"And the Rockets Red Glare..."

Fort McHenry, Baltimore, MD flies a replica of the Star Spangled Banner

We went out to Ft McHenry -- about ten years ago -- on what may have been our last visit to Baltimore, in fact on what was probably our last day there on our last visit.

What I remember was how damned hot it was, blazing hot, and the humidity was high as well. It was in September, too. Despite spending several Septembers in Florida -- where the weather seems to be pretty damned hot and wet pretty much all the time -- I had never experienced heat and humidity like that at Ft. McHenry before and I'd really rather not do so again. This from someone who lived in California's Central Valley for decades. Summertime temperatures in the Valley are often over 100 and can on occasion be over 110 -- up to, say, 115 or so. Not pleasant, to be sure, but survivable because "it's a dry heat." Well, usually. Sometimes it's not...

I understand that at the "Restore the 4th" gathering at the State Capitol in Sacramento yesterday, the temperature was 109. Hot, hot, hot. Those kinds of summer temperatures are normal in Sacramento; it's not due to global warming. The irony is that the lingering rains and actually cooler temperatures in the Valley are more symptomatic of global warming there, whereas here in the East Mountains of New Mexico, it's the heat and drought.

But we've had rain here every day since June 30, apparently the Monsoon is coming in right on schedule. Actually, the weather people say this daily rainfall is not the Monsoon, because the storms are mostly coming from the north and east, and the Monsoon comes up from the west and south and the Gulf of Mexico. So the rains we've been having on a Monsoon schedule are considered anomalous because there is so little moisture coming up from the south or crossing over from the west. Bad as the drought has been here, I understand it has been worse in Mexico proper. I can only imagine.

What I saw of the "Restore the 4th" rallies showed somewhat muted and sparse crowds that weren't really crowds at all. They were hand fulls. A dozen or so in Albuquerque, a few hundred max in some other places, a few scattered 4th Amendment Supporters here and there; that leads me to believe there may have been no more than a few thousand demonstrators in all the land yesterday. How disappointing.

Well, what can I say. We ourselves went out to the Route 66 Casino and had us some fun. We came back through Albuquerque as the multiple fireworks displays were under way -- which made for quite a spectacle given the lightning that was flashing over the mountains. It was really quite a show, and as we crossed over the mountains ourselves, the rain came down in buckets. Day before, there had been much hail, so much that it looked like a heavy snowfall in places like Santa Rosa, and Meadowlake out in Valencia County was mostly flooded. The folks there raised quite a stink when the county told them they'd get no help till after the holiday. Priorities!

The 4th Amendment has never been all that operative when you think about it. If one is a member of a targeted Out Group, the 4th barely applies, and then only under certain tightly confined circumstances. No knock and blanket warrants are common, no warrants in emergencies (ever more broadly defined) is not unusual, and warrantless digital searches have always been part of -- indeed, features of -- the intertubes. Given the way the 4th has been ignored or sidestepped routinely over the past few centuries, and especially how it was all but voided during the conquest of the continent, the various labor uprisings and Red Scares, and more recently the Existential Terror Threats, it seems to me that getting all worked up over it now is a day late and a dollar short.

What is anyone going to do about it?

This is where the hysteria over NSA spying is strikingly dissonant, at least in my view. There have long been big problems with it in part because it is mostly being done by corporate partners like Booz Allen Hamilton, for which Young Snowden worked at the last. (I'd be careful making too much of that, though, because it looks like much of the documentation he collected and gave to the Guardian and possibly others was acquired in 2009 and 2010 rather than recently, which leads to a whole other set of questions about it -- and him.)  But ultimately the NSA portion of the Domestic Surveillance Apparat is that of the aggregator, not so much the instigator, and because it is "above the fray" if you will, the attacks on the NSA for violating the 4th Amendment strike me as jejune. Yes, they are violating it, but so what? What are they doing with their accumulated data? Nobody really knows, do they? Has any of it been used to persecute Americans or "US persons"? Again, nobody knows. Has the NSA been engaging in this persecution -- if it has happened at all -- on its own account? If anybody can testify, please, come forth.

What about the daily violations of the 4th by the FBI, and local and state police forces? Do those suddenly not matter because the NSA has a vast data collection and storage capacity? Because the NSA is in violation of the 4th Amendment, we should forget about all the rest?

That's the message the hysteria communicates, whether or not that's the intent of those undertaking the revelations.

Didn't we fight a revolution in order to secure these rights? No, actually we didn't. The concept of the Bill of Rights comes from an earlier era, and from a prior "revolution" in Britain, the so-called Glorious Revolution that deposed the Stuart monarch James II, and put in on the English throne his daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange. As part of the deal made with them by the insurgents, they were required to accede to the Declaration of Right of 1688 and English Bill of Rights of 1689, which they did. Bless their hearts. Most of the provisions of the English Bill of Rights were already a part of civil and criminal law in the English Colonies that revolted from the Crown c. 1776, and they continued to be part of the post-colonial legal framework of the now independent states. The United States Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, became an issue rather later, when a national government under the Constitution was instituted c. 1789, due to the perceived necessity to control the power of the new government just as the power of the Crown had been partially controlled previously. The American Revolution was not fought to secure these rights, for they were already as secured to American subjects as to the British, though it was often in the breach rather than in practice -- due to exigent circumstances, dontchaknow.

"Exigent circumstances...." Well, here we are again, n'est pas? Come to think of it, have Our Rulers ever not been operating under "exigent circumstances?"

But, but, but, but, surely we don't want the NSA spying on us innocent Americans, just as we don't want the TSA fondling our junk as it were. We must put a stop to it!!!! Well, I won't fly any more if I can avoid it, partly because of the invasive and officious behavior of the TSA. I de-Facebooked and de-Twitted partly because of the utter lack of privacy they entail though it had more to do with their utter time-wasting and hyper-marketing, but that's another issue.

Of course I still use Blogger and Hotmail. And I've never been much for heavy-duty encryption, or any of the other means of dancing around and sidestepping the Surveillance State. For a time, I even had a Carbonite account! OMG! As I see it, you can't really live in the Modern World and avoid all forms of surveillance, given the multitude of ways the private sector tracks your every move and the myriad ways the private sector shares and sells that information to the Perfidious Government. Unless you choose to live as a hermit in the wilderness, you're not going to escape it -- and even then, you probably won't as there are many means most of us don't even think about to keep track of and surveille hermits in the wilderness.

The NSA hysteria is in my view a sideshow and distraction from the very real issues involving day-to-day surveillance by the private sector on behalf of government or on their own account,  and the increasing levels of economic injustice that pervade our Land of the Formerly Free and Home of the Constantly Fearful. In my view, those who are most vocal about the NSA and its data capture and storage don't care in the least about the kinds of invasive ground-level surveillance most of us are subjected to from the private sector and they tend to ignore or actually support the economic injustice that has been eviscerating the middle classes and crushing the poor in this country for years.

This story will be told one day. And when it is, may we come to realize just how badly we've been had...

How It Could All Shake Out...

The last couple of days have displayed one of the most remarkable news cycles in quite a long time. I'd say there's been nothing quite like it since the opening of the Pentagon Papers fracas all those many years ago. Certainly the Bradley Manning Thing has never reached this level of hoarse-throated media screaming frenzy. Nor did even the recent AP Thing reach this level of extremity.

Glenn breaks a story in the Guardian (in a piece that was clearly and rather heavily massaged by someone else; I'm pretty sure that was Spencer Ackerman, though it may have been simply the Guardian's editorial department) touching on the breadth and depth of domestic spying in this country, using -- for the first time that I know of -- an actual FISA court order as the primary documentation. There is a good deal of to-do over this breaking story, not so much because the information it presents is all that "new" (it isn't, not to those who have been following the metastasizing Security State) but because it is now firmly documented in black and white for the first time. It's no long a matter of what "sources familiar with the program(s)" are saying about them, it is now directly a matter of what a top secret court has ordered.

It was interesting that the WaPo and NYT jumped into the fray with their own stories, apparently independently sourced, almost immediately, presenting the same information in pretty much the same way, essentially confirming the Guardian story in detail and actually expanding on the story in some ways.

These didn't look to be stories written in haste to play catch up, either. It was almost as if these stories were mostly pre-written.

Then almost immediately thereafter, we had the stories about the internet being hoovered by the Agencies, now being slightly walked back ("foreign internet only, don'tchaknow.")

Both the WaPo and the NYT are notorious for their close associations with the American spy shops, government agencies and factional players within the government. They are often doing the bidding of one or another of the agencies or factions, and frequently they act as little more than propaganda organs for the government sequentially or simultaneously. This is well-known, but it doesn't seem to be so well understood, as many people still rely on them as primary news sources and believe that what they read in the Times or the Post is credible and correct. There are plenty of people who continue to believe that if something isn't in the NYT or the WaPo, it isn't really "news" at all.

The Guardian has always been outside this nexus, or so it would seem, being British and all. But I started to wonder about it when the Guardian, along with the NYT,  became primary publisher of Wikileaks material.

This became very much a Spy vs Spy issue in my mind as all kinds of mainstream -- and compromised -- outlets were added to the primary publisher category for Wikileaks. My suspicions were heightened that Wikileaks was not just a matter of a honey-pot, but of a serious effort to tightly control the what and how of information release. Julian's eventual fallings-out with the media he himself had chosen as publishers of the trove he had received from Manning were signs to me that Julian wasn't terribly bright -- or that he was as compromised as the outlets he had chosen. The extraordinary level of drama surrounding his various run-ins with The Law and his eventual running to ground over Swedish/Interpol warrants really took away from anything Wikileaks presented to the World, and has by this point made Wikileaks into a very marginal player in the numberless rounds of charge and counter charge in the whole "sekrits" game.

Ever since the Correspondents' Dinner, Team Obama has been under an apparently withering assault from the Right and parts of the media over this or that "scandal" -- to wit, the IRS Thing, the AP Spying Thing, the FOX Reporter Thing, etc. Each one has been ginned up to a frenzy and then left dangling. Now there's this.

When the media Things got all that attention, I -- among a few others -- said, "Wait just a damned minute. This surveillance shit has been perpetrated against the People of the United States for years and years, and you want some kind of special exemption for the highly compromised media? The answer is NO! The issue is the general surveillance of the American People, and until and unless the media makes that a Big Deal, I'm not going to have much sympathy for the AP or FOX."

And would ya lookit now.

Some observers have questioned both the timing and the content of the current leaks regarding domestic surveillance. Given the widespread rightist ideological framework of the previous leaks -- and the OUTRAGE!!!® produced by the current ones -- and the highly personal tenor of the anti-Obama frenzy that's being manufactured over all of them ("I voted for this man TWICE!!! He betrayed me!!!!") I wouldn't be at all surprised if every bit of it isn't part and parcel of a carefully engineered Get Obama! Campaign being waged by the rightist of rightist factions within the government/media-plex for the purpose of ending Obama's already highly constrained ability to govern.

The personal character of the OUTRAGE!!!!® is a tell that there is no intent to curtail the Surveillance State. The intent is merely to hamstring the President.

Who would be interested in that, one wonders. Well, of course, it's the Cheneys and those they serve. This has been obvious as sin since day one of the Obama Administration -- since even before it began. That harpie-spawn of the Devil Dick was carrying on like a total madwoman -- and she was on all the shows, too -- over Obama's announced plans to review and revise and reconsider all the elements of the Great And Glorious Cheney Wars, and her relentless carping had an obvious effect.

In fact, her efforts and those of her father's seemed to terrify the White House into compliance with the wishes of House Cheney in almost every particular. Ever since, any time a Cheney arises from the crypt to lambaste the White House and Obama for this or that failing or overreach, the White House complies with their demands.

Cheney, in effect, is still President. Who the Cheneys serve is another question, though, isn't it.

At any rate, the Surveillance State is a Cheney innovation, and the likely shakeout of all this hoo-hah is that surveillance will be redoubled, not curtailed. There is no doubt in my mind that the Constitution will not be restored to viability, and there is no intention whatsoever that it be revived. In fact, the intent seems to me to be to ensure its perpetual irrelevance from now on. I can see no real intent to get rid of Obama, but there is plenty of intent to control him, and the Cheneys have shown they can do that with barely a curl of their lip. The media has already declared Obama's Second Term Agenda (whatever it might have been, and I surely don't know) to be Dead, Dead, Dead; his only choice is to follow the dictates of the Rightists who've been in charge all along anyway.

OUTRAGE!!!!® is a product, these days it's a packaged product traded for attention and favors. The internet cannot exist without it in abundant measure. The fact that Americans are being surveilled in their multitudes has long been discussed, but not necessarily documented the way it is now. There is no sign -- at all -- that the White House or the Congress (and certainly not the courts) will back off even an inch from the level of universal surveillance currently in place, nor is there much evidence (at least so far) that the People will be up in arms about it. As is so often the case, leftish internet OUTRAGE!!!!® will have no perceptible effect on policy. On the other hand, the existence of leftish OUTRAGE!!!!® at Team Obama will have the effect of further constraining any effort at adopting or expanding positive policies on behalf of the People.

The Surveillance State, after all, exists to preserve, protect and defend the (rightist) government and its sponsors from the People. So far, so good.

We'll see. There may be many more shoes left to drop. I would bet money though that the upshot will be even more surveillance and repression, more inverted totalitarianism.

We are not getting out of this handbasket anytime soon.

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Scott Creighton continues to cast his jaundiced but gimlet eye on the Whole Thing. Check it out. You and I may not agree with his perspective, but then again...

Republicans All The Way Down

Shipoopi-Kabuki

The Dreaded Sequester is now upon us. Apparently. Well, given the Kabuki that is Washington Theater, we never really know whether anything is ever an actual yay or nay -- or even whether it matters -- in that otherworldly realm. They will do what they want and when they want to screw the rest of us, and if that screwage is most effectively accomplished through Sequestration, then so be it.

Now of course in Washington Theater, everything is always the result of Republicans doing something nasty to the Democrats -- who are always, of course, being entirely reasonable and completely powerless.

This has been going on for decades now. The actors and the victors are always the diminishing handful of Republicans -- such as Dame Mitch McConnell, or everyone's least favorite Munster-cousin Paul Ryan. The hapless Dems just take it, whatever "it" may be at the moment, and then when they are not being hapless, they're totally feckless. When their fecklessness fails, they are simply craven.

It is now Iron Law. It was not ever thus, nor need it be thus, but it is thus, and for whatever reason,  the plot cannot be changed. Republicans are the actors in our play. Dems react. If they aren't simply cowering in the corner.

The notion of cutting the federal budget during a now essentially permanent recession seems slightly, somewhat, just a teense counter intuitive, especially given that it is relatively obvious -- even to Republicans and the media who serve them -- that continuing reductions in government workforces are a major drag on economic recovery. Republicans make clear they understand this full well when they scream and fuss about all the military budget cuts and all the military contractors who will be forced to cut back their work-forces because of the Dreaded Sequester. They know full well that their rhetoric about the Government Never Creating A Job is bullshit, but they figure that the Dems are too feckless and craven to counter these lies effectively, and they're too hapless to point out the glaring hypocrisy of paying for endless military spending (on top of the bloated Imperial Domestic Security State)  on the basis of "jobs, jobs, jobs!"

Yeah, well.

This performance on the Washington Stage is being brought to us by a unified company. It includes both parties in Congress and the White House, acting in concert to accomplish certain mutually agreeable ends. Those ends include the fleecing and screwage of the rest of us.

The concept that it is all the Republicans' fault -- or all the Democrats', or Nino Scalia's -- fault is kind of essential myth making and propaganda, intended to maintain division among the Lower Orders. That division is essential for continuing control of said Orders, and that control is necessary for the continued unmolested fleecing and screwage -- which is all Our Betters think the rest of us deserve anyway.

The Dreaded Sequester does little in the context of the overall budget -- because it is such a tiny percentage of overall spending. But because of its focus on bang for the buck, so to speak, the harm caused to ordinary people will be significant -- intentionally. The harm to the poorest among us will be especially harsh, and few will pay much attention because that's the way budget cuts have been implemented for many years now.  But intentional harm to the collapsing middle class will be significant as well.

Obviously, Republicans don't have to worry about what happens to ordinary people in any case because they don't have "constituents" as the term is ordinarily understood. They have client who they serve -- as long as the price is right. Dems may have the same or different clients, but they lack "constituents" as well. The People matter not a whit to the Rulers.

It is so because even when the People become restive, they are still reluctant to do anything that Rulers believe they need pay any attention to. Nobody expects the Paris Commune, but it's well past time to demand something better out of the Washington image machine -- something beyond "it's Republicans all the way down!" (And oh how the "Left" loves to play that game!)

Interestingly, there is some nascent ferment on the Constitutional front, even going so far as to suggest replacing the antiquated, indeed fossilized and ignored, establishing document we have with something appropriate and new. The Voting Rights issue seems to be a trigger to the realization that the establishing document itself is deeply, terminally flawed (because there is no People's right to vote in the Constitution). Regardless of what you believe about the ideology of the Supreme Court majority, if they are going to rule based on what they believe the framers of the Constitution meant, and they will not allow any deviation, then perhaps -- just maybe -- it is time to abolish the whole rickety mess and start over.

Will wonders never cease.

A People's Constitution

A Wiki Project is under way (click here to go there) to formulate a New Constitution for some version of a reconstituted United States of America -- whether Before the Fall or After the Revolution Comes, or some other catastrophe strikes, or just noodling about Building a Better Future, one of my persistent themes, especially this year of Revolution and Upheaval.

Some of those who pass by this blog may not know about it and might want to participate. There is plenty of room, and I'm told that everyone is welcome to visit, to check things out, and if they register, to participate just as fully as or as little as they want.

While there are many different perspectives and points of view being expressed already, I'd say the unifying theme is anti-Imperialism.

Ché says Check It Out!

Hating On Teh Government

As readers may know, I was a Federal employee for about 11 years and left to retire early because I was sick of what was going on, much of which I have mercifully blocked from my memory. It... wasn't pretty.

And this was well into the Obama Reign.

Strangely enough, during the Bush Regime, while matters were becoming more and more politicized and less professionalized, there was far less maneuvering and infighting in the agency, far more common interest in and devotion to duty.

Now why would that be?

There were of course plenty of signs of internal deterioration, but that dated back to the Clinton Era, when the Government was actually shut down several times. That, I'm convinced, did more to undermine government employee loyalty than just about anything else in recent memory, but the advent of -- and disappointment in -- the Obama Reign really did seem to change attitudes and actions to complete Survival Mode.

Leaving one to doubt there was any point in Public Service any more.

In discussing the situation with others, though, people who have much longer service than I do, it's clear enough that this situation -- especially the doubt in the value of Public Service -- is routine, comes and goes, and you work through it or you don't. Politicization of service comes and goes, "survivalism" is the usual state of bureaucratic institutions -- and therefore of their employees -- but not everyone is adapted to this frame of mind. Non-Survivalists, if that's an appropriate term, would probably be better off elsewhere.

In other words, I made the right decision. It's always gratifying to know you've done the right thing, isn't it?

Sure.

Having had experience "within the belly of the beast" as it were (and my experience with Government dates to long before I joined the Federal service, as I'd been contracting with and serving on local Government boards and agencies for many years) I sometimes find it amusing that so many people, particularly of a Libertarian bent, are shocked!, shocked I tell you! when they "discover" -- whether for the first time or over and over again -- the way Government operates.

Particularly are they astonished and outraged at the Hypocrisy of Electeds.

Good heavens! How can they be so unprincipled!? How can they not mean what they say!? I don't know. It is quite a trick, isn't it? So many of them get away with it, too, as they have since the origin of the Republic. Yet to discover that they still do, with bells on, continues to be a shock and surprise! Oh! My! Goodness!

I loved Senator DeMint's letter to Geithner and his determination that The Government would be Brought to Heel by his Manly Insistence that the Debt Ceiling not be raised unless all the cuts he and his cohorts demanded were enacted, in full, with interest, yadda yadda, and The Government could just pay interest on the Debt and not Default, what scare tactics the Other Side (ie: The Government) was employing, DeMint was not amused.

He prates on and on, waxing quite wroth, about The Government and what it has done and must do, and who is to blame and whatnot, never once acknowledging that he and his cohorts in Congress Assembled are part of this very Government he's waxing so wroth about, and so are the Courts and the President, and so on and so forth. And you can't separate them into The Government and Me-Not The Government.

But that's what clowns like him do, all the time, and those tactics appeal to a certain segment of the populi and so it goes.

Hilarity ensues.

Well, sometimes.

All I'm getting at is that Electeds behave the way they do because of the way Government and the Political System is arranged. The Government -- and the Political System that feeds it and is in fact part of it -- was set up for the protection of Privileged White Southern Gentlemen (many of whom got the notion that they "deserved to rule" therefore) and that is actually what it does and what it will continue to do. It has nothing at all to do with Principle.

Rand Paul, about as Privileged a White Southern Gentleman (well, White Male, at any rate) as there is discovered to his delight the other day that he could bring operations of the Senate to a screeching halt unless and until his Demands regarding the renewal of the PATRIOT Act were met. Those Demands were simple enough: a vote on his amendments, primarily one restricting The Government's ability to inquire about and investigate -- or even, gasp, refuse -- "terrorist" access to firearms. He dug in his heels, held the Senate hostage for three days, and he got his vote. His amendments were defeated. He was pleased.

Like many of his colleagues, he pretended that The Government he was holding hostage -- and whose actions he hated and despised -- did not include himself. It was instead some Alien Imposition on the Rights and Privileges of Citizens like Himself.

No, The Government, as flawed and faulty as it is, IS himself and all of his colleagues AND those who serve it, civilian and military alike. There is no "them/us." It is all of a piece, and he and his ilk are part of it.

But the pretense is as it has always been: The Government is by definition "alien" and an improper "imposition" on the Freedom of Citizens to... impose their personal and private authority on others.

In other words, Citizens banding together to Form a More Perfect Union is simply Usurpation of the Rights and Privileges of Individuals, particularly those of White Southern (Gentle)men such as the Pauls.

Therefore, ironically, the entire history of Constitutional Self-Government in this country is as Rand Paul's father -- and many of the Libertarian ilk -- have long claimed: deep in error, wrong from the get-go, and an intolerable usurpation of Individual Freedom.

The sole Principle involved is the individual (not Governmental, in other words) assertion of Authority over others -- and their lands, goods, and chattel.

That's it. Period.

Hating on the Government for interfering in this individual assertion of Authority is an ongoing theme in American Life.

There once was a time when American expansionism allowed plenty of physical space for individuals to assert their personal Authorities as they chose. But those days are long gone; now it is much more difficult for those with the urge to lord it over someone else or to form and rule some petty kingdom of his own -- without the regulation or imposition of The Government -- to do so.

So those who make their purpose in life the Individual Assertion of Authority can find themselves in a very difficult position. There is no unclaimed territory left for them to migrate to and assert themselves. The Frontier has long been closed.

What I'm seeing in response -- both from the inside and outside The Government -- is a concerted effort by a coalition of Libertarians and billionaires to literally dismantle The Government so as to ensure that it cannot interfere with their desire to impose their Authority without the interference of The Government. They are seeking to confine The Government entirely to the protection of their personal/private/corporate and individual interests, and to forbid The Government from serving the Public Interest -- which they don't believe in in any case.

They are winning, and they are using the deeply rooted flaws in our Constitution and the Political System to do so. And they are winning because they have almost no active opposition.

As I've said many times, we are witness to the End of the Republic, much as the Romans in times of yore witnessed the end of their Republic -- and Americans, like the Romans, are greeting it with a shrug.

Too bad that the replacement in both cases is... The Empire.

Relentless

They say the Rs are shelving the Ryan Plan to Gut Medicare for the time being, while -- of course -- "quietly" continuing their campaign to gut government funding of social services. As the states encounter more and more budgetary limitations, funding for social programs is inevitably cut. Federal support is also being cut somewhat more gradually right now, but the cuts are growing, and ultimately they will be draconian.

Rs will get their way. They always do in the end.

They are relentless.

And that's the key to the current situation. No matter what happens, the Rs find that events and circumstances always justify what they've done and what they want to do. Cutting taxes, regulations, and services are what they want to do, and they pursue that goal without deviation no matter what.

And they succeed.

They succeed with the sometimes shockingly active collaboration and cooperation of the Democrats, their ostensible political opposition. But as we have learned over the years, the Rs and the Ds are not really opposition parties; they are essentially two phases of one Government Party, both essentially bought and paid for by a shrinking but devilishly wealthy Ownership Class whose interests and demands are the primary focus of the political system.

As was the case generations ago, so it is now: the Government exists to serve the interests and needs of the Owners, no one else.

Unfortunately, this condition is built in to our anachronistic Constitution, and so long as we are governed by that Constitution -- even if only in theory -- so long will Government of, by and for the Rich in opposition to the People endure.

So it was at the beginning, so it is now, so it will be forever unless the People take into their own hands the means and methods of forming a government in their interests.

Unless the People become as relentless in pursuing their interests -- which are going to be in opposition to those of the Ruling Class, there's no way around it -- the consolidation of rule in the hands of a tiny minority of the Rich will continue without let up.

The Rs (with their D collaborators) will continue to succeed, even if it takes them a little bit longer to reach their goals than they originally decreed.

The People must resist.

[AND come up with viable alternatives -- that aren't simply futile attempts to maintain the status quo... ]

What Constitution?

[Note: I've been dreadfully ill since returning to California from New Mexico. I hope this episode won't require hospitalization, but if things don't start showing signs of improvement soon, I just may have to buckle under, and where that will lead... I dread to think.]

"And so it begins," as they say.

The Fourteenth Amendment is the one that will be under immediate and relentless assault as soon as the New Model Congress and State Legislatures assemble in January. The rightists and reactionaries have been quite up front about what they have in mind: restricting "birthright citizenship" to those born to citizens.

The opening wedge, of course, will come via Arizona's bizarre rightist brown-people hater, one Robert Pence, author of the execrable SB 1070 that made it a crime to be unable to produce proof of citizenship or legal residency on demand of an Officer of the Law.

The assault on the Bill of Rights (except for the Sacred Second) has been underway since the Founding, and the limitations and restrictions on those "rights" (so-called) have been expanded to such an extent that most are now subject to the interpretation of whomever wishes to assert authority over someone else.

It's that bad.

Anyway, the 14th Amendment has stuck in the craws of many reactionary rightists over the years because it does two impermissible things: it extends citizenship to everyone born on US soil (who is subject to US jurisdiction) regardless of the legal status of their parents, and it:

Protects rights against state infringements, defines citizenship, prohibits states from interfering with privileges and immunities, requires due process and equal protection, punishes states for denying vote, and disqualifies Confederate officials and debts

Every bit of it is hated and despised by the reactionary rightists, and I note with interest that many of the Libertarians are still obsessing on Julian and Bradley Manning and what's to become of WikiLeaks.

The more important consideration for most Americans when it comes down to it is what is to become of the 14th Amendment. If the rightists succeed in weakening it -- which looks like a possibility in these difficult times -- it will open a door they have long wished to have access to:

Restricting citizenship rights in general.

This has long been a goal, not only of rightists and reactionaries as a class but of a significant number of Libertarians as well. They all believe that only the "right kind" of person should be granted the privileges of citizenship, and that doesn't include the masses. They are too ignorant, too lazy, too bone stupid to deserve such privileges. Besides, most of them wouldn't miss their citizenship rights if they were taken away. Most Americans don't use them anyway.

Here's a quick squib from TIME Magazine from 1924 which will give you a little taste of how deeply resented the 14th Amendment has been since its ratification in 1868:

In New Orleans, a suit has been filed in the Federal District Court to oust Walter L. Cohen, Collector of Customs of the Port of New Orleans. Mr. Cohen is a Negro, and the petition, filed by Edwin H. Both of Washington, D. C, and Carl E. McHenry of New Orleans, alleges that he obtained his appointment in the U. S. revenue service by subscribing to an oath that he was a citizen of the U. S. when, as a matter of fact, he was "of African descent and, therefore, incapable of becoming a citizen of the United States." The basis of this contention is that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was never legally ratified by three fourths of the states. It was submitted, it is charged, by a Congress from which the Southern States were excluded. Also, it is said, the six Southern states which ratified it did so "under compulsion" and New Jersey and others withdrew their ratification.

The validity of the 14th Amendment has frequently been discussed as an academic question. This suit, however, marks the first time it has ever been before the courts. Said The New York Tribune: ". . . an engaging attempt at nothing less than the juristic revision of the Civil War. . . . The confidence of these two Southern gentlemen in the Supreme Court is monumental. Not even Mr. LaFollette ever charged that it could remake history."


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,769107,00.html#ixzz18fdH6VsB

Indeed. The whole point of Jim Crow laws in the South was to cancel the 14th Amendment, and it was largely successful for nearly 100 years. But Jim Crow style workarounds to the 14th Amendment were instituted throughout most of the rest of the country as well, the whole point being to limit and restrict the civil rights of citizenship to the "right kind of people."

We've only lived a few decades under a profoundly different regime, which takes the 14th literally, and given the reactionary and rightist make up of today's Supreme Court, we're liable to go back to the way things used to be. The 14th cannot be struck down, but just as legislatures and courts did during the Jim Crow era, it can be relatively easily circumvented. It's not just about citizenship, either. It's the whole ugly notion of "equal protection under the law."

They can't rewrite it, and they can't very well repeal it, but they will try every work around and subversion that creeps into their rotten little minds until the 14th is effectively inoperative once again.

That's the game plan.

Civil Liberties Fanatics, where are you?

It will be interesting to see what positions and actions they take on this issue come January.

My prediction: they'll find something else that is so much more important.

Michael Waldman opines:

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_16880625?nclick_check=1

Nino has his say:

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2010/11/antonin-scalia-14th-amendment-should.html

[You see, it's not just about the Messicans, you people. It's about Teh Ghey, too. Eventually, it will get back around to the Negroes, not to forget the Wimmens.]

As the SacBee puts it:

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/19/3268814/arizonas-next-immigration-debate.html

Let's Add "Peace" to "Dignity" and "Justice"

To me, Dignity and Justice are encompassing principles that can be construed to cover most of what we desire in forming and implementing modern nation states. But in the current context of the United States as HyperPower pursuing global hegemony through war and Imperial rule, specifying "Peace" as an objective and a foundational principle is more and more desirable.

We may come to question the advisability of any nation-state in the modern world, but the default position -- absent nation-states -- would have to be either World Empire (which is the direction we're going), or tribal units, which is the direction I would prefer, though with many caveats.

=================
Some random notes:

I am in favor of abolishing the states and substituting semi-autonomous regional governments, for the simple reason that states have become as rotten and corrupt as the Federal government, in fact, they probably started out that way. There are far too many statelets on the East Coast that could be more practically governed as a unit. There is a serious mismatch between the interests of various regions of the country and some of the states have internal mismatches between the interests, populations, and geography of one sector versus another. Break them up, reform them into affinity regions.

Autonomy is important. Direction from the Capital is only feasible with a unified polity, and the United States has never been that. Expansion merely disperses and institutionalizes inherent division. Instead, try for internal unification within the regional polities.

With regional autonomy, ironically, the national assembly can become an Imperial state, but one with strictly limited powers. In other words, the urge to empire, which appears to be deeply ingrained in the American psyche, can be expressed in a national government which ostensibly rules its autonomous regions (think parts of post Maoist China) with all the pomp and circumstance required, but which is purposely benign.

In fact, the national government does not "rule" so much as fulfill the mutual interests of the peoples of the regions.

With Peace as a foundational principle, the nation, much like China, does not engage in armed conflict abroad, and strictly limits armed domestic action. Yes, we have to think about domestic police action, potentials for armed rebellion and so on.

Dignity and Justice are principles that serve as brakes on the predatory interests and intentions of some, generally small, proportion of any population, and sometimes the predators among us become dangers to themselves and others. Their control becomes an interest of the People and the State, but that interest may have to be backed up with force. Predators do not generally yield willingly.

Dignity and Justice encompass more than Law; they are foundational principles of the social contract. They are fundamental principles of a desirable economic and social condition as well as legal principles. One should not separate Law from economic and social justice.

How they are expressed may be different from region to region, and the national expression may be different still.

To be continued...

Redoing the Constitution on Principles of Dignity and Justice

Dignity and Justice

Recently, our friends on the right have taken direct aim at provision of the Constitution that they don’t like, mostly amendments like the 14th, but opening the notion that the Constitution itself is outdated and should probably be “revisited.”

This has meant that many of those on the so-called Left, by default, must defend the Constitutional status quo, even though, many, like me, believe that the Constitution is an anachronism, faulty, and has long been an impediment to progress.

So what will happen -- regardless of whether there are any substantive revisions to the Constitution -- is that discussion of revision will take place from the right, primarily on the premise of 1) strengthening the executive, 2) curtailing or eliminating individual rights, 3) institutionalizing economic rule by the wealthy.

We might see a revision of the concept of “Law” to provide a Constitutional foundation for the long time practice of one Law for the rich, another -- and much harsher -- Law for everyone else. We might see a reversion to “States’ Rights” by which the several states may override Federal Law.

Whatever the case, our friends on the Right are not shy at all about re-doing the Constitution (or substituting the Confederate Constitution) to suit themselves.

Those on the Left bleat pathetically that “Things Are Fine As They Are. Leave the Constitution alone!!!”

But they’re not fine.

They haven’t been for a long time, if they ever were. And rather than a defensive posture, why not take an aggressive stance and demand changes to the Constitution that actually serve the interests of the People rather than letting the Rabid Right prattle about changes that would only serve the Oligarchy?

Peoples Dignity and Justice should be the principles on which a New Constitution is formulated, and we should not be the least bit shy about it and what’s needed.

We can start with the premise that the way things are isn’t working, and they aren’t working because of institutional rot on the one hand and Constitutional imperfection on the other. The way things are -- basically a very corrupted Imperial-Security State run by and for the profit of a very few individuals and interests -- is a direct product of the nature of the Constitution adopted in 1789.

So how would I change it?

First, abolish the Senate.

Second, abolish lifetime judicial appointments.

Third, expand the House of Representatives, by at least double, triple would be better.

Fourth, abolish the states.

Fifth, develop and implement autonomous regions in place of states.

Sixth, develop and implement economic as well as political rights.

Seventh, restrict and limit war-making powers ; institutionalize a defensive military subject to civilian control.

Eighth, restrict and limit the national executive authority .

Ninth, abolish all courts, departments, agencies and bureaus of the current Federal government and replace them only as necessary and as authorized by the representatives of the People.

That’s a start.

Just a start.

If these Constitutional revisions (actually, re-writing the whole thing) were considered on the basis of common human rights, dignity and justice, we'd see a transformed American experiment in self-determination and self-government.

The time has come...

(Note, I'm traveling at least until next week. Posting here may therefore be limited.)

On Redoing the Constitution

You may have noticed that the Rabid Right Wing Noise Machine is banging the drum for a "revisit" of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the ostensible reason being that these foreigners, they come here only to "drop a baby," and thus secure an anchor for citizenship.

But this isn't the only amendment they have issues with; by no means. They have objections to the first, fourth, fifth and sixth; they believe the tenth has long been violated in spirit and substance. Given their druthers, they'd do away with the 17th Amendment, and if you drill down far enough, you'd probably find plenty of TeaBagging ravers who want to overturn the 13th, 15th and 16th Amendments as well as the 19th. But why stop there?

They have issues. You see. And if they had the opportunity, I don't doubt they'd love to start over from scratch, and a whole lot of them would simply prefer to substitute the Confederate Constitution -- with slight modifications.

It's the 14th Amendment's provision of automatic citizenship to those born in the United States or under its jurisdiction that they've chosen as the wedge leading to redoing the whole damn thing.

It's a pretty brilliant ploy. There is a lot of anti-immigrant feeling in the United States due in part to malingering racism (the immigrants are mostly from South of the Border, don't you know) and to the dreadful economic conditions for most Americans.

Pitting one group against another is the time honored ploy of the Ruling Class to ensure their own top-doggedness through all the vicissitudes of popular sentiment.

But in this case, given the general contempt for the Constitution that pervades the Ruling Class (cf: recent Palace regimes) and the contempt for particular provisions of the Constitution that offend the sensibilities of the vocal TeaBagging Brownshirts, it looks very much like this "Movement to Revisit" -- starting with the 14th Amendment -- which is actually the key to the whole Constitutional notion of extending the protections of the Constitution to all Americans, and defining who Americans are -- is the opening salvo in a campaign to openly overthrow the Constitution itself.

And start over?

Well, that's yet to be seen. The point is that the Government has essentially already divorced itself from The People, and over time, it has become the increasingly common practice of The Government to ignore the Constitution when it chooses to. This is a difficult concept to fathom, but it is more and more apparent that the Constitution is little more than a decoration when it comes to actual operations by the Government in all its branches and majesty. The Executive routinely pays it no mind -- with no consequences. The Congress is too corrupted to consider the Constitution, more concerned always with its own rules and perks. The Courts have a very spotty record of following the Constitution and the law, rather than creating out of whole cloth "law" and "Constitutional support" for their generally mindless political positions.

In practice, the military and the bureaucracy do what they're told -- by corrupt and anti-constitutional officials.

So why not start over?

I've advocated no less myself. But isn't it interesting that those who would take up the challenge are fierce anti-constitutionalists operating on the Right Wing, whereas I would look to revise our Constitutional underpinnings from the Left? And isn't it further interesting that so-called Leftists are now in the position of having to defend the status quo Constitution from the depredations of the Right Wing barbarians, whereas many on the Left would be more inclined toward revision themselves if given their druthers?

What's happening with the 14th Amendment may not go anywhere, but it is an example -- yet again -- of how the Right Wing in this country consistently takes the lead for real change toward a far more authoritarian, oppressive and exploitative future, while the Left sits passive or at best parenthetically defends the status quo.

This is how the nation keeps moving rightward.

To the point where it wouldn't be surprising to see the whole "equal protection" framework of the 14th Amendment and thus the Constitution itself overthrown -- in order to satisfy some deep need to protect and defend the nation from Brown Babies.

Three Little Words

Cato-bots, Federalists, Corporatists of all stripes, Libertarians, Propertarians, and Randians almost universally praise the Citizens United decision in such identical terms it looks like a really pimply circle jerk. The celebrations over the Liberation of Corporations from the Oppression they have been under since the first Progressive campaign finance restriction laws were passed a century ago -- and well before that, given the frequency of prohibitions on Corporate participation in campaigns and elections that were commonplace in America from the Founding on -- all praise the Court for their adherence to the First Amendment and the Constitution...

In the process, they forget those those three little words that start the document they regard as Holy Writ:

We the People

I know, it's hard, really, really hard for these Sanctifiers to comprehend the simple truth in front of their faces: the document they revere (or say they do), flawed as it is, was written not as an abstract exercise in Nation Creation, but as a foundation and framework for The People to work out their common interest and welfare.

The Sanctifiers deny that. The People aren't even involved, in their view, in the process of "working out" their "common interest" and "welfare." Except for the Preamble, the Constitution is the completion of that "working out." Since the Preamble is not Sacred Text but merely Prologue, what it says about the function of the document under consideration is simply extraneous. The Text itself is the the Whole of the Law. Everything else is Commentary. And often is Deep in Error.

It is up to the Sacred Priesthood, annointed, to determine with absolute certainty and clarity what is and is not allowed by Holy Writ, and to declare bans and anathema on any who dissent.

That Priesthood is not, by the way, the Supreme Court. How could it be? There is nothing in the Constitution that establishes the Supreme Court as the arbiter and determiner of what the Law is. They took that role on themselves, but they are not the Sacred Priesthood. How could they be? They err.

Inerrancy is found only among the Annointed Ones of the Federalist Society, the Cato Institute and from time to time among the higher ranks of Libertarians, Propertarians and Randians. Everyone else is rabble to be dismissed, and who may consider themselves lucky in the process.

I have said that I find Glenn's stand on the Citizens United ruling to be "contemptible," even though I agree with him on many issues. The problem has been from the beginning that he -- like most Cato-bots, Federalist apparatchiks, and so forth -- approaches the issue in the abstract, and uses only what he regards as valid textural reading and interpretation of the First Amendment to declare campaign finance laws that restrict the "free speech rights" of corporations to be Unconstitutional.

In other words, the Black Letter of the Law -- as Glenn reads it -- is the only thing that matters; no consideration of consequences or the People's common interest can enter into the equation.

Given what the Court had to do to get to where they wanted to be, which is to say the Liberation of Corporations from their Oppression, I would call the whole thing a farce.

A Dumb Show designed to entertain, not enlighten.

On the other hand, unless the People for whom this Constitution was supposed to function take more active control of their mutual welfare and common interest, the only rational conclusion is "We're Doomed!"

We welcome our Generous Corporate Overlords and offer our apologies for ever doubting their Kind Intentions. We will be Good Servants, loyal, trustworthy and honest, pure in thought and compliant in deed.

That's what the Corporate Constitution specifies, isn't it?

F**king Brilliant

My contempt for Libertarianism is boundless, and this little video I found posted at dKos this morning encapsulates a dose of it.

When people rage against teh Central Government or piddle on the Government Schools or demand the liberty to impose their authority on others (ie: Warlordism) in a Regulation Free Market, I about puke.

And then when they start celebrating Ron Paul as the ideological key to the New America, I laugh and laugh.

He claims to be some kind of "Constitutionalist" but what he really is is a Confederate who disputes the entire history of Constitutional self-government in this country. He would go back to 1789 -- pre-1789 in fact -- and start the Government over; to him, pretty much everything the Government has done since Ratification has been in Error.

That may be, but it is not "Constitutionalism" to claim nothing but Error on the part of Government since the beginning of the Constitution. The absurdity of his position is plain. And yet there are always some who can't see it.

He's a Confederate; he does not believe in a Constitutionally Self-Governing Republic as defined -- and operated -- under the Constitution of the United States of America since 1789. He believes in the Confederation under the previous Articles, which proved even in its own time to be unviable as a nation.

In fact, it's more than possible to make a case for some other form of Government than we have, and that case should be made in my view. It may ideed involve reflection on the Confederation. The United States Government has become rotten and corrupted and Palace oriented, and the Constitution itself has provided the means and the impetus to that development. The nature of the Constitution of 1789 made the current Imperial State almost inevitable, and now that we are there, it's more than reasonable to evaluate it on the basis of the Public Interest. Is this what the People truly want?

The Government, for its part, doesn't really care what "The People" (a fiction in Government eyes) want. The practice of Government has long been to govern counter to the People and the Public Interest, and little or nothing has stood in the way of that practice. That practice of governing against the People's Will and the Public Interest was quite open during the Bushevik years; Cheney was (and is) proud of it.

The answer is not Libertarianism, however.

The video shows why.

If I can find some time, I'll try to expand on these thoughts (as I have tried in the past). The current situation is unstable. Under the circumstances, we should be thinking about and arguing over and considering options on a way forward. There is no going back, but we don't know what the best way forward is. The Government, to be sure, is busy consolidating its Imperial Grandeur, safe (it thinks) behind it's Palace Gates. Operating quite independently of us, We, the People.

How do we deal with that?