globalresearch.ca/ contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: media@globalresearch.ca
Copyright © Ellen Brown, Web of Debt, 2011
Ellen Brown
Global Research, August 6, 2011
Web of Debt
It used to be that when the Fed Chairman spoke, the market listened; but the Chairman has lost his mystique. Now when the market speaks, politicians listen. Hopefully they heard what the market just said: government cutbacks are bad for business. The government needs to spend more, not less. Fortunately, there are viable ways to do this while still balancing the budget.
On Thursday, August 4, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 512 points, the biggest stock market drop since the collapse of September 2008.
Why? Weren't the markets supposed to rebound after the debt ceiling agreement was reached on Monday, avoiding U.S. default and a downgrade of U.S. debt?
So we were told, but the market apparently understands what politicians don't: the debt deal is a death deal for the economy.
Reducing government spending by $2.2 trillion over a decade, as Congress just agreed to do, will kill any hopes of economic recovery. We're looking at a double-dip recession.
The figure is actually more than $2.2 trillion. As Jack Rasmus pointed out on Truthout on August 4th:
Economists estimate the "multiplier" from government spending at about 1.5. That means for every $1 cut in government spending, about $1.5 dollars are taken out of the economy. The first year of cuts are therefore $375 billion to $400 billion in terms of their economic effect. Ironically, that's about equal to the spending increase from Obama's 2009 initial stimulus package. In other words, we are about to extract from the economy - now showing multiple signs of weakening badly - the original spending stimulus of 2009!
As others have pointed out, that magnitude of spending contraction will result in 1.5 million to 2 million more jobs lost. That's also about all the jobs created since the trough of the recession in June 2009. In other words, the job market will be thrown back two years as well.
We're not moving forward. We're moving backward. The hand-wringing is all about the "debt crisis," but the national debt is not what has stalled the economy, and the crisis was not created by Social Security or Medicare, which are being set up to take the fall. It was created by Wall Street, which has squeezed trillions in bailout money from the government and the taxpayers; and by the military, which has squeezed trillions more for an amorphous and unending "War on Terror." But the hits are slated to fall on the so-called "entitlements" - a social safety net that we the people are actually entitled to, because we paid for them with taxes.
The Problem Is Not Debt But a Shrinking Money Supply
The markets are not reacting to a "debt crisis." They do not look at charts ten years out. They look at present indicators of jobs and sales, which have turned persistently negative. Jobs and sales are both dependent on "demand," which means getting money into the pockets of consumers; and the money supply today has shrunk.
We don't see this shrinkage because it is primarily in the "shadow banking system," the thing that collapsed in 2008. The shadow banking system used to be reflected in M3, but the Fed no longer reports it. In July 2010, however, the New York Fed posted on its website a staff report titled "Shadow Banking." It said that the shadow banking system had shrunk by $5 trillion since its peak in March 2008, when it was valued at about $20 trillion - actually larger than the traditional banking system. In July 2010, the shadow system was down to about $15 trillion, compared to $13 trillion for the traditional banking system.
Only about $2 trillion of this shrinkage has been replaced with the Fed's quantitative easing programs, leaving a $3 trillion hole to be filled; and only the government is in a position to fill it. We have been sold the idea that there is a "debt crisis" when there is really a liquidity crisis. Paying down the federal debt when money is already scarce just makes matters worse. Historically, when the deficit has been reduced, the money supply has been reduced along with it, throwing the economy into recession.
Most of our money now comes into the world as debt, which is created on the books of banks and lent into the economy. If there were no debt, there would be no money to run the economy; and today, private debt has collapsed. Encouraged by Fed policy, banks have tightened up lending and are sitting on their money, shrinking the circulating money supply and the economy.
Creative Ways to Balance the Budget
The federal debt has not been paid off since the days of Andrew Jackson, and it does not need to be paid off. It is just rolled over from year to year. The only real danger posed by a growing federal debt is the interest burden, but that has not been a problem yet. The Congressional Budget Office reported in December 2010:
[A] sharp drop in interest rates has held down the amount of interest that the government pays on [the national] debt. In 2010, net interest outlays totaled $197 billion, or 1.4 percent of GDP--a smaller share of GDP than they accounted for during most of the past decade.
The interest burden will increase if the federal debt continues to grow, but that problem can be solved by mandating the Federal Reserve to buy the government's debt. The Fed rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs, making the money nearly interest-free. The Fed is already doing this with its quantitative easing programs and now holds nearly $1.7 trillion in federal securities.
If Congress must maintain its debt ceiling, there are other ways to balance the budget and avoid a growing debt. Ron Paul has brought a creative bill that would eliminate the $1.7 trillion deficit simply by having the Fed tear up its federal securities. No creditors would be harmed, since the money was generated with a computer keystroke in the first place. The government would just be canceling a debt to itself and saving the interest.
The Trillion Dollar Coin Alternative
The most direct solution to the debt problem is for the government to fund its budget with government-issued money. One alternative would be for the Treasury to issue U.S. Notes, as was done in the Civil War by President Lincoln.
Another alternative was suggested in my book Web of Debt in 2007: the government could simply mint some trillion dollar coins. Congress has the Constitutional power to "coin money," and no limit is put on the value of the coins it creates, as was pointed out by a chairman of the House Coinage Subcommittee in the 1980s.
This idea is now getting some attention from economists. According to a July 29th article in the Johnsville News titled "Coin Trick: The Trillion Dollar Coin":
The idea just started to get serious traction the last few days as the debt stalemate has grown more intense and partisan. Yale constitutional law professor Jack Balkin floated it as an option in a CNN op-ed yesterday (July 28th).
Today the idea has gone mainstream. It is covered by NY Magazine, CNBC, and The Economist. Even Nobel economist Paul Krugman of the NY Times has weighed in. Annie Lowrey of Slate discusses it as one of several gimmicks the government could use to resolve the debt-ceiling debacle. Krugman added:
These things [like coin seigniorage] sound ridiculous - but so is the behavior of Congressional Republicans. So why not fight back using legal tricks?
The debt ceiling itself was a legal trick, a form of extortion based on a century-old statute that conflicts with the Constitution. However, said the Johnsville News article, "coin seigniorage is not a scam. It is legal . . . . This plan looks like it might be Obama's ace in the hole . . . ."
The article cites Warren Mosler, founder of MMT (Modern Monetary Theory), who reviewed the idea in a January 20th blog post and concluded it would work operationally.
Scott Fullwiler, associate professor of economics at Wartburg College, also did a comprehensive analysis and concluded that the trillion dollar coin alternative was unlikely to result in inflation. Comparing it to Ron Paul's plan, he wrote:
This option is much like Ron Paul's proposal-actually identical in terms of the effect on the debt ceiling and the Treasury-except that his proposal would destroy all of the Fed's capital (and then some), which is a potential problem politically . . . though not operationally, and which the Fed is therefore very unlikely to agree to.
On the inflation question, just because the Treasury has money in its account doesn't mean it can spend the funds. It needs the usual Congressional approval. To keep a lid on spending, Congress just needs to be instructed in basic economics. They can spend on goods and services up to full employment without creating price inflation (since supply and demand will rise together). After that, they need to tax -- not to fund the budget, but to pull excess money back in and avoid driving up prices.
Spending More While Borrowing Less
In an economic downturn, the government needs to spend more, not less, as history shows. This can be done while still balancing the budget, simply by taking back the government's Constitutional power to issue money.
The budget crisis is an artificial one, and the current "solution" will only guarantee a deeper recession and more widespread suffering. Rather than obsessing over deficits and debt, the government needs to turn its focus to jobs, sales and quality of life.
------------------------
Ellen Brown is president of the Public Banking Institute and the author of eleven books. She developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.
Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Please support Global Research
Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers.
Your endorsement is greatly appreciated
Subscribe to the Global Research E-Newsletter Spread the word! Forward to a friend!
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: publications@globalresearch.ca
http://www.globalresearch.ca/ contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: media@globalresearch.ca
Copyright © Ellen Brown, Web of Debt, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
QE3, Treasury Style—Go Around, Not Over the Debt Ceiling Limit
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/scott-fullwiller-qe3-treasury-style%E2%80%94go-around-not-over-the-debt-ceiling-limit.html
Monday, July 11, 2011
Scott Fullwiler, Associate Professor of Economics at Wartburg College
Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/
Cullen Roche’s excellent post at Pragmatic Capitalism explains that the debt ceiling debate could be ended right now given that the US Constitution bestows upon the US Treasury the authority to mint coins (particularly platinum ones). Further, this simple change would lift the veil on how current monetary operations work and thereby demonstrate clearly that a currency-issuing government under flexible exchange rates cannot be forced into default against its will and is not beholden to “vigilante” bond markets. As Beowulf explains in a later comment, “The anomaly it addresses is that the US Govt has a debt limit yet an agency of the US Govt (the Federal Reserve) does not have a debt limit. Clearly this is a structural defect.”
The following is a description of how the process would work and the implications for monetary operations:
1. The Treasury mints a $1 trillion coin, or whatever amount is desired.
2. The Treasury deposits the coin into the Treasury’s account at the Fed. The Fed’s assets (coin) and liabilities (Treasury’s account) increase by the same amount. As Beowulf notes later in a comment to the same post from Cullen, were the Fed to resist, the Federal Reserve Act clearly states that “wherever any power vested by this Act in the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or the Federal reserve agent appears to conflict with the powers of the Secretary of the Treasury, such powers shall be exercised subject to the supervision and control of the Secretary.” The Fed is legally an agency operating at the pleasure of the government, not vice versa. Regardless, the actions I describe here and below by the Treasury in no way interfere with the normal operations of monetary policy (explained in various places below).
3. The Treasury buys back bonds (thereby retiring them) until total market value purchased is equal to the dollar value of the newly minted coin. The result is a decrease in the Treasury’s account at Fed and an increase in bank reserve balances held at the Fed.
4. Total debt service for the Treasury falls, too, as higher interest earning bonds are replaced with reserve balances earning 0.25%. Effective debt service on purchased bonds now is 0.25% since interest on reserve balances reduces the Fed’s profits that are returned to Treasury each year.
5. The retirement of bonds is an asset swap, no different from QE2, except that the Treasury has purchased the bonds instead of the Fed. But since the Treasury’s account is on the Fed’s balance sheet, there is no operational difference. That is, this is effectively “QE3, Treasury Style.” As with QE2, no net financial assets have been created for the non-government sector. The net effect, like QE2, is to reduce the term structure of US debt held by private investors, as bonds have been replaced with reserve balances.
6. The increase in reserve balances is not inflationary, as Credit Easing 1.0, QE 1.0, and QE 2.0 already have shown. Banks can’t “do” anything with all the extra reserve balances. Loans create deposits—reserve balances don’t finance lending or add any “fuel” to the economy. Banks don’t lend reserve balances except in the federal funds market, and in that case the Fed always provides sufficient quantities to keep the federal funds rate at its target—that’s what it means to set an interest rate target. Widespread belief that reserve balances add “fuel” to bank lending is flawed, as I explained here over two years ago.
7. Non-bank sellers of the bonds purchased by the Treasury now have deposits earning essentially 0%. Again, this is not inflationary. There are three points to make in explaining why.
First, sellers of bonds were always able to sell their securities for deposits with or without the Treasury’s intervention given that there are around 20 dealers posting bids at all times. Anyone holding a treasury security and desiring to sell it in order to spend more out of current income can do so easily; holders of Treasury securities are never constrained in spending by the fact that they hold the security instead of a deposit. Further, dealers finance purchases of securities from both the private sector and the Treasury by borrowing in the repo market—that is, via credit creation using securities as collateral. This means there is no “taking money from one person to give it to another” zero sum game when bonds are issued (banks can similarly purchase securities by taking an overdraft in reserve accounts and clearing it at the end of the day in the federal funds market), as what in fact happens is that the existence of the security actually enables more credit creation and are known to regularly facilitate credit creation in money markets that are a multiple of face value. Removing the security from circulation eliminates the ability for it to be leveraged many times over in money markets.
Second, the seller of the security now holding a deposit is earning less interest can convert the deposit to an interest earning balance. Just as one holding a Treasury can easily sell, one holding a deposit can easily find interest earning alternatives. Some make the argument that the security can decline in value and so this is not the same as holding a deposit, but this unwittingly supports my point here that holders of deposits aren’t necessarily doing so to spend. Deposits don’t spend themselves, after all.
Third, these operations by the Treasury create no new net financial assets for the non-government sector (and can in fact reduce its net saving by reducing interest paid on the national debt as bonds are replaced by reserve balances earning 0.25%). Any increase in aggregate spending would thereby require the private sector to spend more out of existing income or dissaving, as opposed to additional spending out of additional income. The commonly held view that “more money” necessarily creates spending confuses “more money” with “more income.” QE—whether “Fed style” or “Treasury style”—creates the former via an asset swap; on the other hand, a true helicopter drop would create the latter as it raises the net financial assets of the private sector. Again, “money” doesn’t spend itself. Further, by definition, spending more out of existing income is a re-leveraging of private sector balance sheets. This is highly unlikely in the current balance-sheet recession and is aside from the fact that QE again does nothing to facilitate more spending or credit creation beyond what is already possible without QE. The exception is that QE may reduce interest rates, particularly if the Fed or (in this case) the Treasury sets a fixed bid and offers to purchase all bonds offered for sale at that price—though this again may not lead to more credit creation in a balance-sheet recession and has the negative effect of reducing the net interest income of the private sector. (As an aside, a key difficulty neoclassical economists are having at the moment is they do not recognize the difference between a balance-sheet recession and their own flawed understanding of Keynes’s liquidity trap.)
Addendum: From points 6 and 7, QE3, Treasury Style can only be as inflationary as QE2 (which is to say, not at all, aside from indirect, temporary effects of commodities speculators who believed QE2 would be inflationary), since operationally it’s the exact same thing in terms of the effect on the non-government sector’s financial position. Anybody arguing that QE Treasury Style would be inflationary must explain why QE2 wasn’t inflationary. Neoclassical economists are currently saying “interest on reserves” is why QE2 didn’t work, but QE Treasury style similarly requires interest on reserves or the Fed to drain reserve balances with time deposits offered to banks if the Fed is to hit an overnight target. In other words, there’s no such thing as QE Fed Style or Treasury Style without interest on reserves (or, alternatively, time deposits).
8. The debt ceiling crisis is averted, as US debt outstanding has been reduced by the dollar value of the minted coin, and can continue to be reduced as desired. This simple asset swap demonstrates that the self-imposed constraints of the debt-ceiling, counting Treasury securities held by the Fed against the debt ceiling, and forbidding the Fed from “lending” to the Treasury directly are just that—self-imposed—and are not operational constraints at all. The only constraint is in the flawed understanding of the monetary system that is standard today among the macroeconomists writing textbooks and advising policymakers, or acting as policymakers themselves. From points 6 and 7 above, this asset swap is not inflationary—spending without issuing bonds is not any more inflationary than spending with bond sales.
9. Just as the Fed is the monopoly supplier of reserve balances, the Treasury is the monopoly supplier of coins. Future deficit spending by the federal government could thereby continue to be carried out by minting coins and depositing them in the Treasury’s account at the Fed. It then would be clear to everyone that the Treasury’s spending is not operationally constrained by revenues or its ability to sell bonds. It would be obvious that the Treasury spends by crediting the reserve accounts of banks, who in turn credit the deposit accounts of the spending recipients. Deficits would increase the quantity of reserve balances circulating and currently earning 0.25%. As MMT’ers have explained for years (even decades), the operational purpose of the Treasury’s sale of a bond is merely to aid the Fed’s ability to achieve its overnight target by draining reserve balances created by a deficit. But even selling bonds isn’t operationally necessary if the Fed pays interest on reserve balances at a rate equal to its target rate. On the other hand, if the Fed set the rate on reserve balances below its target and the Treasury no issuing bonds, the Fed could issue its own time deposits (with Congress’ blessing) to drain reserve balances created by a deficit. Whether the Fed’s target rate were set above the rate paid on reserve balances or equal to it, effective interest on the national debt clearly would be a monetary policy variable (as interest paid on reserve balances or on time deposits by the Fed reduces the Fed’s profits returned to the Treasury), as it at the very worst can be even under current operating procedures.
10. This approach to dealing with the debt ceiling is far better than the recent proposal by Ron Paul, as again it lifts the veil on current monetary operations and recognizes the currency-issuing status of the US federal government. Instead, Paul proposes that the Fed destroy its holdings of Treasury securities. What’s strange about the proposal is that it shows that Paul either doesn’t understand monetary operations or is trying to have it both ways. Destroying the securities requires reducing the Fed’s capital by the same amount. Given the Fed’s miniscule level of capital (because, again, it has virtually no retained earnings after transferring them all to the Treasury each year), its capital would be way into negative territory. This isn’t a problem operationally, given that the Fed is the monopoly supplier of reserve balances. But recall that Paul was one of those protesting Credit Easing and QE1 the loudest, claiming that these would surely destroy the Fed’s capital and leave it insolvent. (Again, this is only relevant operationally under a gold standard or similar monetary arrangement—Paul and others like him want to analyze the US national debt and the Fed as if a gold standard existed, and then claim that a going on the gold standard is the solution to all of our problems, but I digress.) So, effectively Paul’s proposal would leave the Fed in a state of (in his view) “insolvency”—perhaps he does know what he’s doing and his debt ceiling proposal is just part of his grand plan to “end the Fed.” Otherwise, it would have been simpler to simply propose exempting the Treasury securities held by the Fed from counting toward the debt ceiling.
Lastly, giving credit where it is due, I want to again recognize the efforts of both Joe Firestone and Beowulf in researching and explaining the legal basis for and operational implications of the Treasury’s Constitutional authority to mint its own coin(s). This post benefits significantly from their important, original work.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Scott Fullwiler, Associate Professor of Economics at Wartburg College
Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/
Cullen Roche’s excellent post at Pragmatic Capitalism explains that the debt ceiling debate could be ended right now given that the US Constitution bestows upon the US Treasury the authority to mint coins (particularly platinum ones). Further, this simple change would lift the veil on how current monetary operations work and thereby demonstrate clearly that a currency-issuing government under flexible exchange rates cannot be forced into default against its will and is not beholden to “vigilante” bond markets. As Beowulf explains in a later comment, “The anomaly it addresses is that the US Govt has a debt limit yet an agency of the US Govt (the Federal Reserve) does not have a debt limit. Clearly this is a structural defect.”
The following is a description of how the process would work and the implications for monetary operations:
1. The Treasury mints a $1 trillion coin, or whatever amount is desired.
2. The Treasury deposits the coin into the Treasury’s account at the Fed. The Fed’s assets (coin) and liabilities (Treasury’s account) increase by the same amount. As Beowulf notes later in a comment to the same post from Cullen, were the Fed to resist, the Federal Reserve Act clearly states that “wherever any power vested by this Act in the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or the Federal reserve agent appears to conflict with the powers of the Secretary of the Treasury, such powers shall be exercised subject to the supervision and control of the Secretary.” The Fed is legally an agency operating at the pleasure of the government, not vice versa. Regardless, the actions I describe here and below by the Treasury in no way interfere with the normal operations of monetary policy (explained in various places below).
3. The Treasury buys back bonds (thereby retiring them) until total market value purchased is equal to the dollar value of the newly minted coin. The result is a decrease in the Treasury’s account at Fed and an increase in bank reserve balances held at the Fed.
4. Total debt service for the Treasury falls, too, as higher interest earning bonds are replaced with reserve balances earning 0.25%. Effective debt service on purchased bonds now is 0.25% since interest on reserve balances reduces the Fed’s profits that are returned to Treasury each year.
5. The retirement of bonds is an asset swap, no different from QE2, except that the Treasury has purchased the bonds instead of the Fed. But since the Treasury’s account is on the Fed’s balance sheet, there is no operational difference. That is, this is effectively “QE3, Treasury Style.” As with QE2, no net financial assets have been created for the non-government sector. The net effect, like QE2, is to reduce the term structure of US debt held by private investors, as bonds have been replaced with reserve balances.
6. The increase in reserve balances is not inflationary, as Credit Easing 1.0, QE 1.0, and QE 2.0 already have shown. Banks can’t “do” anything with all the extra reserve balances. Loans create deposits—reserve balances don’t finance lending or add any “fuel” to the economy. Banks don’t lend reserve balances except in the federal funds market, and in that case the Fed always provides sufficient quantities to keep the federal funds rate at its target—that’s what it means to set an interest rate target. Widespread belief that reserve balances add “fuel” to bank lending is flawed, as I explained here over two years ago.
7. Non-bank sellers of the bonds purchased by the Treasury now have deposits earning essentially 0%. Again, this is not inflationary. There are three points to make in explaining why.
First, sellers of bonds were always able to sell their securities for deposits with or without the Treasury’s intervention given that there are around 20 dealers posting bids at all times. Anyone holding a treasury security and desiring to sell it in order to spend more out of current income can do so easily; holders of Treasury securities are never constrained in spending by the fact that they hold the security instead of a deposit. Further, dealers finance purchases of securities from both the private sector and the Treasury by borrowing in the repo market—that is, via credit creation using securities as collateral. This means there is no “taking money from one person to give it to another” zero sum game when bonds are issued (banks can similarly purchase securities by taking an overdraft in reserve accounts and clearing it at the end of the day in the federal funds market), as what in fact happens is that the existence of the security actually enables more credit creation and are known to regularly facilitate credit creation in money markets that are a multiple of face value. Removing the security from circulation eliminates the ability for it to be leveraged many times over in money markets.
Second, the seller of the security now holding a deposit is earning less interest can convert the deposit to an interest earning balance. Just as one holding a Treasury can easily sell, one holding a deposit can easily find interest earning alternatives. Some make the argument that the security can decline in value and so this is not the same as holding a deposit, but this unwittingly supports my point here that holders of deposits aren’t necessarily doing so to spend. Deposits don’t spend themselves, after all.
Third, these operations by the Treasury create no new net financial assets for the non-government sector (and can in fact reduce its net saving by reducing interest paid on the national debt as bonds are replaced by reserve balances earning 0.25%). Any increase in aggregate spending would thereby require the private sector to spend more out of existing income or dissaving, as opposed to additional spending out of additional income. The commonly held view that “more money” necessarily creates spending confuses “more money” with “more income.” QE—whether “Fed style” or “Treasury style”—creates the former via an asset swap; on the other hand, a true helicopter drop would create the latter as it raises the net financial assets of the private sector. Again, “money” doesn’t spend itself. Further, by definition, spending more out of existing income is a re-leveraging of private sector balance sheets. This is highly unlikely in the current balance-sheet recession and is aside from the fact that QE again does nothing to facilitate more spending or credit creation beyond what is already possible without QE. The exception is that QE may reduce interest rates, particularly if the Fed or (in this case) the Treasury sets a fixed bid and offers to purchase all bonds offered for sale at that price—though this again may not lead to more credit creation in a balance-sheet recession and has the negative effect of reducing the net interest income of the private sector. (As an aside, a key difficulty neoclassical economists are having at the moment is they do not recognize the difference between a balance-sheet recession and their own flawed understanding of Keynes’s liquidity trap.)
Addendum: From points 6 and 7, QE3, Treasury Style can only be as inflationary as QE2 (which is to say, not at all, aside from indirect, temporary effects of commodities speculators who believed QE2 would be inflationary), since operationally it’s the exact same thing in terms of the effect on the non-government sector’s financial position. Anybody arguing that QE Treasury Style would be inflationary must explain why QE2 wasn’t inflationary. Neoclassical economists are currently saying “interest on reserves” is why QE2 didn’t work, but QE Treasury style similarly requires interest on reserves or the Fed to drain reserve balances with time deposits offered to banks if the Fed is to hit an overnight target. In other words, there’s no such thing as QE Fed Style or Treasury Style without interest on reserves (or, alternatively, time deposits).
8. The debt ceiling crisis is averted, as US debt outstanding has been reduced by the dollar value of the minted coin, and can continue to be reduced as desired. This simple asset swap demonstrates that the self-imposed constraints of the debt-ceiling, counting Treasury securities held by the Fed against the debt ceiling, and forbidding the Fed from “lending” to the Treasury directly are just that—self-imposed—and are not operational constraints at all. The only constraint is in the flawed understanding of the monetary system that is standard today among the macroeconomists writing textbooks and advising policymakers, or acting as policymakers themselves. From points 6 and 7 above, this asset swap is not inflationary—spending without issuing bonds is not any more inflationary than spending with bond sales.
9. Just as the Fed is the monopoly supplier of reserve balances, the Treasury is the monopoly supplier of coins. Future deficit spending by the federal government could thereby continue to be carried out by minting coins and depositing them in the Treasury’s account at the Fed. It then would be clear to everyone that the Treasury’s spending is not operationally constrained by revenues or its ability to sell bonds. It would be obvious that the Treasury spends by crediting the reserve accounts of banks, who in turn credit the deposit accounts of the spending recipients. Deficits would increase the quantity of reserve balances circulating and currently earning 0.25%. As MMT’ers have explained for years (even decades), the operational purpose of the Treasury’s sale of a bond is merely to aid the Fed’s ability to achieve its overnight target by draining reserve balances created by a deficit. But even selling bonds isn’t operationally necessary if the Fed pays interest on reserve balances at a rate equal to its target rate. On the other hand, if the Fed set the rate on reserve balances below its target and the Treasury no issuing bonds, the Fed could issue its own time deposits (with Congress’ blessing) to drain reserve balances created by a deficit. Whether the Fed’s target rate were set above the rate paid on reserve balances or equal to it, effective interest on the national debt clearly would be a monetary policy variable (as interest paid on reserve balances or on time deposits by the Fed reduces the Fed’s profits returned to the Treasury), as it at the very worst can be even under current operating procedures.
10. This approach to dealing with the debt ceiling is far better than the recent proposal by Ron Paul, as again it lifts the veil on current monetary operations and recognizes the currency-issuing status of the US federal government. Instead, Paul proposes that the Fed destroy its holdings of Treasury securities. What’s strange about the proposal is that it shows that Paul either doesn’t understand monetary operations or is trying to have it both ways. Destroying the securities requires reducing the Fed’s capital by the same amount. Given the Fed’s miniscule level of capital (because, again, it has virtually no retained earnings after transferring them all to the Treasury each year), its capital would be way into negative territory. This isn’t a problem operationally, given that the Fed is the monopoly supplier of reserve balances. But recall that Paul was one of those protesting Credit Easing and QE1 the loudest, claiming that these would surely destroy the Fed’s capital and leave it insolvent. (Again, this is only relevant operationally under a gold standard or similar monetary arrangement—Paul and others like him want to analyze the US national debt and the Fed as if a gold standard existed, and then claim that a going on the gold standard is the solution to all of our problems, but I digress.) So, effectively Paul’s proposal would leave the Fed in a state of (in his view) “insolvency”—perhaps he does know what he’s doing and his debt ceiling proposal is just part of his grand plan to “end the Fed.” Otherwise, it would have been simpler to simply propose exempting the Treasury securities held by the Fed from counting toward the debt ceiling.
Lastly, giving credit where it is due, I want to again recognize the efforts of both Joe Firestone and Beowulf in researching and explaining the legal basis for and operational implications of the Treasury’s Constitutional authority to mint its own coin(s). This post benefits significantly from their important, original work.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Why U.S. is not a Christian nation
Kenneth C. Davis
July 4, 2011
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/04/davis.jefferson.other.words/
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Thomas Jefferson is famous for words he wrote in the Declaration of Independence
Kenneth Davis: Jefferson's other words resonate as well
Jefferson wrote Bill of Rights set up "wall of separation between Church and State"
Founding Fathers knew the dangers of merging church and state, Davis says
Kenneth C. Davis is the author of "Don't Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition" (HarperCollins). He posts regularly at his blog at http://www.dontknowmuch.com/.
(CNN) -- As America celebrates its birthday on July 4, the timeless words of Thomas Jefferson will surely be invoked to remind us of our founding ideals -- that "All men are created equal" and are "endowed by their Creator" with the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These phrases, a cherished part of our history, have rightly been called "American Scripture."
But Jefferson penned another phrase, arguably his most famous after those from the Declaration of Independence. These far more contentious words -- "a wall of separation between church and state" -- lie at the heart of the ongoing debate between those who see America as a "Christian Nation" and those who see it as a secular republic, a debate that is hotter than a Washington Fourth of July.
It is true these words do not appear in any early national document. What may be Jefferson's second most-quoted phrase is found instead in a letter he sent to a Baptist association in Danbury, Connecticut.
While president in 1802, Jefferson wrote: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State ... "
The idea was not Jefferson's. Other 17th- and 18th-century Enlightenment writers had used a variant of it. Earlier still, religious dissident Roger Williams had written in a 1644 letter of a "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world."
Williams, who founded Rhode Island with a colonial charter that included religious freedom, knew intolerance firsthand. He and other religious dissenters, including Anne Hutchinson, had been banished from neighboring Massachusetts, the "shining city on a hill" where Catholics, Quakers and Baptists were banned under penalty of death.
As president, Jefferson was voicing an idea that was fundamental to his view of religion and government, expressed most significantly in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which he drafted in 1777.
Revised by James Madison and passed by Virginia's legislature in January 1786, the bill stated: "No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened (sic) in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief ..."
It was this simple -- government could not dictate how to pray, or that you cannot pray, or that you must pray.
Jefferson regarded this law so highly that he had his authorship of the statute made part of his epitaph, along with writing the Declaration and founding the University of Virginia. (Being president wasn't worth a mention.)
Why do Jefferson's "other words" matter today?
First, because knowing history matters -- it can safeguard us from repeating our mistakes and help us value our rights, won at great cost. Yet we are sorely lacking in knowledge about our past, as shown by a recent National Assessment of Educational Progress.
But more to the point, we are witnessing an aggressively promoted version of our history and heritage in which America is called a "Christian Nation."
This "Sunday School" version of our past has gained currency among conservative television commentators, school boards that have rewritten state textbooks and several GOP presidential candidates, some of whom trekked to Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in early June 2011.
No one can argue, as "Christian Nation" proponents correctly state, that the Founding Fathers were not Christian, although some notably doubted Christ's divinity.
More precisely, the founders were, with very few exceptions, mainstream Protestants. Many of them were Episcopalians, the American offshoot of the official Church of England. The status of America's Catholics, both legally and socially, in the colonies and early Republic, was clearly second-class. Other Christian sects, including Baptists, Quakers and Mormons, faced official resistance, discrimination and worse for decades.
But the founders, and more specifically the framers of the Constitution, included men who had fought a war for independence -- the very war celebrated on the "Glorious Fourth" -- against a country in which church and state were essentially one.
They understood the long history of sectarian bloodshed in Europe that brought many pilgrims to America. They knew the dangers of merging government, which was designed to protect individual rights, with religion, which as Jefferson argued, was a matter of individual conscience.
And that is why the U.S. Constitution reads as it does.
The supreme law of the land, written in the summer of 1787, includes no references to religion -- including in the presidential oath of office -- until the conclusion of Article VI, after all that dull stuff about debts and treaties: "No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." (There is a pro forma "Year of the Lord" reference in the date at the Constitution's conclusion.)
Original intent? "No religious Test" seems pretty clear cut.
The primacy of a secular state was solidified when the First Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights. According to Purdue history professor Frank Lambert, that "introduced the radical notion that the state had no voice concerning matters of conscience."
Beyond that, the first House of Representatives, while debating the First Amendment, specifically rejected a Senate proposal calling for the establishment of Christianity as an official religion. As Lambert concludes, "There would be no Church of the United States. Nor would America represent itself as a Christian Republic."
The actions of the first presidents, founders of the first rank, confirmed this "original intent:"
-- In 1790, President George Washington wrote to America's first synagogue, in Rhode Island, that "all possess alike liberty of conscience" and that "toleration" was an "inherent national gift," not the government's to dole out or take away
-- In 1797, with President John Adams in office, the Senate unanimously approved one of America's earliest foreign treaties, which emphatically stated (Article 11): "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, -- as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims) ..."
-- In 1802, Jefferson added his famous "wall of separation," implicit in the Constitution until he so described it (and cited in several Supreme Court decisions since).
These are, to borrow an admittedly loaded phrase, "inconvenient truths" to those who proclaim that America is a "Christian Nation."
The Constitution and the views of these Founding Fathers trump all arguments about references to God in presidential speeches (permitted under the First Amendment), on money (not introduced until the Civil War), the Pledge of Allegiance ("under God" added in 1954) and in the national motto "In God We Trust" (adopted by law in 1956).
And those contentious monuments to the Ten Commandments found around the country and occasionally challenged in court? Many of them were installed as a publicity stunt for Cecile B. DeMille's 1956 Hollywood spectacle, "The Ten Commandments."
So who are you going to believe? Thomas Jefferson or Hollywood? On second thought: Don't answer.
July 4, 2011
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/04/davis.jefferson.other.words/
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Thomas Jefferson is famous for words he wrote in the Declaration of Independence
Kenneth Davis: Jefferson's other words resonate as well
Jefferson wrote Bill of Rights set up "wall of separation between Church and State"
Founding Fathers knew the dangers of merging church and state, Davis says
Kenneth C. Davis is the author of "Don't Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition" (HarperCollins). He posts regularly at his blog at http://www.dontknowmuch.com/.
(CNN) -- As America celebrates its birthday on July 4, the timeless words of Thomas Jefferson will surely be invoked to remind us of our founding ideals -- that "All men are created equal" and are "endowed by their Creator" with the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These phrases, a cherished part of our history, have rightly been called "American Scripture."
But Jefferson penned another phrase, arguably his most famous after those from the Declaration of Independence. These far more contentious words -- "a wall of separation between church and state" -- lie at the heart of the ongoing debate between those who see America as a "Christian Nation" and those who see it as a secular republic, a debate that is hotter than a Washington Fourth of July.
It is true these words do not appear in any early national document. What may be Jefferson's second most-quoted phrase is found instead in a letter he sent to a Baptist association in Danbury, Connecticut.
While president in 1802, Jefferson wrote: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State ... "
The idea was not Jefferson's. Other 17th- and 18th-century Enlightenment writers had used a variant of it. Earlier still, religious dissident Roger Williams had written in a 1644 letter of a "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world."
Williams, who founded Rhode Island with a colonial charter that included religious freedom, knew intolerance firsthand. He and other religious dissenters, including Anne Hutchinson, had been banished from neighboring Massachusetts, the "shining city on a hill" where Catholics, Quakers and Baptists were banned under penalty of death.
As president, Jefferson was voicing an idea that was fundamental to his view of religion and government, expressed most significantly in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which he drafted in 1777.
Revised by James Madison and passed by Virginia's legislature in January 1786, the bill stated: "No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened (sic) in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief ..."
It was this simple -- government could not dictate how to pray, or that you cannot pray, or that you must pray.
Jefferson regarded this law so highly that he had his authorship of the statute made part of his epitaph, along with writing the Declaration and founding the University of Virginia. (Being president wasn't worth a mention.)
Why do Jefferson's "other words" matter today?
First, because knowing history matters -- it can safeguard us from repeating our mistakes and help us value our rights, won at great cost. Yet we are sorely lacking in knowledge about our past, as shown by a recent National Assessment of Educational Progress.
But more to the point, we are witnessing an aggressively promoted version of our history and heritage in which America is called a "Christian Nation."
This "Sunday School" version of our past has gained currency among conservative television commentators, school boards that have rewritten state textbooks and several GOP presidential candidates, some of whom trekked to Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in early June 2011.
No one can argue, as "Christian Nation" proponents correctly state, that the Founding Fathers were not Christian, although some notably doubted Christ's divinity.
More precisely, the founders were, with very few exceptions, mainstream Protestants. Many of them were Episcopalians, the American offshoot of the official Church of England. The status of America's Catholics, both legally and socially, in the colonies and early Republic, was clearly second-class. Other Christian sects, including Baptists, Quakers and Mormons, faced official resistance, discrimination and worse for decades.
But the founders, and more specifically the framers of the Constitution, included men who had fought a war for independence -- the very war celebrated on the "Glorious Fourth" -- against a country in which church and state were essentially one.
They understood the long history of sectarian bloodshed in Europe that brought many pilgrims to America. They knew the dangers of merging government, which was designed to protect individual rights, with religion, which as Jefferson argued, was a matter of individual conscience.
And that is why the U.S. Constitution reads as it does.
The supreme law of the land, written in the summer of 1787, includes no references to religion -- including in the presidential oath of office -- until the conclusion of Article VI, after all that dull stuff about debts and treaties: "No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." (There is a pro forma "Year of the Lord" reference in the date at the Constitution's conclusion.)
Original intent? "No religious Test" seems pretty clear cut.
The primacy of a secular state was solidified when the First Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights. According to Purdue history professor Frank Lambert, that "introduced the radical notion that the state had no voice concerning matters of conscience."
Beyond that, the first House of Representatives, while debating the First Amendment, specifically rejected a Senate proposal calling for the establishment of Christianity as an official religion. As Lambert concludes, "There would be no Church of the United States. Nor would America represent itself as a Christian Republic."
The actions of the first presidents, founders of the first rank, confirmed this "original intent:"
-- In 1790, President George Washington wrote to America's first synagogue, in Rhode Island, that "all possess alike liberty of conscience" and that "toleration" was an "inherent national gift," not the government's to dole out or take away
-- In 1797, with President John Adams in office, the Senate unanimously approved one of America's earliest foreign treaties, which emphatically stated (Article 11): "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, -- as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims) ..."
-- In 1802, Jefferson added his famous "wall of separation," implicit in the Constitution until he so described it (and cited in several Supreme Court decisions since).
These are, to borrow an admittedly loaded phrase, "inconvenient truths" to those who proclaim that America is a "Christian Nation."
The Constitution and the views of these Founding Fathers trump all arguments about references to God in presidential speeches (permitted under the First Amendment), on money (not introduced until the Civil War), the Pledge of Allegiance ("under God" added in 1954) and in the national motto "In God We Trust" (adopted by law in 1956).
And those contentious monuments to the Ten Commandments found around the country and occasionally challenged in court? Many of them were installed as a publicity stunt for Cecile B. DeMille's 1956 Hollywood spectacle, "The Ten Commandments."
So who are you going to believe? Thomas Jefferson or Hollywood? On second thought: Don't answer.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Unequal Protection: Jefferson Versus the Corporate Aristocracy
Tuesday 19 April 2011
Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers
http://www.truth-out.org/unequal-protection-jefferson-versus-corporate-aristocracy/1303196400
Let monopolies and all kinds and degrees of oppression be carefully guarded against.
— Samuel Webster, 1777
Although the first shots were fired in 1775 and the Declaration was signed in 1776, the war against a transnational corporation and the nation that used it to extract wealth from its colonies had just begun. These colonists, facing the biggest empire and military force in the world, fought for five more years—the war didn’t end until General Charles Cornwallis surrendered in October 1781. Even then some resistance remained; the last loyalists and the British left New York starting in April 1782, and the treaty that formally ended the war was signed in Paris in September 1783.
The first form of government, the Articles of Confederation, was written in 1777 and endorsed by the states in 1781. It was subsequently replaced by our current Constitution, as has been documented in many books. In this chapter we take a look at the visions that motivated what Alexis de Tocqueville would later call America’s experiment with democracy in a republic. One of its most conspicuous features was the lack of vast wealth or any sort of corporation that resembled the East India Company—until the early 1800s.
The First Glimpses of a Powerful American Company
Very few people are aware that Thomas Jefferson considered freedom from monopolies to be one of the fundamental human rights. But it was very much a part of his thinking during the time when the Bill of Rights was born.
In fact, most of the Founders never imagined a huge commercial empire sweeping over their land, reminiscent of George R. T. Hewes’s “ships of an enormous burthen” with “immense quantities” of goods. Rather, most of them saw an America made up of people like themselves: farmers.
In a speech before the House of Representatives on April 9, 1789, James Madison referred to agriculture as the great staple of America. He added, “I think [agriculture] may justly be styled the staple of the United States; from the spontaneous productions which nature furnishes, and the manifest preference it has over every other object of emolument in this country.”1
In a National Gazette article on March 3, 1792, Madison wrote,
The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. They are more: they are the best basis of public liberty, and the strongest bulwark of public safety. It follows, that the greater the proportion of this class to the whole society, the more free, the more independent, and the more happy must be the society itself.2
The first large privately owned corporation to rise up in the new United States during the presidential terms of Jefferson (1801 to 1809) and Madison (1809 to 1817) was the Second Bank of the United States. By 1830 the bank was one of the largest and most powerful private corporations and, to extend its own power, was even sponsoring its directors and agents as candidates for political office.
In President Andrew Jackson’s annual message to Congress on December 3, 1833, he explicitly demanded that the bank cease its political activities or receive a corporate death sentence—revocation of its corporate charter. He said, “In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions.”3
Jackson succeeded in forcing a withdrawal of all federal funds from the bank that year, putting it out of business. Its federal charter expired in 1836 and was revived only as a state bank authorized by the State of Pennsylvania. It went bankrupt in 1841.
Although thousands of federal, state, county, city, and community laws of the time restrained corporations vastly more than they are today, the presidents who followed Jackson continued to worry out loud about the implications if corporations expanded their power.
In the middle of the thirty-year struggle, on March 10, 1827, James Madison wrote a letter to his friend James K. Paulding about the issue:
With regard to Banks, they have taken too deep and too wide a root in social transactions, to be got rid of altogether, if that were desirable....they have a hold on public opinion, which alone would make it expedient to aim rather at the improvement, than the suppression of them. As now generally constituted, their advantages whatever they be, are outweighed by the excesses of their paper emissions, and the partialities and corruption with which they are administered.4
Thus, while Madison saw the rise of corporate power and its dangers during and after his presidency, the issues weren’t obvious to him when he was helping write the U.S. Constitution decades earlier. And that may have been significant when the Bill of Rights was being put together.
The Federalists versus the Democratic Republicans
Shortly after George Washington became the first president of the United States in 1789, his secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, proposed that the federal government incorporate a national bank and assume state debts left over from the Revolutionary War. Congressman James Madison and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson saw this as an inappropriate role for the federal government, representing the potential concentration of too much money and power. (The Bill of Rights, with its Tenth Amendment reserving powers to the states, wouldn’t be ratified for two more years.)
The disagreement over the bank and assuming the states’ debt nearly tore apart the new government and led to the creation—by Hamilton, Washington, and Vice President John Adams (among others, including Thomas and Charles Pinckney, Rufus King, DeWitt Clinton, and John Jay)—of the Federallist Party.
Several factions arose in opposition to the Federalists, broadly referred to as the Anti-Federalists, including two groups who called themselves Democrats and Republicans. Jefferson pulled them together by 1794 into the Democratic Republican Party (which dropped the word Republican from its name in the early 1830s, today known as the Democratic Party, the world’s oldest and longest-lived political party), united in their opposition to the Federalists’ ideas of a strong central government that could grant the power to incorporate a national bank and bestow benefits to favored businesses through the use of tariffs and trade regulation.
During the Washington and Adams presidencies, however, the Federalists reigned, and Hamilton was successful in pushing through his programs for assuming state debts, creating a United States Bank and a network of bounties and tariffs to benefit emerging industries and businesses.
In 1794 independent whiskey distillers in Pennsylvania revolted against Hamilton’s federal taxes on their product, calling them “unjust, dangerous to liberty, oppressive to the poor, and particularly oppressive to the Western country, where grain could only be disposed of by distilling it.”5
The whiskey distillers tarred and feathered a tax collector and pulled together a local militia of seven thousand men. But President Washington issued two federal orders and sent in General Henry Lee, commanding militias from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia. To demonstrate his authority as commander in chief, Washington rode at the head of the soldiers in their initial attack.
The Whiskey Rebellion was put down, and the power of the Federalists wasn’t questioned again until the election of 1800, which Jefferson’s Democratic Republican Party won, in a contest referred to as the Second American Revolution or the Revolution of 1800.
In the election of 1804, the Federalists carried only Delaware, Connecticut, and part of Maryland against Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans; and by 1832, as the Industrial Revolution was taking hold of America, the Federalists were so marginalized that they ceased to exist as an organized party, being largely replaced by the short-lived Whigs, who were themselves replaced by today’s Republican Party, organized in the 1850s.
Jefferson and Natural Rights
Back in the earliest days of the United States, Jefferson didn’t anticipate the scope, meaning, and consequences of the Industrial Revolution that was just starting to gather steam in Europe about the time he was entering politics in the Virginia House of Burgesses. He distrusted letting companies have too much power, but he was focusing on the concept of “natural rights,” an idea that was at the core of the writings and the speeches of most of the Revolutionary-era generation, from Thomas Paine to Patrick Henry to Benjamin Franklin.
In Jefferson’s mind “the natural rights of man” were enjoyed by Jefferson’s ancient tribal ancestors of Europe, were lived out during Jefferson’s life by some of the tribal peoples of North America, and were written about most explicitly sixty years before Jefferson’s birth by John Locke, whose writings were widely known and often referenced in pre-revolutionary America.
Natural rights, Locke said, are things that people are born with simply by virtue of their being human and born into the world. In 1690, in his Second Treatise of Government, Locke put forth one of the most well-known definitions of the natural rights that all people are heirs to by virtue of their common humanity. He wrote, “All men by nature are equal...in that equal right that every man hath to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man...being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions...”
As to the role of government, Locke wrote, “Men being...by nature all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent which is done by agreeing with other men, to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living...in a secure enjoyment of their properties...”
This natural right was asserted by Jefferson first in his Summary View of the Rights of British America, published in 1774, in which he wrote, “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” His first draft of the Declaration of Independence similarly declared, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all Men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and unalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”6
Individuals asserted those natural rights in the form of a representative government that they controlled, and that same government also protected their natural rights from all the forces that in previous lands had dominated, enslaved, and taken advantage of them.
The Three Threats
Thomas Jefferson’s vision of America was quite straightforward. In its simplest form, he saw a society where people were first and institutions were second. In his day Jefferson saw three agencies that were threats to humans’ natural rights:
•Governments (particularly in the form of kingdoms and elite groups like the Federalists)
•Organized religions* (he rewrote the New Testament to take out all the “miracles” so that in The Jefferson Bible—which is still in print—Jesus became a proponent of natural rights and peace)
•Commercial monopolies and the “pseudo aristoi,” or pseudo aristocracy (in the form of extremely wealthy individuals and overly powerful corporations)
Instead he believed it was possible for people to live by self-government in a nation in which nobody controlled the people except the people themselves. He found evidence for this belief both in the cultures of Native Americans such as the Cherokee and the Iroquois Confederation, which he studied extensively; in the political experiments of the Greeks; and in histories that documented the lives of his own tribal ancestors in England and Wales.
Jefferson Considers Freedom against Monopolies a Basic Right
Once the Revolutionary War was over and the Constitution had been worked out and presented to the states for ratification, Jefferson turned his attention to what he and Madison felt was a terrible inadequacy in the new Constitution: it didn’t explicitly stipulate the natural rights of the new nation’s citizens, and it didn’t protect against the rise of new commercial monopolies like the East India Company.
On December 20, 1787, Jefferson wrote to James Madison about his concerns regarding the Constitution. He said bluntly that it was deficient in several areas:
I will now tell you what I do not like. First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land, and not by the laws of nations.7
Such a bill protecting natural persons from out-of-control governments or commercial monopolies shouldn’t be limited to America, Jefferson believed. “Let me add,” he summarized, “that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.”
In 1788 Jefferson wrote about his concerns to several people. In a letter to Alexander Donald, on February 7, he defined the items that should be in a bill of rights. “By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil, which no honest government should decline.”8
Jefferson kept pushing for a law, written into the Constitution as an amendment, which would prevent companies from growing so large that they could dominate entire industries or have the power to influence the people’s government.
On February 12, 1788, he wrote to Mr. Dumas about his pleasure that the U.S. Constitution was about to be ratified, but he also expressed his concerns about what was missing from the Constitution. He was pushing hard for his own state to reject the Constitution if it didn’t protect people from the dangers he foresaw:
With respect to the new Government, nine or ten States will probably have accepted by the end of this month. The others may oppose it. Virginia, I think, will be of this number. Besides other objections of less moment, she [Virginia] will insist on annexing a bill of rights to the new Constitution, i.e. a bill wherein the Government shall declare that, 1. Religion shall be free; 2. Printing presses free; 3. Trials by jury preserved in all cases; 4. No monopolies in commerce; 5. No standing army. Upon receiving this bill of rights, she will probably depart from her other objections; and this bill is so much to the interest of all the States, that I presume they will offer it, and thus our Constitution be amended, and our Union closed by the end of the present year.9
By midsummer of 1788, things were moving along, and Jefferson was helping his close friend James Madison write the Bill of Rights. On the last day of July, he wrote to Madison,
I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new constitution by nine States. It is a good canvass, on which some strokes only want retouching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from north to south, which calls for a bill of rights. It seems pretty generally understood, that this should go to juries, habeas corpus, standing armies, printing, religion, and monopolies.10
The following year, on March 13, he wrote to Francis Hopkinson about continuing objection to monopolies:
You say that I have been dished up to you as an anti-federalist, and ask me if it be just. My opinion was never worthy enough of notice to merit citing; but since you ask it, I will tell it to you. I am not a federalist....What I disapproved from the first moment also, was the want of a bill of rights, to guard liberty against the legislative as well as the executive branches of the government; that is to say, to secure freedom in religion, freedom of the press, freedom from monopolies, freedom from unlawful imprisonment, freedom from a permanent military, and a trial by jury, in all cases determinable by the laws of the land.11
All of Jefferson’s wishes, except two, would soon come true. But not all of his views were shared universally.
The Rise of an American Corporate Aristocracy
Years later, on October 28, 1813, Jefferson would write to John Adams about their earlier disagreements over whether a government should be run by the wealthy and powerful few (the pseudo-aristoi) or a group of the most wise and capable people (the “natural aristocracy”), elected from the larger class of all Americans, including working people:
The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy. On the question, what is the best provision, you and I differ; but we differ as rational friends, using the free exercise of our own reason, and mutually indulging its errors. You think it best to put the pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber of legislation [the Senate], where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate branches, and where, also, they may be a protection to wealth against the agrarian and plundering enterprises of the majority of the people. I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief, is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil.12
Adams and the Federalists were wary of the common person (who Adams referred to as “the rabble”), and many subscribed to the Calvinist notion that wealth was a sign of certification or blessing from above and a certain minimum level of morality. Because the Senate of the United States was appointed by the states (not elected by the voters, until 1913) and made up entirely of wealthy men, it was mostly on the Federalist side. Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans disagreed strongly with the notion of a Senate composed of the wealthy and powerful.
“Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively,” Jefferson wrote to Adams in the next paragraph of that 1813 letter, still arguing for a directly elected Senate:
Of this, a cabal in the Senate of the United States has furnished many proofs. Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislation, to protect themselves....I think the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff. In general they will elect the really good and wise. In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them; but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society.
Jefferson’s vision of a more egalitarian Senate—directly elected by the people instead of by state legislators—finally became law in 1913 with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, promoted by the Populist Movement and passed on a wave of public disgust with the corruption of the political process by giant corporations.
Almost all of Jefferson’s visions for a Bill of Rights—all except “freedom from monopolies in commerce” and his concern about a permanent army— were incorporated into the actual Bill of Rights, which James Madison shepherded through Congress and was ratified on December 15, 1791.
But the Federalists fought hard to keep “freedom from monopolies” out of the Constitution. And they won. The result was a boon for very large businesses in America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which arguably brought our nation and much of the world many blessings.
But as we’ll see in the way things have unfolded, some of those same principles have also given unexpected influence to the very monopolies Jefferson had argued must be constrained from the beginning. The result has sometimes been the same kind of problem the Tea Party rebels had risked their lives to fight: a situation in which the government protects one competitor against all others and against the will of the people whose money is at stake—along with their freedom of choice.
As the country progressed through the early 1800s, corporations were generally constrained to act within reasonable civic boundaries. In the next chapter, we examine how Americans and their government viewed the role of corporations, up to the time of the Civil War and its subsequent amendments.
Notes:
The First Amendment protected citizens from the predations of churches by guaranteeing freedom of religion in a new nation that still had states and cities that demanded obedience to and weekly participation in state-recognized churches or religious doctrine. The Ninth Amendment was a direct and clear acknowledgement of Jefferson’s concept of the natural right of humans to hold all personal powers that they haven’t specifically and intentionally given to their government of their own free will. It reads, in its entirety, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
James Madison, speech in the House of Representatives, April 9, 1789, in James Madison, The Writings of James Madison, vol. 5., ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1900): 342–45.
James Madison, “Republican Distribution of Citizens,” National Gazette, March 3, 1792, http://olldownload.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=875&chapter=63884&layout=html&Itemid=27.
Andrew Jackson, fifth annual message to Congress, December 3, 1833, http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3640.
James Madison to James K. Paulding, March 10, 1827, http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1940&chapter=119324&layout=html&Itemid=27.
A statement by Albert Gallatin, who later became secretary of the Treasury after the Federalists lost power.
This early draft of the Declaration of Independence can be viewed at http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/rough.htm.
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=306.
Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Donald, February 7, 1788, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a7s12.html.
Thomas Jefferson to Mr. Dumas, February 12, 1788.
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, July 31, 1788, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=998.
Thomas Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl75.htm.
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, October 28, 1813, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl223.htm.
Copyright Thom Hartmann and Mythical Research, Inc.
Want a copy of the book? Receive "Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became 'People' - And How You Can Fight Back" as a thank-you gift with a donation of $35 or more to Truthout.
Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers
http://www.truth-out.org/unequal-protection-jefferson-versus-corporate-aristocracy/1303196400
Let monopolies and all kinds and degrees of oppression be carefully guarded against.
— Samuel Webster, 1777
Although the first shots were fired in 1775 and the Declaration was signed in 1776, the war against a transnational corporation and the nation that used it to extract wealth from its colonies had just begun. These colonists, facing the biggest empire and military force in the world, fought for five more years—the war didn’t end until General Charles Cornwallis surrendered in October 1781. Even then some resistance remained; the last loyalists and the British left New York starting in April 1782, and the treaty that formally ended the war was signed in Paris in September 1783.
The first form of government, the Articles of Confederation, was written in 1777 and endorsed by the states in 1781. It was subsequently replaced by our current Constitution, as has been documented in many books. In this chapter we take a look at the visions that motivated what Alexis de Tocqueville would later call America’s experiment with democracy in a republic. One of its most conspicuous features was the lack of vast wealth or any sort of corporation that resembled the East India Company—until the early 1800s.
The First Glimpses of a Powerful American Company
Very few people are aware that Thomas Jefferson considered freedom from monopolies to be one of the fundamental human rights. But it was very much a part of his thinking during the time when the Bill of Rights was born.
In fact, most of the Founders never imagined a huge commercial empire sweeping over their land, reminiscent of George R. T. Hewes’s “ships of an enormous burthen” with “immense quantities” of goods. Rather, most of them saw an America made up of people like themselves: farmers.
In a speech before the House of Representatives on April 9, 1789, James Madison referred to agriculture as the great staple of America. He added, “I think [agriculture] may justly be styled the staple of the United States; from the spontaneous productions which nature furnishes, and the manifest preference it has over every other object of emolument in this country.”1
In a National Gazette article on March 3, 1792, Madison wrote,
The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. They are more: they are the best basis of public liberty, and the strongest bulwark of public safety. It follows, that the greater the proportion of this class to the whole society, the more free, the more independent, and the more happy must be the society itself.2
The first large privately owned corporation to rise up in the new United States during the presidential terms of Jefferson (1801 to 1809) and Madison (1809 to 1817) was the Second Bank of the United States. By 1830 the bank was one of the largest and most powerful private corporations and, to extend its own power, was even sponsoring its directors and agents as candidates for political office.
In President Andrew Jackson’s annual message to Congress on December 3, 1833, he explicitly demanded that the bank cease its political activities or receive a corporate death sentence—revocation of its corporate charter. He said, “In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions.”3
Jackson succeeded in forcing a withdrawal of all federal funds from the bank that year, putting it out of business. Its federal charter expired in 1836 and was revived only as a state bank authorized by the State of Pennsylvania. It went bankrupt in 1841.
Although thousands of federal, state, county, city, and community laws of the time restrained corporations vastly more than they are today, the presidents who followed Jackson continued to worry out loud about the implications if corporations expanded their power.
In the middle of the thirty-year struggle, on March 10, 1827, James Madison wrote a letter to his friend James K. Paulding about the issue:
With regard to Banks, they have taken too deep and too wide a root in social transactions, to be got rid of altogether, if that were desirable....they have a hold on public opinion, which alone would make it expedient to aim rather at the improvement, than the suppression of them. As now generally constituted, their advantages whatever they be, are outweighed by the excesses of their paper emissions, and the partialities and corruption with which they are administered.4
Thus, while Madison saw the rise of corporate power and its dangers during and after his presidency, the issues weren’t obvious to him when he was helping write the U.S. Constitution decades earlier. And that may have been significant when the Bill of Rights was being put together.
The Federalists versus the Democratic Republicans
Shortly after George Washington became the first president of the United States in 1789, his secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, proposed that the federal government incorporate a national bank and assume state debts left over from the Revolutionary War. Congressman James Madison and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson saw this as an inappropriate role for the federal government, representing the potential concentration of too much money and power. (The Bill of Rights, with its Tenth Amendment reserving powers to the states, wouldn’t be ratified for two more years.)
The disagreement over the bank and assuming the states’ debt nearly tore apart the new government and led to the creation—by Hamilton, Washington, and Vice President John Adams (among others, including Thomas and Charles Pinckney, Rufus King, DeWitt Clinton, and John Jay)—of the Federallist Party.
Several factions arose in opposition to the Federalists, broadly referred to as the Anti-Federalists, including two groups who called themselves Democrats and Republicans. Jefferson pulled them together by 1794 into the Democratic Republican Party (which dropped the word Republican from its name in the early 1830s, today known as the Democratic Party, the world’s oldest and longest-lived political party), united in their opposition to the Federalists’ ideas of a strong central government that could grant the power to incorporate a national bank and bestow benefits to favored businesses through the use of tariffs and trade regulation.
During the Washington and Adams presidencies, however, the Federalists reigned, and Hamilton was successful in pushing through his programs for assuming state debts, creating a United States Bank and a network of bounties and tariffs to benefit emerging industries and businesses.
In 1794 independent whiskey distillers in Pennsylvania revolted against Hamilton’s federal taxes on their product, calling them “unjust, dangerous to liberty, oppressive to the poor, and particularly oppressive to the Western country, where grain could only be disposed of by distilling it.”5
The whiskey distillers tarred and feathered a tax collector and pulled together a local militia of seven thousand men. But President Washington issued two federal orders and sent in General Henry Lee, commanding militias from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia. To demonstrate his authority as commander in chief, Washington rode at the head of the soldiers in their initial attack.
The Whiskey Rebellion was put down, and the power of the Federalists wasn’t questioned again until the election of 1800, which Jefferson’s Democratic Republican Party won, in a contest referred to as the Second American Revolution or the Revolution of 1800.
In the election of 1804, the Federalists carried only Delaware, Connecticut, and part of Maryland against Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans; and by 1832, as the Industrial Revolution was taking hold of America, the Federalists were so marginalized that they ceased to exist as an organized party, being largely replaced by the short-lived Whigs, who were themselves replaced by today’s Republican Party, organized in the 1850s.
Jefferson and Natural Rights
Back in the earliest days of the United States, Jefferson didn’t anticipate the scope, meaning, and consequences of the Industrial Revolution that was just starting to gather steam in Europe about the time he was entering politics in the Virginia House of Burgesses. He distrusted letting companies have too much power, but he was focusing on the concept of “natural rights,” an idea that was at the core of the writings and the speeches of most of the Revolutionary-era generation, from Thomas Paine to Patrick Henry to Benjamin Franklin.
In Jefferson’s mind “the natural rights of man” were enjoyed by Jefferson’s ancient tribal ancestors of Europe, were lived out during Jefferson’s life by some of the tribal peoples of North America, and were written about most explicitly sixty years before Jefferson’s birth by John Locke, whose writings were widely known and often referenced in pre-revolutionary America.
Natural rights, Locke said, are things that people are born with simply by virtue of their being human and born into the world. In 1690, in his Second Treatise of Government, Locke put forth one of the most well-known definitions of the natural rights that all people are heirs to by virtue of their common humanity. He wrote, “All men by nature are equal...in that equal right that every man hath to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man...being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions...”
As to the role of government, Locke wrote, “Men being...by nature all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent which is done by agreeing with other men, to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living...in a secure enjoyment of their properties...”
This natural right was asserted by Jefferson first in his Summary View of the Rights of British America, published in 1774, in which he wrote, “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” His first draft of the Declaration of Independence similarly declared, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all Men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and unalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”6
Individuals asserted those natural rights in the form of a representative government that they controlled, and that same government also protected their natural rights from all the forces that in previous lands had dominated, enslaved, and taken advantage of them.
The Three Threats
Thomas Jefferson’s vision of America was quite straightforward. In its simplest form, he saw a society where people were first and institutions were second. In his day Jefferson saw three agencies that were threats to humans’ natural rights:
•Governments (particularly in the form of kingdoms and elite groups like the Federalists)
•Organized religions* (he rewrote the New Testament to take out all the “miracles” so that in The Jefferson Bible—which is still in print—Jesus became a proponent of natural rights and peace)
•Commercial monopolies and the “pseudo aristoi,” or pseudo aristocracy (in the form of extremely wealthy individuals and overly powerful corporations)
Instead he believed it was possible for people to live by self-government in a nation in which nobody controlled the people except the people themselves. He found evidence for this belief both in the cultures of Native Americans such as the Cherokee and the Iroquois Confederation, which he studied extensively; in the political experiments of the Greeks; and in histories that documented the lives of his own tribal ancestors in England and Wales.
Jefferson Considers Freedom against Monopolies a Basic Right
Once the Revolutionary War was over and the Constitution had been worked out and presented to the states for ratification, Jefferson turned his attention to what he and Madison felt was a terrible inadequacy in the new Constitution: it didn’t explicitly stipulate the natural rights of the new nation’s citizens, and it didn’t protect against the rise of new commercial monopolies like the East India Company.
On December 20, 1787, Jefferson wrote to James Madison about his concerns regarding the Constitution. He said bluntly that it was deficient in several areas:
I will now tell you what I do not like. First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land, and not by the laws of nations.7
Such a bill protecting natural persons from out-of-control governments or commercial monopolies shouldn’t be limited to America, Jefferson believed. “Let me add,” he summarized, “that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.”
In 1788 Jefferson wrote about his concerns to several people. In a letter to Alexander Donald, on February 7, he defined the items that should be in a bill of rights. “By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil, which no honest government should decline.”8
Jefferson kept pushing for a law, written into the Constitution as an amendment, which would prevent companies from growing so large that they could dominate entire industries or have the power to influence the people’s government.
On February 12, 1788, he wrote to Mr. Dumas about his pleasure that the U.S. Constitution was about to be ratified, but he also expressed his concerns about what was missing from the Constitution. He was pushing hard for his own state to reject the Constitution if it didn’t protect people from the dangers he foresaw:
With respect to the new Government, nine or ten States will probably have accepted by the end of this month. The others may oppose it. Virginia, I think, will be of this number. Besides other objections of less moment, she [Virginia] will insist on annexing a bill of rights to the new Constitution, i.e. a bill wherein the Government shall declare that, 1. Religion shall be free; 2. Printing presses free; 3. Trials by jury preserved in all cases; 4. No monopolies in commerce; 5. No standing army. Upon receiving this bill of rights, she will probably depart from her other objections; and this bill is so much to the interest of all the States, that I presume they will offer it, and thus our Constitution be amended, and our Union closed by the end of the present year.9
By midsummer of 1788, things were moving along, and Jefferson was helping his close friend James Madison write the Bill of Rights. On the last day of July, he wrote to Madison,
I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new constitution by nine States. It is a good canvass, on which some strokes only want retouching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from north to south, which calls for a bill of rights. It seems pretty generally understood, that this should go to juries, habeas corpus, standing armies, printing, religion, and monopolies.10
The following year, on March 13, he wrote to Francis Hopkinson about continuing objection to monopolies:
You say that I have been dished up to you as an anti-federalist, and ask me if it be just. My opinion was never worthy enough of notice to merit citing; but since you ask it, I will tell it to you. I am not a federalist....What I disapproved from the first moment also, was the want of a bill of rights, to guard liberty against the legislative as well as the executive branches of the government; that is to say, to secure freedom in religion, freedom of the press, freedom from monopolies, freedom from unlawful imprisonment, freedom from a permanent military, and a trial by jury, in all cases determinable by the laws of the land.11
All of Jefferson’s wishes, except two, would soon come true. But not all of his views were shared universally.
The Rise of an American Corporate Aristocracy
Years later, on October 28, 1813, Jefferson would write to John Adams about their earlier disagreements over whether a government should be run by the wealthy and powerful few (the pseudo-aristoi) or a group of the most wise and capable people (the “natural aristocracy”), elected from the larger class of all Americans, including working people:
The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy. On the question, what is the best provision, you and I differ; but we differ as rational friends, using the free exercise of our own reason, and mutually indulging its errors. You think it best to put the pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber of legislation [the Senate], where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate branches, and where, also, they may be a protection to wealth against the agrarian and plundering enterprises of the majority of the people. I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief, is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil.12
Adams and the Federalists were wary of the common person (who Adams referred to as “the rabble”), and many subscribed to the Calvinist notion that wealth was a sign of certification or blessing from above and a certain minimum level of morality. Because the Senate of the United States was appointed by the states (not elected by the voters, until 1913) and made up entirely of wealthy men, it was mostly on the Federalist side. Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans disagreed strongly with the notion of a Senate composed of the wealthy and powerful.
“Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively,” Jefferson wrote to Adams in the next paragraph of that 1813 letter, still arguing for a directly elected Senate:
Of this, a cabal in the Senate of the United States has furnished many proofs. Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislation, to protect themselves....I think the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff. In general they will elect the really good and wise. In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them; but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society.
Jefferson’s vision of a more egalitarian Senate—directly elected by the people instead of by state legislators—finally became law in 1913 with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, promoted by the Populist Movement and passed on a wave of public disgust with the corruption of the political process by giant corporations.
Almost all of Jefferson’s visions for a Bill of Rights—all except “freedom from monopolies in commerce” and his concern about a permanent army— were incorporated into the actual Bill of Rights, which James Madison shepherded through Congress and was ratified on December 15, 1791.
But the Federalists fought hard to keep “freedom from monopolies” out of the Constitution. And they won. The result was a boon for very large businesses in America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which arguably brought our nation and much of the world many blessings.
But as we’ll see in the way things have unfolded, some of those same principles have also given unexpected influence to the very monopolies Jefferson had argued must be constrained from the beginning. The result has sometimes been the same kind of problem the Tea Party rebels had risked their lives to fight: a situation in which the government protects one competitor against all others and against the will of the people whose money is at stake—along with their freedom of choice.
As the country progressed through the early 1800s, corporations were generally constrained to act within reasonable civic boundaries. In the next chapter, we examine how Americans and their government viewed the role of corporations, up to the time of the Civil War and its subsequent amendments.
Notes:
The First Amendment protected citizens from the predations of churches by guaranteeing freedom of religion in a new nation that still had states and cities that demanded obedience to and weekly participation in state-recognized churches or religious doctrine. The Ninth Amendment was a direct and clear acknowledgement of Jefferson’s concept of the natural right of humans to hold all personal powers that they haven’t specifically and intentionally given to their government of their own free will. It reads, in its entirety, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
James Madison, speech in the House of Representatives, April 9, 1789, in James Madison, The Writings of James Madison, vol. 5., ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1900): 342–45.
James Madison, “Republican Distribution of Citizens,” National Gazette, March 3, 1792, http://olldownload.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=875&chapter=63884&layout=html&Itemid=27.
Andrew Jackson, fifth annual message to Congress, December 3, 1833, http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3640.
James Madison to James K. Paulding, March 10, 1827, http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1940&chapter=119324&layout=html&Itemid=27.
A statement by Albert Gallatin, who later became secretary of the Treasury after the Federalists lost power.
This early draft of the Declaration of Independence can be viewed at http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/rough.htm.
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=306.
Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Donald, February 7, 1788, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a7s12.html.
Thomas Jefferson to Mr. Dumas, February 12, 1788.
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, July 31, 1788, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=998.
Thomas Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl75.htm.
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, October 28, 1813, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl223.htm.
Copyright Thom Hartmann and Mythical Research, Inc.
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Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Obamacare Ruled Unconstitutional Again
From the New York Times:
"A second federal judge ruled on Monday that it was unconstitutional for Congress to enact a health care law that required Americans to obtain commercial insurance, evening the score at 2 to 2 in the lower courts as conflicting opinions begin their path to the Supreme Court.
But unlike a Virginia judge in December, Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., concluded that the insurance requirement was so 'inextricably bound' to other provisions of the Affordable Care Act that its unconstitutionality required the invalidation of the entire law.
'The act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker,' Judge Vinson wrote...
In his 78-page opinion, Judge Vinson held that the insurance requirement exceeded the regulatory powers granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. He wrote that the provision could not be rescued by an associated clause in Article I that gives Congress broad authority to make laws 'necessary and proper' to carrying out its designated responsibilities.
'If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain,' the judge asserted...
Judge Vinson’s opinion hangs on a series of Supreme Court decisions that have defined the limits of the Commerce Clause by granting Congress authority to regulate 'activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.'
The plaintiffs characterized the insurance requirement as an unprecedented effort to regulate inactivity because citizens would be assessed an income tax penalty for failing to buy a product.
Justice Department lawyers responded that a choice not to obtain health insurance was itself an active decision that, taken in the aggregate, shifted the cost of caring for the uninsured to hospitals, governments and privately insured individuals.
In his decision, Judge Vinson wrote, 'It would be a radical departure from existing case law to hold that Congress can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause.' If Congress has such power, he continued, 'it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted.'"
Why did Vinson rule the whole law unconstitutional because of a single provision? Ken Klukowski of the Family Research Council did a surprisingly great job of explaining why at Fox News:
"A single law usually contains many different provisions. Lawmakers know that if someone challenges the constitutionality of a statute, they often challenge only one or two provisions of it. So lawmakers usually try to make sure at least part of their law will survive.
The process of striking down only part of a law is called 'severability.' Therefore Congress almost always inserts a severability clause, saying that if part of the law is struck down, the remaining provisions continue in full force and effect.
Congress did not insert a severability clause in ObamaCare. So even though only a couple provisions of the health care law are being challenged in the Florida case — those two provisions being the individual mandate aka the requirement that every American has to buy insurance and also the sweeping expansion of Medicaid — the issue arises that if a court strikes down either of those provisions, it might strike down the entire statute...
Severability is an issue so far off the beaten path that few lawyers have ever dealt with it, even though including a severability clause in legislation — or in contracts — is so common that it’s now boilerplate. So it would surprise most lawyers that a judge would strike down all of ObamaCare.
But it’s not surprising if you look at how the Supreme Court deals with the issue of severability...
Not only does ObamaCare lack a severability clause, Congress also includes in the individual mandate section (which is Section 1501) a declaration that the mandate is 'essential' to the statute functioning in the manner Congress desires. This closely tracks language in the Supreme Court’s precedents for when a court must strike down the entire law."
Left unsaid is why no severability clause (which Klukowski describes as "boilerplate") was included in Obamacare. My guess is that Team Obama was so delusional in their assumption of how popular most of their reforms would be, they made it an all-of-nothing as a legal poison pill against challenges. A more cynical (and conspiratorial) explanation is that Democratic leadership secretly wants health reform to fail and have those evil Republicans in the Supreme Court be their scapegoat.
Perhaps the most disappointing trend of the ruling is this, as noted by the Times:
"The ruling by Judge Vinson, a senior judge who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, solidified the divide in the health litigation among judges named by Republicans and those named by Democrats.
In December, Judge Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, Va., who was appointed by President George W. Bush, became the first to invalidate the insurance mandate. Two other federal judges named by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, have upheld the law."
This despite the AP noting that the individual mandate is "an idea dating back to Republican proposals from the 1990s but is now almost universally rejected by conservatives." Indeed, the individual mandate was central to John McCain's "health reform" plan of 2008.
This underscores the pathetic dynamics of Obamacare: bunch of a Democratic apologists bending over backwards defending an unpopular plan made by right-wingers who wisely won't even defend it.
The upside down Bizzaro world of the Obamacare debate is summed up in by the World Socialist Web Site:
"The focus of the legal proceedings on the individual mandate is a byproduct of the Obama administration’s overall approach to the issue of health care, which is politically reactionary. The White House drafted legislation whose main purpose was to reduce health care costs for American corporations and the federal government, while enlisting the insurance industry, the drug companies and the for-profit hospital chains in the process and ensuring their profit interests.
Instead of establishing the right of all people to medical care — a right that is essential to a decent and humane society — the Obama administration legislated the right of profit-making insurance companies to collect premiums, mandating that every individual not covered by Medicare or Medicaid must purchase a health insurance policy.
This policy in effect blames the uninsured, i.e., the victims, for the failure of the profit-driven US health care system, and seeks to punish them by forcing them to pay exorbitant premiums or a fine estimated at nearly $2,100 per capita, once the system is fully in place in 2014.
This measure is regressive in itself, placing a considerable financial burden on hard-pressed low-wage workers. And it is doubly reactionary because it allows the political right, which opposes any extension of social benefits, to posture as the defender of 'individual freedom' against a new government imposition.
To the extent that the Tea Party agitation, financed by a handful of ultra-right-wing billionaires, was able to gain any popular influence, it is because of measures like the individual mandate and the Obama administration’s decision to finance its supposed expansion of coverage by cuts in Medicare, rather than through taxes on the wealthy or big business."
Federal Judge Rules That Health Law Violates Constitution
KEVIN SACK
January 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/us/01ruling.html
ObamaCare Unconstitutional -- Why Judge Vinson's Ruling Is So Important
Ken Klukowski
February 01, 2011
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/02/01/obamacare-unconstitutional-judge-vinsons-ruling-important
Federal judge rules Obama health care law unconstitutional
Patrick Martin
3 February 2011
http://wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/heal-f03.shtml
"A second federal judge ruled on Monday that it was unconstitutional for Congress to enact a health care law that required Americans to obtain commercial insurance, evening the score at 2 to 2 in the lower courts as conflicting opinions begin their path to the Supreme Court.
But unlike a Virginia judge in December, Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., concluded that the insurance requirement was so 'inextricably bound' to other provisions of the Affordable Care Act that its unconstitutionality required the invalidation of the entire law.
'The act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker,' Judge Vinson wrote...
In his 78-page opinion, Judge Vinson held that the insurance requirement exceeded the regulatory powers granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. He wrote that the provision could not be rescued by an associated clause in Article I that gives Congress broad authority to make laws 'necessary and proper' to carrying out its designated responsibilities.
'If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain,' the judge asserted...
Judge Vinson’s opinion hangs on a series of Supreme Court decisions that have defined the limits of the Commerce Clause by granting Congress authority to regulate 'activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.'
The plaintiffs characterized the insurance requirement as an unprecedented effort to regulate inactivity because citizens would be assessed an income tax penalty for failing to buy a product.
Justice Department lawyers responded that a choice not to obtain health insurance was itself an active decision that, taken in the aggregate, shifted the cost of caring for the uninsured to hospitals, governments and privately insured individuals.
In his decision, Judge Vinson wrote, 'It would be a radical departure from existing case law to hold that Congress can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause.' If Congress has such power, he continued, 'it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted.'"
Why did Vinson rule the whole law unconstitutional because of a single provision? Ken Klukowski of the Family Research Council did a surprisingly great job of explaining why at Fox News:
"A single law usually contains many different provisions. Lawmakers know that if someone challenges the constitutionality of a statute, they often challenge only one or two provisions of it. So lawmakers usually try to make sure at least part of their law will survive.
The process of striking down only part of a law is called 'severability.' Therefore Congress almost always inserts a severability clause, saying that if part of the law is struck down, the remaining provisions continue in full force and effect.
Congress did not insert a severability clause in ObamaCare. So even though only a couple provisions of the health care law are being challenged in the Florida case — those two provisions being the individual mandate aka the requirement that every American has to buy insurance and also the sweeping expansion of Medicaid — the issue arises that if a court strikes down either of those provisions, it might strike down the entire statute...
Severability is an issue so far off the beaten path that few lawyers have ever dealt with it, even though including a severability clause in legislation — or in contracts — is so common that it’s now boilerplate. So it would surprise most lawyers that a judge would strike down all of ObamaCare.
But it’s not surprising if you look at how the Supreme Court deals with the issue of severability...
Not only does ObamaCare lack a severability clause, Congress also includes in the individual mandate section (which is Section 1501) a declaration that the mandate is 'essential' to the statute functioning in the manner Congress desires. This closely tracks language in the Supreme Court’s precedents for when a court must strike down the entire law."
Left unsaid is why no severability clause (which Klukowski describes as "boilerplate") was included in Obamacare. My guess is that Team Obama was so delusional in their assumption of how popular most of their reforms would be, they made it an all-of-nothing as a legal poison pill against challenges. A more cynical (and conspiratorial) explanation is that Democratic leadership secretly wants health reform to fail and have those evil Republicans in the Supreme Court be their scapegoat.
Perhaps the most disappointing trend of the ruling is this, as noted by the Times:
"The ruling by Judge Vinson, a senior judge who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, solidified the divide in the health litigation among judges named by Republicans and those named by Democrats.
In December, Judge Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, Va., who was appointed by President George W. Bush, became the first to invalidate the insurance mandate. Two other federal judges named by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, have upheld the law."
This despite the AP noting that the individual mandate is "an idea dating back to Republican proposals from the 1990s but is now almost universally rejected by conservatives." Indeed, the individual mandate was central to John McCain's "health reform" plan of 2008.
This underscores the pathetic dynamics of Obamacare: bunch of a Democratic apologists bending over backwards defending an unpopular plan made by right-wingers who wisely won't even defend it.
The upside down Bizzaro world of the Obamacare debate is summed up in by the World Socialist Web Site:
"The focus of the legal proceedings on the individual mandate is a byproduct of the Obama administration’s overall approach to the issue of health care, which is politically reactionary. The White House drafted legislation whose main purpose was to reduce health care costs for American corporations and the federal government, while enlisting the insurance industry, the drug companies and the for-profit hospital chains in the process and ensuring their profit interests.
Instead of establishing the right of all people to medical care — a right that is essential to a decent and humane society — the Obama administration legislated the right of profit-making insurance companies to collect premiums, mandating that every individual not covered by Medicare or Medicaid must purchase a health insurance policy.
This policy in effect blames the uninsured, i.e., the victims, for the failure of the profit-driven US health care system, and seeks to punish them by forcing them to pay exorbitant premiums or a fine estimated at nearly $2,100 per capita, once the system is fully in place in 2014.
This measure is regressive in itself, placing a considerable financial burden on hard-pressed low-wage workers. And it is doubly reactionary because it allows the political right, which opposes any extension of social benefits, to posture as the defender of 'individual freedom' against a new government imposition.
To the extent that the Tea Party agitation, financed by a handful of ultra-right-wing billionaires, was able to gain any popular influence, it is because of measures like the individual mandate and the Obama administration’s decision to finance its supposed expansion of coverage by cuts in Medicare, rather than through taxes on the wealthy or big business."
Federal Judge Rules That Health Law Violates Constitution
KEVIN SACK
January 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/us/01ruling.html
ObamaCare Unconstitutional -- Why Judge Vinson's Ruling Is So Important
Ken Klukowski
February 01, 2011
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/02/01/obamacare-unconstitutional-judge-vinsons-ruling-important
Federal judge rules Obama health care law unconstitutional
Patrick Martin
3 February 2011
http://wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/heal-f03.shtml
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Our Founding Fathers Were Liberal, NOT Conservative
http://www.politicususa.com/en/founding-fathers-liberal
Our Founding Fathers Were Liberal, NOT Conservative
December 18, 2010
Ray Medeiros
A lot has been said about our founding fathers in recent years. The Tea Party has all of the sudden become historical scholars. They have become the defenders of our Country and our Constitution. Glenn Beck is their proverbial historical professor. Unfortunately their knowledge is fairly limited to specifically what their Fox News comrade regurgitates.
In 1797, Paine wrote a pamphlet called “Agrarian Justice“. It was his last great pamphlet and it was addressed to the French legislature, itself in the throes of revolution. While he addressed the pamphlet to the French legislature, he meant the plan in it to be universal, as he said in his accompanying letter:
The plan contained in this work is not adapted for any particular country alone: the principle on which it is based is general. But as the rights of man are a new study in this world, and one needing protection from priestly imposture, and the insolence of oppressions too long established, I have thought it right to place this little work under your safeguard.
Paine starts his proposal by discussing poverty. First of all, he says poverty is not natural:
“Poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state. On the other hand, the natural state is without those advantages which flow from agriculture, arts, science and manufactures.”
Paine decries the disparity of income just I have and many other liberals have today:
“Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways: to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched, than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.”
He accepts as a basic principle that:
“the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period.”
This thought is the same type of thought that we have today as Americans, We want the next generation to have a better standard of living than we had.
When Thomas Paine wrote this, unfortunately, this was not the case in 18th century Europe.
It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.
Thomas Paine in the next paragraph plans how to solve this problem:
Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund prod in this plan is to issue.
The property owners owe rent to those who do not own property for the privilege of cultivating the land, and taking away the natural ownership that all people have.
In my view, Thomas Paine is calling for Property taxes, and the the use of property tax to help the community as a whole.
In fact, Paine directly challenges the justification for pure private property with no community responsibilities:
There could be no such thing as landed property originally. Man did not make the earth, and, though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue.
Paine proceeds to justify private property on the common grounds that cultivation is important, but not without community responsibilities in exchange for permission to cultivate:
Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before
And just as today’s liberals continue do argue against the idea that they are simply trying to institutionalize charity or welfare, Paine rejected the idea that he was advocating for charity at all. Instead, he was advocating for a positive right.
In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for. But it is that kind of right which, being neglected at first, could not be brought forward afterwords till heaven had opened the way by a revolution in the system of government. Let us then do honor to revolutions by justice, and give currency to their principles by blessings
In other words, Paine considers a primary purpose of government to be remedying the problems of the marginalized poor as a fundamental right not as a form of institutionalized charity or welfare state.
In case you think this was all just an hypothesis, Paine finishes off with a detailed plan of how to move forward. His proposal:
To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property:
And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.
This proposal sounds like a national pension plan, similar to Social Security. Later on, Paine also argues for the same 10 pound payment to be made to the disabled. By comparison, a housewife could make between 6 and 8 pounds for a year.
But how is a country expected to raise enough money to give every citizen that much money upon turning 21, and pay living expenses for the elderly and disabled? The answer is an estate tax, inheritance tax or as the conservatives like to call it the DEATH TAX.
Taking it then for granted that no person ought to be in a worse condition when born under what is called a state of civilization, than he would have been had he been born in a state of nature, and that civilization ought to have made, and ought still to make, provision for that purpose, it can only be done by subtracting from property a portion equal in value to the natural inheritance it has absorbed.
Various methods may be proposed for this purpose, but that which appears to be the best is at the moment that property is passing by the death of one person to the possession of another. In this case, the bequeather gives nothing: the receiver pays nothing. The only matter to him is that the monopoly of natural inheritance, to which there never was a right, begins to cease in his person. A generous man would not wish it to continue, and a just man will rejoice to see it abolished.
Paine covers what kind of “revolution” he would like to see.”
It is not charity but a right, not bounty but justice, that I am pleading for. The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it. The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together. Though I care as little about riches as any man, I am a friend to riches because they are capable of good.
This quote by Thomas Paine is very similar to what I believe. Unfortunately through trickle down economics of the past
30 years we have seen people lose their jobs through outsourcing in order to increase the affluence of a few.
“I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene.”
Many on the right call for charity to help the poor rather than society. While it has it’s good intentions, it is simply not enough.
Here Thomas Paine explains:
There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed.
In other words, government, through taxation, and proposals such as the one he’s outlining here, are the only solution to the problem. In fact, he argues that a prime purpose of government is to resolve vast income inequality.
Again arguing for this plan as part of the French Revolution, Paine points out that by helping the poor, France will be better off in the end:
A plan upon this principle would benefit the revolution by the energy that springs from the consciousness of justice. It would multiply also the national resources; for property, like vegetation, increases by offsets. When a young couple begin the world, the difference is exceedingly great whether they begin with nothing or with fifteen pounds apiece. With this aid they could buy a cow, and implements to cultivate a few acres of land; and instead of becoming burdens upon society, which is always the case where children are produced faster than they can be fed, would be put in the way of becoming useful and profitable citizens.
In other words, we can resolve the burden on society by vast poverty by simply making it easier for the impoverished to start life with something, instead of being trapped in the cycle of poverty. Almost sounds like a modern-day liberal, doesn’t he?
Further, he argues that it’s not enough to help the poor once they become poor–we must fundamentally alter the conditions that unjustly produce poverty.
It is the practice of what has unjustly obtained the name of civilization (and the practice merits not to be called either charity or policy) to make some provision for persons becoming poor and wretched only at the time they become so. Would it not, even as a matter of economy, be far better to adopt means to prevent their becoming poor? This can best be done by making every person when arrived at the age of twenty-one years an inheritor of something to begin with.
It is cheaper to fix the larger problem of poverty than it is to apply failing band-aids on top of the problems of the impoverished.
This particular quote, Thomas Paine responds in advance of the wealthy who will most likely attack him for advocating for a social safety net. He did this by telling them that they were in favor of war, which costs more in taxes than the Social Security, disability payments, and inheritance that he is proposing.
It is from the overgrown acquisition of property that the fund will support itself; and I know that the possessors of such property in England, though they would eventually be benefitted by the protection of nine-tenths of it, will exclaim against the plan. But without entering any inquiry how they came by that property, let them recollect that they have been the advocates of this war, and that Mr. Pitt has already laid on more new taxes to be raised annually upon the people of England, and that for supporting the despotism of Austria and the Bourbons against the liberties of France, than would pay annually all the sums proposed in this plan.
So, you see or forefathers like Thomas Paine were not conservative in a sense of advocating for Economic Darwinism and individualism. There are many more quotes from various founding fathers all the way to today’s leaders and advocates.
Today we are still fighting the fight that led to Thomas Paine writing this pamphlet and we must continue, no matter what the cost.
Our Founding Fathers Were Liberal, NOT Conservative
December 18, 2010
Ray Medeiros
A lot has been said about our founding fathers in recent years. The Tea Party has all of the sudden become historical scholars. They have become the defenders of our Country and our Constitution. Glenn Beck is their proverbial historical professor. Unfortunately their knowledge is fairly limited to specifically what their Fox News comrade regurgitates.
In 1797, Paine wrote a pamphlet called “Agrarian Justice“. It was his last great pamphlet and it was addressed to the French legislature, itself in the throes of revolution. While he addressed the pamphlet to the French legislature, he meant the plan in it to be universal, as he said in his accompanying letter:
The plan contained in this work is not adapted for any particular country alone: the principle on which it is based is general. But as the rights of man are a new study in this world, and one needing protection from priestly imposture, and the insolence of oppressions too long established, I have thought it right to place this little work under your safeguard.
Paine starts his proposal by discussing poverty. First of all, he says poverty is not natural:
“Poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state. On the other hand, the natural state is without those advantages which flow from agriculture, arts, science and manufactures.”
Paine decries the disparity of income just I have and many other liberals have today:
“Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways: to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched, than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.”
He accepts as a basic principle that:
“the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period.”
This thought is the same type of thought that we have today as Americans, We want the next generation to have a better standard of living than we had.
When Thomas Paine wrote this, unfortunately, this was not the case in 18th century Europe.
It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.
Thomas Paine in the next paragraph plans how to solve this problem:
Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund prod in this plan is to issue.
The property owners owe rent to those who do not own property for the privilege of cultivating the land, and taking away the natural ownership that all people have.
In my view, Thomas Paine is calling for Property taxes, and the the use of property tax to help the community as a whole.
In fact, Paine directly challenges the justification for pure private property with no community responsibilities:
There could be no such thing as landed property originally. Man did not make the earth, and, though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue.
Paine proceeds to justify private property on the common grounds that cultivation is important, but not without community responsibilities in exchange for permission to cultivate:
Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before
And just as today’s liberals continue do argue against the idea that they are simply trying to institutionalize charity or welfare, Paine rejected the idea that he was advocating for charity at all. Instead, he was advocating for a positive right.
In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for. But it is that kind of right which, being neglected at first, could not be brought forward afterwords till heaven had opened the way by a revolution in the system of government. Let us then do honor to revolutions by justice, and give currency to their principles by blessings
In other words, Paine considers a primary purpose of government to be remedying the problems of the marginalized poor as a fundamental right not as a form of institutionalized charity or welfare state.
In case you think this was all just an hypothesis, Paine finishes off with a detailed plan of how to move forward. His proposal:
To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property:
And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.
This proposal sounds like a national pension plan, similar to Social Security. Later on, Paine also argues for the same 10 pound payment to be made to the disabled. By comparison, a housewife could make between 6 and 8 pounds for a year.
But how is a country expected to raise enough money to give every citizen that much money upon turning 21, and pay living expenses for the elderly and disabled? The answer is an estate tax, inheritance tax or as the conservatives like to call it the DEATH TAX.
Taking it then for granted that no person ought to be in a worse condition when born under what is called a state of civilization, than he would have been had he been born in a state of nature, and that civilization ought to have made, and ought still to make, provision for that purpose, it can only be done by subtracting from property a portion equal in value to the natural inheritance it has absorbed.
Various methods may be proposed for this purpose, but that which appears to be the best is at the moment that property is passing by the death of one person to the possession of another. In this case, the bequeather gives nothing: the receiver pays nothing. The only matter to him is that the monopoly of natural inheritance, to which there never was a right, begins to cease in his person. A generous man would not wish it to continue, and a just man will rejoice to see it abolished.
Paine covers what kind of “revolution” he would like to see.”
It is not charity but a right, not bounty but justice, that I am pleading for. The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it. The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together. Though I care as little about riches as any man, I am a friend to riches because they are capable of good.
This quote by Thomas Paine is very similar to what I believe. Unfortunately through trickle down economics of the past
30 years we have seen people lose their jobs through outsourcing in order to increase the affluence of a few.
“I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene.”
Many on the right call for charity to help the poor rather than society. While it has it’s good intentions, it is simply not enough.
Here Thomas Paine explains:
There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed.
In other words, government, through taxation, and proposals such as the one he’s outlining here, are the only solution to the problem. In fact, he argues that a prime purpose of government is to resolve vast income inequality.
Again arguing for this plan as part of the French Revolution, Paine points out that by helping the poor, France will be better off in the end:
A plan upon this principle would benefit the revolution by the energy that springs from the consciousness of justice. It would multiply also the national resources; for property, like vegetation, increases by offsets. When a young couple begin the world, the difference is exceedingly great whether they begin with nothing or with fifteen pounds apiece. With this aid they could buy a cow, and implements to cultivate a few acres of land; and instead of becoming burdens upon society, which is always the case where children are produced faster than they can be fed, would be put in the way of becoming useful and profitable citizens.
In other words, we can resolve the burden on society by vast poverty by simply making it easier for the impoverished to start life with something, instead of being trapped in the cycle of poverty. Almost sounds like a modern-day liberal, doesn’t he?
Further, he argues that it’s not enough to help the poor once they become poor–we must fundamentally alter the conditions that unjustly produce poverty.
It is the practice of what has unjustly obtained the name of civilization (and the practice merits not to be called either charity or policy) to make some provision for persons becoming poor and wretched only at the time they become so. Would it not, even as a matter of economy, be far better to adopt means to prevent their becoming poor? This can best be done by making every person when arrived at the age of twenty-one years an inheritor of something to begin with.
It is cheaper to fix the larger problem of poverty than it is to apply failing band-aids on top of the problems of the impoverished.
This particular quote, Thomas Paine responds in advance of the wealthy who will most likely attack him for advocating for a social safety net. He did this by telling them that they were in favor of war, which costs more in taxes than the Social Security, disability payments, and inheritance that he is proposing.
It is from the overgrown acquisition of property that the fund will support itself; and I know that the possessors of such property in England, though they would eventually be benefitted by the protection of nine-tenths of it, will exclaim against the plan. But without entering any inquiry how they came by that property, let them recollect that they have been the advocates of this war, and that Mr. Pitt has already laid on more new taxes to be raised annually upon the people of England, and that for supporting the despotism of Austria and the Bourbons against the liberties of France, than would pay annually all the sums proposed in this plan.
So, you see or forefathers like Thomas Paine were not conservative in a sense of advocating for Economic Darwinism and individualism. There are many more quotes from various founding fathers all the way to today’s leaders and advocates.
Today we are still fighting the fight that led to Thomas Paine writing this pamphlet and we must continue, no matter what the cost.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Suit on Health Care Bill Appears Likely to Advance
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/health/policy/15health.html
Suit on Health Care Bill Appears Likely to Advance
KEVIN SACK
September 14, 2010
PENSACOLA, Fla. — A federal judge indicated on Tuesday that he would give a green light to a lawsuit filed by elected officials from 20 states who are challenging the constitutionality of the new health care law and its requirement that most individuals obtain medical insurance.
Although he did not issue a formal ruling, Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court said at the close of a two-hour hearing that he leaned toward denying the federal government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, on at least one count. That would end the jockeying over whether states have legal standing to challenge the law, and move the case to a full debate over its fundamental constitutional question: Is the federal government’s power so broad that Congress can require citizens to purchase a commercial product like health insurance?
Judge Vinson did not detail which claims he might sustain and which he might dismiss as improper. But he said he would issue an opinion no later than Oct. 14, and scheduled arguments on the merits of the case for Dec. 16.
The Pensacola case would be the second of more than 15 lawsuits filed against the health law to advance to this stage. Last month, a federal judge in Richmond, Va., rejected a Justice Department request to dismiss a similar lawsuit filed by Virginia’s attorney general. That case is scheduled for oral argument on Oct. 18.
Experts on both sides expect the challenges to eventually present the Supreme Court with a landmark opportunity. “Our whole system of federalism rests on the decisions of this case,” said Florida’s attorney general, Bill McCollum, a Republican who is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit here.
Although the Florida case is proceeding slightly behind its Virginia counterpart, it has been closely watched as a possible first among equals in the appellate process because of the political weight carried by the plaintiffs. They include 16 attorneys general, all but one a Republican, and four Republican governors.
Two individuals and the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small companies, were added to the lawsuit to fend off the federal government’s contention that states do not have standing to sue because they have not been injured by the new health law.
Given that all but one of the state plaintiffs are Republicans, the lawsuit is seen as one prong of a partisan strategy to eviscerate the law in the courts, at the ballot box and on Capitol Hill.
By filing the lawsuit in Pensacola, Mr. McCollum ensured that the case would be heard by a Republican appointee to the District Court, and then by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, a generally conservative bench that handles cases from Florida. Judge Vinson, a senior judge who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan, is a former naval aviator and a member of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, as well as the president of the American Camellia Society.
His comments from the bench on Tuesday suggested initial skepticism of the federal government’s claim that an individual’s decision to not purchase insurance constitutes commercial “activity” that can be regulated by Congress.
“You’re trying to turn the word upside down and say activity is really equivalent to inactivity,” Judge Vinson at one point challenged Ian H. Gershengorn, a deputy assistant United States attorney general.
Each of the legal challenges to the health care law is somewhat different, and judges around the country have ruled differently on whether plaintiffs have legal standing to sue. Judges recently tossed out lawsuits filed by individuals and interest groups in California and Maryland, but those filed by state officials have survived.
Mr. McCollum, who recently lost Florida’s Republican primary for governor, watched the hearing in the courtroom along with Attorneys General Troy King of Alabama and Mark L. Shurtleff of Utah.
The Florida lawsuit attacks the sweeping health care law on a number of fronts. Most prominently, it charges that the insurance requirement, which does not take effect until 2014, exceeds the traditional reach of the Commerce Clause in Article I of the Constitution. The Supreme Court in its most recent opinion on the matter said the clause allows Congress to “regulate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.”
David B. Rivkin Jr., a Washington lawyer hired to represent the plaintiffs, argued that if the government could regulate individual decisions to not purchase health insurance there could be no meaningful limits on federal power. “Congress can regulate commerce,” he said. “But Congress cannot create it.”
Mr. Gershengorn countered that decisions to not buy insurance, taken in the aggregate, have a direct effect on commerce because uninsured people still consume health care, and often cannot pay. That uncompensated care, he said, is subsidized by others and drives up costs for hospitals, governments and privately insured individuals.
“The appearance of inactivity here is just an illusion,” Mr. Gershengorn said. What Congress is regulating, he said, is how and when people will pay for the medical services they will inevitably consume. “This is not telling people you have to buy a product,” he said. “It’s saying this is how you have to pay for your health care.”
The states also argue that the new law, by vastly expanding the shared state and federal Medicaid program, amounts to a coercive commandeering of state resources. The federal government initially will pay for the entire eligibility expansion, but states will start paying a share in 2016 that eventually rises to 10 percent.
The Justice Department responds that the Medicaid program, which provides health insurance to those with low incomes, is voluntary, and that states may withdraw if they wish. But Blaine H. Winship, an assistant Florida attorney general, said that presented states with a Hobson’s choice that ignored the safety-net role played by Medicaid for more than four decades.
“I think it’s disingenuous,” he told Judge Vinson. “The idea that we could walk away from Medicaid is just essentially nonsensical.”
The judge seemed to empathize. “This really puts all 50 states on the short end of the stick,” he said. “States are in a Catch-22 situation.”
A version of this article appeared in print on September 15, 2010, on page A20 of the New York edition.
Suit on Health Care Bill Appears Likely to Advance
KEVIN SACK
September 14, 2010
PENSACOLA, Fla. — A federal judge indicated on Tuesday that he would give a green light to a lawsuit filed by elected officials from 20 states who are challenging the constitutionality of the new health care law and its requirement that most individuals obtain medical insurance.
Although he did not issue a formal ruling, Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court said at the close of a two-hour hearing that he leaned toward denying the federal government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, on at least one count. That would end the jockeying over whether states have legal standing to challenge the law, and move the case to a full debate over its fundamental constitutional question: Is the federal government’s power so broad that Congress can require citizens to purchase a commercial product like health insurance?
Judge Vinson did not detail which claims he might sustain and which he might dismiss as improper. But he said he would issue an opinion no later than Oct. 14, and scheduled arguments on the merits of the case for Dec. 16.
The Pensacola case would be the second of more than 15 lawsuits filed against the health law to advance to this stage. Last month, a federal judge in Richmond, Va., rejected a Justice Department request to dismiss a similar lawsuit filed by Virginia’s attorney general. That case is scheduled for oral argument on Oct. 18.
Experts on both sides expect the challenges to eventually present the Supreme Court with a landmark opportunity. “Our whole system of federalism rests on the decisions of this case,” said Florida’s attorney general, Bill McCollum, a Republican who is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit here.
Although the Florida case is proceeding slightly behind its Virginia counterpart, it has been closely watched as a possible first among equals in the appellate process because of the political weight carried by the plaintiffs. They include 16 attorneys general, all but one a Republican, and four Republican governors.
Two individuals and the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small companies, were added to the lawsuit to fend off the federal government’s contention that states do not have standing to sue because they have not been injured by the new health law.
Given that all but one of the state plaintiffs are Republicans, the lawsuit is seen as one prong of a partisan strategy to eviscerate the law in the courts, at the ballot box and on Capitol Hill.
By filing the lawsuit in Pensacola, Mr. McCollum ensured that the case would be heard by a Republican appointee to the District Court, and then by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, a generally conservative bench that handles cases from Florida. Judge Vinson, a senior judge who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan, is a former naval aviator and a member of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, as well as the president of the American Camellia Society.
His comments from the bench on Tuesday suggested initial skepticism of the federal government’s claim that an individual’s decision to not purchase insurance constitutes commercial “activity” that can be regulated by Congress.
“You’re trying to turn the word upside down and say activity is really equivalent to inactivity,” Judge Vinson at one point challenged Ian H. Gershengorn, a deputy assistant United States attorney general.
Each of the legal challenges to the health care law is somewhat different, and judges around the country have ruled differently on whether plaintiffs have legal standing to sue. Judges recently tossed out lawsuits filed by individuals and interest groups in California and Maryland, but those filed by state officials have survived.
Mr. McCollum, who recently lost Florida’s Republican primary for governor, watched the hearing in the courtroom along with Attorneys General Troy King of Alabama and Mark L. Shurtleff of Utah.
The Florida lawsuit attacks the sweeping health care law on a number of fronts. Most prominently, it charges that the insurance requirement, which does not take effect until 2014, exceeds the traditional reach of the Commerce Clause in Article I of the Constitution. The Supreme Court in its most recent opinion on the matter said the clause allows Congress to “regulate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.”
David B. Rivkin Jr., a Washington lawyer hired to represent the plaintiffs, argued that if the government could regulate individual decisions to not purchase health insurance there could be no meaningful limits on federal power. “Congress can regulate commerce,” he said. “But Congress cannot create it.”
Mr. Gershengorn countered that decisions to not buy insurance, taken in the aggregate, have a direct effect on commerce because uninsured people still consume health care, and often cannot pay. That uncompensated care, he said, is subsidized by others and drives up costs for hospitals, governments and privately insured individuals.
“The appearance of inactivity here is just an illusion,” Mr. Gershengorn said. What Congress is regulating, he said, is how and when people will pay for the medical services they will inevitably consume. “This is not telling people you have to buy a product,” he said. “It’s saying this is how you have to pay for your health care.”
The states also argue that the new law, by vastly expanding the shared state and federal Medicaid program, amounts to a coercive commandeering of state resources. The federal government initially will pay for the entire eligibility expansion, but states will start paying a share in 2016 that eventually rises to 10 percent.
The Justice Department responds that the Medicaid program, which provides health insurance to those with low incomes, is voluntary, and that states may withdraw if they wish. But Blaine H. Winship, an assistant Florida attorney general, said that presented states with a Hobson’s choice that ignored the safety-net role played by Medicaid for more than four decades.
“I think it’s disingenuous,” he told Judge Vinson. “The idea that we could walk away from Medicaid is just essentially nonsensical.”
The judge seemed to empathize. “This really puts all 50 states on the short end of the stick,” he said. “States are in a Catch-22 situation.”
A version of this article appeared in print on September 15, 2010, on page A20 of the New York edition.
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