What’s
Wrong Today:

For
65 years, the US government was barred by law from acting as a news outlet inside
America. It was restricted to providing news overseas, through the Voice of
America, Radio Free Europe and other outlets operated by the Broadcasting Board
of Governors (BBG), an independent federal
agency supervising all US government-supported, civilian international media.

The
law that prevented this was the Smith-Mundt act of 1948. Smith-Mundt was amended
numerous times over the years.  In 1972, Senator
J. William Fulbright (D-AR) authored one of the most significant amendments. Fulbright
was no friend of Voice Of America and Radio Free Europe and moved to restrict them from being used domestically,
saying they:

In 1985, Senator
Edward Zorinsky’s (D-NE) amendment blocked taxpayer access to materials of the
US Information Agency (USIA),
even by requests under the Freedom of Information Act. (The USIA was replaced by the
BBG in 1999). Zorinsky compared the USIA to an organ of Soviet propaganda
saying it should be kept out of America to distinguish the US “from
the Soviet Union where domestic propaganda is a principal government
activity.”

Zorinsky
and Fulbright sold their amendments using a sensible argument: American taxpayers shouldn’t be funding
propaganda directed at American audiences.

In
May of 2012, the Wrongologist warned that Congress was considering an
amendment to Smith-Mundt that would eliminate the ban on domestic
dissemination of propaganda materials produced by the State Department and
the Pentagon. The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 was passed as part of
the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, and went into effect on July 2.  

Now, John
Hudson of Foreign Policy reports that the
result is an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded
radio and TV programs for domestic US consumption: 

It started
with BBG broadcasts on local radio stations in the US. The agency is trying to
reach Diaspora communities, such as St. Paul Minnesota’s large Somali expat community.

But if
anyone needs a reason for the dangers of domestic propaganda efforts, we just saw a reminder. The Washington Post exposed a counter propaganda program by the Pentagon that
recommended posting comments on a US website run by a Somali expat with readers
opposing al-Shabaab,
the Somali-based al-Qaeda affiliate. From WaPo:

There are issues here
for every citizen to consider:

• There will be no real oversight
  of the people in our government who will put out this information

• There will be limited
  checks and balances

• No one will know if the
  information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false

The BBG of
course, has an alternative view, that the reform has a transparency benefit as
well. Americans will be able to know more about what they are paying for with
their tax dollars – greater transparency is a win-win for all involved.  

Maybe.

Hudson
reported on meeting with BBG spokeswoman Lynne Weil, who insists BBG is not a
propaganda outlet, and its flagship services such as VOA present fair and
accurate news:

So goes
the thought bubble: Now that the BBG’s materials can be broadcasted by local
radio stations and TV networks, they won’t be a complete mystery to Americans. And
what are the chances that America winds up saying: “Some of this stuff is
really good?”

Few events speak
more clearly to the creeping fascism in American politics than the assertion
by Congress and the BBG, that allowing DoD and the State Department to offer us
government propaganda as news, “provides transparency”, or “lets Americans know
where their tax dollars are going”.

A final
point: Last year Wired
Magazine
reported that the Defense Department was trying to seek out “persuasion
campaign structures and influence operations” using social media like Twitter,
Facebook and Tumblr. They established the Social Media in Strategic
Communication (SMISC) program to learn about and exploit social media
techniques. SMISC is designed to quickly flag rumors and emerging themes on
social media, figure out who’s behind it and counter the message.

You can be sure that with
the new, improved, modernized Smith-Mundt, there will be much more of the same
from your government: More “fair and balanced”, more propaganda for domestic
consumption by an America that can no longer see through to the truth.

Soon, there will be “suggestions” to the corporate media to run BBG “content”.
Between license renewals, environmental impact statements for new
studios or antenna installations, access to lawmakers and the President
and press junket invites, if the government wants
stations to run their content, you can bet that the media will do it. Given media consolidation, only a few big companies need to be influenced in order to get the latest from VOA into the nightly
news.

Did anyone in
Congress ever read a book on
the Soviet Union during the Stalin period?  

You are watching more of our basic freedoms drain
away, and no one in the Main Stream Media covered it.

 

“This country has come to feel the same when
Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.” –Will Rogers

What’s
Wrong Today:

In January
2012, the Wrongologist wrote about MERS:

Instead of
individual banks or lenders registering with counties each time a loan was sold
or re-sold, MERS handled the initial registration and then became the
“nominal” note-holder. Then, each time the note was passed on, MERS
would record the transaction in its computers — but no matter who the actual owner of the note
was, MERS remained the legally registered assignee of the note with the county.
Without MERS, the mortgage bubble
would not have been physically possible. By using MERS,
lenders/buyers of mortgages no longer had to document their transactions with
county clerks, or pay the courthouse registration and processing fees. And MERS
holds the liens on behalf of all the players in the game.

The Wrongologist
concluded:

Well, here’s
what’s next. Dave Dayden reports:

Although
the MERS system has been subject to many lawsuits throughout the country, initially
for the “Robo-signing” mess, according to this bill’s text, any document
arising from this repository would be legal on its face, pre-empting state and federal laws on foreclosure.

Rep. Jeb
Hensarling (R-TX), chair of the House Financial Services Committee, introduced
the bill, called the “Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners (PATH)
Act” on July 11th. It’s the House Republican response to a series of
bills and initiatives to deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and set a course
for the future of mortgage finance. Most of the bill deals with that: in Hensarling’s
vision, Fannie and Freddie should be dismantled within five years, and
private financial services firms take up the slack with virtually no government
guarantee.

But Title III
of the proposed PATH Act directs the Federal Housing Finance Agency to provide
a charter for the National Mortgage Market Utility (NMMU). The utility would
create standard practices for origination, servicing, pooling and
securitization of mortgages, and operate a platform for holding and bundling
mortgages just like MERS.

But, the
bill also allows the big banks to wrap up the documentation failures of the
bubble years under the cover of a new federal regulation. That should sound a
few alarms throughout America.

The bill
proposes that the National Mortgage Market Utility would exempt mortgage backed
securities from SEC oversight under the Securities Act of 1933. This would
allow the mortgage and derivatives bubble of 2007-2008 to come back with a vengeance.
From the proposed bill, the repository’s defined purpose is to: (emphasis by
the Wrongologist)

This is an
elegant solution for the Banks. It takes all the questions arising from whether
MERS has the legal right to foreclose, all the myriad problems with mortgage
documentation, and buries them with a brand-new private database that pre-empts
all those questions and concerns. All the losses
MERS has suffered in state courts? Gone. All those problems servicers are
having foreclosing in states like Nevada
and California
and elsewhere? Also gone.

States
have always controlled property law, but this Republican bill would remove state
control, putting it not in the hands of the federal government, but in a private entity. The banks would be able to
foreclose because a repository, in all likelihood owned by the banks, said they
had that legal right.

The PATH Act is unlikely to become law. But, it represents the
opening negotiating position of the banks regarding how they want to insulate
themselves from foreclosure fraud in the future: Just make it impossible to
challenge fraudulent documents by using one’s personal private property and due
process rights.

“Protecting
American Taxpayers and Homeowners (PATH) Act.” How Orwellian: No consumer will
be protected, this bill only protects the banks.

Why are
Republicans, who are so devoted to rugged individualism, states rights, the 10th
Amendment, and smaller government, so comfortable with grabbing this power from
individuals and the states?

What’s
Wrong Today:

The
situation on the ground in Afghanistan has become so uncertain that Afghan
diplomats no longer want to return to their homeland. Up to 100 foreign service
employees set for rotation back to Kabul from assignments abroad have now
defected or failed to report in back home.

From Der Spiegel: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Sources at
the Afghan Foreign Ministry told Der Spiegel that embassy staff members have said
they would apply for asylum in their respective host countries or at least
apply for an extension of their service abroad with Afghanistan until after the
presidential election in spring 2014:

The NYT said about Afghani diplomats:

Der
Spiegel reports that many Afghan diplomats are the sons and daughters of
high-ranking politicians. They also say that international foundations and
organizations that organize educational trips and conferences for Afghans
abroad have also become more cautious recently. They know that more and more
trip participants will disappear and that several Afghan teachers never
returned from a trip organized recently by the German government.

From Tinko
Weibezahl, the head of the Kabul office of Germany’s Konrad Adenauer
Foundation:

So it
seems that the story of the hopeful future of an Afghanistan that stands on its
own two feet, which is safe and peaceful and democratically governed, is just a story that the Obama
Administration is keeping out there for domestic consumption.

It seems
clear that many Afghans don’t believe it.

The NY Times reports that Omar Samad, a former
ambassador to Paris who is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation,
indicates that more than 60% of Afghan diplomats decide to remain abroad, and
the trend has been accelerating recently. Samad:

Mr. Samad said that
when he was ambassador to Canada, only two of the seven diplomats posted in
Ottawa returned between 2004 and 2009, and that in Toronto, even fewer did.
While he was in Paris, from 2009 to 2011, two-thirds returned, he said.

The Times reports that the practice often begins
at the top, with ambassadors who leave their posts and do not return. A former
ambassador to Washington, Said Tayeb Jawad, joined a diplomacy project at
Harvard after his tenure ended in 2010 and then went to Johns Hopkins. Jawed
Ludin, a former ambassador to Canada, did return, to take up a post as deputy
foreign minister, but he resigned from the ministry this year to become an
executive for a Saudi firm, Anham, based in the United States.

Some Afghan
ambassadors have dual citizenship, making it easy for them to stay away — Mr.
Samad is also American, for example. Lower-level diplomatic staff members often
have to resort to going underground or applying for asylum, as many emigrants
from Afghanistan already do. The US State Department has started turning down
visa requests from Afghan diplomats to bring along their extended families,
like brothers, sisters and parents.

The diplomatic drain
parallels an effort by many Afghans to make sure they have a foothold abroad in
case things go badly after the Western military withdrawal, which is scheduled
to be completed
in 2014.

Western countries
have been barraged by visa applications from Afghans, and many who have been
stymied by the slow visa process, are resorting to seeking asylum. Since 2011,
according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more asylum seekers have left Afghanistan than any other
country, about 36,000 a year, and they have applied for permission to stay in
nearly all of the world’s industrialized countries. The previous time when Afghan asylum requests were that high was in
2001, when the Taliban were in power.

The push for visas in
Afghanistan has led many smaller embassies to close their visa operations in
Kabul entirely. Dutch officials said they were forced to do so last year after
the embassy officer in charge of visa processing, Mary Sarwary, an Afghan, went
on a professional visit to the Netherlands and did not come back.

It’s true everywhere and all the time that the 1% knows more than the rest of us,
even in Afghanistan.

The Afghan 1% knows
enough to get out while they can. Maybe they know a lot more than Mr. Obama, Mr.
Hagel and Mr. Karzai.

Or, could they just be
smarter?

It’s time to put our old Karzai up on blocks.

Hopefully, the young know we should feed the hungry:

Old MacBohener had Farm Stamps, but no Food Stamps:

Mr. Spitzer can count on a few votes:

GOP doesn’t believe in evolution either:

For all of our money, America is toothless:

 

Fly Safe, People:

What’s
Wrong Today:

When you
talk with ideologues, the worst and weakest way to persuade them of anything
is by using facts. They simply don’t care about facts…They own the Truth, so
facts just muddy the waters, because of their private pipeline to Truth.

A reporter from the
Houston Chronicle/San Antonio Express-News Capitol bureau recorded a Texas legislator
arguing that sex education gets previously chaste teens so “hot and bothered”
that they can’t even use contraception correctly. I highly doubt they were shown something like the material you find on tubev.sex, so this story seems overblown to say the least.

Check out the audio clip of the conversation among state Rep.
Steve Toth, (R-The Woodlands), state Rep. Bill Zedler, (R-Arlington), and state
Rep. Donna Howard, (D-Austin). The three were speaking just minutes after the
House State Affairs Committee approved
legislation with extreme abortion restrictions that could cause most of
the state’s clinics to close. Rep. Howard was explaining to her colleagues that
responsible sex education, including information on birth control, would lower
the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions. Instead of couples and sexual partners thinking contraception isn’t needed due to so many adult films on sites like nu-bay.com and many others that lack contraception methods.

Rep. Toth didn’t
agree: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

If you listen to the
rest of the clip, Rep. Howard then asks her colleagues to
move beyond absurd anecdotes and provide some real data to back up their
arguments.

Sadly, they do not.

Shouldn’t we be thankful
for good, God-fearing, patriotic Christian white males like Texas state Rep.
Steve Toth? After all, he’s willing to shoulder the heavy burden of protecting
Texas men from the evil of women’s lady parts. After all, he recognizes
the reality that women use their sexuality to manipulate and trap men into
having children and forcing them to marry. Once you understand that basic and
undeniable Truth, it stands to reason that someone needs to protect men from women and their scheming uteri.

It seems doubtful
that the collective brain power of the Texas Congressional delegation could
jump-start a Vespa.

When your roster
includes Steve Stockman, John Cornyn, Louie Gohmert, Joe Barton, and Ted Cruz
as your “rising stars”, you may be in trouble. Where else but Texas could a
Governor demonstrate his leadership by holding a statewide day of prayer
in a desperate attempt to end a drought…and be taken seriously by his constituents?

Texas politicians would
be humorous if they weren’t deadly serious about turning Texas into a functional dominionist theocracy,
a place where white conservative Christians rule and where women and minorities
are by law second-class citizens.

It is apparent that
there is some form of Texas Tourette’s syndrome that causes their governmental
institutions and individuals to think the unthinkable, say the unspeakable, and
take actions that are disconnected from accepted norms of, well, science and history.

The list of ignorance
and/or irrationality is stunning. Texas politics is a comedy gold mine. Consider some highlights:

• Rick Perry talks seriously about
  Texas seceding and no one objects
• Louie Gohmert believes there’s a straight line
  that connects bestiality and same-sex marriage to gun control
• John Cornyn compares same-sex marriage
  to copulating with turtles
• Ted Cruz is convinced that he’s
  the only thing stopping Barack Obama from becoming a Muslim dictator…right
  after he helps the UN abolish golf courses
• Ezekiel Gilbert was acquitted of murder (unusual for a
  state infamous for conducting about half of America’s death penalties), even
  though he killed a prostitute who took his $150 and then refused to service
  him
• Willie Moore got 50 years in prison for stealing a
  rack of ribs

(Yes, the lesson
really IS that barbecue has a higher value in Texas than the life of a woman).

BTW, which state has the highest incidence of repeat teen pregnancies? Texas –
where 22% of teens under 20 who give birth have already had at
least one child. No need for sex ed in Texas and that’s the Truth.

What makes Texas so grotesque? Perhaps it’s the wide open spaces. Or the heat,
or maybe the armadillos.

Whatever the reason, no
place combines ignorance, hyper-religiosity, intolerance, and misogyny
like Texas. Whether it’s politicians or dumber than dirt criminals, no place on
the planet does whack job as well as Texas.

Now that’s Truth to
be proud of.

What’s
Wrong Today:

The essence of jazz is the same as
democracy: the greatest amount of individual freedom consistent with a healthy
community. Each musician is allowed extraordinary liberty during a solo and
then is expected to conscientiously back up the other musicians in turn. The
two most exciting moments in jazz are during flights of individual virtuosity
and when the entire musical group seems to become one. The genius of jazz (and
democracy) is that the same people are willing and able to do both. – Sam
Smith

Not true
in Congress today. From the National
Journal: House Republicans are drafting what members call a “menu” of
mandatory spending cuts to offer the White House in exchange for raising the country’s debt ceiling. Their
idea is to put the President in the position of picking from among difficult
options:

So
in October, we will again begin to hear the same disjointed, cacophonous music from
Republicans: They will demand
that Medicare be dismantled, or Social Security privatized, or SNAP (food
stamps) cut back further in order to get the House to go along with a debt
ceiling increase.  We had thought that we
would reach the debt ceiling in
April, but raising taxes on the rich, the continuing Sequester and the
improvement in the economy have pushed out any need to talk about the debt ceiling
until sometime in the 4th quarter. More from the National Journal:

This is another
example of poorly thought out Republican tactics. The Republicans already seem
confused in their response to immigration. They have produced nothing concrete
on their IRS and Benghazi investigations, their sequester, as short sighted as
it is, actually lowers the deficit and is pushing the debt ceiling debate
closer to the 2014 congressional election, giving the president and the
Democrats leverage they might not have expected to have.

Ironically, even in these suggested “deals,” the GOP is acknowledging
that there is no more discretionary spending to cut. That is the reason they now
say they must now go after mandatory spending including Social
Security, Medicaid and Medicare, along with food stamps. No mention of additional cuts in defense spending, though.

But the
president has said that he won’t negotiate on debt payments since the debt results
from spending already authorized by Congress. It is likely that Mr. Obama will say, as he has in the past, that
he would be willing to accept Chained CPI in the context of other reforms.  He will again offer that to the Republicans, giving
them a final chance to save face. Because he knows, as well as John Boehner and his
team on the Hill, that the Republican’s
big business base will not tolerate intransigence over the debt limit.

If Republicans were to fail to
increase the debt ceiling, it could be the third time that the House says no to big business’ interests, having failed to pass the Farm bill and their expected
failure on immigration.

If they agree to extend the debt ceiling for the rest of Mr. Obama’s term
in exchange for Chained CPI, they can say to their base that they got
something very big. Otherwise, they will be rolled over by Democrats in a very public humiliation.

The president and the Democrats will be
able make the case to the American people in 2014, blaming the
Republicans for once again trying to hold the global economy hostage in order
to force their ideas about Social Darwinism down the throats of the American
people.

It is unlikely that the most incompetent Speaker in recent history fails to see this one coming. It almost sounds
as though the Grand Old Party wants to take a suicide pill in front of the nation. A sacrifice on the altar of the Gods of Poverty.  

Why don’t they try a
different strategy–real, good faith negotiations? That could look and sound a
lot like a good jazz combo, it would be wonderful to experience for a change.

Sadly,
that won’t happen unless the 2014 congressional election changes the composition
of the House. Less Tea, more jazz please. 

 

Fourth
of July Quotes:

Where
liberty dwells, there is my country.
— Benjamin Franklin

All we have of
freedom, all we use or know –
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
–Rudyard Kipling

What
is the essence of America?  Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate
balance between freedom “to” and freedom “from”.

–Marilyn
vos Savant

Independence Day Party Animals:

You need the NSA when terrorists are everywhere:

Egyptian Army Launches New Government:

The Wrongologist
mentioned anti-Sharia laws in North Carolina here.
Last week, North Carolina’s GOP-controlled senate introduced an anti-Sharia law
bill. Their concern was that Sharia could trump our laws and maybe threaten our
constitution. Sharia, they feared, could blur the lines between church and
state…Women would be subjugated. And then, the state senate amended the bill
to restrict access to legal and
constitutionally-protected abortion. Why do that? Because of their
religious convictions:

Multiple Choice Test:

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

The
Wrongologist is not an Egyptian expert. He is of two minds about the current
situation where the Muslim Brotherhood (“MB”) has been ousted from power in Egypt
in a military coup. There is an astonishing amount of support for the ouster
around the region and around the world as well.  

Mr.
Obama also has had difficulty hitting the ball down the middle of the fairway. He
expressed concern over the military’s action, urged all sides to exercise
restraint and reiterated that the United States takes no side except to support
democracy and the rule of law. All while the Egyptian Army Chief Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi spent
time speaking with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, probably to be sure
the US was OK with the coup.

We have been
beating our chests and beating the world to death with the concept of “democracy”.
Maybe it is time to admit it’s not for everybody.

Juan
Cole reported that General Al-Sisi said that the officer corps had been in dialogue with the various political
parties since the crisis in November, 2012, when President Morsi
abruptly declared himself above the law. He then pushed through a theocratic
constitution (turnout for the referendum on it was only 30%), then tried to
pack their Senate with MB members and sympathizers.

Cole
reports that Al-Sisi indicated that all
the political actors on the Egyptian stage showed a willingness to compromise
to end the crisis except Morsi, who refused to show any flexibility. A
last attempt at national reconciliation, brokered by the officers, began June
20, but President Morsi’s speech last week offered nothing that would satisfy the people
or the military.

Al-Sisi
said that the constitution rushed into law by Morsi last December would be
suspended, and a balanced constituent assembly would be formed to revise it.

He said
that there will be new presidential and parliamentary elections in the coming
months. Freedom of the press will be guaranteed, he said, and a mechanism
established to allow the youth to be partners in making policy decisions.

The
provisional government has asked the MB to continue to participate in
government. From the MB’s perspective, this must be seen as cynical: You can
participate in our democracy, but only on our terms.

The Egyptian
military isn’t showing much respect for pluralism.

They
closed pro-MB television channels and arrested the reporters, though they only
detained them a few hours before releasing them. This move appears to have been
tactical, ensuring that the Brotherhood media could not help get out a call for
resistance to the coup. Then the officers issued arrest warrants for 300 major
figures in the Muslim Brotherhood, and proceeded to detain Morsi and his inner circle.
The mass arrests are troubling, since they have the effect of criminalizing the
Muslim Brotherhood.

From Moon of Alabama:

The question seems to
be about “how Islamist” and about “how inclusive” versus
“exclusive” the Egyptian government and constitution should be.  

The coup was
supported by Al-Azhar, Islam’s highest institute of learning, and by the Salafi
parties which came in second in the last Egyptian election. With broad
religious support, it is very likely that a majority of Egyptians will consent
to what is happening.

So, we will watch the Egyptian people
try to decide between an Islamist government and more pluralist principles.

It is an excellent time to reflect upon
America if it were a nation run by the Ralph Reed’s and Pat Robertson’s of our
land.

We would be assured that Jesus loves us.
The Bible would determine what women should do, should not do, and better damn
well not do.

The last serious attempt by Western
Christians to hold control of large populations ended with an Inquisition.
It was a brutal lesson in governance by religion. Today, Europe still ranks
lowest in the world in share of population with religious belief.

Finally,
it is ironic that many liberal Westerners approve this
military coup which by definition overturns a democracy. It is as if democracy
for Arab states is only OK if it produces the result we want.

Maybe,
since Islamists can’t get Sharia
Law passed in Egypt, we can stop worrying about Sharia law taking over in the
US: Laws prohibiting enacting future laws based on Sharia, or legal interpretations based on Sharia law in our courts, have already passed in North
Carolina, Oklahoma,
and Kansas,
among other states.

On July 4, 1776, or
within a few days thereafter, 56 people signed the Declaration of Independence.

(View the seminal documents of our republic here).

The signers were openly resisting the
legal authority of the King of England. The British considered them outlaws who
were breaking the laws of England. They risked capture, prison and even death
for their belief in independence from England.

The new country was far from perfect: The
vote was restricted to landowners. Most women could not vote, slavery was
already well entrenched in the land, colonists had been forcing Native Americans from their
lands for almost 150 years. So at that point, liberty, equality and unalienable
rights were for a select few.

Is it inalienable or unalienable?

The Grammarist
says English has changed
since the founders of the United States used “unalienable” in the signed final
draft of their 1776 Declaration of Independence (some earlier drafts and later
copies have inalienable). Inalienable
means exactly the same thing (both mean incapable
of being transferred to another or others). Inalienable is now the preferred form.

The legal separation
of the 13 Colonies from Great Britain occurred on July 2, 1776, when the Second
Continental Congress
voted to approve a resolution
of independence
that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, declaring the United States
independent from Great Britain.

After voting for
independence, the Continental Congress created a Committee of Five  to write a Declaration of Independence, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress
debated and revised the wording of the Declaration, finally approving it on
July 4. John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail:

Adams’s prediction
was off by two days. From the outset, Americans celebrated independence on July
4, the date of the Declaration of Independence, rather than on July 2, the date
the resolution of independence was approved in a closed session of Congress.

Historians dispute
whether Congress actually signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th
, even though Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin all later
wrote that they had signed it on that day. Most historians have concluded that
the Declaration was not signed by all until nearly a month after its adoption,
on August 2, 1776, not on July 4th.

In a remarkable
coincidence, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the only signers of the
Declaration of Independence who later served as presidents of the US, died on
the same day: July 4, 1826. James Monroe, a founder of our country, but not a
signatory of the Declaration, became
the third president in a row to die on July 4th in 1831.

Here are a few
important July 4th milestones:

• 1776
  – The Colonies declare their independence

• 1803
  – The Louisiana Purchase is announced

• 1826
  – Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president of the United States, dies the
  same day as John Adams, 2nd president of the United States. It was
  the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of
  Independence

• 1831
  – James Monroe, 5th president
  dies

• 1863
  – Vicksburg surrenders to US Grant after 47 days of siege

• 1863
  – Lee withdraws from the battlefield after
  losing at the Battle
  of Gettysburg,
  signaling an end to the Southern invasion of the North

• 1872-
  Calvin Coolidge, 30th president was born

• 1966
  – President LB Johnson signs the
  Freedom of Information Act into law

So,
who are the true patriots of today?

• The
  flag-draped politicians who wrote the Patriot Act?

• Those
  same politicians who send other people’s children off to be killed or disabled
  in wars of choice?

• The
  flag-wavers who earn outsized profits through partnership with the government?

• The
  crowds who chant “USA, USA, USA” when they learned about the death of Osama bin
  Laden?

• The
  religious hypocrites who speak of patriotism while they work to limit the
  rights of others?

True patriots today are
those very few people who continue
to fight to preserve our constitutional rights. They are the people who work to
add jobs in our jobs-short economy. They are the military personnel who return
time and again to the front lines, enduring the unendurable. They are the families
of those in the military. They are people who serve on school boards, zoning boards
and town councils, who get a very limited return for their efforts, compared to
politicians on the national level who are working hard to become millionaires,
assuming they were not millionaires when they were elected.

They are average
Americans who are watching the decline of our civic institutions and
infrastructure in disbelief, wondering where to turn if we are to reverse all
of these bad trends.

Is anyone “High as a
kite on the 4th of July” anymore?

What’s
Wrong Today:

Now that
the Senate’s passed an immigration bill, everyone wants to know what the House
is going to do, and there are a few theories about what happens next. Speaker
John Boehner, at a briefing last Thursday, said the House
would not take up the Senate bill and would pass its own bill, but only if a
majority of Republicans backed it. Although he didn’t say it, that is known as
the “Hastert Rule”. From the Wrongologist  in March:

Although Republicans
hold 234 seats in congress and just 218 votes are required to pass legislation,
the question is, are there are more than 17 Republicans who will refuse to
support any Immigration Bill? The answer is certainly yes.

The question is: Can Mr. Boehner lead his caucus?

There are doubters. Roll
Call reports that the Club for Growth and Heritage Action for America are
out to depose Mr. Boehner:

Mr.
Boehner has had continuing problems leading his caucus. Recently, the
Senate-passed Farm Bill failed
to pass the House. The vote wasn’t even particularly close: 234-195 against passage, as 62 Republicans voted against the bill.

Remember
Boehner’s Plan B? It was Mr. Boehner’s fiscal cliff tax proposal that in
December 2012 would have extended the Bush tax cuts on income for those who
earn $1 million or less. Even on the day of the expected vote, he said it would
pass, but it failed to win even enough support in the Republican Conference and
the vote was canceled. 

Of the 234 House Republicans,
48 are members
of the Tea Party Caucus and 4 representatives are former members of the
Tea Party caucus. 201 members are Democrats. So, a majority of the House – 253 of 435
members – are either Tea Party Republicans or Democrats, leaving only 180 members who are more or less mainstream Republicans to form
the basis of a functioning center-right coalition.

At some
point, the House will probably pass something related to immigration reform. It
might not resemble the Senate version. It might be 100% about border security,
but some bill will serve as a vehicle to go to a Conference Committee with the
Senate.

Then the
House will vote on assigning members to serve on the Conference Committee. That
requires a majority vote. The Senate has a similar process, although approval
of their conferees is not in doubt. Speaker Boehner will not have an easy time
convincing the majority of his caucus to assign conferees because he cannot
assure them that the Conference Committee will produce a bill that they can
support.

Instead, he
has assured them that he won’t allow a vote on the Conference Report if the
majority doesn’t support it.

In order
for a bill to become a law, both Houses have to pass an identical version of
the bill. That is what the Conference
Report is. Apparently, many House Republicans suspect that the
Conference Report will be a bill that they can’t support.

It’s hard
to see how the Conference Committee can create a report than the Democrats can
support and that the president is willing to sign, but is also acceptable to
the majority of the House. The way it looks right now is that the
Committee will produce a report that the House will reject.

So Mr.
Boehner is caught in a vise: Many traditional Republican supporters favor the
Senate bill. They include: Grover Nordquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the US
Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Majority, the National Association of
Manufacturers and the Financial Services Forum.  

He faces
attacks from his right by the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth, and a
revolt from the Tea Party caucus, while most of his traditional sources of
support want him to bring forward something close to the Senate’s bill.

Can Mr.
Boehner find a way to lead on Immigration? If he can, perhaps it will be by
making a deal with most of the 201 House Democrats and 40 or so Republicans.

That would
likely be the end of his ride as Speaker, so don’t bet on Boehner’s leadership
stepping in front of his partisanship in 2013.

The worst
possible outcome for the GOP would be for something like the Senate bill to
become law over the explicit objections of the House leadership. It would give
Democrats a huge policy victory and leave Republicans without the political
dividends they’d pocket if they were equal partners in the reform effort.

It would really
exacerbate their problems with Hispanic voters. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said:

But the
longer the House takes on immigration, the more the 2016 presidential election
will emerge as a factor in the Republicans’ thinking about how to pass a bill.

The trick
Republicans are trying to play is to win additional seats in the Senate by claiming
they supported the immigration bill, while retaining their majority in the
House by claiming they did not vote to pass the Senate version of the bill.

Hard to
see how this is a winning strategy for their party. Certainly it is not a
winning strategy for the country.