I happen to think Citizens United was correctly decided. The U.S. Constitution does not provide for the good behavior of individual natural persons to be directed by their agents of government. Keep in mind that the people govern. Now, it could be argued that the use of currency, a public utility issued at the direction of Congress, can be legislated by the issuers. But then one might also ask why the issuers of the currency are not providing for the promotion and hiring of public servants out of the public purse. Why are Congress critters looking for kick-backs? Why are they looking for kick-backs from corporations, artificial bodies whose establishment is authorized by governmental entities to which they are, therefor, subordinate? How is this not extortion? Because the corporation have been compliant and failed to lodge complaints? TRADITION! That is the explanation for how the electoral process has been hijacked by self-designated factions, aka parties, to select and promote individuals from the commercial sector to protect commercial interests on Capitol Hill and state legislative bodies. That is why Elizabeth Warren was absolutely correct when she claimed that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the FIRST federal agency set up to serve the interests of individual persons. All else has been to promote commerce--all commerce, not just the trade in slaves. How do we define slavery? If it's "involuntary servitude," that is still with us as punishment for crime. If it's the ownership of humans as property, that is still with us as the status of all juveniles until the attain the age of emancipation. Which accounts for why the U.S. has refused to sign on to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. U.S. children have no rights. Besides, the Constitution does not recognize human rights. That is why convicts can be killed and women can be forced to reproduce. Oh, and suicide is a crime.
From a distance it looks like the river rose maybe six inches. The weatherperson is predicting rain Monday evening into Tuesday, maybe a third of an inch. We will take what we can get.
Cool enough to wear a jacket and cap when walking this morning, light breeze, partly cloudy sky. We will do a bit of grocery shopping and then some gardening. Tomorrow we are supposed to get our new heater, which will be nice. Rooting around on YouTube this morning I happened across a video of a group of urban sketchers doing a sketch crawl in the medieval center of Lübeck; it has been about sixty years since I studied German, but I could understand enough.
Brave Little State made me aware that State Rep. Thomas Burditt would like Vermont to move to Daylight Saving Time (DST) year ‘round. There is a bill (H.168) before the Vermont House seeking this remedy.
The difficulty in going to DST year ‘round is that the Federal Government only permits states to choose to remain on Standard Time year ‘round, if they so choose, but not DST. That this does not serve Vermont well became clear to me today when the sun set at 4:34pm, with more than 6 weeks left of days getting shorter. Many people struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder, time changes are hard on the body, evidenced by how many accidents and heart attacks happen in the wake of a time change. The sun ought not set mid-afternoon, yet soon it will.
As the Brave Little State podcast explains, there is a bill before Congress that, when passed, would allow states to choose to stay on DST year ‘round, if they so choose. Please support H.R. 69, the Sunshine Protection Act, so that Vermont may freely choose to have more daylight.
As soon as the Democrats in the House of Representatives, marshaled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), passed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (H.R. 3684) by a bipartisan vote of 228–206 last night, Republicans began to say that the Democrats were ushering in “socialism.”
When Republicans warn of socialism, they are not talking about actual socialism, which is an economic system in which the means of production, that is, the factories and industries, are owned by the people. In practical terms, that means they are owned by the government.
True socialism has never been popular in America, and virtually no one is talking about it here today. The best it has ever done in a national election was in 1912, when labor organizer Eugene V. Debs, running for president as a Socialist, won a whopping 6% of the vote, coming in behind Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft. True socialism isn't a real threat in America.
What politicians mean when they cry “socialism” in America today is something entirely different. It is a product of the years immediately after the Civil War, when Black men first got the right to vote.
Eager to join the free labor system from which they had previously been excluded, these men joined poor white men to vote for leaders who promised to rebuild the South, provide schools and hospitals (as well as desperately needed prosthetics for veterans), and develop the economy with railroads to provide an equal opportunity for all men to work hard and rise.
Former Confederates loathed the idea of Black men voting. But their opposition to Black voting on racial grounds ran headlong into the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which, after it was ratified in 1870, gave the U.S. government the power to make sure that no state denied any man the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” When white former Confederates nonetheless tried to force their Black neighbors from the polls, Congress in 1870 created the Department of Justice, which began to prosecute the Ku Klux Klan members who had been terrorizing the South.
With racial discrimination now prohibited by the federal government, elite white southerners changed their approach. They insisted that they objected to Black voting not on racial grounds, but because Black men were voting for programs that redistributed wealth from hardworking white people to Black people, since hospitals and roads would cost tax dollars and white people were the only ones with taxable property in the Reconstruction South. Poor Black voters were instituting, one popular magazine wrote, "Socialism in South Carolina."
This idea that it was dangerous for poor working men to have a say in the government caught on in the North as immigrants moved into growing cities to work in the new factories. Like their counterparts in the South, they voted for roads and schools, and northern men of wealth too insisted these programs meant a redistribution of wealth through tax dollars.
They got more concerned still when a majority of Americans began to call for regulation to keep businessmen from gouging consumers, polluting the environment, and poisoning the food supply (milk was preserved with formaldehyde, and candy was often painted with lead paint). Wealthy men argued that any attempt to regulate business would impinge on a man's liberty, while an army of bureaucrats to enforce regulations would cost tax dollars and thus would mean a redistribution of wealth from men of means to the poor who would benefit from the regulations.
Long before the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia brought the fears of a workers' government to life, Americans who opposed regulation insisted that their economy was under siege by socialists. That conviction did indeed lead to a redistribution of wealth, but as regular Americans were kept from voting, it went dramatically upward, not down.
Regulation of business and promotion of infrastructure is not, in fact, the international socialism today’s Republicans claim. According to Abraham Lincoln, who first articulated the principles of the Republican Party, and under whom the party invented the American income tax, the “legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves---in their separate, and individual capacities.” Those things included, he wrote, “public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself.”
One of Maha's bloggers. He's lalked about this from time to time. Very interesting guy. I'm getting two copies for Christmas presents.
ReplyDeletehttps://doughughesauthor.com/
I happen to think Citizens United was correctly decided. The U.S. Constitution does not provide for the good behavior of individual natural persons to be directed by their agents of government. Keep in mind that the people govern.
DeleteNow, it could be argued that the use of currency, a public utility issued at the direction of Congress, can be legislated by the issuers. But then one might also ask why the issuers of the currency are not providing for the promotion and hiring of public servants out of the public purse. Why are Congress critters looking for kick-backs?
Why are they looking for kick-backs from corporations, artificial bodies whose establishment is authorized by governmental entities to which they are, therefor, subordinate? How is this not extortion? Because the corporation have been compliant and failed to lodge complaints?
TRADITION!
That is the explanation for how the electoral process has been hijacked by self-designated factions, aka parties, to select and promote individuals from the commercial sector to protect commercial interests on Capitol Hill and state legislative bodies.
That is why Elizabeth Warren was absolutely correct when she claimed that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the FIRST federal agency set up to serve the interests of individual persons. All else has been to promote commerce--all commerce, not just the trade in slaves.
How do we define slavery? If it's "involuntary servitude," that is still with us as punishment for crime. If it's the ownership of humans as property, that is still with us as the status of all juveniles until the attain the age of emancipation. Which accounts for why the U.S. has refused to sign on to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. U.S. children have no rights. Besides, the Constitution does not recognize human rights. That is why convicts can be killed and women can be forced to reproduce. Oh, and suicide is a crime.
Here’s puddle’s link made clickable: https://doughughesauthor.com/
DeleteRobert Reich: It’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working class [Click] Yep.
ReplyDeleteSerge Schmemann: The mystery of ‘Havana Syndrome’ [Click] The successor to “Moscow Eye”
ReplyDeleteBernie holds essay contest for Vermont high school students: write about a current issue and how you’d solve it.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.wcax.com/2021/11/07/sanders-holds-essay-contest-vermont-high-school-students/
The legendary 'miracle' rings of Ourense [Click]
ReplyDeleteWooden bird bought for £75 revealed to be Anne Boleyn’s – and is now worth £200,000 [Click]
ReplyDeleteAwesome! So happy for the person who snagged it!
Delete
ReplyDeleteHow one of California’s cheapest cities became unaffordable: ‘the housing market is broken’ [Click]
Boris Johnson sleaze crisis deepens [Click] Why, the poor fellow. Perhaps he could find relief by meditating on his golden wallpaper.
ReplyDeleteThe river seems to have risen a little bit--most of a sandbar in the river bottom has disappeared.
ReplyDelete🌊Hurrah!☔️
DeleteFrom a distance it looks like the river rose maybe six inches. The weatherperson is predicting rain Monday evening into Tuesday, maybe a third of an inch. We will take what we can get.
DeleteWhy a new U.S.-EU trade arrangement about steel is surprisingly important [Click]
ReplyDeleteSunny day here, low 50's. Perfect for outdoor work. Thus, out I go...!
ReplyDeleteCool enough to wear a jacket and cap when walking this morning, light breeze, partly cloudy sky. We will do a bit of grocery shopping and then some gardening. Tomorrow we are supposed to get our new heater, which will be nice. Rooting around on YouTube this morning I happened across a video of a group of urban sketchers doing a sketch crawl in the medieval center of Lübeck; it has been about sixty years since I studied German, but I could understand enough.
DeleteWhat we're getting wrong about the 'Great Resignation' [Click] It is far more complicated than it appears.
ReplyDeleteThere has to be something here about chickens that you were not aware of. [Click] Among other things, I learned that chickens, eggs, and milk were not rationed in the US during WWII.
ReplyDeleteTo my good Congressman, Peter Welch:
ReplyDeleteBrave Little State made me aware that State Rep. Thomas Burditt would like Vermont to move to Daylight Saving Time (DST) year ‘round. There is a bill (H.168) before the Vermont House seeking this remedy.
https://www.vpr.org/podcast/brave-little-state/2021-11-05/ask-bob-what-would-it-take-to-end-daylight-saving-time?fbclid=IwAR1OCa8jCjxusLe4AlBVzBK5qeXwS9UqliZgQ7lm6o3M9Ktt6zdBZ-Pr2zY
The difficulty in going to DST year ‘round is that the Federal Government only permits states to choose to remain on Standard Time year ‘round, if they so choose, but not DST. That this does not serve Vermont well became clear to me today when the sun set at 4:34pm, with more than 6 weeks left of days getting shorter. Many people struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder, time changes are hard on the body, evidenced by how many accidents and heart attacks happen in the wake of a time change. The sun ought not set mid-afternoon, yet soon it will.
As the Brave Little State podcast explains, there is a bill before Congress that, when passed, would allow states to choose to stay on DST year ‘round, if they so choose. Please support H.R. 69, the Sunshine Protection Act, so that Vermont may freely choose to have more daylight.
With Gratitude for all you do!
Back in the day when I had to go somewhere to work, I never enjoyed getting up in the dark of the night. But I can set my own hours now.
Delete
ReplyDeleteHeather Cox Richardson Nov 7
As soon as the Democrats in the House of Representatives, marshaled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), passed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (H.R. 3684) by a bipartisan vote of 228–206 last night, Republicans began to say that the Democrats were ushering in “socialism.”
When Republicans warn of socialism, they are not talking about actual socialism, which is an economic system in which the means of production, that is, the factories and industries, are owned by the people. In practical terms, that means they are owned by the government.
True socialism has never been popular in America, and virtually no one is talking about it here today. The best it has ever done in a national election was in 1912, when labor organizer Eugene V. Debs, running for president as a Socialist, won a whopping 6% of the vote, coming in behind Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft. True socialism isn't a real threat in America.
What politicians mean when they cry “socialism” in America today is something entirely different. It is a product of the years immediately after the Civil War, when Black men first got the right to vote.
Eager to join the free labor system from which they had previously been excluded, these men joined poor white men to vote for leaders who promised to rebuild the South, provide schools and hospitals (as well as desperately needed prosthetics for veterans), and develop the economy with railroads to provide an equal opportunity for all men to work hard and rise.
Former Confederates loathed the idea of Black men voting. But their opposition to Black voting on racial grounds ran headlong into the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which, after it was ratified in 1870, gave the U.S. government the power to make sure that no state denied any man the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” When white former Confederates nonetheless tried to force their Black neighbors from the polls, Congress in 1870 created the Department of Justice, which began to prosecute the Ku Klux Klan members who had been terrorizing the South.
With racial discrimination now prohibited by the federal government, elite white southerners changed their approach. They insisted that they objected to Black voting not on racial grounds, but because Black men were voting for programs that redistributed wealth from hardworking white people to Black people, since hospitals and roads would cost tax dollars and white people were the only ones with taxable property in the Reconstruction South. Poor Black voters were instituting, one popular magazine wrote, "Socialism in South Carolina."
This idea that it was dangerous for poor working men to have a say in the government caught on in the North as immigrants moved into growing cities to work in the new factories. Like their counterparts in the South, they voted for roads and schools, and northern men of wealth too insisted these programs meant a redistribution of wealth through tax dollars.
continued
ReplyDeleteThey got more concerned still when a majority of Americans began to call for regulation to keep businessmen from gouging consumers, polluting the environment, and poisoning the food supply (milk was preserved with formaldehyde, and candy was often painted with lead paint). Wealthy men argued that any attempt to regulate business would impinge on a man's liberty, while an army of bureaucrats to enforce regulations would cost tax dollars and thus would mean a redistribution of wealth from men of means to the poor who would benefit from the regulations.
Long before the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia brought the fears of a workers' government to life, Americans who opposed regulation insisted that their economy was under siege by socialists. That conviction did indeed lead to a redistribution of wealth, but as regular Americans were kept from voting, it went dramatically upward, not down.
Regulation of business and promotion of infrastructure is not, in fact, the international socialism today’s Republicans claim. According to Abraham Lincoln, who first articulated the principles of the Republican Party, and under whom the party invented the American income tax, the “legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves---in their separate, and individual capacities.” Those things included, he wrote, “public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself.”