states rights

Texas Governor Rick Perry: Savior Of The Republican Party And The Nation? NO!

Ronald 1 Comment

The author is shocked that Texas Governor Rick Perry is scheduled to announce his candidacy for President tomorrow, on the day of the Iowa Ames Straw Poll.

It seemed clear all along that all Rick Perry was trying to do was get attention, and build up his massive ego further. He had said he had no interest in the Presidency, but apparently he has been tempted and enticed to run because of all the attention he is getting, which he clearly craves! So this is an ego trip, nothing else!

Is Governor Rick Perry qualified to be President? Well, he IS the Governor of Texas, the second largest state in population and land area, and has been for the past eleven years, longer than any governor in the country.

However, one must realize that the Governor of Texas is more of an honorary position, as it is literally the WEAKEST Governorship constitutionally in the whole nation of 50 states! The Governor of Texas is a media star because of the tremendous size and population of Texas, but he has very little authority and power, and has loads of free time to pursue other ambitions, a fact that helped George W. Bush decide to seek the White House!

It is also said that Rick Perry has presided over a tremendous increase of employment, about 40 percent of the whole nation’s growth in employment in this recession, and Perry loves to brag about it!

But the fact that the vast majority of these jobs are MINIMUM WAGE is ignored, as if one can live and support a family on a minimum wage job! And the fact that the military and oil companies have a major role in Texas also distorts the reality of employment!

The fact is that Texas ranks very low on education funding, as well as educational curriculum in history and science being distorted and inaccurate to the extreme!

It is a fact that poverty in Texas is widespread, one of the worst levels of poverty in America! But Perry has no concern for the poor, the sick, the disabled, the elderly or anyone else, and instead prefers to promote states rights, as if that is the basic meaning of the US Constitution, which it clearly is exactly the opposite, federal supremacy!

It is the fact that health care is very inadequate for millions of Texans under Rick Perry, but Perry has no concern about that reality! Instead, he is refusing to cooperate on the establishment of the Obama Health Care plan, preferring to sue in federal court to deny health care to millions of Texans!

It is the fact that Rick Perry is described by many as a great campaigner, but a very lazy, shiftless governor who avoids work when he can, so it is obvious he loves the battle but not the challenge of leadership!

It is a fact that Rick Perry has no clue to an understanding of economics, and would be a disaster for us, having no clue as to how to promote an economic recovery!

It is a fact that Rick Perry is quite stupid in reality, and is best noted for his cockiness and swagger, reminding many of George W. Bush, with the only improvement from the image of Bush being that Rick Perry would be described as a more handsome man than Bush is, but are we to vote based on looks, or brains and character and intelligence, which in the long run matter more?

It is a fact that Rick Perry would love to make America a Christian nation, rather than what it is–a nation primarily of many different Christian sects, along with other religions! Perry does not believe in our basic principle of separation of church and state, and has no understanding of our history, being extremely ignorant! But then, Perry was a C and D student, much like George W. Bush, so what can one expect?

It is a fact that Rick Perry is a great fan of and is supported by the Tea Party Movement, the reckless, radical group which has helped to cause the downgrading of our credit by Standard and Poor’s, and will stop at nothing to make certain that there is NEVER any increase in taxes on the greedy, selfish top two percent of the population and the corporations, no matter how much it impoverishes the nation and makes a more stratified society with a disappearing middle class!

It is a fact that Rick Perry advocated secession of Texas from the Union,which is illegal and unconstitutional, and over which the Civil War was fought 150 years ago! Former Texas Governor, President, and Senator Sam Houston, were he alive today, would be ashamed of Rick Perry being the Governor of his beloved state, which he felt had gone wrong when it seceded from the Union in 1861 and joined the Confederacy, and courageously supported Abraham Lincoln and the Union during that Civil War!

It is a fact that the Bush family themselves oppose Perry, which says that establishment Republicans who want to remain in the mainstream, as at least father George H. W. Bush wishes, are terrified of the possibility that this unaccomplished, inferior man might be the leader of the free world, with his maniacal belief in his own superiority!

It is a fact that if Rick Perry somehow won the Presidency, the nation would suffer far worse under him than even the worst critics of Barack Obama might imagine!

If Rick Perry is the best we can gain for President in 2012, this nation is in far greater danger and trouble than we can possibly imagine in 2011!

Death Of Alexander Hamilton On This Day In 1804: What Would He Think Of The Debt Ceiling Crisis?

Ronald Leave a comment

On this day, 207 years ago, in 1804, former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton was killed in a gun duel with Vice President Aaron Burr!

The tragedy of this bright, intelligent, brilliant man, who made such a dramatic difference in our history, dying at the young age of 47, still reverberates through our nation, as we desperately need a financial genius such as Hamilton to resolve our financial difficulties, where we are on the brink of default of our debt payments by August 2, unless cooler heads prevail and a compromise is reached!

Would Hamilton be proud of the Republican Party refusal to consider any tax adjustments, reforms, or increases, when the tax rate is the lowest it has been since the 1940s, and our greatest prosperity came during the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations, when the tax rates were as high as 91 percent under Eisenhower, and were dropped to 70 percent under JFK?

Hamilton, who believed in the power of the federal government, would be appalled at the states rights emphasis reviving today, as if there was no Civil War to resolve that matter!

He would be shocked at the ignorance of Republican leaders and supporters who feel no loyalty to the country, but only to their own selfish, greedy personal desires!

Hamilton revived the American economy 220 years ago when it was in desperate circumstances, making certain that all debts were paid!

It would be ironic if now we saw our nation declare bankruptcy, which will damage the nation and its citizens for generations to come, all over refusal to promote what the definition of politics is, that it is “the art of compromise”!

The Meaning Of Our 235th Anniversary Of Independence

Ronald Leave a comment

The author of this blog can well remember the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1976, when Gerald Ford was President, and we had just recently come out from under the dual burdens of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War.

There was great optimism at the time about the future of the world’s greatest democracy. Unfortunately, that optimism no longer exists.

Instead, we have great pessimism and negativism and partisanship, and we now face the threat of a bankruptcy and default of our government’s finances if the two major political parties cannot overcome their differences and do what is necessary for the national good.

We have tremendous ignorance in this country about the Fourth of July, whereby only 58 percent know its significance as the day we declared our independence to the world wide community of nations.

And we have tremendous propaganda about the Founding Fathers, who gave us the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, making them out to be god like, and also to have the views of right wing Republican conservatives, which all of them would have been horrified to imagine was the image being taught and propagated about them.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, despite what the right wing conservative Republicans claim, believed in a “United States”, not thirteen independent states going their own way, and the experiment with the Articles of Confederation proved how inept a government was that promoted so called “states rights”!

The concept that the Tea Party Movement promotes that they represent the true meaning of the Declaration and the Constitution is preposterous, as the Founding Fathers promoted the idea of a government of the people, not the states, and wanted the authority to promote effective and responsive government to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!

That required a national government to promote the general welfare, justice, common defense, and the blessings of liberty. States rights were not primary, whether in 1787 or at the end of the Civil War in 1865!

The ultimate conclusion is that the Declaration of Independence was not condemning government or taxes. It was not promoting anarchy or reckless behavior, but rather responsible government that dealt with reality for the common good!

150 Years After The Civil War, It Is Still Being Fought!

Ronald 2 Comments

When one studies the Civil War, the most significant event in US History, being commemorated on its 150th Anniversary this year, it makes one realize that the issues being fought then are still being fought today!

Not only is there still sectionalism and regionalism between North and South.

There is still a racial problem, with the South being the area having the most trouble accepting a black President, and therefore, perpetuating the “Birther” Myth, which claims that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

It is also being fought in the sense that there seems to be no political center in America in recent years, similar to what the situation was before the Civil War.

It is also compared as to the growing influence of evangelical Christianity, which tends to be rigid and unwilling to make any concessions with what they consider the battle between evil and good, and with Biblical language which demonizes the opposition with self righteousness and the sense that compromise is unnecessary and wrong.

It is still part of America today also due to the debate over federal power as compared to the states, and the constant threat of states rights and secession being brandished.

Also, there is the constant debate over the powers of the President to promote his world view, whether Abraham Lincoln then or Barack Obama today.

The parties in control may have switched, with the Republicans replacing the Democrats in the South, but in so many ways, the present party division geographically resembles the North-South split of Lincoln’s time.

The need to escape the same trap of tensions and disagreements in the present and the future is imperative, so we must learn from the Civil War so as to advance the American experiment in freedom and democracy.

This is even more essential because of the major world role now being played by the United States, compared to the insular republic of the mid 19th century.

Correction! Arizona In 2011 Is Both Mississippi And South Carolina!

Ronald Leave a comment

The author has already labeled Arizona, with its anti immigration legislation targeted at Latinos and Hispanics, as the equivalent of Mississippi in its treatment of African Americans in the 1960s.

Now, Arizona must also be compared to South Carolina, with its threat of nullification of federal laws and the Constitution, which went on from the 1830s with John C. Calhoun, all the way up to Fort Sumter and the Civil War in 1861!

It is extremely ironic that just as we are about to commemorate the tragedy of the Civil War’s beginning on April 12, we now have the Arizona State Senate passing legislation declaring the power to nullify federal laws and the US Constitution if they do not like what is being done!

This idea of defiance was supposed to be settled by the Civil War prosecution by Abraham Lincoln, and also supposed to be resolved by US National Guard intervention in Arkansas in 1957 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and in Mississippi and Alabama in 1962 and 1963 by President John F. Kennedy!

Now, however, State Senator Russell Pearce of the Arizona legislature is promoting defiance of the federal government, not only on immigration matters and the health care law, but also on anything else that he and his followers believe is unconstitutional!

Apparently, they have learned nothing from history, and the reality that only the Supreme Court can declare actions of the executive and legislative branches unconstitutional!

To advocate anything else is TREASON, subject to prosecution by the federal government if action is actually taken, and if need be, Presidential control of the state National Guard to enforce federal laws and federal court decisions, just as in the South in the 1950s and 1960s!

Anyone living in Arizona should be ashamed of what their government leaders are advocating, a path that would lead to chaos and lawlessness and abuse of power by state outlaws, and it might be necessary at some point to enforce federal law by intervention by Federal authorities!

Hopefully, before we get into that kind of crisis, cooler heads will prevail, as states may not defy the US Constitution and be allowed to get away with it!

This is a warning to Governor Jan Brewer, State Senator Russell Pearce, and other radical right wingers: Shape up or else suffer the consequences of disobedience of constitutional law!

Abraham Lincoln’s 202nd Birthday: Greater Than Ever, Even If Unappreciated By Many Southerners And Republicans!

Ronald Leave a comment

Abraham Lincoln, our greatest President, is 202 years old today, and we are about to commemorate all of the events of the Civil War, on its 150th anniversary this April, but there are many who will not be celebrating this man.

Throughout the South, the descendants of the Confederate States of America are about to celebrate the rebellion, rather than mourn the loss of life brought about by their insistence to defend their right to own slaves, using the facade of “States Rights” to justify the abuse of human rights!

And much of the Republican Party today, while mouthing the heritage of Abraham Lincoln, glorify states rights, as if it is still a valid alternative to defy the national government and the Constitution, as the South did a century and a half ago.

It is ironic that the party of Lincoln, which fought states rights and secession, now contains within it political leaders who openly advocate the same ideology in 2011.

If someone from 1861 to 1865 suddenly came back and saw what has happened to the party of Lincoln, and that it was the Democratic Party which elected the first African American President, Barack Obama, in 2008, they would be totally shocked and speechless!

Meanwhile, ignore the repudiation of Lincoln in the South and in the GOP, and let us celebrate this great man who preserved the Union and ended slavery! He is still our greatest President, and will never be surpassed!

90th Anniversary Of Woman Suffrage: The American South Tradition Of Human Rights Discrimination Remembered!

Ronald Leave a comment

Today, August 26th, marks the 90th Anniversary of Women Suffrage, the right of women to vote!

Somehow, when we look back, it is hard to believe that there was such strong resistance to this, as far back as 1848, right after the Seneca Falls, New York, Equal Rights Convention which started the suffrage fight!

The struggle went on for 72 years, and only came about as a result of World War I military contributions by women, and President Woodrow Wilson backing away from his earlier opposition to the 19th Amendment, finally endorsing it!

But still it took to 1920, and the final battle to win the 36th state, Tennessee, which was won by a state legislator who listened to his mother and cast the decisive vote!

What is often forgotten is that there were still 12 states that refused to accept the adopted amendment by ratifying it for a long time after 1920! They had to obey it and enforce the amendment, but they took decades to ratify it! 🙁 And nine of them were Southern states!

Imagine: Maryland in 1941, Virginia in 1952, Alabama in 1953, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina between 1969 and 1971, and Mississippi in 1984 finally ratified woman suffrage! 🙁

Notice that it was also the South, which was, of course, openly antagonistic to African American civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, and is still in many hidden ways working against it, now in the Republican party, instead of the Democratic party!

And what area of the country is most opposed to gay rights? Again, the South, which talks about “family values” and connects it to religion, wanting us to forget that it was religion that worked to keep women, African Americans, and poor people from voting in the South, and is now actively working against gay equality! 🙁

These “family values” in the South mean to keep women, African Americans, immigrants, and gays as second class citizens, unless the federal government interferes against “states rights”, meaning the power to discriminate! 🙁

The South may have lost the Civil War, but they have had tremendous impact in a negative way against the rights of women, African Americans, immigrants, the poor, and gay Americans over the decades since! Thank goodness that the US government has used its power and its influence, often belatedly, to enforce basic civil rights and civil liberties, overruling the false premise of “states rights”! 🙁

Tea Party Activists: Back To The Articles Of Confederation, States Rights, And Secession! NO WAY! :(

Ronald Leave a comment

There is a new movement developing to promote a constitutional amendment to take away the power of the federal government, and allow states to refuse to obey federal laws and statutes! This is secession all over again, just as we come close to the 150th anniversary of the secession of the Southern states between December 1860 and April 1861! 🙁

Tea Party activists and other conservative interests want to negate the effects of the Civil War, which ended for all time the concept that states rights could be utilized to defy federal law and the Constitution!

Basically, what these radical extremists want to do is revive the Articles of Confederation, which denied the national government any real authority, and totally failed between 1781-1789! The American people were in the “critical period” during this decade, with states going their own way and no federal authority to enforce the concept of one nation indivisible! The Founding Fathers saw the necessity of a stronger national government when they gathered at Philadelphia in the spring and summer of 1787, and drew up the Constitution we live under now for 221 years!

These Tea Party activists fail to understand our history, and the essential nature of having a central government which keeps order and promotes freedom and liberty!

The history of the states is that many have failed to promote equality and freedom, so all this does is try to revive the past, when the mass of common citizens were denied just treatment under the law!

Do we really want to go back to the era of the Articles of Confederation; or the times of the Southern Confederacy; or the Gilded Age, when big corporations ran rampant over the rights of their workers, and immigrants and women and children were exploited for the benefit of unbridled capitalism? 🙁

Do we want the rights of minority groups and women taken away by state governments that historically have not given any concern to basic human rights?

Is this not a power play by conservative interests to bring back the 19th century, the “good old days” of slavery, segregation, labor exploitation, mistreatment of women and children, and widespread nativism against immigrants? 🙁

Has not the American dream been advanced by the federal government, the Supreme Court, and Presidents of both parties who saw the NATIONAL interest, not petty, sectional and regional interests, as essential for the common good?

The fortunate thing about this mad rush to destroy everything that has been good about our national experience is that it requires a constitutional amendment–two thirds vote of the House of Representatives and of the Senate, and three fourths (38) of the states with majority vote in both houses of the state legislature!

This is a tall order, and thank goodness, the Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, made sure that outrageous ideas such as this loony amendment would not see the light of day, beyond the suggestion itself!

The American people need to make clear in their votes this November that the Tea Party activists are repudiated as a anti democratic movement that would take away progress, human freedom, equality, and basic fairness!

The American dream was not meant to be in the form that these disgraceful extremists wish to take it! 🙁

The Anarchistic Nature Existing Today In America! A Great Danger! :(

Ronald Leave a comment

Yesterday’s results in primaries in four states has been judged to be a sign of anti Establishment and anti Washington, DC sentiment!

There is nothing wrong with the concept of “throwing the rascals out”! That was the design of our nation, that when the people are unhappy with their public servants, that they should be able to vote them out!

Turnover is good, and there are those who would think there should be term limits and age limits, although in no other occupation do such limits now exist, because they would be considered discriminatory! Experience and knowledge have always been thought of as virtues, except maybe in politics, ironically, where many citizens seem to think having “fresh blood” is always desirable!

Actually, a mix of experienced people and newcomers is what is best for a democratic system to operate efficiently! But try to tell that to the Tea Party activists, who simply are against all those who have served in government, in both parties, and against the federal government. The results in Pennsylvania are seen by many as the repudiation of Barack Obama, but the results in Kentucky are seen as the rejection of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell from that state!

In the rhetoric they employ, in reality, the Tea Party Movement is bordering on anarchism! They want a complete turnover of government, and back to the pre Great Depression America, when state and local government were the dominant levels and spent the most money in governing the masses! Of course, that was a much simpler time which many would wish could return, but which will not occur!

The problem is that we cannot go back to 1929 and earlier in levels of responsibility of local, state, and national government! The more one examines the facts, we become aware of the reality that state and local governments are far more corrupt, far less representative, and far less competent to solve issues that government in a complex world must deal with!

The concept of states rights is so overdrawn as a virtue, but it was made clear 150 years ago that all citizens had to be treated the same, not be at the whims of state governments which in many cases treated its citizens in very different, unjust ways! History tells us that did not always happen, but that became the basic view that has been enforced in the past 50 years!

To be against Washington, DC is to be against our Constitution, which provided for a federal government to unite the people and protect them in the Bill of Rights! We are not a confederation of 50 states, all doing their own thing with a “go to hell” attitude toward the nation as a whole! We tried that with the Articles of Confederation from 1781-1789, and it failed miserably!

To wish to go back to the Articles of Confederation mentality denies the whole point of our national experience, and it is a move toward total anarchism! This fury and anger must be directed to necessary change, but not deny the whole purpose of our Constitution!

National government IS necessary, and national government is the only level of government that can promote equality of opportunity and equal justice! Witness Arizona now, and many Southern states in the past, which have denied basic human rights! 🙁

The job of the Obama Administration, the Democrats, and “reasonable” Republicans, who do not wish to contribute to the downfall of a stable government, is to offer rational solutions to the many problems this nation now faces! It is a major challenge, but there have been crises before, and fringe movements have been overcome by strong leadership and measured response to national emergencies!

The Need For Ethnic Studies Courses As Electives In Schools!

Ronald Leave a comment

Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer has just signed a bill that bans ethnic studies classes in public schools and charter schools, with specific attention being paid to the Tucson public schools, which have a Chicano Studies course, that many claim has promoted discontent and anger among students who have taken the course.

The law actually bans ANY ethnic studies courses, meaning including African American, Asian American, Native American–and by extension–Jewish and Women and Gay Studies courses, which would also be covered under the ban by extension! 🙁

If all of the above groups were covered fairly and comprehensively in American History courses below the college level, then one could possibly understand the reasoning behind the legislation, although it is still censorship!

But as it is, the public school curriculum around the nation lacks the ability to even cover the basic facts and concepts of American history! It is, therefore, outrageous to promote the banning of coverage of the various groups in American society who have been denied equality and justice throughout most of the nation’s history!

This is clearly a right wing attempt to promote distortion, and it now makes Arizona similar to Texas, where the entire history curriculum is being politicized and distorted to teach a conservative oriented, narrow minded view of our national history!

The biggest loser in both Texas and Arizona are Mexican Americans and other Latinos, and yet, as stated many times, the future of the nation is the reality that people of Spanish descent will become, more and more, the largest minority group in America, as in fact, they already are!

Of all ethnic groups that have made up the American nation, only those of German ethnicity have rivaled the numbers who are of Mexican heritage. So the future is here, and the nation needs to learn to deal with it! People of Latino heritage, whether Mexican or other Spanish speaking nations, will not sit back and allow continued discrimination and denial of their history!

All that this outrageous legislation does is promote racism, hatred, and ignorance! It must be appealed by law suits, and Arizona should be ashamed of itself, as it continues down the road of being the inheritor of the racism of Mississippi and Alabama in the 1960s!

In the present, it represents more a state, such as South Carolina or Texas, in its disgraceful state government actions! This demonstrates the danger of states rights, which many conservatives still claim to be existent, although in reality states rights as a legitimate concept was settled by the Civil War, like it or not! 🙁