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A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns
Freeeedom!
It comes as a surprise to me that many liberals oppose self-determination, especially since home rule is the central theory on which this country was founded. Remember the Declaration of Independence?:
That to secure these [inalienable] rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness….
It should be obvious that vast swaths of the country, emanating from the South and creeping westward and northward, do not now nor did they ever want to adhere to laws imposed by representatives of the majority of U.S. citizens. Moreover, those Southerners and others believe it is their inalienable right to ignore – or nullify – majority rule. In 1830, Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina wrote to a friend,
The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick institution of the Southern States [i.e., slavery], and the consequent direction, which that and her soil and climate have given to her industry, have placed them in regard to taxation and appropriations in opposite relation to the majority of the Union; against the danger of which, if there be no protective power in the reserved rights of the States, they must in the end be forced to rebel, or submit to have their permanent interests sacraficed, their domestick institutions subverted by Colonization and other schemes, and themselves & children reduced to wretchedness.
Two years later, South Carolina’s legislature formalized Calhoun's theory in an Ordinance of Nullification:
We..., the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain ... that the several acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States, purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities..., are unauthorized by the constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens....
This is the same theory under which the Southern states seceded in 1860 and 1861, and under which they imposed Jim Crow laws in violation of the post-Civil War Constitutional Amendments. Nearly two hundred years later, many states have passed laws that nullify federal laws and Supreme Court decisions: they violate Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Pennsylvania and the Voting Rights Act. States and communities have passed laws and put into common practice violations of the First Amendment, laws and court decisions imposing the separation of church and state. In today's New York Times, the editors point out that four states – Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Louisiana – are violating an order from the Defense Department – based on a Supreme Court decision – to provide equal protection to same-sex couples in the military. As the editors note, “The [national] guard units say they are merely adhering to state constitutions that ban same-sex marriages and do not recognize same-sex marriages lawfully performed in other states.... Under the Constitution’s supremacy clause, federal law takes precedence.” The editors are absolutely right about U.S. law, but the powers that be in those states don't see it as the New York Times does. Those Southern National Guard units stand today with the South Carolina nullifiers of old.
At least one writer in yesterday's comments thread suggested a sort of Rodney King solution – we should all just get along. That is a lovely thought, similar to one expressed by Barack Obama in his 2004 Democratic convention speech. Now President Barack Obama has found out the hard way that his lovely image of “one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America” is illusory. Legislators in and from red states have done all they can to nullify laws passed during his administration, most notably of course the Affordable Care Act. They have done this, as Paul Krugman notes today, out of “sheer spite – the desire to sabotage anything with President Obama’s name on it,” and to the disadvantage of their neediest citizens. Southerners do not believe Barack Obama is the legitimate President of the United States; as Garry Wills writes, they say they “object to Obama because he is a 'foreign-born Muslim'” but “they really mean 'a black man.'” Public Policy Polling found that
49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the [2012] election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore.
Almost 200 years after the South Carolina legislature passed the Nullification Act, 150 years after Southern states seceded from the Union and Northern states forced them to return – Southerners and some Westerners continue to hold the views that inspired these early acts of nullification. Today's Southerners are not going to try to “get along” with “Northern aggressors.” Laws imposed by the representatives of the majority of Americans did not adhere to Southern views then or now. Southern conservatives think the federal government is illegitimate – a fraud perpetrated by liberal election cheats.
I don't agree with any of those Southern conservative views. I believe in a woman's right to choose, in everyone's right to vote, in everyone's right to equal protection, in the separation of church and state, and in the legitimacy of the elections of Barack Obama. But I also believe in the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence: that governments derive their power from the “consent of the governed.” It is clear that Southerners do not consent to certain Constitutional provisions and laws deriving from them. Perhaps the majority of Southerners do not “consent” to the U.S. government. They live in a country that has for two centuries deprived them of self-determination.
That is why I propose secession – not to punish Southerners but to free them to make their own constitutions and their own laws. For most of the history of our country, the North has aggrieved the South. Northerners have forced Southerners to live in a country whose values they eschew. We should give them a way out. It has happened before, and it has happened on a massive scale during my lifetime. The break-up of the Soviet Union came in the form of a “Velvet Revolution,” one in which nary a shot was fired, but the “inalienable right” to self-governance was restored to millions of Europeans and Asians. Is it likely to happen here? No. But until it does, this country will be crippled by a fundamental and unbreachable divide. You can suppress people, but you cannot suppress their beliefs. Attempts to suppress beliefs and values serve only to solidify those beliefs and to give them exaggerated importance. After 200 years, let us not insist upon prolonging this noble experiment. It failed when we forgot why we started it in the first place.
The Commentariat -- Oct. 21, 2013
Justin Sink of the Hill: "President Obama 'will directly address the technical problems' with the ObamaCare website during a Rose Garden event Monday morning, according to a White House official.... The official said the president will be joined by 'consumers, small business owners, and pharmacists,' including individuals who have already enrolled in ObamaCare online." ...
... Louise Radnofsky of the Wall Street Journal: "The Department of Health and Human Services said Sunday it was bringing in outside help to resolve some of the technical woes that have beset the federally run insurance exchanges...." ...
... Department of Health & Human Service: "Unfortunately, the experience on HealthCare.gov has been frustrating for many Americans.... The initial consumer experience of HealthCare.gov has not lived up to the expectations of the American people. We are committed to doing better." ...
... Sharon LaFraniere, et al., of the New York Times: "Federal contractors have identified most of the main problems crippling President Obama's online health insurance marketplace, but the administration has been slow to issue orders for fixing those flaws, and some contractors worry that the system may be weeks away from operating smoothly...." ...
... Fox "News": Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) "said Sunday that Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius will testify before Congress about the problem-plagued ObamaCare website, amid a growing call for her to accept requests to testify.... Sebelius and the entire Obama administration has declined requests to testify on Capitol Hill about the site, which has been plagued by crashes, slow responses and other glitches since it went online Oct. 1." ...
... Paul Krugman: "... the technical problems, while infuriating — heads should roll -- will not, in the end, be the big story. The real threat remains the effort of conservative groups to sabotage reform, especially by blocking the expansion of Medicaid. This effort relies heavily on lobbying, lavishly bankrolled by the usual suspects, including the omnipresent Koch brothers." And other lice! ...
... Garance Franke-Ruta of the Atlantic: "... people do not turn to government programs because they believe in them. They turn to them because they need them, and the market is not meeting their needs.... That's going to save the Obamacare rollout.... People who have experience with programs for the needy will recognize a familiar bureaucratic incompetence in the rollout.... Obamacare ... also has also suffered from what Johns Hopkins University political scientist Steven Teles calls 'kludgeocracy' -- the tendency of interest groups, lobbyists, bureaucracy, and bad management to combine to create highly complex legislation and giant public-administration kludges, a term defined as 'an ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole.'" (Emphasis added.) ...
... Ross Douthat: "Like the Bush administration in Iraq, the White House seems to have invaded the health insurance marketplace with woefully inadequate postinvasion planning, and let the occupation turn into a disaster of hack work and incompetence." ...
... Digby: "Yes, except for all the actual human carnage, torture and death, it's exactly the same. Good insight. Once again, I'm struck by how the right sees Obamacare in such violent terms. I thought I was immune to how weird these people are, but I still have things to learn. These are people who valorize our out of control gun violence and cheer on any war the nation decides to join. But affordable health care is a fundamental threat to life and liberty. Ok." ...
... Douthat: "The Obamacare exchanges… are actually closer to the right-of-center vision for health care reform...." ...
... Brad DeLong of U.C.-Berkeley: "For five years Ross Douthat has been claiming Obamacare ≠ RomneyCare, and that the marketplaces-exchanges are not the Heritage Foundation's intellectual child. But now, apparently, it is finally time to strip of the mask and acknowledge what he has been pretending for five years is not so.... Could you have made a difference, Ross, if you had spent the last five years telling your copains of the right that ObamaCare = RomneyCare?" ...
... Max Ehrenfreund in the Washington Monthly: "... if we hadn't been so concerned about protecting hospitals and insurers, we might have found our way to a simpler system with a better chance of success.... It's far too early to give up on the exchanges, but if they do fail, it seems most likely that they will fail because of their conservatism -- because Congress and the president weren't willing to go far enough in 2010 in expanding the government presence in the health care system." ...
... Jeb 2 Ted: STFU. Justin Sink: "Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) said in an interview airing Sunday that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) needs to 'have a little bit of self-restraint' if the Republican Party is to succeed in repealing ObamaCare.... 'Tactically, it was a mistake to focus on something that couldn't be achieved,' Bush said, complaining that the controversy over the shutdown had 'crowded out' how 'dysfunctional' the implementation of ObamaCare had been." CW: Huh. Sounds like me telling my stray mouser to quit dropping dead (or half-dead) rodents at my feet. Neither Ted nor the cat can comprehend the message. ...
... Ted 2 Jeb, et al.: STFU. Ashley Killough of CNN: Cruz "was unapologetic for fighting to defund President Obama's health care law in the face of outsized odds, saying he doesn't work for the 'party bosses' in Washington." CW: Toljaso. ...
... Everything Is Obama's Fault. Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) suggested on Sunday that President Obama's refusal to compromise with Republicans on Obamacare to re-open the government and raise the nation's debt ceiling has jeopardized the chances of passing comprehensive immigration reform." CW Translation: Obama refused to kowtow to us nullifiers & insurrectionists who refused to do our jobs, so we're never going to do our jobs. ...
Paul Steinhauser of CNN: "Just more than half the public says that it's bad for the country that the GOP controls the House of Representatives, according to a new national poll conducted after the end of the partial government shutdown. And the CNN/ORC International survey also indicates that more than six in 10 Americans say that Speaker of the House John Boehner should be replaced.... 54% say it's a bad thing that the GOP controls the House, up 11 points from last December.... Only 38% say it's a good thing the GOP controls the House, a 13-point dive from the end of last year." ...
... AND Treasury Secretary Jack Lew writes a "can't we all just get along" op-ed for the New York Times: "It is time to put an end to governing by crisis and focus on accelerating economic growth and job creation. If we are open to what we can achieve together rather than simply setting our sights on our divisions, there is a lot we can do to support America's workers and businesses. This is what the American people expect from their leaders in Washington."
A lot of times, though, when people say the president should lead, what they want him to do is adopt Republican positions and then push for those. That's not leadership, that's capitulation. -- E.J. Dionne on "Press the Meat," via Digby, who may have mentioned this herself
Zach Carter of the Huffington Post: Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 man in the Senate told Chris Wallace of Fox "News" "that Republicans had to put tax revenue on the table to get entitlement cuts. 'Social Security is gonna run out of money in 20 years," Durbin said. "The Baby Boom generation is gonna blow away our future. We don't wanna see that happen.' [CW: gonna, wanna?] Social Security will not run out of money in 20 years. The program currently enjoys a surplus of more than $2 trillion. Social Security will, however, be unable to pay all benefits at current levels if nothing is changed. If a 25 percent benefit cut were implemented in 20 years, the program would be solvent into the 2080s." ...
... Really, Dick? Really, Zach? Phoenix Woman in Firedoglake: "The only 'reforms' Social Security might possibly require, besides keeping the hedge fund CEOs away from it, are as follows: 1. Remove the cap, and 2. Subject *all* income to FICA. Doing this keeps Social Security safe forever." CW: When even HuffPost writers, not to mention Durbin, can't get with the obvious, we're in trouble. ...
... Digby: "Gee, Dick, way to stoke generational warfare there. Thanks a lot. Pete Peterson's wrecking crew couldn't have said it better." ...
... As Peter Nicholas & Colleen Nelson of the Wall Street Journal report, at least some actual Democrats -- and Bernie Sanders -- will fight Durbin & Obama on this.
Humor Break. Mark Sanford's fiancee Maria Chapur, speaking on the Argentine news site InfobaeTV to which she occasionally contributes, "acknowledged that there are 'extremists' among Republican lawmakers, but 'just because there are extremists that doesn't mean they aren't fundamentally right.' ... Her latest [contribution to the site], published on Oct. 8, addressed the topic of why a U.S. debt default is 'unthinkable.'" Via Daniel Politi of McClatchy News. CW: Evidently Chapur's soulmate doesn't agree. He voted "no" on the bill to reauthorize the government & prevent debt default. So are extremists fundamentally right -- or not?
Jens Glusing of Spiegel Online & others: "The NSA has been systematically eavesdropping on the Mexican government for years. It hacked into the president's public email account and gained deep insight into policymaking and the political system. The news is likely to hurt ties between the US and Mexico.... This operation ... is described in a document leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden...." CW: Thanks for sharing, Ed. I really needed to know this. ...
... AFP: "France and Mexico have angrily demanded prompt explanations from Washington following fresh, 'shocking' spying allegations leaked by former US security contractor Edward Snowden. The reports in French daily Le Monde and German weekly Der Spiegel revealed that the National Security Agency secretly recorded tens of millions of phone calls in France and hacked into former Mexican President Felipe Calderon's email account." CW: Thanks again, Ed.
Ben Protess & Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon & Attorney General Eric Holder personally negotiated the settlement deal -- which has not yet been signed -- in the government's civil case against the bank -- the nation's largest.
More Nullification. New York Times Editors: "In August, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that the Defense Department would begin offering full spousal and family benefits, including health care coverage, housing allowances and survivor benefits, to the same-sex spouses of military personnel" in compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling on DOMA. "National Guard units in four states -- Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Oklahoma -- have, however, refused to process applications by same-sex couples in a convenient and respectful manner.... The guard units say they are merely adhering to state constitutions that ban same-sex marriages and do not recognize same-sex marriages lawfully performed in other states. But state bans cannot pre-empt a lawful Defense Department order based on a Supreme Court ruling. Under the Constitution's supremacy clause, federal law takes precedence."
Gubernatorial Race
"None of the Above." Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch Editors: "The major-party candidates have earned the citizenry's derision. The third-party alternative has run a more exemplary race yet does not qualify as a suitable option. We cannot in good conscience endorse a candidate for governor.
The Commentariat -- Oct. 20, 2013
** Freeeeedom! Garry Wills in the New York Review of Books on "Back Door Secession." CW: As I wrote some while back, President Obama is fighting the same civil war that President Lincoln fought. Wills makes this abundantly clear. A very fine piece. BTW, every time I write that Lincoln made a terrible -- if understandable -- mistake in prosecuting the Civil War, I get great howls of objection. Here's the thing: people want self-governance. That was ostensibly the purpose of the American Revolution, after all. The North has been forcing its laws on the South for 150 years. Southerners keep resisting. It is reasonable to hate white Southern values. I don't think it is reasonable to hate white Southerners for wanting home rule, no matter how terrible that rule is. Let 'em secede. Please. ...
... Jonathan Martin, et al., of the New York Times: Meanwhile, Republicans are engaged in their own internal civil war. "The budget fight that led to the first government shutdown in 17 years did not just set off a round of recriminations among Republicans over who was to blame for the politically disastrous standoff. It also heralded a very public escalation of a far more consequential battle for control of the Republican Party, a confrontation between Tea Party conservatives and establishment Republicans that will play out in the coming Congressional and presidential primaries in 2014 and 2016 but has been simmering since President George W. Bush’s administration, if not before."
Maureen Dowd: "The paradox of Obama is that he believes in his own magical powers, but then he doesn't turn up to use them." I liked this line: "(We have met the enemy and they are ... bloggers?)" Nothing Dowd hasn't written before. ...
... AND this from Dana Milbank: "These 'extremes' who 'don't like the word "compromise" were the obvious target of Obama's demand that we all 'stop focusing on the lobbyists and the bloggers and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict.' (He did not mention newspaper columnists, so you are free to continue reading.) The gloating was a bit unseemly, but the president is entitled to savor a victory lap. The more important thing is that Obama now maintain the forceful leadership that won him the budget and debt fights. In that sense, the rest of Obama's speech had some worrisome indications that he was returning to his familiar position in the rear."...
Every day, I jump out of bed with a smile on my face, because it is a joy to have the opportunity to stand with the American people and work to help restore people's faith and optimism in our nation. It's an incredible honor to play a small role in expanding the American dream. -- Sen. Ted Cruz
Apparently Ted figures the American dream is to die of a treatable illness for want of affordable health care. Also, the image of Ted jumping out of bed with a diabolical smile on his face is ultra-creepy. -- Constant Weader ...
... Tailgunner Ted Is Still Shooting. Robert Costa of National Review: "According to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, it's his [Republican] colleagues, more than anyone, who should be blamed for the failure of the defund-Obamacare campaign -- and he expects conservatives to remember come primary season."
I am excited about being a member of the budget conference committee and I look forward to working with my Democratic and Republican colleagues to end the absurdity of sequestration and to develop a budget which works for all Americans. In my view, it is imperative that this new budget helps us create the millions of jobs we desperately need and does not balance the budget on the backs of working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor. -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ...
... Jason Easley of Politics USA: "Majority Leader Harry Reid has shattered Paul Ryan's dreams of killing Social Security and Medicare by putting Sen. Bernie Sanders on the budget conference committee." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...
... "The Biggest Victim of the Debt Ceiling Deal -- Your Retirement." Adam Levin of ABC News: "Congressional leaders are playing a dangerous game with their constituents' money, their livelihoods and their retirement savings. On Wednesday, all Congress did was flip over the hourglass on a game of chicken that cost our economy $24 billion and left America's future up in the air -- and, by doing so, may cause some of our hard-earned retirement savings to disappear into it."
Julie Pace of the AP: "Last week, President Barack Obama gathered some of his top advisers in the Oval Office to discuss the problem-plagued rollout of his health care legislation. He told his team the administration had to own up to the fact that there were no excuses for not having the health care website ready to operate on Day One. The admonition from a frustrated president came amid the embarrassing start to sign-ups for the health care insurance exchanges. The president is expected to address the cascade of computer problems Monday during an event at the White House."
John Whitesides of Reuters: "Hillary Clinton returned to the campaign trail on Saturday to endorse old friend Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor's race.... At her first overtly political appearance since leaving her post as secretary of state in February..., [Clinton] said the outcome of the bitter governor's battle would show whether voters were ready to choose common sense over ideology. She received a hero's welcome from the packed crowd in a theater in Falls Church, a Washington suburb, during an appearance certain to heighten speculation about a possible 2016 presidential bid."
Ben Protess & Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times: "JPMorgan Chase and the Justice Department are moving closer to a $13 billion settlement over the bank's mortgage practices, a record penalty that would cap weeks of heated negotiating and underscore the extent of the bank's legal woes, people briefed on the talks said. To resolve an array of federal and state investigations into the bank's sale of troubled mortgage securities to investors in the lead up to the financial crisis, the bank would be expected to pay about $9 billion in fines.... JPMorgan, the nation's largest bank, is also likely to spend $4 billion in relief for struggling homeowners, another person briefed on the talks said." (Emphasis added.)
News Lede
New York Times: "Mother Antonia Brenner, who left a comfortable life in Beverly Hills to minister to inmates in a notorious Mexican prison, eventually becoming a nun and spending more than 30 years living in a cell to be closer to those she served, died on Thursday in Tijuana, Mexico. She was 86."