What’s
Wrong Today:

There is
much comment in the media and blogosphere about the Republican plan to change
how votes in the Electoral College are apportioned to presidential candidates,
from winner take all, to being largely apportioned to the winner of each
congressional district. Republicans in Virginia and other battleground states
are pushing for this change, in order to prevent future Democratic national electoral success like President Obama’s winning of a 2nd term.

How
does the system work today?

In
most states, (Maine and Nebraska excepted) the presidential candidate who wins the
popular vote in their state receives all of that state’s electoral votes. A
state’s number of electors equals its number of US Representatives and Senators.

Although
ballots list the names of the presidential candidates, voters within the 50
states and Washington, DC actually
choose electors for their state when they vote for President and Vice
President. These presidential electors in turn cast electoral votes for those
two offices, so the national popular vote is not the basis for electing a
President or Vice President.

Despite
what you might think, the Constitution reserves this power to the states. Here
is Article 2,
Section 1; Clause 2:

“Each
state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a
number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives
to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or
Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United
States, shall be appointed an elector.”

So it is clear that each state has the exclusive right to
determine how their state electors are selected.

What is the proposed Republican “Fix”?         

The proposed Republican “Fix” would apportion electoral votes to the presidential candidate
that wins each congressional district, plus 2 electors that would go to
whomever won the statewide total. Since
each congressional district is worth one elector, under this approach
in Virginia in 2012, President Obama would have claimed 4 of the state’s 13
electoral votes, despite winning the state by 150,000 votes.

Other
states considering moving from a winner-take-all system to allocating electoral
votes to the candidate winning in each congressional district include Michigan,
Ohio and Pennsylvania, all of which, like Virginia, went for Obama in the past
two elections, but are controlled by Republicans at the state level.

This change
would heavily favor Republican presidential candidates in these states, tilting
the voting power away from cities and toward rural areas, making it more likely
that a candidate with fewer votes over all could win a larger share of
electoral votes. Thanks in part to recent gerrymandering, 27 States have Republican-controlled
legislatures.

Peter
Lund, a Republican state representative in Michigan, plans to reintroduce legislation
that would award all but two of Michigan’s 16 Electoral College votes according
to congressional district results, while the remaining two would go to the
candidate winning the statewide majority, says an article in The Detroit
News.

Mr. Obama
beat Mr. Romney in Michigan by a margin of nearly 450,000 votes. With an
allocation of electoral votes by congressional district as described in Peter
Lund’s proposal, the Detroit News reported that Romney would have gotten 9 of
Michigan’s electoral votes and Obama would have received 7 in 2012. Instead,
Obama garnered all 16 Michigan electoral votes.  

Is the
proposed “Fix” Fair?

Should we
be talking about this in 2013? Debating whether to pass bills to reduce urban
voters to a fraction of the value of other voters while hoping that someone else
will step forward to stop it?

An advantage of the Electoral
College is that it tends to inflate the mandate and give us a leader who has a
leg to stand on, at least at the beginning of his/her term of office. Also, it ensures
that candidates will actually campaign in more places rather than in fewer. Why
would anyone campaign in NH when they can garner five or ten times as many
popular votes in a couple of counties in California? Now they do because the
four electoral votes can make a difference.

Jonathan Bernstein had an important observation in the Washington
Monthly:
(emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The fact is that the Republicans
have the ability to make this happen, even though some Republican are downplaying the plan. California’s redistricting model, using
an independent commission may prove effective, since politics-based redistricting
is at the root of this evil.

Statehouses deciding elections can have severe consequences.

We need a strategy
to prevent this from happening, or to reverse it once it does happen. Removing
politicians from the redistricting process is crucial.

Spread
the word:

To:     Reince
Priebus – Chairman of the RNC

From:
The American Voter


Let’s recap the your party’s ideas to win more national elections:

• Promote
  the fiction of “widespread voter fraud” with new voter ID laws that
  adversely impact the poor and people of color.

• Shut
  down early voting hours in key states and districts where the early vote tends to
  favor Democrats.

• Move
  the goalposts in the Electoral College to a proportional allocation instead of
  winner take all system for electors – potentially distorting the majority will
  of the people.

Mr.
Priebus, here is another strategy to consider: How about taking reasonable
positions on major issues and creating balanced public policy proposals to gain
greater voter support?


How about being a party of better ideas and sounder leadership rather than a
party of subterfuge?

You
will attract more support that way.

What’s
Wrong Today:

The Global
War on Terror (GWOT) will never die. Any hope by those who thought it was over are
about to be dashed.

It’s now
officially back on the front burner, despite saying that we are ending the war
in Afghanistan, despite the death of Osama bin Laden. Here
is Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander, US Africa Command, or AFRICOM:

His words
were echoed by Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

And here
is PM David Cameron on Mali/Algeria and AQIM: (emphasis by the
Wrongologist)

Exit
“traditional” al-Qaeda, holed up somewhere in the Pakistani tribal areas; enter AQIM.
In Gen. Ham’s words, AQIM is a threat not only to the country of Mali, but the
region, and if left unaddressed, a threat to us.

AQIM soldiers in Mali

You have just
not been paying attention to North and Saharan Africa, but the Pentagon has
been doing it for you. We now hear that the current civil war in Mali could potentially
throw the whole Sahara region into chaos.

Pepe
Escobar reports
that the six member nations of the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS) will comprise an African army tasked by the UN to pacify and hold the
parts of Mali under the control of AQIM. As a part of this effort, the US is
sending the first 100 US military “advisers” to Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso,
Senegal, Togo and Ghana.

This African
mini-army adventure is being paid for by the West.

Students
of the Vietnam War will note that sending “advisers” was the first step of that
subsequent epic fail.

This French-Anglo-American
concern about Mali being the new
al-Qaeda playground is confusing, since we have just absorbed the fact
that the major playground is really Syria,
northern Lebanon and most parts of Libya.

Trouble may
have been brewing in the Sahara for years, but until France’s invasion of Mali
and the attack on the Algerian gas refinery made headlines, we were buying what Mr. Obama was saying about
10 years of war finally ending.

Can we stay
out of this? Maybe not. We are being driven by three connected strands.

First, from
Algeria:
In 1991, Algeria’s military junta allowed a free election and Algeria’s
Islamists won the first round vote for seats in the parliament. Its military, backed
by France, crushed the Islamic movement and arrested its leaders. As a result,
a civil war erupted between Islamists and the Algerian military.

Over
200,000 Algerians died. Entire villages were massacred.  

After the
uprising was crushed, one Islamist guerrilla group, known as GIC, reformed as al-Qaida
in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). At that point, AQIM had little connection to
Osama bin Laden, but the al-Qaida name brought instant attention – a primary
goal of radical groups.

Second,
Mokhtar Belmokhtar.
Belmokhtar went to battle the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980’s and 90’s. He
returned to his native Algeria, minus an eye lost in combat. Then, along with some
of his fellow “Afghani,” sought to overthrow Algeria’s western-backed military
regime. After losing in Algeria, he began making trouble in the Sahara,
kidnapping westerners, robbing caravans and smuggling cigarettes.

Third, the
coup in Mali.
After Mali’s soldiers overthrew its government last March, its vast north was in
chaos. The Tuareg declared the independent state of Azawad. Assorted jihadists,
including some of Belmokhtar’s men, imposed Sharia law and Mali’s southerners
called on France for help.

Two months
ago, France’s President Hollande declared France would not again intervene in
Africa. Since granting independence in 1960 to the states that comprised former
French West Africa, France has
intervened militarily 50 times.

Al-Qaida in Mali

Mali is a
major supplier of uranium to France’s nuclear industry which provides 80% of France’s
power. French mining interests cover West Africa, which is also a key export
market for French goods and arms. France may also be aiming to control northern
Mali’s vast gold mines and latent oil reserves. Mali, along with Ghana, account for 8% of global gold production.
Imagine all that gold falling into the hands of say, China. (More below about
China)

When the jihadists
proclaimed that they would nationalize Mali’s mines, France went into action.
They declared Belmokhtar to be Osama bin Laden of the Sahara. Mali became a
humanitarian mission. Then Americans and Brits died in the Algerian hostage
taking by Belmokhtar.

Now we are
tiptoeing into the conflict. Is it a tempest in a teapot? After all it’s only a
few thousand French troops.

• Does
  it threaten the Ivory Coast, Chad and Central African Republic, where 5,000
  French soldiers and aircraft are based?

• What
  about Nigeria? There is an existing Islamist uprising in Nigeria and it worries
  Washington, because we
  import  about 540,000 barrels of oil per day
  from Nigeria out of our total imports of 8.8 million bpd.

What about
the possibility that Mali could become an even larger problem? We are not
focused on it, but China is Mali’s
largest trading partner. China’s Naval Military Research Institute
said this week:

The
Chinese observe that American troops are stationed in 35 African countries and
they conclude that their strategy in
Africa is at risk:  (emphasis by
the Wrongologist)

The
Military Research Institute concludes that China should actively participate in
any UN-authorized peacekeeping operations in Africa. Here is the close of their
press release: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Duck, here
comes the grenade! We are now pawns in a geostrategic power play: The “West” will
tussle with China in Africa. Our client, ECOWAS is giving a hand to Mr.
Hollande, while the USA and the UK contemplate a return to the GWOT/ al-Qaida Long
War adventure.

Getting
into little wars is always easy. Getting out is not, as Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan
have shown.

Slow down
Mr. Obama, Mr. Cameron. STFU Gens. Ham and Dempsey.

Let’s
think and plan our next moves very, very carefully.

With a
few Hillary Cartoons:

 

And
Finally:

(This
is the 2nd column in a continuing series about America’s low growth
future. You can read the 1st here).

What’s
Wrong Today:

Nothing
is more central to America’s self-confidence than the faith that robust
economic growth will continue forever. Between 1891 and 2007, the nation averaged
a 2% annual growth rate of GDP per person. But it appears that future economic
growth will average more like 1% at best, so says Robert Gordon of Northwestern
University: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Mr. Gordon
points out that long-term economic growth hasn’t been a steady process; it has
been driven by several discrete “industrial revolutions,” each based on a
particular set of technologies.

• The
  first industrial revolution, based largely on the steam engine, drove growth in
  the late 18th and early 19th centuries

• The
  second, made possible by technologies such as electrification, internal
  combustion and chemical engineering, began around 1870 and drove growth into
  the 1960s. Gordon says:

• The
  third, our current era, is based on information technology

According
to Mr. Gordon, our third industrial
revolution, while creating real value, has had a smaller economic impact than
the second. Electrification, for example, was a much bigger deal than
the Internet. Mr. Gordon:

We continue
to innovate. Some new ideas are amazing, but will they create sustained growth
at historical levels? Gordon says that the era of greatest incremental change
in our standard of living is behind us, while the case against his techno-pessimism
rests largely on the assertion that the big payoff from information technology is
just getting started. And it will come from the deployment of smart machines.

Machines
may soon be poised to perform many tasks that currently require large amounts
of human labor. This will mean rapid productivity growth and therefore, high
overall economic growth.

But the
crucial question is: Who benefits from that growth?

Between
1975 and 2009, US labor productivity doubled, while average real US wages were slightly below the 1975 level.

Where did
the benefits of that productivity go? Into corporate profits. In 2009, the US
corporate profitability index stood at 1300 when compared to a 1975 index value
of 100.

This strongly suggests that increasing
productivity is unlikely to benefit the rest of us in the future, since it has
not benefited us in the recent past.

The
Financial Times published the results of a study by Standard & Poor’s of the
per worker corporate profits for the F500. Their findings:

There
are no statistics that show how much of these profits were shared with the employees
who created it. But we know that bonuses and raises were few and many sustained
cuts to their benefit packages.

The
further deployment of smart machines may leave many Americans behind, particularly
those “middle
wage”
or mid-skilled workers whose skills slowly become redundant in the face of
technology. Our economy has been losing these middle wage jobs for decades. Jobs
are growing for both the highly skilled and least skilled among us.

It makes
economic sense: In affluent nations, competition stimulates technology
improvements that increase labor productivity and reduce costs. As labor
becomes more productive, fewer people are required to produce the same goods.
This leads to unemployment unless
demand grows at the same rate as labor becomes more productive. If
growth stops, unemployment increases, household income drops, demand drops and
the system collapses toward recession.

This shows
the policy dilemmas about growth:

• High
  growth is unsustainable. Unbounded resource consumption exceeds environmental
  capacity

• No
  growth is unstable. It leads to reduced consumer demand, increased unemployment
  and the spiral of recession

What will sustained low
(1%) growth lead to?

Inequality in America
will continue to grow. CEOs will continue to reap the benefits of multinational
sales in emerging markets. The exodus of prime-age males (the missing 1/5th)
from the labor force will not improve. American educational attainment will
continue to slide among our competitors. And with students owing $1 Trillion in
the face of low wage growth, America’s 18-34 year olds will be unable to build
savings adding to the inequality.

From
1993 to 2008, income growth among the bottom 99% of earners was 0.5 points
slower than the economy’s overall growth rate.

If future output
grows at a rate of just 1% a year; that means the overwhelming majority of
Americans will see their incomes grow at just 0.5% annually.

Conclusion:

Our
political system does not have a vision, a strategy or any policy for the
future.

The
assumption that the genius of the “free market” will take care of the future by
itself, is just a theology. We need to get serious. Any change in economic
status of our society flows first from an idea and then follows the tedious
process of implementation. A meditation from Tom Dispatch:

Our
soon-to-be overrated country needs to develop a plan: We need to consider mega projects, joint ventures between the private
sector and the government to employ our middle and low wage citizens.This policy would not need to last forever, our low birth rate will bring population back towards equilibrium with job creation in 20 years or so. 

The Fed’s
Quantitative Easing has not been about improving our economy; it is about preservation
of the current flawed system which brought the current economic catastrophe down
upon us. Harnessing the next wave of economic growth so that it benefits all
the people means confronting the above.

The
question is: Do we have the political sense and moral fortitude to do so?

What’s Wrong Today:

 

Guns are enabling tools for
killers.

 

On August 1, 1966 Charles Whitman killed 14 people and wounded 32 others
in and around the Tower of the University of Texas during a 96 minute shooting rampage.
Whitman did most of his shooting with a scoped bolt action 6mm Remington, (below) a rifle that looks and functions like a deer rifle:

 

Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster
.223, (below) the civilian equivalent of the military’s M-16. It is similar
in form and function to M-16 and he killed 26 in less than 20 minutes. 27 if
you include killing himself. Oh, and he also killed his mother, but he had killed
her earlier.

 

96 minutes vs. 20 minutes. 14 dead vs. 26: The thread that runs from
Charles Whitman to Adam Lanza includes two strands: gun technology and the tactics used to defend us from guys like
them.

Let’s start with tactics:

After Newtown, we learned that police
tactics for mass shootings, particularly in schools, have changed in the last
decade. In the past, first responders, when faced with a school shooting in progress
were told to wait for the SWAT team.

 

Apparently, enough people died
while first responders waited for SWAT to arrive, that they changed tactics:
Now, first responders are told to go right in, to walk past the wounded and try
to kill the shooter if he won’t be arrested.

 

The idea is that the sooner the shooting stops, the lower the body
count.

 

Great tactics, but a tall order for a cop who may not be as well armed
as his or her adversary.

 

Let’s talk about technology:

 

Gun owners love putting multiple shots into a target, whether it is a rusted
out car on the back 40, a hillside, or a paper target outline of a human. Therefore,
they buy the biggest magazines they can for their guns.

 

And maybe this is a chink in the NRA’s armor: The size of gun magazines and the use of automatic weapons. People
support outlawing of high capacity magazines.

 

On the left is a 90 round magazine for the AR-15.
It works in the Bushmaster too. Most police officers and mayors believe a 10 round magazine should be the
legally available standard.

 

If it was the only permissible size magazine and the shooter abides by
the law, only carrying legal magazines of the proper capacity, what’s to stop
him from carrying a satchel full of extra magazines so he can shoot all day?
Nothing.

 

But he will still have to re-load more often, and that is why the
outlawing of high capacity magazines is a practical solution, given the evolution of police tactics.

 

There is a saying: “If you’re reloading, you’re not in the
fight.”  

 

So, if a shooter has to change magazines under duress, he’s out of the
fight for a few seconds and the highway patrolman, the deputy sheriff, or the
local cop who happens to respond, will have a second or two to fire at the
shooter without risking return fire.

 

Any cop in that situation would appreciate those seconds.

 

The same applies to automatic weapons. They should be outlawed except
for military-type requirements. That means except for the military or the
police, if they are faced with automatic weapons fire.

 

Nobody has a good definition of an “assault weapon”. So let’s base
prohibitions on weapon functionality: No automatic weapons, no high capacity
magazines, no guns that have the same specifications as the military weapon.

 

Even with these rules, tragedies will still happen, but the body counts
might be lower, as the new police tactics expect. We need to give that cop an
extra few seconds to make the shooting stop. That way, some parent gets to see their child come home at the end
of the day, a child who wouldn’t without that extra time.

 

The NRA as an enabler:

 

The ‘90s weren’t
particularly good for gun manufacturers. Bankruptcy and reorganization were
rife in the industry. That was due to the fundamental flaw in the gun manufacturer’s
business model: To make the gun safe for the user, it has to be so well built that
it never needs to be replaced.

From
1980 to 2000, the gun industry failed
to keep up with population growth. The US population grew from 226. 5
million to 281.4 million, a 24 % increase. Over the same period, total domestic
small arms production fell by 33 %.  As
America grew, the gun industry was shrinking.

 

To sell more guns, the industry had to find a way to make customers want
more guns, and/or create more customers. That became the role of the NRA:

According to the Violence Policy Center, the first step was the NRA’s campaign to change state laws to allow the concealed carry of firearms;
and (2) the gun industry’s parallel aggressive marketing of concealable,
high-powered handguns.

Second was creating a demand for militarized
firearms for civilians. These are weapons in the military inventory, or
weapons based on military designs. Militarized weapons have been the industry’s
key design and marketing strategy since the 1980s.

Today, militarized
weapons: semiautomatic assault rifles, 50 caliber anti-armor sniper rifles and
armor-piercing handguns, define the US civilian gun market.

 

Finally, one of the best tactics in this situation is to scare the customers into thinking they’ll never be able to
get any more guns unless they buy now. This is the “Obama is going to
take away your guns” message that pervades the NRA’s advertising. It made 2009
and 2010 two of the best three years for sales for the gun industry since 1980.
The best year was 1981 when 5.4 million were sold.

 

Building market share for gun manufacturers has become the sole raison
d’être for the NRA. And it has worked.  

David Keene, CEO of the NRA, is receiving death threats for his role in trying
to ensure that gun owners continue to have an easy time getting the guns
they need. Who does he blame for the threats?  Mr. Obama.

Keene said:

Why is Mr. Keene afraid? He’s certainly
armed.

 

The Wrongologist asks incessantly: What kind of society do we want to
be?

 

If we want to be a better society, we must behave like a better society.
Organizations must dial back the rage. Media must report truth without rancor
or inflammatory editorializing. Individuals must be made to see that they are
part of the whole that is America.

 

We can have a 2nd Amendment and fewer mass shootings. To do
so, we have to pass laws and make deals, deals that none of us are likely to be
satisfied with at the end of the day.

 

This is the consequence of democracy.

Today was a great day for our
American Republic. We again transferred power without the losers challenging the
outcome. Mr. Obama gave a reasoned, progressively-tinged speech. He started by quoting the
Declaration of Independence, which his Tea Party adversaries have spent the
past four years trying to twist to meet their politics. He
conceded every point possible about liberty, individualism, freedom, limited
government, suspicion of centralized authority.

Then came the twist: He proceeded
to make all of that the foundation for construction of a vision of equality,
justice, civil and human rights, peaceful engagement with the world;
justification of a commitment to the social welfare state; and to a limited
degree, an activist government.

Perhaps heads are
exploding on Fox News today. 

Four years
ago, Mr. Obama’s election was seen by many as a fluke, a confluence of events
including fatigue from the worst presidency of the modern era and a catastrophic
economic collapse.

Four years
later, we’ve returned Mr. Obama to office when few thought it would be
possible, given the stagnant economy and persistent unemployment.

We live in a
remarkable country. Every once
in a while it shows through. Today, we glimpsed a future in which we could
learn to live up to our ideals. To move toward the better society that we hope to become.

The best part for the
Wrongologist was the poem by Richard Blanco. Richard Blanco
is a poet and teacher. He is the fifth person to be an inaugural poet. He is the
first immigrant, first Latino, the first openly gay person and the youngest to
be the US inaugural poet.

Read his wonderful poem:

 

Live in this moment. The political fights will resume
tomorrow!

Today, we are
reflecting on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

At the Inaugural, the president will pay tribute to Dr. King by taking the oath of office on
two Bibles rather than the customary one: He will use a bible that once
belonged to President Abraham Lincoln and one that belonged to Dr. King.

This year
marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Dr. King delivered
his “I Have a Dream” speech, arguably one of
the greatest orations in American history. And 2013 is the 150th anniversary of
the Emancipation Proclamation.

For America’s youth,
knowledge about Dr. King and understanding of civil rights history overall,
doesn’t go very far beyond that. The National
Assessment of Educational Progress,
for instance, reported that only 2% of high school seniors could correctly
answer a basic question about the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of
Education case.

Throughout the country
Dr. King is honored as a national hero. Major city boulevards bear his
name and two years ago a memorial on the National Mall in Washington was
unveiled (below). But if Dr. King’s
teachings aren’t passed on to younger generations, then all these tributes will
fall far short of maintaining his legacy.

Below is a link to
the audio for a song by OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark) from their 1986
album “The Pacific Age”. The song is
“Southern” and it takes fragments of speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and
sets them to an electronic music track. Sadly, no video for “Southern” exists
on YouTube.

Hear the song at: http://mp3lemon.org/song/399619/OMD_-_06_-_Southern

And while you listen,
read the lyrics of Southern:

I remember that
Monday morning

When I was subpoenaed to be in court


Many things ran through my mind
I started thinking about the people
All day long, trying to think of something to say to the people


Are you ready for the question?
All in favor, let it be known by standing on your feet


I want young men and young women, who are not alive today
But who will come into this world, with new privileges
And new opportunities
I want them to know and see that these new privileges and opportunities
Did not come without somebody suffering and sacrificing, for
Freedom is never given to anybody


Like anybody
I would like to live a long life
Longevity has its place
But I’m not concerned about that now
I just want to do God’s will
And he has allowed me to go up to the mountain
And I’ve looked over
And I’ve seen the promised land
I may not get there with you
But I want you to know tonight
That we as a people
Will get to the promise land
So I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything
I’m not fearing any man
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord


Glory hallelujah, glory hallelujah
Glory hallelujah, glory hallelujah
His truth is marching on

What’s
Wrong Today:

Roll Call reports that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) announced plans to try to
undo parts of President Barack Obama’s executive proposals to curb gun
violence, saying the president may be developing a “king-like complex”:
(emphasis by the Wrongologist)

(Mr. Paul
forgets that FDR died in office. The 22nd Amendment was ratified in
1951.)

Mr.
Obama’s executive actions this week ranged from steps to encourage states to
improve information sharing on background checks to directing the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention to conduct new studies related to gun violence.

Mr. Paul
would seek to nullify any executive
actions that could be construed as contravening the 2nd Amendment:

So, What’s Wrong?

It is the same old story: Nullification has been with us since 1809 when The
Supreme Court, rejected the idea of nullification in the case of United
States v. Peters.  

The theory of nullification has been
rejected repeatedly by the courts. The courts have found that under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal law is
superior to state law, and that under Article III of the Constitution, the federal judiciary has the
final power to interpret the Constitution. Therefore, the power to make final
decisions about the constitutionality of federal laws lies with the federal
courts, not the states and the states do not have the power to nullify federal
laws.

Politicians
like to say that the Tenth
Amendment says they don’t have to follow laws they don’t like. 

South Carolina tried it 1832. They
were smacked down by Andrew Jackson (Congress passed legislation authorizing
the use of force against SC over this and they folded in 1833). 
The nullification effort by South Carolina was basically the real first shot
fired in the Civil War, although actual bullets didn’t fly until nearly three
decades later. 

In the 1950s, a few southern states
attempted to use nullification to prevent desegregation of
their schools. These attempts failed when the Supreme Court again rejected
nullification in Cooper
v. Aaron,
explicitly holding that the states may not nullify federal law.

Except
for segregated southern states using nullification to maintain Jim Crow laws,
the concept has been the purview of “constitutional
radicalism” until January 2009 when President Obama took office.

Since then, several
states have attempted to pass nullification laws and they are all states with
Republican governors.

• Leading
  the charge to nullify federal regulations is Mississippi, where Republican Gov.
  Phil Bryant took to the airwaves after Obama announced his steps on gun control, to
  ensure that those executive orders don’t take effect in his state. From
  the Jackson
  Clarion-Ledger:

Gov. Bryant
and House Speaker Philip Gunn said they would block any federal measures
limiting the right to bear and possess arms from being enforced in Mississippi. This
is a sitting state Governor saying he
reserves the right to ignore the federal government.

• Virginia
  governor Bob McDonnell signed an obviously unconstitutional law
  that purports to nullify portions of the Affordable Care Act, and several states have followed suit with many
  considering so-called “sovereignty resolutions” which claim states have the power
  to ignore federal laws that conservatives oppose.

• In March 2011, Arizona considered Senate
  Bill 1433 which envisioned
  a 12-member committee within the state legislature that would review and
  recommend to the full legislature, laws they believe are unconstitutional. The full legislature would then have had the
  power to nullify the federal statute by a simple majority vote.

• Georgia
  Republicans have gone one big step further and want to basically opt out of the union altogether:

• In
  Texas, legislators passed a law nullifying federal law regulating light bulbs. Texas Governor Rick Perry told an audience in March of 2009:

America
is being torn asunder by people who believe they can pick and choose
which rules are valid and constitutional and only abide by the ones they so
choose. 

Many of these
people are fringe members of the Republican/Tea Party.

But
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is a mainstream Republican. In
November 2010, Mr. Cantor said he was
willing to change the Constitution to provide for Nullification.

Talking Points Memo reported that Cantor supported a bill in the Virginia
House to amend the Constitution so that a 2/3 vote of the states could overturn
any federal law passed by the Congress and signed by the President.

This is
not the way the Constitution is amended. Amendments emerge from the Congress,
which must pass them by a 2/3 vote in both the House and Senate before sending
them to the states to be ratified by a 3/4 vote.

VA House
Speaker Bill Howell first floated the idea in a September 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed he co-wrote with
Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett.

They said
the plan was in response to the
federal overreach created by ‘progressive’ constitutional amendments adopted in
1913, the 16th Amendment creating a federal income tax and the 17th
Amendment allowing for the direct election of US Senators, which were
previously appointed by state legislatures.

Mr.
Cantor released a statement which said in part:

History
will not be kind to Republicans because the record will show that in this
century, they were willing to tear the
country apart. In a sense, Republicans are walking the same path that let to Americans fighting the Civil War.

The
similarities between 1860 and now are that the Constitution will survive while Americans
will suffer, unless voters nullify wing nut Republicans at
the ballot box for attempting to tear apart the United States of America.

This will be district by district fighting for the soul
of America.

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

From the New York Times: Yesterday at the
White House, Mr. Obama announced plans to introduce legislation by next week
that includes a ban on new assault weapons, limits on high-capacity magazines,
expanded background checks for gun purchases and tougher gun trafficking laws
to crack down on the spread of weapons across the country.

Without
waiting for Congress, the president also acted on his own authority, signing 23
Executive Orders designed to increase the enforcement of existing gun laws and
improve the flow of information among federal agencies in order to keep guns
out of the hands of criminals and others who shouldn’t have them. View them here.

From Free Republic: These actions by
the president raise the question, “Can he do that?”

The answer
is, it depends how far he tries to go. And
he didn’t go beyond the point where he can be easily challenged under the law.

Executive
orders are not constitutionally sanctioned or prohibited, but once signed, they
have the force of law.

Presidents
have utilized executive orders to drive policy within the executive branch
since the dawn of the republic. In some cases, presidents have acted aggressively
through executive orders:

• President
  Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War

• President
  Roosevelt established internment camps during World War II

• President
  Truman mandated equal treatment of all members of the armed forces

• Eisenhower
  desegregated the schools

• Kennedy
  and Johnson barred racial discrimination in federal housing

• Reagan
  forbade the use of federal funds to advocate for abortion

Every
president since George Washington has used executive orders in exercising the
“executive power” granted in Article II, Section 1 and in “tak[ing] Care that
the Laws be faithfully executed” as required in Section 3 of the same article
of our Constitution.

Presidents
acting by executive order have been challenged in court, notably in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer
(1952). In Youngstown, the Court held
that President Truman had exceeded his authority by directing the seizure of
steel mills to avert a strike during the Korean War. The Court held that “the
president’s power to see that laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea
that he is to be a lawmaker.” Thus, the majority found that Truman had strayed
too far into the province of the legislature, violating the
separation-of-powers doctrine.

Justice
Robert Jackson’s concurrence in Youngstown
established the three-part framework for considering executive authority going
forward.

• First,
  there are the areas of express or implied constitutional or statutory
  presidential authority, where the president’s authority for executive action is
  legitimate.

• Second,
  there are areas where Congress has not legislated and where the line of
  authority between the president and the Congress is vague or overlapping.

• Finally,
  there are areas where presidential action is “incompatible with the express or
  implied will of Congress,” where the president’s authority is at its lowest.

Turning to
limitations on guns, here are three recent examples:

In 1989, George
H.W. Bush declared by executive order a permanent ban on
most foreign-made semiautomatic assault rifles.

In 1998, Bill
Clinton issued an executive order to ban the importation
of more than 50 semiautomatic “assault weapons” that had been
modified to get through President Bush’s “sporting purposes” exemption.

In 2001,
Clinton moved again via executive order, banning the importation of
assault pistols.

Republicans
are already threatening to impeach Obama over executive
action on gun control. Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) threatened that he would file
articles of
impeachment
against President Barack Obama if he uses the power of his office to address
gun control.

Stockman,
who can’t be familiar with the Constitution or history, claimed an executive
order would be “unconstitutional” and “infringe on our
constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms.” Stockman went on to
say:

Stockman
previously served in Congress from 1995 to 1997, but reality may not be playing
a large role for Stockman. He is the guy who introduced “The Safe Schools Act”
this month, a bill aimed at
repealing federal laws mandating gun free zones around schools.

The Absolutists’ case against Mr. Obama’s right to do what he is
doing is not based on Supreme Court precedents or any careful analysis of
presidential powers.

It’s
based on a belief that the 2nd Amendment is unconditional. That it is the constitutional guarantee that ensures all the
others. So any gun regulations, existing or potential, are suspect as
“tyrannical” in that they limit the ability of “law-abiding Americans” to
stockpile weapons against the day when “patriots” decide
being law-abiding is no longer acceptable.

The argument by the 2nd Amendment
Absolutists demonstrates a perfect example of circular reasoning:

• We need
  guns so that we can resist the government when it becomes tyrannical

• When does
  the government become tyrannical? When it comes to take our guns away

Why is the 2nd Amendment an absolute right? After all, the 1st
Amendment is not absolute, you cannot have a religion that engages in human
sacrifice and you cannot shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, (unless there is a
fire).

What
makes the 2nd amendment more sacrosanct than the 1st amendment?

The 2nd
Amendment says nothing about regulating the sale of guns. This point has been
argued, and lost in District of
Columbia vs. Heller:

Indeed, it
gets worse for the Absolutists in Heller:

One final argument against the 2nd
Amendment Absolutists: Militias exist
as a protection against insurrection, not a means to enable it. The Militia Act of 1792 should be the controlling
document. It says in part:

Note that the Militia Act of 1792 closely
followed the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791.

Many of the same people were involved
in crafting both.

Lt. Col
Jason Dempsey wrote yesterday at Foreign
Policy that the NRA’s notion that an openly armed American society would
make us look like more like what he has seen in Afghanistan, than like a freer
society.   

The
Wrongologist asks again: What kind of
society do we want to be?

We should
scorn the paranoia that sees our best solution as even more weapons in more
public spaces.

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

You may have seen the study by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council showing that younger Americans die earlier and live in poorer health than their counterparts in other developed countries, with higher rates of death from guns, car accidents and drug addiction, according to a new analysis of health and longevity in the US.

Americans had the lowest probability of surviving to the age of 50. Overall, American men ranked last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study, and American women ranked second to last.

The report compared the US to 16 other high income countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

But we don’t just die by driving around while drugged and waving guns. People in the US experience higher rates of disease and injury and die earlier than people in other high-income countries. We had the second-highest death rate from the most common form of heart disease and the second-highest death rate from lung disease, possibly a legacy of high smoking rates in past decades.

American adults also have the highest diabetes rates.

Youths fared no
better. The US has the highest infant mortality rate among these countries. Its young
people have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and deaths from car crashes. Americans
lose more years of life before age 50 to alcohol and drug abuse than people in any of the other
countries.

Deaths before age 50 accounted for about two-thirds of the difference in life expectancy between males in the United States and their counterparts in the 16 other developed countries and about one-third of the difference for females.

Dr. Steven Woolf, chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led the panel, said:

Below is a chart about infant mortality. You can see many more charts from the study here:

US newborns begin life at a health disadvantage: They have a shorter life expectancy than newborns in other wealthy countries. For decades, US infants have been less likely to reach their first birthday than infants born in peer countries. Outcomes such
as low birth weight are more prevalent in the United States and mortality rates up to age 5 years are also higher.

But, there are a few bright spots: Death rates from cancers that are detected by tests, like breast cancer, were lower in the United States.
Adults had better control over their cholesterol and high blood pressure.

The very oldest Americans, those over 75, tended to outlive their counterparts, although older US adults reported higher rates of arthritis and activity limitations than seniors in England, other European countries, and Japan. This is problematic for the older US seniors who are experiencing lower mobility as a result of their arthritis. Access to the best cbd cream is the only silver lining for the increasing number of Americans who are suffering as a result of this condition. Americans shouldn’t just accept their arthritis, there are things they can do to prevent some of this pain. For example, some people can access these physical therapy seattle professionals who can help seniors to reduce some of this pain and get moving again. It’s vital that older people take care of themselves, so it’s worth getting in contact with a physical therapist in your local area if you’re experiencing arthritis or any other pain that is limiting your mobility.

The panel called the
pattern of higher rates of disease and shorter lives “the US health disadvantage” and said it was responsible for dragging the country to the bottom in terms of life expectancy over the past 30 years.

It is well known that the US spends more on health care than does any other country, but now we know that our health outcomes are generally worse than those of other wealthy nations:

(NOTE: PPP
on the chart above means Purchasing Power Parity, a comparison of economies based on standardized international dollar price weights, rather than official currency exchange rates)

On the other hand, our health care system cannot keep us from dying from violence, automobile accidents, or morbid obesity, three significant health threats for which the US comfortably leads all of these nations.

Car accidents, gun violence and drug overdoses were major contributors to years of life lost by Americans before age 50. Americans were seven times more likely to die in a homicide and 20 times more likely to die in a shooting than their peers.

Although suicide rates were lower in the United States, firearm suicide rates were six times higher. 69% of all American homicide deaths in 2007 involved firearms, compared with an average of 26% in other countries, the study said.

In all, two-thirds of the mortality disadvantage for American men was attributable to people under the age of 50 and slightly over half of that resulted from injuries.

So,
What’s Wrong?

Once again, the Wrongologist asks: What
kind of society do we want?

This report should be a wake-up call: The high death rate among Americans under 50 due to easy access to guns, lack of health insurance, high rates of alcohol and
drug abuse, and other unhealthy behaviors, is sobering. Thankfully, there are drug rehab options available to those whose lives have been affected for the worse by their battle with addiction – there is help out there which could be a comfort to many.

The health disadvantages faced by our
children carry profound implications for tomorrow’s adults, the nation’s
economy, and national security.

Now
the question is: what is US society prepared to do about it?

As a
society, we waste enormous amounts of human potential because of our misplaced thought that freedom should impose
no limits on the actions of the individual.

We could
be less disturbed if it the report prompted a response from our government like:

But that will not happen, no matter how
solid the report’s scientific basis.

And despite the lead author of the report saying that the mess we are in “is not the product of a particular administration or political party”, one of our parties has long championed equal access to health care for all, while the other has fought that consistently. Why pretend otherwise?

Ideology is truly
at fault for the fact that the US is now among the least healthy of all the developed nations of the world.