169.4 - Nonviolence and Me, Part 4

Nonviolence and Me, Part 4

[This week's show was one long discussion of my commitment to nonviolence. For ease of reading, I have broken it into five parts, this being the fourth.]

Consider these quotes:

Those who organized this provocation deliberately desired a further aggravation of the international situation by striving to smear us, sow hostility towards us, and cast aspersions on our peace-loving policies.

Something said by, who, I don't know, maybe the rebels in Ukraine? Or maybe about those rebels? Neither. It’s from a TASS wire service dispatch, September 3, 1983. It’s about the US.

...to save the freedom of the world, to save liberty, to save the honor of women and children, everyone who loves freedom and honor, everyone who puts principle before ease and life itself before mere living, is banded in a great crusade - we cannot deny it - to kill Muslims, to kill them not for the sake of killing but to save the world...to kill them lest the civilization of the world itself be killed.

Other than being blunter than most, is this truly different from many sentiments expressed during our so-called War on Terror? But in the original version, "Muslims" was "Germans," and the quote is from a sermon preached by the Bishop of London during World War I.

We concur in considering [them] ...as totally without morality, insolent beyond bearing, inflated with vanity and ambition aiming at the exclusive domination of the world, lost in corruption, of deep-rooted hatred toward us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world.

The style may be stilted, but I'd defy anyone to tell me any fundamental difference between these sentiments and those directed against Hamas to justify the attack on Gaza - or, for that matter, any different from those directed against Jews by any number of anti-Semites across the ages. But the year was 1815, the speaker was President Thomas Jefferson, and the "them" in question was Great Britain.

It's always the same. Every time, the same arguments are trotted out. "They" are evil, immoral, corrupt, cruel; "they" can’t be trusted; "they" understand only force; "they" don’t respect human life the way we do; it’s sad, but "they" have given us no choice; blah, blah, and more blah, as we go about convincing ourselves that "they" are "other," are fundamentally different, and when we kill them - except we don't, do we, no, instead we "secure targets" and "achieve objectives" and "deny the enemy resources" - and when we kill them we imagine that there are none left behind to mourn, for the "other" has no wife or husband, no sons or daughters, no sisters or brothers, no parents, no aunts or uncles or grandparents or cousins or friends or neighbors or colleagues or co-workers, they are merely an instrumentality of the enemy, denied their humanity so they may be denied their life, because "they" are "other" and so not really "alive," not like "we" are.

It has been charged that nonviolence gives "fear and hatred an opportunity to triumph." Well, I say that with murderous violence, fear and hatred always triumph. I say that might does not make right. I say that the ends do not justify the means - which, no matter how many colors are cast on it, is still the primer under the entire argument - but they are affected by them.

I say that humanity cannot be conveniently divided into our friends, the victimized innocents, and our foes, the venal infidels. That war solves no problems except as it replaces them with new ones; that mass murder does not bring any peace except that of the graveyard; that hatreds do not produce love; that a river of blood, no matter how thick, deep, wide, or red, does not, cannot, will not mark the path to justice. Because justice must be justice for "them" as well as for "us," for "enemy" the same as for "friend," or it's not justice at all but mere favoritism.

Ultimately, I agree with Gandhi's statement that "the only thing worse than violence is cowardly refusal to act in the face of injustice. But nonviolent action is always superior to violent action."

Contrary to the underlying, unspoken conviction of those who, despite their claims to the contrary, do endorse mass violence, pacifism does not mean passivity and nonviolence does not mean non-action; they do not involve, as I was once accused of advocating, allowing ourselves to "get butchered" in order to "be morally superior."

Let me be clear: I believe we are responsible for that which we approve, and that applies to me as much as to others; perhaps more so because I make the choice so consciously. I know the course I've chosen carries risks, that nonviolent action isn't "safe," that it may (and for some in some circumstances surely would) involve risking one's life, and that the greatest risk is that of failure, of seeing injustice ascendant.

But every one of those risks applies equally strongly to violent action, which carries the added risks, risks so often realized they're less risks than a process, of destroying that which you say you'd save and of becoming that which you say you oppose.

Nonviolent action is not without risk, not without pain, not without suffering, and aggressive nonviolent techniques - such as economic sanctions - can put such pain and suffering on others, including innocents.

No, there are no ironclad guarantees of success, and yes, there would be losses as well as victories. But all of that - all of that, despite any romanticized notions to the contrary - is equally true of violence.

169.3 - Nonviolence and Me, Part 3

Nonviolence and Me, Part 3

[This week's show was one long discussion of my commitment to nonviolence. For ease of reading, I have broken it into five parts, this being the third.]

In fact, when do those looking to excuse the bloodshed for which they're responsible (or of which they tacitly or expressly approve) describe pacifism and nonviolence in terms other than "doctrinaire" or "knee-jerk" or other equally dismissive adjectives? When is the refusal to commit mass murder not brushed off as "hopelessly idealistic," always with the required sighs of regret, by those who imagine that both revolution and self-defense are marked by how many you kill rather than by how many you change - except, that is, for those times when a commitment to nonviolence is denounced as a tool of the ruling class?

And no, I need no lectures on the destructiveness of institutional violence, nor do I need to be reminded that it's easy for those of us not suffering under the yoke of an oppressor to urge the oppressed to foreswear murderous violence, especially when it is equally easy for us to embrace such violence as "necessary" or "liberating" when we do not have to live with blood and gore and shredded limbs and the shrieks of the wounded, writhing in pain, and the wails of the widows and the orphans and the cries of the parents holding their dead children while sitting among the smoking ruins of what had been their homes and fields.

That is the painful reality hidden behind that "necessity" of violence, a reality of tens - of hundreds - of millions around the world, past and present, abused by military power of one sort or another, almost if not always in the name of some supposed “higher purpose.” A reality of the real effect of real violence on real people.

As I said before, wars of one sort or another are now going on in who knows how many places, and in every one of them you can be damn sure that no one on any side has picked up a gun or dropped a bomb or fired a rocket or laid a mine or set a booby-trap without claiming to be on the side of the angels; no one has blown someone’s head off or burned a village to the ground or tortured a prisoner without claiming it’s in pursuit of “justice” or “freedom” or “self-defense” or the “glory of God” (or "Jesus" or “Allah” or whoever).

That’s the reality. Not musings about how you'd "prefer" nonviolence or about "self-defense" or, horribly, the "creative" aspects of violence. The reality, rather, of death, destruction, and despair in which everyone claims that they are the wounded innocents.

169.2 - Nonviolence and Me, Part 2

Nonviolence and Me, Part 2

[This week's show was one long discussion of my commitment to nonviolence. For ease of reading, I have broken it into five parts, this being the second.]

Being me, I had to see if I could intellectually justify my emotional reaction. So I read pamphlets on pacifism and nonviolence. I read books on pacifism and nonviolence. I read scientific articles on the psychology of violence, both individual violence and group violence. I read histories of nonviolent campaigns around the world, including both successful and unsuccessful ones. I read essays on the philosophy of government.

That is, being me, I had to see if I could make a logical case for deep morality, a logical case for conscience. It didn't have to be an airtight case, it didn't have to be of a sort that would convince everyone or even anyone else: Conscience is an intensely personal thing; recently on the show I called conscience "the most human of human rights."

But for me, for myself, my conviction about organized violence had to be based on something more than an emotional reaction, it had to be conscience rooted in something beyond itself. Again, it didn't have to be absolute proof but for me conscience had to have some logical foundation or at least logical support to stand on. You had to be able to make some kind of case.

Ultimately, I decided couldn't justify the full extent of emotional reaction, an extent that said I would never raise my hand against anyone no matter what, but I could justify the baseline conviction that large-scale organized violence cannot be right. Ever.

A big reason for that is that there are alternatives. There is extensive literature on the use of nonviolence, of nonviolent action, to achieve justice. Gandhi was just a small, even a tiny, part of that history. In fact, he credited Henry David Thoreau as one of his influences; one story says he had read Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience so many times that he had it memorized.

That essay, called "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," was Thoreau's explanation of why he refused to pay a tax levy intended to help pay for the war with Mexico in 1848. These are my favorite lines from that essay, which I think present the core of the argument:

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth ... but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

This idea, this concept, of using nonviolent action, nonviolent resistance, as a means for working for justice, is not only ancient, it goes up to and includes nonviolent national defense - that is, defending the nation without an army.

But of course if you say this to anybody, if you argue that nonviolence is both a moral and a logical imperative, especially if you say it to politically-oriented or involved people, and especially when the issue at hand is a matter of justice or people resisting oppression (which is usually when it comes up), you will get the standard pushback of how "that would be nice but it won't work" or "nonviolence only works when everyone is ready to agree," often enough (in an odd twist on Godwin's law) including some reference to the supposedly self-evident absurdity of using nonviolence against Hitler.

And then after all that these same people will say how they'd prefer nonviolence, it's just, "y'know, it's naive, and y'know, I'm not glorifying violence you understand, of course not" and so forth and so on.

Well, of course such people are glorifying violence. They are glorifying violence as a - indeed, as the only reliable - means of self-defense and achieving justice. Indeed, the political philosopher Franz Fanon openly glorified violence itself, declaring not only that it was the only way for the colonized peoples of the world to be liberated but that it itself, that the very act of violence, was liberating.

The argument, stripped to its essence, is that nonviolence, well, yeah, it might work sometimes - but violence always does. Nonviolence can fail, but violence never does; just hasn't succeeded yet. The argument allows for no option under which violence fails, even less for one where violence fails but nonviolence succeeds. Even when the conflict goes on, as some in world have, for decades, in some - in too many - minds, including if not especially among those not directly affected, the thought "violence has failed" never seems to arise.

169.1 - Nonviolence and Me, Part 1

Nonviolence and Me, Part 1

[This week's show was one long discussion of my commitment to nonviolence. For ease of reading, I have broken it into five parts, this being the first.]

I have from time to time talked about my convictions - and here I don't mean judgments or opinions about issues, but about the baseline convictions that drive and inform those judgments. I think that everyone who does the kind of thing I do, who analyzes and comments on events, should do that so that people who see or read them can put what they say in a context.

I've talked about how I'm a green, a leftist, a radical, a democratic socialist and such. But there is something I haven't talked about much if at all that also is a moral conviction that informs my opinions and analyses: I am also a pacifist.

Which usually is something you say on TV when you want to lose viewers. But I hope you'll bear with me as I talk about that today.

This is why I bring it up now: I mentioned in the last show I did how I sometimes feel, as I put it although perhaps not originally, "the world is too much with me" and for a time - usually a short time - I'm just overwhelmed with an emotional awareness of the enormity of suffering in world: the hunger, poverty, oppression, exploitation, the homelessness, and how much of it is driven by war.

What got me started this time was news about fighting in Libya, where since the fall of Qaddafi the fighting has never really stopped. And I thought about the fact that I knew that at that moment there were wars of one sort of another going on in Libya, South Sudan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Somalia, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and who knows how many more places - with some of those wars having gone on for decades, some of them with death tolls in the hundreds of thousands or even the millions.

Which in turn got me to remembering watching on TV the violence in the streets outside the Chicago Democratic convention in 1968 as police attacked antiwar protesters in what was later labeled "a police riot" by an investigating commission.

Watching that - I was young, a teenager, still at home, politically a good liberal who was finding it increasingly hard to maintain his patriotic support for the Vietnam war, or maybe by that time I had already turned against it, I'm not sure - anyway, the thing is, watching the events that night, events that were origination of the chant "the whole world watching," was my first exposure to actual violence. Not just kids fighting, not just schoolyard tussles, not the staged pretend violence of movies or TV, but actual violence. I still have a memory, an image of a cop with his club raised and his arm outstretched, chasing a long-haired kid down street, trying to catch him to beat him up.

Watching that, I had a visceral, gut reaction - I wrote later that "a reality of which I was somehow already aware was clubbed into eyes until I had to admit to it." I went to work the next day full of righteous liberal indignation only to discover a chorus from my co-workers of "the only thing the cops did wrong was not beat those punks harder."

I was so upset, I left work, I just walked out and walked home. I had there experienced violence for the second time - this was an emotional, a verbal violence, but still it was violence - and it changed me. Or, more likely, it just brought out what was already there. I don't know and it really doesn't matter.

I became in that moment what I later called an "emotional pacifist." That is, emotional in the sense that this was not the result of logical argument or thinking it through or whatever. It was a response of pure conscience: the utter clarity of "this cannot be right." That violence, particularly organized violence, is wrong. Period.

Left Side of the Aisle #169

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of August 7-13, 2014

This week:

Nonviolence as part of my worldview
http://www.transcendentalists.com/civil_disobedience.htm
http://warprayer.org/

Va-ca-TION! Va-ca-TION!

I mentioned on the show but neglected to mention here that I am taking a week off. "Left Side of the Aisle," my half-hour cable access (and YouTube) show has now appeared 168 times in 168 weeks and so a week off doesn't seem like too much to ask.

But to tide you over until next week, following are a few short notes on items that could have made the cut for this week's show had I done one.

~~~

First off, on the Good News front, two quick related bits, extra quick because I know I'll bring them up when I come back from vacation:

- On July 28, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals became the second appellate-level court to strike down a ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, upholding a lower-court decision to that end. The state involved here is Virginia.

- On the same day and in response to that ruling, the Attorney General of North Carolina said he would no longer defend his state's ban in same-sex marriage on the grounds that, since North Carolina is also in the 4th Circuit, the appeal of a district court ruling throwing out the ban would "almost certainly" fail.

~~~

Next up, the Clown Award.

- A likely recipient was Kentucky State Sen. Brandon Smith, who insisted that "I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here." (Give him a break, though: He only missed by some 76 degrees Celsius or 141 degrees Fahrenheit.)

He then responded to criticism - actually, well-deserved mockery - by calling the quote (which is on tape) "bogus" and claiming he meant to say something entirely different from what he said so get off his back, already - even though what he claims to meant to say is as dumb as what he actually did say.

- On the other hand, because it was both more recent and less-noted than that, I might have gone with Rand Paul, who make a speech to an unsurprisingly-thin crowd at a gathering of the National Urban League in which he said that TPers like him are minorities targeted for discrimination because of the "shade of their ideology."

 ~~~

I had two strong contenders for Outrage of the Week:

- One involved a woman, Debra Harrell, who was arrested for "child abandonment" because she let her nine-year-old child play in a well-populated public park while Harrell went to her job at McDonald's.

It could have been worse: McDonald's fired her - but later claimed it was a "misunderstanding" and she is back to work full time.

People in comments recalled their own related memories; mine is this one: At the age of about seven, I and my nine-year-old brother would walk a mile to the bus, take the bus into town, get a train to another town, and then walk a mile to our grandmother's house, where our parents would pick us up at the end of the day.

Yeah, yeah, I know, "times are different, look at this horrible story, you can't be too careful, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." But are times really that different? Is the danger not only really greater but SO much greater that we have to live in this state of perpetual terror? And yes, dammit, you can be "too careful."

- The other was learning that a third of US states enable money lenders, landlords, and the like to make an end run around the bans on debtors' prisons in the US by allowing people who claim other people owe them money to go to court to demand payment, so that if the debtor doesn't pay, they get sent to jail - but not for owing money, oh no, we don't do that sort of thing, but for violating a court order.

~~~

Finally, we have an Update to something discussed previously, in this case something that could be filed under Wish I'd Thought of That:

- The Satanic Church has struck a blow against the utter inanity of the Hobby Lobby decision, providing letters for women to use to declare that their religious beliefs exempt them from having to listed to the anti-abortion claptrap that a number of states require doctors to recite to women seeking the procedure.

Personally, I suspect that if this ever gets to SCOTUS, the foul five will declare this does not fall within the bounds of religious freedom, marking Hobby Lobby as what we knew it was all along: not just inane but religious bigotry that favors one sort of religious belief - conservative Christianity (including conservative Catholicism) - over others.

~~~

Sources cited in links:

Good News
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/28/virginia-gay-marriage_n_5627524.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/28/north-carolina-gay-marriage_n_5628129.html

Clown Award
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/03/1311565/-Missouri-Republican-Climate-change-unproven-because-temperature-on-Mars-is-exactly-as-it-is-here
http://www.space.com/17816-earth-temperature.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/14/1313909/-Kentucky-Republican-angrily-doubles-down-on-his-Mars-conspiracy-theory
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/26/1316848/-What-not-to-say-to-black-people-when-you-are-Rand-Paul
http://www.barefootandprogressive.com/2014/07/at-the-urban-league-rand-paul-says-hes-a-minority-because-of-the-shade-of-his-ideology-video.html

Outrage of the Week
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/07/15/3460227/mom-jailed-daughter-park/
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/07/22/3462704/debra-harrell-fired/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/22/1315659/-Debtor-s-Prison-A-New-Reality

Update
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/28/1317272/-Well-well-Satanists-to-use-Hobby-Lobby-to-block-pro-life-propaganda

168.9 - Clown Award: House GOPpers on Washington, DC laws

Clown Award: House GOPpers on Washington, DC laws

I just have time for the Clown Award, given weekly for meritorious stupidity.

The big red nose this week goes to the Republican members of the House of Representatives. There were some Democrats involved, but 90% involved were GOPpers, so they get the award.

Despite a 2008 Supreme Court decision striking down its ban on owning handguns, Washington, DC, still has some of the toughest gun control laws around. Residents must register handguns every three years, complete a safety course, and be fingerprinted and photographed.

Meanwhile, in March, the city decriminalized possession of less than one ounce of pot, replacing criminal penalties for simple possession with a $25 fine.

Last week, the GOP-controlled House approved a spending bill that would undo both of those laws.

Bear in mind that Congress has the final say over the District's local laws and budget. So what this means is that if the House GOPpers get their way and this survives the rest of the budget process, it will be a crime in Washington, DC, to have a joint in your jeans - but entirely legal to walk the streets with a loaded .45.

What more can be said? Each and every one of them: clowns.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.aol.com/article/2014/07/16/house-gop-to-dc-guns-ok-pot-dangerous/20932428/

168.8 - Middle East and Gaza: Israel does not want peace

Middle East and Gaza: Israel does not want peace

The are times, moments, occasions, periods, when I have trouble dealing with things. Not things, things. Not the me, the my life stuff, the get up, go to work, do errands, read a book, chill out, walk the dogs stuff. The whole world stuff.

Sometimes, the awareness penetrates the cynicism, the emotion penetrates the intellectualizing, the reality penetrates the analysis, the whole penetrates the parts. I have an expression for such times: I say "the world is too much with me."

I don't know if I came with that phrase on my own or if I heard it somewhere, since it can be found in a sonnet by William Wordsworth that dates from about 1802:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours; ...

So maybe I came across it somewhere. Or maybe I made it up for myself. I have no idea and it doesn't matter. What is means for me is those moments when I am too aware of the sheer enormity of pain and suffering in world and how small and pointless any effort you - I - came make in the face of it appears to be. It's not good place to be because if it persists too long it can be debilitating.

I was finding the world too much with me recently. What brought it on was noticing a news story about two rival Libyan militias were fighting for control of the Tripoli airport and another about a battle between the Libyan army and Islamist forces in Benghazi. And it reminded me that fighting in Libya has never really ended since the fall of Qaddafi.

So there is near anarchy in parts of Libya. There is civil war in Ukraine, there is civil war in Iraq, there is civil war in Syria - and of course there is butchery in Gaza. And it was too much. I wanted to hide. I still do.

But I can't, at least not yet - because there is something I have to say:

Israel does not want peace.

I don't know how else to say it except that bluntly and directly. Israel prefers the status quo; Israel prefers having Hamas as an excuse to avoid a final settlement; it prefers the occasional Hamas rocket, very few of which actually do any harm, to having no rockets at all; it prefers to drive the people of Gaza into the arms of Hamas to doing anything that would undermine Hamas's popularity - such as lifting the blockade of Gaza, which has turned it into the world's largest-ever outdoor prison.

Why? Because real peace would mean a real Palestinian state and that would require the hard right of Israel to give up it's dreams of a "greater Israel," a nation standing astride the Middle East with the power and reach of King David in all his glory in the most grandiose of tellings of the tales. It would mean treating Palestinians as equals and as regarding themselves as one among equals - and for too many among the Israeli right, the politically powerful Israeli right, the politically powerful religiously-conservative Israeli right, that just can't be allowed.

But Israel can't do this, it can't maintain this, without the active support of the United States, which is now paying for about 25% of Israel's annual military budget. So we have to be flooded with Israeli propaganda, propaganda which depends for its success on Americans knowing little about Gaza, an ignorance driven in turn by the heavy pro-Israel bias of the US news media, a bias so extreme that on July 21 MSNBC contributor Rula Jebreal accused her own network of being "disgustingly biased," saying that the network might have on a Palestinian “maybe for 30 seconds, and then you have twenty-five minutes for Bibi Netanyahu, and half an hour for Naftali Bennett."

(Benjamin, nicknamed "Bibi," Netanyahu is the prime minister of Israel; Bennett is minister of the economy.)

As if to prove her point, Jebreal later said on Twitter that her upcoming TV appearances had been canceled.

You want an example of how that ignorance works? How many times in the past several days have you heard it said that Israel blames the hundreds of civilian deaths, including over 150 children, the thousands of civilian casualties, its attack on Gaza has caused on Hamas, on claims of Hamas using civilians as "human shields?" How many times have you heard it claimed that Israel is doing everything it can to not hit civilians?

Indeed, on Monday, Netanyahu said that the Palestinians "are responsible for all the civilian deaths," because, he said, "they don't care ... [they want to] pile up the bodies."

Here's where the ignorance comes in: The population of Gaza is about 1.8 million. The area of Gaza is about 140 square miles. That's about 12,900 people per square mile.

The population density of the city of Boston: 12,900 people per square mile.

Gaza is as densely populated as the city of Boston. And remember, the people of Gaza can't leave: They are blocked in on one side by the Egyptians and on the other by the Israelis.

Okay, so you tell me: Where are those civilians supposed to go? Where is it they can go where they will not be targeted by Israeli bombs?

Consider this leaflet, which the Israelis dropped over Gaza. The other thing here is that it's easy to forget - because damn well the US media never mentions it and the Israelis will consciously avoid mentioning it - is that Hamas is not just a military organization: It is the elected civil leadership of Gaza. It's the schools, the police force, the fire protection, it has day-care centers, hospitals. So where do those people go to not be near anything "Hamas?"

Israel knows this. It knows those people have nowhere to go. The Israeli government knows - it cannot not know - that its attacks will indiscriminately kill civilians. It knows - and it doesn't care. We know it doesn't care because it keeps doing it, keeps doing what it knows will kill large numbers of civilians and then lies about whose fault it is. It knows - and it doesn't care. What it cares about is that we do not know.

We have to be aware. We have to learn. We have to know. And one thing we do have to know - now - is that it is time, it is long past time, for a complete end to all US military assistance, aid, and sales to Israel. Not one plane, not one gun, not one bullet, not one dollar. Not until Israel formally, overtly, and specifically recognizes the Palestinians' right to an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza and reaches an actual agreement to that end and I do mean formally and specifically: none of the "maybe sure someday kinda in some form yup sort of" doubletalk that has been the Israeli government's pattern for years - a pattern, we now know, which is nothing short of a lie:

At a press conference on July 11, Netanyahu made it explicitly clear that he would never agree to a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank. Quoting him,

there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.

At that same press conference, he also said, in the combination of inflamed self-importance and paranoia that increasingly marks Israeli government policy, that he sees Israel as standing almost alone on the frontlines against Islamic radicalism, while the rest of the as-yet free world does its best not to notice.

Well, okay: If the leadership of Israel likes to see their nation as standing alone, maybe we should allow it to do just that. Until there is an actual settlement including an independent Palestinian state - which any real settlement will have to include - not one US penny should go to the Israeli military. We may not be able to stay the hangman's noose, but we can at least stop paying for the rope.

Sources cited in links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Too_Much_with_Us
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/test-393840245
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/07/22/Deadly-clashes-between-Libyan-army-and-Islamists-strike-Benghazi-.html
http://www.npr.org/2014/07/22/333892178/violence-flares-in-libya-leaving-main-airport-in-ruins
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/18/some-of-israel-s-top-defenders-say-it-s-time-to-end-u-s-aid.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/rula-jebreal-msnbc-palestinians-airtime_n_5606673.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/23/world/meast/human-shields-mideast-controversy/
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/middle-east-unrest/netanyahu-says-hamas-wants-pile-bodies-sympathy-n161236
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-22/israel-declares-soldier-hamas-says-holds-in-gaza-missing.html
http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/boston-population/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/07/21/333537714/in-crowded-gaza-civilians-have-few-places-to-flee
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/07/14/did_netanyahu_just_say_what_he_really_thinks_about_a_two_state_solution.html
http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-finally-speaks-his-mind/

168.7 - Outrage of the Week: Suit against discrimination fails even though Court admits there was discrimination

Outrage of the Week: Suit against discrimination fails even though Court admits there was discrimination

A couple of decades ago, activists learned that class action suits were an effective way to pursue justice through the courts: People who could not afford to mount a legal challenge to a wrong on their own could join with others in a similar situation and so have the means to take on corporations and government agencies.

So, of course, in more recent times it has become harder and harder for people to pursue such suits: The requirements for being certified, that is, recognized, as a "class" by the courts have gotten stricter and stricter; even small differences in the individual circumstances of the members of the asserted class can get result in certification being denied with the result to suit can't go forward.

Specifically in the area of civil rights suits, not only is it harder to get certified as a class, it has also been made harder to prove you have been wronged even if everyone knows you have been.

Which brings us to the Outrage of the Week.

On July 18, the state Supreme Court of Iowa, in a 7-0 vote, rejected a class-action lawsuit that alleged the executive branch of state government discriminated against black job applicants.

The court upheld a lower court decision to dismiss the case, finding that the class of 5,000 black employees and job applicants failed to prove they suffered systemic discrimination because they did not show that specific hiring practices disadvantaged them.

At the same time, all seven justices recognized the reality of implicit bias, in which individuals subconsciously favor whites over blacks.

The main opinion, written by Justice Brent Appel and joined by three others, said that overt racism has been replaced by unconscious discrimination as the “headwinds faced by African Americans in the employment marketplace.”

A separate concurring opinion from Justice Thomas Waterman and two others, agreed the case should be dismissed even though

there undoubtedly was subjectivity and - as the plaintiffs credibly demonstrated - implicit bias in multiple state hiring decisions.

In fact, Waterman noted that even the original trial judge said "it appears African Americans on the whole were disadvantaged in getting job interviews from some agencies."

This is where it gets outrageous: The plaintiffs' case was based on statistical evidence that blacks received fewer interviews and jobs than whites at state agencies plus a growing body of social science research affirming the concept of implicit bias. Their lawyer, Tom Newkirk, noted data, including some from state consultants and experts, which suggested that blacks were generally disadvantaged.

That sort of statistical evidence of bias used to be enough to prove your case. It's not any more and hasn't been for a while. Instead, as the justices noted in their ruling, current state and federal law require that plaintiffs be able to point to and prove specific hiring practices were discriminatory.

But of course in the case of implicit bias, there is no such specific hiring practice because the discrimination rests within the unconscious mind of the interviewer or hiring agent.

Newkirk said he knew the appeal was a long shot, but considered the ruling “tremendously positive” because "the recognition of implicit bias is huge," paving the way for suture lawsuits.

Frankly, I think that's just trying to put a good face on it because I don't see how that's true. As current federal law stands, unless your employer puts out a memo saying something like "we don't hire us no coloreds," you really don't have a case for claiming bias.

And that is an outrage.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/justices-reject-iowa-class-action-bias-case/2014/07/18/1bcf0cf4-0e84-11e4-b0dd-edc009ac1f9d_story.html

168.6 - Factoid of the Week: F-35 fighter

Factoid of the Week: F-35 fighter

Okay, this is something that may or may not become a regular feature. Pretty soon I may have so many regular features I won't have time for anything else. But here it is: It's the Factoid of the Week.

The subject is the program to create a fleet of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, which is 7 years behind schedule and a couple of weeks ago was grounded just before two air shows that were supposed to be the jet's coming out party.

Here's the factoid: The entire cost of the program over the projected life of the jets is now $400 billion. That amount could have provided a $600,000 home to each and every one of the estimated 600,000 homeless people in the US.

Or, if you prefer another way to look at it, a single year's cost of the program, about $49 billion, could have covered the entire yearly cost of the National School Lunch Program, which feeds roughly 31 million students every year, eliminate the cuts made in the Food Stamp program, pay our share of UN's 16 peacekeeping missions around the world, and pay the entire amount sought by the UN Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs to address humanitarian crises around the world, including the millions of refugees and internally displaced people in war zones - and we'd still have a few billion left over for dessert.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/11/military-jet-spending_n_5575045.html?cps=gravity
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/budget-appropriations/211520-f-35s-air-show-debut-in-jeopardy
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-16/us-approve-limited-flights-for-f-35-joint-strike-fighter/5599896
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/07/09/3458101/f35-boondoggle-fail/
http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/current.shtml

168.5 - RIP: Johnny Winter, James Garner

RIP: Johnny Winter, James Garner

We have two RIPS this week as more bits of my younger years slip away.

Legendary blues guitarist Johnny Winter died of natural causes at his hotel room in Zurich on July 17. He was 70.

He made his national debut at Woodstock and spent the next 45 years as a proselytizer for the blues. He was on tour when he died.

He was noted for the speed and intensity of his playing and his fans among fellow guitarists included Carlos Santana, Eddie Van Halen, Michael Bloomfield, and Jimi Hendrix.

So RIP, Johnny Winter

The other, well, I suppose it's possible you may not have heard of Johnny Winter but you do know this guy.

James Garner died July 19 at the age of 86. He died of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles.

Garner was probably best known to most people for his two big TV roles - in the late '50s as Bret Maverick and in the late '70s as Jim Rockford - but he also made over 50 movies, including 1985's "Murphy's Romance," which got him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

And I suppose it says something that an appreciation of Garner at People.com said "While their grandparents remember him from Maverick and their parents remember him from Rockford, to Millennials, Garner will always be Duke, the elderly version of Ryan Gosling's character in The Notebook," a movie from 2004, 47 years after Maverick hit the small screen.

RIP, James Garner. I think you earned it.


Sources cited in links:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/johnny-winter-dead-70-blues-guitarist-struck-chord-rock-fans-article-1.1870928
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/legal-and-management/6164928/johnny-winter-blues-torchbearer-an-appreciation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Garner
http://www.people.com/article/james-garner-best-roles

168.4 - Unintentional Humor: NSA concerned about privacy

Unintentional Humor: NSA concerned about privacy

Pierre Beaumarchais, who was among other thing a French playwright, is credited with the saying “I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.”

Here's an example of what he meant:

Journalist Matthew Keys submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the National Security Agency, the NSA, for emails sent by Edward Snowden from his NSA account in the months before he became a whistleblower.

Snowden insists that before decided to leak the documents that revealed the NSA's massive spying apparatus, he repeatedly he raised concerns internally about the legality of the program.

In May, the NSA, after having initially denied that Snowden had raised any questions with anyone about surveillance programs, released one single email from Snowden, in which he inquired about the relative power of executive orders and laws. The agency then claimed that this time, that really, really was all it had from Snowden related to the mass surveillance.

Edward Snowden

For his part, Snowden called that a “clearly tailored and incomplete leak.”

So Matthew Keys filed his FOIA request to try to see who was right.

The NSA, of course, said no, claiming exemptions under the FOIA.

Here's why it gets funny. Among the excuses the NSA offered - remember, now the NSA has already released one email from Snowden, one it used to buttress its case against him - among the excuses the NSA offered was the claim that revealing any other emails "would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

Yes, you heard that right: The NSA is now deeply concerned about personal privacy.

Remember to laugh so you don't cry.

Sources cited in links:
http://izquotes.com/quote/14039
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/07/14/nsa-releasing-edward-snowden-emails-would-violate-his-privacy
http://thedesk.matthewkeys.net/2014/07/nsa-says-snowden-emails-exempt-from-public-disclosure/

168.3 - Hero Award: Salem, MA, Mayor Kimberly Driscoll

Hero Award: Salem, MA, Mayor Kimberly Driscoll

From there we can slide over easily into one of our occasional features, the hero award, given as the occasion arises to someone who just does the right thing.

On July 1, Michael Lindsay, president of Gordon College in Salem, MA, signed a letter sent to President Barack Obama by several religious colleges, demanding an exemption from federal regulations that outlaw antigay discrimination.

In response, Salem Mayor Kimberly Driscoll terminated Gordon College’s contract to operate the city’s Old Town Hall. In a letter to Lindsay posted on the city's website, Driscoll made it clear that the college's demand to be allowed to discriminate was the reason for the termination, writing that

"I am truly disappointed in the stance you have taken, which plainly discriminates against the rights of LGBT individuals, both on and off campus. These actions fly in the face of the City of Salem’s Non-Discrimination Ordinance, which prohibits our municipality from contracting with entities that maintain discriminatory practices."

Kimberly Driscoll, given that law it may have seemed like an easy call, but I don't care: You're still a hero.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2014/07/09/salem-kills-contract-with-gordon-college-over-school-stance-against-antigay-regulations/0hqb8efQqei1IO4gvCTz4I/story.html?p1=Must_Reads_hp

168.2 - Good News: same-sex marriage advances in CO, OK, and FL

Good News: same-sex marriage advances in CO, OK, and FL

On another good news front, an area where there has been a fair amount of good news of late, same-sex marriage has come to Colorado, at least in principle. In this case it involves state courts, not federal courts. Earlier this month a state judge for Adams County determined that a 2006 Colorado constitutional amendment forbidding same-sex marriage violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of equal protection and due process. The ruling, as is common, was put on hold pending appeal.

However, the next day a federal judge refused to stop Boulder County from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, which it has been doing since June 25. In response, Denver started issuing licenses to same-sex couples.

Unfortunately, the State Supreme Court ordered the clerks to stop issuing such licenses on the grounds that while the appeals are going on the ban is still technically in effect. Which is why I said equality has come "in principle" - the initials rulings are there but the process must be played out. And remember, these are all stays. They are not defeats.

Meanwhile, diagonally across the country, last week, Luis Garcia, Chief Circuit Judge of Monroe County, FL, ordered the county clerk’s office to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. That decision, too, was put on hold due to the state attorney general announcing an intention to appeal, but supporters of marriage justice called it "the beginning of the end" of the state's ban on same-sex marriage.

There are two other cases challenging the state's ban; one would only affect Miami-Dade county but the other, in federal district court, would apply to the whole state. Decisions on either or both of those could come any time.

Finally, remember when I said that when the 10th Circuit court of appeals upheld a lower court decision striking down Utah's ban on same-sex marriage that it probably also spelled doom for Oklahoma's ban, because an appeal of a decision overturning that one was on appeal to the same 10th circuit? Bingo: Last week, the appeals court upheld the lower-court decision, continuing the unbroken string of pro-marriage justice decisions across the country.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.advocate.com/politics/marriage-equality/2014/07/09/colo-marriage-ban-ruled-unconstitutional
http://www.advocate.com/politics/marriage-equality/2014/07/10/breaking-denver-now-issuing-same-sex-marriage-licenses
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/tenth-circuit-declares-oklahomas-gay-marriage-ban-unconstitutional
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/17/4240865/keys-judge-gay-couples-can-marry.html
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2014-07-15/news/os-gay-marriage-florida-roundup-20140715_1_florida-family-policy-council-gay-marriage-3-judges
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/court-rules-gay-marriage-oklahoma-case-24618411

168.1 - Good News: Chicago moves on minimum wage

Good News: Chicago moves on minimum wage

As always whenever I can, starting off with good news to get us started the right way.

First, even as the federal government continues to sputter and stall on the minimum wage, states and localities continue to take it on.

The latest is Chicago, where Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he is backing a plan to boost the city’s minimum wage to $13 over the next four years, after which it would be tied to inflation.

The proposal was put together by a group of aldermen and labor and business leaders which he appointed to come up with a proposal.

Unfortunately, the City Council is unlikely to take up the plan in the near future, but it will do so as some point and it's still progress in the right direction.

The state minimum wage in Illinois is now $8.25.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.wbez.org/mayor-emanuel-backs-chicago-minimum-wage-hike-13-110462

Left Side of the Aisle #168

This week:

Good News: Chicago moves on minimum wage
http://www.wbez.org/mayor-emanuel-backs-chicago-minimum-wage-hike-13-110462

Good News: same-sex marriage advances in CO, OK, and FL
http://www.advocate.com/politics/marriage-equality/2014/07/09/colo-marriage-ban-ruled-unconstitutional
http://www.advocate.com/politics/marriage-equality/2014/07/10/breaking-denver-now-issuing-same-sex-marriage-licenses
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/tenth-circuit-declares-oklahomas-gay-marriage-ban-unconstitutional
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/17/4240865/keys-judge-gay-couples-can-marry.html
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2014-07-15/news/os-gay-marriage-florida-roundup-20140715_1_florida-family-policy-council-gay-marriage-3-judges
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/court-rules-gay-marriage-oklahoma-case-24618411

Hero Award: Salem, MA, Mayor Kimberly Driscoll
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2014/07/09/salem-kills-contract-with-gordon-college-over-school-stance-against-antigay-regulations/0hqb8efQqei1IO4gvCTz4I/story.html?p1=Must_Reads_hp

Unintentional Humor: NSA concerned about privacy
http://izquotes.com/quote/14039
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/07/14/nsa-releasing-edward-snowden-emails-would-violate-his-privacy
http://thedesk.matthewkeys.net/2014/07/nsa-says-snowden-emails-exempt-from-public-disclosure/

RIP: Johnny Winter, James Garner
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/johnny-winter-dead-70-blues-guitarist-struck-chord-rock-fans-article-1.1870928
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/legal-and-management/6164928/johnny-winter-blues-torchbearer-an-appreciation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Garner
http://www.people.com/article/james-garner-best-roles

Factoid of the Week: F-35 fighter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/11/military-jet-spending_n_5575045.html?cps=gravity
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/budget-appropriations/211520-f-35s-air-show-debut-in-jeopardy
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-16/us-approve-limited-flights-for-f-35-joint-strike-fighter/5599896
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/07/09/3458101/f35-boondoggle-fail/
http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/current.shtml

Outrage of the Week: Suit against discrimination fails even though Court admits there was discrimination
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/justices-reject-iowa-class-action-bias-case/2014/07/18/1bcf0cf4-0e84-11e4-b0dd-edc009ac1f9d_story.html

Middle East and Gaza: Israel does not want peace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Too_Much_with_Us
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/test-393840245
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/07/22/Deadly-clashes-between-Libyan-army-and-Islamists-strike-Benghazi-.html
http://www.npr.org/2014/07/22/333892178/violence-flares-in-libya-leaving-main-airport-in-ruins
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/18/some-of-israel-s-top-defenders-say-it-s-time-to-end-u-s-aid.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/rula-jebreal-msnbc-palestinians-airtime_n_5606673.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/23/world/meast/human-shields-mideast-controversy/
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/middle-east-unrest/netanyahu-says-hamas-wants-pile-bodies-sympathy-n161236
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-22/israel-declares-soldier-hamas-says-holds-in-gaza-missing.html
http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/boston-population/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/07/21/333537714/in-crowded-gaza-civilians-have-few-places-to-flee
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/07/14/did_netanyahu_just_say_what_he_really_thinks_about_a_two_state_solution.html
http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-finally-speaks-his-mind/

Clown Award: House GOPpers on Washington, DC laws
http://www.aol.com/article/2014/07/16/house-gop-to-dc-guns-ok-pot-dangerous/20932428/

167.5 - Not Good News: Turning back the 20th century

Not Good News: Turning back the 20th century

This actually follows on from what I was just talking about. The connection may not be obvious at first, but it's there.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that just days after the city of Seattle enacted legislation to rise the city's minimum wage to $15/hour over the next several years, a group of corporations had filed suit to overturn the law.

As I said at the time, some of the suit's arguments are laughably frivolous, such as the claim that it violates the employers' First Amendment rights of free speech because higher wages could reduce the amount of money they have to advertise.

More importantly - and let me say that I am indebted to an article at Think Progress, linked just above, for much of what follows - the suit seeks to re-energize some long-rejected legal theories, including "liberty of contract" and a prohibition on "class legislation."

"Class legislation" was defined as "legislation that picks out a group of people for special benefits or special burdens without adequate public justification." Sounds like a reasonable idea, but the problem is that nearly any law can be characterized as discriminatory if a judge really wants it to be.

As an example, consider an infamous case from 1904, People v. Lochner. The state of New York had passed a law limiting the number of hours a bakery worker could be required to work to 10 per day and 60 per week. A bakery owner named Joseph Lochner was convicted of having one of his employees exceed the 60-hour limit. He appealed his conviction.

He lost in lower courts, but one dissenting judge claimed that a law prohibiting bakery owners from overworking their workers was unconstitutional class legislation because it only applied to the "small fraction of the community who happen to conduct bakeries or confectionery establishments." That is, a law regulating bakeries was unconstitutional because it only applied to bakeries.

The case then went to the Supreme Court, where it became known as Lochner v. State of New York. The Supreme Court struck down the New York law, but not on the basis of "class legislation." Rather, it threw the law out on the basis of "liberty of contract" - that is, by virtue of accepting the job, the workers had "agreed" to work those very long hours and the courts certainly should not interfere with that "freedom!"

Using that same argument, later Supreme Court decisions in what became known as "the Lochner era" struck down minimum wage laws (because that took away your "freedom" to "agree" to work for less) and laws protecting the rights of workers to form unions (because that took away your "freedom" to "agree" to deal with the bosses on your own).

The point here is that both these doctrines, "class legislation" and "liberty of contract," had over the course of the 20th century become regarded as invalid and improper. Lochner has been taught in law schools as an example of how courts should not act, alongside such abominations as Plessy v. Ferguson (which declared racial segregation under "separate but equal" was constitutional) and Dred Scott v. Sandford (which found that African-Americans could not be US citizens but were "beings of an inferior order ... so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.")

But now, some high-powered legal talent - the lead litigator in the suit over the Seattle minimum wage law is Paul Clement, former US Solicitor General under George Bush and all-around right-wing go-to guy - some high-powered legal talent seems to think that with a Supreme Court apparently willing to go out of its way to say corporations are just like living beings, that this is the time to bring those legal notions back, to strike with arguments that, if adopted by the courts, would essentially invalidate the 20th century because any government regulation of or restriction on businesses would be subject to being found unconstitutional.

Every minimum wage law. Every law protecting the rights of workers to organize. Every environmental regulation. Every law about overtime. Every health and safety law. Every consumer protection law. Every law barring discrimination in hiring and promotions. Every law barring discrimination in public accommodations. All of them would be as risk. And more.

And don't think this is a one-off. George Will, the man all right-wingers turn to when they want to pretend they have any intellectual authority, and the man who once wrote that "'Back to 1900' is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal," said not long ago that Lochner was "correctly decided" based on our "individual possess[ion of] inalienable rights," including apparently, our "right" to "choose" to be desperate enough to submit to being overworked, underpaid, and exploited until we're no longer of use and can be dumped by the side of the road.

Meanwhile, right-wing legal theorist David Bernstein wrote a whole book devoted to, in the words of the title, Rehabilitating Lochner.

Bringing back the legal theories of "class legislation" and "liberty of contract," theories used in years past to strike down health and safety regulations and the rights of workers, these theories are continuing threads in right-wing legal circles and Paul Clement, who is no fool, has decided that now is the time to bring them into court, with his briefs for the Supreme Court doubtless already in preparation.

Make no mistake about it: George Will said it - "back to 1900." At the time he wrote it, he probably thought of it as a dream. Now there are those who can see it on the horizon. The right wing in this country is looking to undo the social progress of the entire 20th century. And if we don't pay attention and fight back, they just might do it.

Sources cited in links:
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/06/1636-update-even-imf-says-raise-minimum.html
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/06/12/3448134/the-completely-bonkers-lawsuit-seeking-to-kill-seattles-minimum-wage-repeal-the-twentieth-century/
http://thinkprogress.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_v._New_York
https://www.soc.umn.edu/~samaha/cases/people_v_lochner_excerpts.htm
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=198&invol=45
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-liberals-fear-the-lochner-decision/2011/09/06/gIQAZapUAK_story.html
http://www.amazon.com/Rehabilitating-Lochner-Defending-Individual-Progressive/dp/022600404X/ref=la_B001K7PO08_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405501263&sr=1-1

167.4 - Footnote: confidence in SCOTUS at all-time low

Footnote: confidence in SCOTUS at all-time low

As a brief footnote to that, I suspect that rulings such as these - not the Hobby Lobby one in particular, because it came down after the poll was conducted, by the trend of cases of late - rulings such as these are part of the reason that public confidence in the Supreme Court has dropped seven percentage points in the past two years and is now at a record low: Just 30% of the public has a "great deal" or a "quite a lot" of confidence in the Court.

Confidence in all three branches of the federal government have dropped, but confidence in the Supreme Court had remained relatively steady - ranging between 42% and 50% approval - since 1991, until, interestingly, right after Sam Alito joined the Court in 2006, replacing the relatively moderate Sandra Day O'Conner, after which the Court took its dramatic right turn and its approval rating hasn't reached the 40% level since.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/30/supreme-court-poll_n_5544322.html
http://www.gallup.com/poll/171992/americans-losing-confidence-branches-gov.aspx

167.3 - Outrage of the Week: Hobby Lobby and corporate personhood

Outrage of the Week: Hobby Lobby and corporate personhood

Now it's time for our other regular feature, the Outrage of the Week. For this week's Outrage I'm going to go back to something I've talked about before - the Hobby Lobby decision - but I'm going to look at a different aspect.

Because amid all the discussion about the impact on availability of contraceptive care, something else was largely lost in the shuffle and so was not getting the attention it deserved.

In it's decision on the Hobby Lobby case, the Supreme Court found as a practical matter that a profit-seeking corporation, a commerical business, can have a religious belief and has rights of conscience. It has never found this before. This is a dramatic, far-reaching, expansion of the ill-founded and Constitution-twisting notion of "corporate personhood," the idea that in some ways - an increasing number of ways, now - a corporation is just like a living, breathing, person with the same fundamental rights.

What Citizens United did for the idea of corporate freedom of speech, Hobby Lobby did for corporate freedom of religion. In fact, more: In this case it didn't expand the "freedom," it created it.

That the foul five, the maleficent majority, knew what they were doing is evident in the effort they went to, to try to play down the meaning. It's no big deal, nothing to see here, move along, nothing new or radical about creating new rights for corporations. In fact, in his majority opinion, Justice Sam Alito wrote that "a corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends."

That is a declaration so utterly at odds with both the real world and the law as to brand it a deliberate lie meant to conceal the decision's impact. Because that decision is, in fact, as one commentator put it, "a radical reimagining of both First Amendment and corporate law."

Corporations are not just another "form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends." Corporations are different from other forms of organization. They are intended to be different, they are designed to be different, that is their whole point: to be different in the way that they are.

In his dissent to Citizens United, John Paul Stevens wrote that corporate "personhood" "often serves as a useful legal fiction. But," he added, "they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

It is important - it is vital - for us to remember that corporations are legal fictions, they are legal constructs. They are "creatures of law" that have no existence apart from their definition under such law. Corporations do not actually exist in the physical world. There is no building to which you can point and say "that is the corporation." You can say "that's where the headquarters of the corporation is, that's where it does most of it's business," but you can't say "that is the corporation." There is no person, no group of people, to who you can point and say "that is the corporation." You can say they are officers of the corporation or executives of the corporation or employees of the corporation or stockholders of the corporation, but they are not "the corporation." Oh, various facilities owned by the corporation do exist - but the corporation itself is a creation of the state, one which by design exists apart from any of the actual people involved in it. Even in a case where a single person incorporates themselves, you can't point to that person and say "there is the corporation," because they are not: The corporation, again, exists apart from them.

Corporations exist apart from those involved with them in order to offer those people protection against certain kinds of risk - that is their whole point! And it is altogether possible for a corporation to exist without any facilities, officers, employees, agents, income, or debts, to exist solely on paper. It would be incapable of action - but legally, it would still exist.

On the other hand, unincorporated groups, organizations, associations, clubs - that is, actual "organized groups of people" - whether political or otherwise, long-term or ad hoc, exist only as the aggregate of their members. No members, no group. If any unincorporated organization owns property, there will be actual people on the hook for actual debts. If there is a lawsuit, it is against people, not some disembodied legal formality. Corporations, by design, by their nature, by intent, are different and it is inane to suggest otherwise.

That's the point here: Corporations are, again, designed to protect involved persons against certain types of risk. That is, by incorporating, those people gain special protections and that corporation occupies a special status, one not available to others. It is entirely reasonable, logical, and I say Constitutional to expect that in return for that special status, that those corporations - not the individuals, the corporations - face certain restrictions on what they can do in the public arena as compared to what individuals, actual, living, breathing, human beings, can.

Even so, courts have long held that corporations can assert some, but not all, of the Constitutional rights of individuals, straining to make distinctions as to what rights are "purely personal" and so unavailable to corporations and which are not.

But even that idea, that corporations have any rights beyond certain basic universal guarantees, specifically those of equal protection and due process (including the right to sue and to own and use property in accordance with the law), that notion may rest on a - to use an old phrase - foundation of stubble and straw.

The modern idea of corporate rights - that is, corporate "personhood" - comes from an 1886 SCOTUS decision called Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Except it doesn't: The phrase "corporations are persons," the entire foundation for the doctrine that corporations are "legal persons," does not appear anywhere in the ruling; rather, it was in a summary of the arguments presented in the case written by a court reporter. Such summaries are not legally binding. What the court said was that the 14th Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection applied to corporations such as were parties in that suit, not that "corporations are people, my friend."

In fact, for the first 100-plus years of our history, that was not the fact or the law. In a case decided in 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall said

A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.

That is, the rights of a corporation depend on “the object for which it was created.”

Which is why, by the way, profit-oriented corporations can be and have been treated differently than specifically religious institutions and nonprofits - or at least they were.

Of course, that was before corporations, just like the Velveteen Rabbit, became "real" (although the love in this case was that of money and power).

Still, for the very reason that the case was decided in 1819, just 31 years after the ratification of the Constitution, it could be argued that it's more likely than the Santa Clara case to reflect the intentions of the framers vis-à-vis corporations and the political process - which should have been of concern to those "strict constructionists" among the foul five who always claim to be looking for "the original intent," but of course it wasn't.

I say we are entirely within our rights and authorities as a free people to define the rights, protections, and authorities of corporations in whatever way we choose, including imposing whatever limitations we care to place on them, limited only by those baseline guarantees which have been there since the beginning of the republic - which were, again, equal protection and due process, access to the courts, and the right to own and use property in accordance with the law. Beyond that, well, we offer the privileges and protections that corporations provide for their participants, so we get to set the conditions under which they are available. You don't want the restrictions? You don't incorporate.

But the Supreme Court continues to go the opposite direction, to provide corporations and the rich elite who run them more power, more authority, and fewer restrictions; giving them by judicial fiat more and more of the rights previously held to be, in what is an increasingly anachronistic phrase, "human rights."

And now it has declared that perhaps the most human of rights, the most distinctive of human qualities, the right of conscience, also describes corporations. That corporations can have consciences, that entirely apart from actions of their directors (because remember that is the point of a corporation, to be separate from the people that comprise it) they can pray, they can express devotion to a god, that corporations can have their own emotional and spiritual existence as we continue to strip away what is "human" in service to the corporate state.

And That. Is. An. Outrage.

Sources cited in links:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/06/30/supreme-court-embraces-discrimination-against-w/199935
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2010/02/footnote-to-everybodys-talkin-parts-1.html
http://theusconstitution.org/text-history/2169/next-big-test-corporate-personhood
http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/3rd-CA-decision-on-mandate-7-26-13.pdf
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2004/02/important-thing-to-know.html

167.2 - Clown Award: Bill O’Reilly

Clown Award: Bill O’Reilly

Now it's time for one of our regular features, the Clown Award, given for meritorious stupidity.

A couple of people have been retired from contention for the award because they would wind up dominating the rankings. One is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, of who I will just say I can't  understand why some supposedly knowledgeable people say he is this great legal mind. Ithink it'd be more accurate to replace the words "great legal" with "never."

Another is Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, the man who puts the "Gomer" in Gohmert, and who can be counted on to say something stupid at pretty much regular intervals.

But there is another, someone who I just had to bring out of retirement because of - well, you'll see.

So this week the winner of the Big Red Nose is the man with the world's most perfect initials: Bill O'Reilly

On his July 14 show, after citing a recent Harris poll saying that 46% of Americans who are not retired report living paycheck to paycheck, he proceeded to tell those people what to do about it.

He started by saying that you should have at least $25,000 on hand, money you can immediately access in case you get fired or some financial crisis hits your family. He then proceeds to tell people how they can easily amass such an amount.

I'm quoting now:

First of all, never waste money. Ever. That trinket? You don't need it! Then, look at your life. See what your vices are. See what you overdo - and cut back. Then, go to websites like Groupon, get discounts on stuff that you have to buy. Never - never pay full price. Also, every time you have loose change in your pocket, put it in a big jar. That'll add up fast, pay your cable bill some day. But most important is what my father drummed into my head: every dollar you make, save ten cents. No excuses.

First bear in mind that this is the multi-millionaire who recently called income inequality "bull" and "a fabricated, political thing."

And then let's go through what he said: First, every dollar you spend should be on absolute necessities. No frills, no "trinkets," nothing just for fun, nothing to make your life brighter or more colorful. You're not rich enough to deserve it. Oh, and your "vices?" Don't have any.

Speaking of trinkets and vices, I wonder what Bill O'Reilly's loufa bill is.

Getting back to what he said, Groupon and the rest are "deal of the day" sites. If you didn't happen to need that day's deal so you had to go pay full price for a loaf of bread and some cereal, well, apparently according to Mr. B.O. you paid full price and that somehow was your fault, you wasteful loser.

Oh, and a jar for spare change! Oh yeah, that will mount up so fast that "some day" it may pay one month's cable bill. What a bonanza!

Which also means, by the way, cable is apparently a necessity, not a waste or a trinket or any other sort of unnecessary expense which you can survive without. It's a necessity - because, after all, if you don't have cable, you can't watch Bill O'Reilly.

But here it is, the putrid poetry of the pontificating pinhead: "Every dollar you make, save ten cents. No excuses." You have to save 10% of your total income. No excuses.

Remember, this is being addressed to people he had already described as living paycheck to paycheck. Which means by definition they have little if anything to spare. Saving 10% of that current income is, in effect, a 10% cut in the amount of money you have now for current expenses. How are people who are, again, already living paycheck to paycheck supposed to do that?

The utter cluelessness, the utter disconnect, between this bozo and the life he presumes to judge and the people he does judge as just needing a little more self-discipline because if you're poor or struggling it's your own fault, you're either lazy or a spendthrift or both; the utter disconnect between this self-important nitwit and the people he condescends to advise, is just - well, I was going to say stunning but actually it's not, it's exactly what we should expect.

Which is why Bill O'Reilly is and always will be a clown's clown.

Sources cited in links:
http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/07/15/millionaire-oreilly-lectures-struggling-america/200103
http://mediamatters.org/video/2012/05/14/oreilly-income-inequality-is-bull-nobody-gives/185720
http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/05/30/bill-oreilly-income-inequality-is-a-fabricated/199524