The Attack On The 14th
Some folks who claim they believe in Democracy and our American way of life, folks who are willing to spend our treasure and our youth to push our system on the other peoples of the world, have placed under attack one of the cornerstones of our Democracy, the 14th amendment.
For those of you unfamiliar, here is an excerpt:
Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The timing of the 14th goes back to post Civil War when the “back to Africa” crowd wanted to deny all rights to the recently freed slaves. To protect the blacks, and each succeeding generation, the 14th was adopted to determine that any baby born on U.S. soil was a U.S. citizen, and therefore entitled to all of the rights and privileges of a citizen. It didn’t matter where your parents came from, or how your parents got here, if you were born on American soil, you are an American citizen.
To double down on the concept, the amendment prohibited any state from making specific laws that would inhibit the enforcement of a citizen’s rights. This is the oft referred to “equal protection under the law” that comes in to play when a group/class of people have the expectation that an act permitted in one state should be allowed in another. Think gay rights or voting.
Currently we have a group of politicians that want to repeal the 14th amendment to improve the survivability of the Republican party, and to grease the wheels on the “back to Mexico” bus. If the “back to Mexico” crowd can deny the Hispanic children their birthright of American citizenship they can avoid one of the legal hurdles in rounding everyone up and sending them back over the Rio Grande. If this proposal succeeds, all of those naturalized Hispanics of voting age will have lost their right to make a difference in our leaders, their voice in our democracy.
Is it irony that the proposed changes to the 14th comes from those strict constructionist politicians that would have us all die in church at the hands of a madman rather than arrange one comma in the 2nd amendment? I hate a hypocrite worse than anything.
One would assume that any current Hispanic citizens by birthright would be grandfathered in to whatever these new “14th Amendment Freedom Fighters” are going to propose. These citizen’s votes should stay solidly in the Democratic party’s camp. It’s also likely that any “right leaning” Hispanics might have voted for the Democrats in this election out of fear for having some other indignity imposed on them in the future. If the “back to Mexico” bus leaves on time, then the “red states” with high Hispanic populations will likely go from purple back to solid red, for a while.
Modifying birthright citizenship probably doesn’t stop the inevitable, just delays it for another election cycle or two. I guess that would give The Donald or the next Republican president time to declare martial law and require all of us to have our immigration genealogy verified. But, where does the backward immigration verification stop? Is the Irish Immigration far enough or do we go all the way back to the Mayflower?
A new industry, Citizen Validation, is born, and a dying industry, bus travel, has a boon. All of those menial tasks now performed by immigrants hoping to make life better for their descendants will be filled by white anglo-saxon protestant losers who wouldn’t know democracy if it hit them over the head.
Sieg Heil, y’all, welcome to your new jobs.
Doctor Strangelove
In his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961, President Eisenhower counseled the nation:
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
The Commander in Chief, the former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and the first Supreme Commander of NATO, thought it was important to give a warning to the American public before he passed from the spotlight. What a warning it was! Simply put, be wary of those businesses that make armaments their livelihood.
In the 60 years passage of time since Eisenhower’s address we have seen the “total influence” be “felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.” The military industrial complex has spread itself far and wide into as many communities as possible to ensure that every politician can “bring home the bacon” for his district. This proliferation makes it very hard for a representative to vote for defense budget cuts when it would possibly result in job losses for his constituency, not to mention the loss of contributions. No one seems to question if these government funded jobs could be for industries that raise the human condition, not destroy other humans.
We have observed the impact economically, politically, and most importantly, spiritually. As a nation, our moral center seems to be off kilter. Where America once went reluctantly to war, it seems that now we have adopted the gunslinger attitude of shoot first and ask questions later. Is the arrogant bully the image that peace loving Americans want to give to the world’s community? Do we raise our children to be used as cannon fodder, or as implements to sell more product for the munitions manufacturers?
We know the ice cream vendor can’t wait for the first day of summer, while the mitten maker prays for snow. Every business has its most opportune times to sell the most of their product. So it is with the arms maker, stir up a conflict and those assembly lines start humming. War is much better for the production line, and the bottom line, than just replacing worn out equipment. Of course replacing worn out equipment would come under the heading, “provide for the common defense”. The term “protecting our vital interests” is used to describe our current level of militarism.
There are over 800 U.S. military bases around the world, 800. Why? There are 6 bases in peace loving Italy. The largest physical base outside of the United States is located in Greenland. The largest accumulation of personnel is in Ramstein, Germany. Why? It’s been estimated that by closing the military bases in just Europe it would free up enough tax dollars to provide free kindergarten through graduate school education to all American citizens. If brought to a vote, would the American people vote for bases in Europe or college for their kids? Maybe I’m wrong, but I think most of us would vote for our kids.
I’ll save the proliferation of weapons in the homeland for another time. The images of the Capitol under siege are too fresh.
Escape From Alcatraz
A famous law professor once told his class, “We are here to protect the sheep from the wolves”. Further adding that the “wolves can take care of themselves, even against other wolves”.
As we ponder how the recent killings by police have resulted in no indictments, we wonder what can be done to tip the scales of power to where justice is blind and all men are treated fairly and equally by the court system.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. At the end of May 2020 the rate was 655 incarcerated per 100,000 population. Currently there are 2.3 million people in jail. Equally as important is the fact that 113 million, one third of the population, has been to jail or had a close family member incarcerated. Are we as a people really that immoral, or is our court system just extremely good at locking us up?
Roughly 52% of those incarcerated in state prisons were for violent crimes, and no one can make an argument for allowing those harming others the opportunity to walk free. What can be said about the other 48%? Can we explain why half of the prisons’ populations are made up of non-violent criminals? We already know it’s not the white-collar criminals who are guilty of insider trading off of the Covid crisis. To date none of them has even been charged, much less brought to trial.
From 1980 through 2003 prison populations quadrupled. Can we explain why such a tremendous surge during this period? As the old saying goes, “follow the money”. The two biggest factors, the war on drugs and for profit prisons. From 2000 to 2016 incarceration in private prisons increased by 47%. I guess the states couldn’t build as fast as they could lock them up.
The various U.S. federal and state governments spent over $47 billion dollars in 2018 on the War on Drugs. That’s right, one year, $47 billion dollars. The spending resulted in the incarceration of 1,654,282 offenders. Of these, 1,429,299 were for possession only, not Mafia kingpins. Although comprising only 13% of the general population, blacks made up 27% of the arrests.
In 2018, 67,367 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States.Two thirds of these deaths were due to opioid overdose. Of these deaths, two thirds were due to synthetic opioids. We all know now who the kingpins behind the synthetic opioid markets are.
Let’s ask ourselves a couple of basic questions:
1. Is the war on drugs working, are there less drugs available? Couldn’t you find anything you want on the street in an hour? So the answer is no, the war on drugs is not working.
2. Is incarceration a viable solution for drug offenses? California estimates to spend $47,000 a year to jail a person. Using $30,000 as an average for all states, the total comes to $2,694,000,000 (2.7 billion) each year to lock up just drug offenders.
3. Is the punishment being meted out fairly? In information compiled by the FBI, it shows that over a ten-year period, from 1995 to 2005, whites made up 68.9 percent of the total arrests and blacks made up 27.8 percent. Of the 2,131,200 incarcerated in all facilities in 2004, 42.7 percent are black, 18.5 percent are Hispanic, and 36.5 percent are white. It appears that while justice may be blind, it’s not color blind.
The beneficiaries of the “war on drugs” are obvious. It’s the same military industrial complex outfitting our excursions into other countries. If one couples the desire to have a country engaged in an endless, unwinnable “war”, to a desire to lock people up for profit, you’ve created an unstoppable juggernaut for filling prisons.
Common Sense Isn’t So Common
Time was my Daddy would come up with a witticism that would fit a situation perfectly. He might say my current situation put me, “between a rock and a hard place”. I might describe the situation to him as just being “common sense”, whereupon he would inevitably tell me that “common sense isn’t very common”.
After watching the news about two more police shootings of unarmed black men in Ohio, I went back to review what I thought was the most egregious police shooting ever recorded. As I watched the Youtube of the Tamir Rice shooting unfold on my TV, I have to say Daddy was right. Common sense seems to have no place in the events, or in the aftermath of the police shooting of a twelve year old black boy.
In case you are unfamiliar with the story, Tamir Rice was playing with a BB gun outside of a recreation center in Cleveland, Ohio. Possibly he was pointing the gun at passers by and going “pppeewww, pppeewww”, simulating the sounds of bullets. Possibly he was just pointing the gun at folks, or maybe he didn’t point the gun at anyone. In any event, someone dialed 911 and called the police on this black child who had scared them.
In the 911 call, the caller even mentioned they thought that the gun was a toy, but that fact didn’t strike the common sense part of the responding officer’s brain. Within three second of arriving on the scene, Tamir Rice was shot dead. As improbable as it sounds, it was death by firing squad, without arrest or trial. Click here to see the video, the shooting occurs at about the 1:03 mark, by 1:07, Tamir is dying. Continue to watch the video to its end and see if you see the officers trying to offer assistance to the child they had just gunned down. If these two officers are an example of Cleveland, Ohio’s “finest”, well, what can I say?
Common sense tells me the police involved in the shooting didn’t use standard procedure in this case. If this is police policy, then all of the folks that I’ve been describing as wackey-doodle for gathering up arms to oppose the impending “government takeover”, may be right. If police policy is for police to receive a 911 call describing a child with, “what could be a toy gun”, and to roll up in their car ten feet from the suspect with guns drawn, and immediately shoot the suspect, then I’d say we have reason to fear a “police state”, and, common sense has left town for good.
The grand jury decided that the police men involved acted reasonably, and decided to not indict the officers for murder. This lack of compassion or sense of justice has led me to believe that common sense has left Cleveland, Ohio forever. Imagine how all of the parents and grandparents who gave their kids the latest look a like weapon toy must feel. A gift of a toy gun makes their children fair game for the police while real guns brandished by hate groups are ignored.
Common sense in Cleveland, Ohio is clearly different than what goes for common sense in Cleveland, Georgia.
Common sense says that if the police are overreacting because of a fear brought on by the proliferation of weapons in our society, we need to fix the proliferation, not shoot the children. Common sense says when you find out that you’ve got two officers so out of control from fear, or prejudice, that they’re shooting first and not even bothering to ask questions, that you need to prune those branches from the tree. Common sense tells us that the city will save money by firing bad officers rather than paying out awards in wrongful death suits.
Like my Daddy said, “common sense isn’t very common”, but my common sense says this child should still be walking among us.
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