The Wrongologist

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.

What’s
Wrong Today:

From
today’s New York Times: President Karzai
announced Monday that the US would give Afghanistan its own fleet of aerial surveillance drones and would speed
up the handover of detainees held by American forces.

It was his
first public comment since returning from his visit to Washington. The obvious irony in the
prospective Afghan use of drones, when Karzai is
consistently outraged by America’s use of drones inside his country, was
completely lost on Karzai and the local press.

Mr. Karzai
said that the meetings in
Washington
had yielded nearly everything his country hoped for:

Apparently, Karzai and the Afghans got everything they wanted at the
Washington meetings. Moreover, they promised
nothing that they can’t walk away from once they get through their slow motion
picking of our pockets between now and the end of 2014.

President
Obama moved the deadline for the end of US combat missions in Afghanistan up
from July 2013 to “this spring.” After that, US troops will mainly be training
the Afghan National Army (ANA) or providing close air and logistical support.
The troop withdrawal will be accelerated. Mr. Obama reiterated that we needed
immunity for our troops if they are to stay past 2014.

President
Obama at their joint news conference: (context by the Wrongologist)

Here is
what Mr. Karzai got from Mr. Obama:

• Drones!
  Without those missile thingies (Yet)

• US
  forces will be withdrawn
  from villages,
  including the promised end to raids conducted by NATO forces in Afghan homes
  and villages

• The
  Obama administration pledged to leave 4 C-130s  and 20 helicopters for the Afghanistan
  National Army

• The
  US agreed to turn over to the Afghanistan
  government the Bagram prison and
  other prisons,
  where the US holds large numbers of captured Taliban. The prisoners will be
  given to the Karzai government.

Karzai
reversed himself by pledging to try to
get Afghans
to accept immunity from prosecution in Afghan courts for any remaining US
troops after December, 2014. But now that he is back in Afghanistan, we see how Karzai plans to
make his “push”:

It
seems virtually impossible that a Loya Jirga would vote to confer
immunity. It appears that by including the Loya Jirga in the decision process,
Karzai will be able to claim that he “pushed” for immunity but was unable to
get the vote for it.

That won’t
matter since Karzai will not be head of the Afghan government: He is term
limited out and there will be a general election before the end of 2014.

The immunity issue will surely be a major feature
of that election and since Karzai will not be head of state, the
new government could repudiate whatever commitments Karzai might have made.

So what did the
US get from Karzai’s Visit?  Permission to leave the classroom?

If Only. Any
analysis of the value that a continued American military commitment (in any
configuration) will have post the “Afghanization” of the conflict turns on our
current aim and purpose:  Mr. Obama
refers to our “mission”. To accomplish what?

• Initially
  it was to crush al-Qaeda and unseat the Taliban. We have succeeded in that
  “mission”.

• Beyond
  that, it was to ensure a stable, pro-Western regime in Afghanistan that would
  foreclose any future possibility that elements hostile to the United States
  could find sanctuary in Afghanistan. We have failed spectacularly at that.

So, what’s the point of continuing this
exercise?
For Mr. Obama, it is leaving with sufficient ambiguity to be able to spin it as
a favorable outcome. For the Pentagon and CIA, it is to continue prosecute the “war
on terror” as presently constituted: Drones, Drones, oh, and Drones. They also
avoid being stigmatized for having failed. Congress gets to perpetuate their make-believe
that we are masters of the planet.

Around
Thanksgiving, the Wrongologist posted:

 

Umm, wouldn’t that be Mr. Karzai and/or his
successor?

Our predicament is aggravated and insoluble, since we can‘t admit
to the grievous errors of judgment that led us into Iraq and then to escalate
the strategic commitment in Afghanistan.

We are
unable to do so because the impulses that produced both tragedies stem from a
wellspring deep in the American psyche, which is now embedded in our misplaced sense of American
Exceptionalism and of our place in the world.

As a
consequence, we are trapped in a situation where
we cannot succeed by any reasonable standard (much less in accordance with our
exalted self image) and cannot face squarely the reasons why.

Operating
without any political or intellectual accountability, we spare ourselves self
scrutiny but pay heavily through the repetition of miscalculations and self
contradictory policies. The total absence of either self-reflection or
accountability by our politicians or the Pentagon is breathtaking:

When you get things this wrong, you’re
supposed to ask yourself why and whether your assumptions or your strategy need
updating.

Why nobody
asks these pretty obvious questions, or
demands coherent answers is unacceptable – even in our dumbed down political
culture.

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

There is
an undeclared war about to be waged in
America by a loose coalition of survivalists, militia men,
secessionists, and white supremacists.

You
probably heard last week about James Yeager, the CEO of a Tennessee firm that
offers firearm and tactical training. He published a video in which he threatened to “start killing
people” if the Obama administration
proceeds with executive orders regulating guns.

This is From Yeager’s Facebook page
where he speaks about legislation that may come out of the President’s
Taskforce on Gun Violence:

(Emphasis
below by the Wrongologist)

Keep all of this in mind as the Obama
administration moves toward articulating a policy of narrowing the use of
certain firearms and high capacity magazines over the next month.

Some of these
guys could be about to explode. 

“Some of
these guys” could include the Oath Keepers. Founded in 2009,
the Oath Keepers say they are patriots upholding the Constitution by the very act of taking up arms against
the Federal Government. They are organizing militias around the country
to resist actions by our government that they believe overstep what they define
as “constitutional boundaries”.

On their website, the Oath Keepers
say they believe that the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment is not
about protecting themselves and their families against street crime, rather:

Oath
Keeper member Richard Mack has said:

Elements of the GOP and the Tea Party have evolved
an extreme worldview that is able to justify any means, however destructive, to
achieve whatever righteous cause they embrace. In this case, they are joined by
the Oath Keepers and the NRA in championing the unrestricted right to use
military-style weapons, even though the NRA says they are only used for
hunting.

The Oath
Keepers placed this billboard outside Ft. Leavenworth KS, home of the US
Army Command and General Staff College, after an Army Colonel wrote an
article that described the Tea Party as a possible future military opponent for
the US military.

Their
cause is helped by right wing writers who posit that the
whole purpose of the 2nd Amendment and the reason it protects even
weapons designed for use by the military, is to preserve the right
of insurrection
against the state should it institute “tyranny.”

They
believe in 2nd Amendment absolutism.

The Second
Amendment absolutists believe that electoral majorities and court decisions cannot be permitted to modify the right
to bear arms. Any effort to do so is “tyrannical.”

The
lynchpin of this debate is the answer to the question: Who gets to decide when
it’s necessary to take extralegal action?

The Oath
Keepers? Wayne
LaPierre? Or, God forbid, James Yeager?

According
to them, our political system (the system that produced the “tyranny” of
Obamacare) will not protect their rights. So it’s up to heavily armed individuals
and groups to figure out when it’s
necessary to start shooting politicians or other beneficiaries of tyranny.

Let’s
review the 2nd Amendment:

The
purpose of the 2nd amendment was NOT to protect American citizens against the
American government. It was to protect American citizens against tyranny from
outsiders, like King George. The new American nation did not have a standing
army. Thus the Constitution gave its citizens a mechanism to defend the nation
should it be attacked. When the alarm was sounded, the citizens were supposed
to grab their muskets and gather on the village green, prepared to defend
their nation.

The right to bear arms was established
within a context.
All of the Amendment’s clauses matter. The language is tricky, but we must try
to understand the full text. Gun enthusiasts need to show us how their
preferences fit the complete text.

Do the Absolutists intend to operate as part of a well regulated militia?

In the Federalist Papers, Hamilton wrote about the use of
well regulated militias to counteract threats to the federal government. Hamilton
states in #29:

He
continues to discuss the need for uniformity in training and such before
summing up his thought with:

In #25,
Hamilton warns that unregulated state militias were a potential risk to
national security. (context below by the Wrongologist)

That
should be enough for any person who isn’t willfully blind to see that militias
were meant to be defenders of the federal government, what Hamilton meant by the
“national authority.”

Read
all of #29 at the link above if you want a complete understanding.

In 1783, democracy
brought majority rule by its citizens to the US. In a democracy, a minority can
disagree with the legislative actions of the majority, but disagreeing with the majority cannot mean defining the prevailing
legislative direction of the majority as tyranny. Majority rule is how
democracy works.

The 2nd
Amendment Absolutists fail the first test for citizenship in a democracy;
namely, respect for the will of the majority. Their claim that 2nd Amendment gives them the means to rise
up against the US government if they disagree with the legislative
action of the majority (what they would call tyranny) is specious and seditious.

We shouldn’t be able to own military-style weapons. No one needs one in
order to hunt.

We should be
prevented from being able to cut down trees or huddled masses in a mall, with a
burst from our “hunting rifle.”

Cartoon? Check.

Villains?
Check.

Threatening
to destroy America? Check.

From Daily
Kos:

What’s
Wrong Today:

Now that
corporations are people, they should be taxed like people. Corporate tax policy
is a toxic cesspool of sweetheart deals, lobbying, campaign finance and bad public
policy.

We are about to begin
a debate between the parties over corporate taxes as part of the fiscal cliff
and debt ceiling talks:

MSNBC reports that Democrats
have set forth terms for the next fiscal cliff skirmish: They want to match future
spending cuts with revenue increases by eliminating corporate tax deductions.

President Obama said last Saturday:

Sen. Dick
Durbin, D-Ill. on CNN, went further:

So, are we
talking about new revenue? Maybe not.  

The White
House’s policy
is to take the corporate tax rate down from 35% to 28% while making up the
difference by closing some large loopholes. The Treasury Department has also said
that loophole reform should be revenue
neutral.

Closing loopholes
appeals to everyone, even Republicans. Loopholes are provisions in the tax code
that exempt certain types of profit from regular taxation. For example,
multinational corporations can allocate profits to overseas operations and
reduce their tax liability by doing so.

The New York
Times editorial
 on January 7th made the argument that corporate tax
reform should also deliver higher tax revenue.

Why shouldn’t
tax reform be revenue positive?

In 2011, taxes paid by individuals made up
47.3% of Federal tax receipts while taxes paid by corporations were 7.8% of tax
receipts.
The
National Priorities Project’s chart below shows a long-term decline in
corporate tax receipts to the federal government compared to the steady share
of tax receipts provided by individuals. Another 33% of Federal tax receipts
are paid jointly by individuals and corporations in the form of payroll taxes.

Individual income
taxes make up a much larger share of all federal tax revenues than corporate
taxes do, in part because the total wages
and salaries of all Americans are much larger than the profits of all US
corporations. But, the share of federal tax revenue paid by
corporations has also declined substantially over time.

Looking at
the chart below, the effective tax rate
for corporations has fallen steadily from about 50% in the 1950’s to about 20%
today (chart on the right). The effective rate is the percentage of corporate
taxes paid, of corporate profits. While the stated corporate tax rate is 35%,
the actual rate paid by corporations is 20%.

So, when
Washington or Wall Street demagogue about lowering the stated rate from 35%, let’s
understand that few corporations are paying that today.

The chart
above (on the left) shows how nicely corporate profits have grown in dollar
terms since the 1940’s. Note that since the 1980’s, tax receipts have not kept
pace with the growth in corporate profits.

Corporate tax receipts have fallen from
around 4.5% of GDP in 1950 to about 2% of GDP today (see chart below). Back
in the 1960s federal taxes from corporations accounted for about 25% of all
federal tax revenues. Since the Reagan-era tax cuts in 1981, tax revenue from
corporations has provided less than 12% of federal revenues and are now ±10%.
During this period, corporate tax revenues fell from 4% of GDP to 2% since the
mid-1980s.  On this chart, the left axis is for the blue line that
represents corporate taxes as a % of GDP while the right axis is for the red
line, representing corporate tax receipts as a % of total tax receipts.

Based on the
facts, the tax reform conversation shouldn’t be constrained by revenue
neutrality. In fact, locking in
these historically low revenue levels, either as a share of GDP, total
receipts, or profits, would be yet another self-inflicted wound.

So, let’s
close a few Corporate Welfare loopholes:

·   Energy
companies lease almost 40 million acres of onshore land in the US and more than
40 million offshore. The government temporarily lowered royalties on oil pumped
in the Gulf of Mexico to encourage more drilling at a time of low oil prices. Oil
prices are now high, but royalty relief wasn’t rescinded, giving oil
companies a windfall of billions of dollars

·   The
mining industry leases federal land at $5 per acre and keeps all the gold,
silver, or uranium they find; we, the people, get no royalty payments at all,
even though metal prices have soared in the past 10 years

·   Farmers,
despite food prices at record highs, still get almost $5 billion annually in
direct payments, along with billions more in crop insurance and drought aid

·   US
sugar companies benefit from an import quota that keeps American sugar prices
roughly twice as high as they otherwise would be, handing the industry
guaranteed profits

·   State
and local governments give away $70 billion annually in tax breaks and
subsidies in order to lure (or keep) companies

·   The
government requires refiners to blend billions of gallons of ethanol into
gasoline annually, and hands out an ethanol tax credit. As a result, forty per
cent of corn acreage in the U.S. now goes to make ethanol. This jacks up food
prices, since less corn is grown for feed and table, and the environmental
benefit is dubious

·   The
benefit of patent protection is worth $100’s of billions a
year just to the drug industry

·   Pass
throughs of what used to be corporate income to the individual side of the tax
code, which takes advantage of lower capital gains rates, such as carried interest rules for investment companies

We live in an era defined by increasing corporate
influence and authority over the individual. The individual
has been supplanted in the political process by corporate money, legislative
influence, campaign contributions, even free speech rights.

Society
wants (and desperately needs) more tax revenues, but it also needs growth in GDP,
as that in turn grows tax revenues and general wealth.

Taxing corporations isn’t a panacea for our
current economic disaster, but the ideology that says when corporations
maximize shareholder value, society is enriched, is wrong on its face.

Taxing corporations
by ending Corporate Welfare provides some cash to help solve these problems:

We
live in a society in which the income among the bottom 99% of earners grew .5% slower than the economy grew overall,

Where
about 20% of young males are missing
from the labor force,

Where
our educational achievement is sliding down in the international standings, but
our students owe $1 trillion for their
educations,

Where
our health statistics for people under 50 are
the worst among rich countries,

Where
our level of poverty is the worst
among rich countries,

Where
our infrastructure is crumbling
and is poorer than that of our global competitors.

A strong military is indispensable to our
national security and to our leadership position in the world. Since 2001, defense spending has soared from $287
billion to $718 billion in 2011, including the primary costs of the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Now that those wars are ending and
austerity is in vogue, the Pentagon will have to start tightening its belt. But
very few believe that the sequestration cuts will be in place after the next
round of “fiscal responsibility” negotiations in Washington.

The real question is: Is defense truly on the table as a part of the deficit reduction
plan, or are the deficit hawks also chicken hawks when it comes to the
defense department?

The
sequestration may not be the best tool for cutting the defense budget; cuts
should be based on rational planning. But the Pentagon spending debate is driven
by politics, including the legions of lobbyists for the military-industrial
complex. It is also ensnared in the military’s effort to fit the ideology (and tools) of past wars to the
present world.

Our
national security strategy must be based on current and future threats, not
past war doctrines.

Consider this:

The US has
more than 1,000 international
military bases and another 4,000
more in
the 50 states and Washington, DC. This empire of military installations is unprecedented
in history.

A thousand
locations should be enough, yet we continue to add to the string of pearls: We
are building a new base in Vicenza, Italy, near
Venice. It is Dal
Molin,
a base that the US Army is readying for the relocation of 2,000 soldiers from
Germany in 2013.

It will cost
the tax payers $500 million dollars to build. Now, this may be a
well-considered decision, but we rarely think about these bases, let alone how much of our tax money (and
debt) goes to build and maintain them. Dal Molin includes a
natural-gas-powered energy plant, a hospital, two schools, a fitness center,
dining facilities and a mini-mall.

So how
much does the United States Military spend each year on its global
presence?  Estimates vary, but the Tom Dispatch blog says that it pencils out to $170 billion per year, while
the Pentagon’s public estimate is $22.1 billion a year. $22.1 billion is
about as much
as the budgets for the
Departments of Justice and Agriculture and about half the State Department’s
2012 budget.

But the Pentagon’s
figure contrasts sharply with Tom Dispatch’s estimate and that of economist Anita
Dancs, who estimates costs of $140
billion,
almost $120 billion more than the Pentagon suggests.

So,
What’s Wrong?

The US
government spent
about $718 billion on defense and international security assistance in
2011, more than we spent on Medicare. That
includes the price tag for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which came to $159
billion in 2011. It also includes arms transfers to foreign
governments. That $718 billion equaled 20% of the 2011 federal budget.

Defense spending does not include, however, benefits for veterans, which came
to $127 billion in 2011, or about 3.5% of the federal budget.

U.S.
defense spending is
expected to rise in 2012, to about $729 billion and then to fall in
2013 to $716 billion, as spending caps kick in. 

Here’s a
historical chart of US defense spending since World War II in
inflation-adjusted dollars. There’s a big spike for the Korean and Vietnam
wars. There’s another big ramp-up during the 1980s under President Reagan.
Defense spending was cut significantly during the Clinton years, then soared to
historically unprecedented levels after 9/11:

Source: WonkBlog

Two big
things are about to happen to military spending: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
are winding down. And given the 2011 Budget Control Act, the Pentagon is facing
both hard budget caps and the looming sequester that would further cut defense spending
by about $1 trillion over the next decade (compared to what was expected).

Source: WonkBlog

These are
serious cuts. Although, as the graph above from the Center
for Strategic and International Studies shows, even if the sequester
is fully implemented, which no one expects, the draw downs after Korea, Vietnam
and the Cold War were more drastic, even in 2013 inflation-adjusted
dollars. 

In January
2012, the Department of Defense unveiled its proposed budget for fiscal year
2013, giving us a look at how it would begin to deal with new budget constraints. As Danger Room’s Spencer Ackerman reported,
the Pentagon wanted to downsize about 100,000 human soldiers and ramp up
advanced weapons programs, including drones, bombers and missiles. They asked for a budget of $613 billion.

Yet, in
December 2012, Congress passed its own $631
billion defense appropriations bill, more than the Pentagon had asked. Weapons systems that the Obama administration wanted to retire, such as
three Navy cruisers, were kept in.  

The
Wrongologist proposes three places to consider very large cuts:

1. The massive Military
base structure that costs $140-$170 billion/year

 

2. The F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter. The F-35 program is slated to cost $1.5 trillion over its lifetime:
Today, the use of manned aircraft is more and more limited, so few of our future
threats will call for it. Developing this plane has cost more than was spent on
veterans in the last 20 years

3.  Nuclear weapons: Our
policy is based on Cold War conditions that no longer exist. The Pentagon is expected to spend more than $700 billion on
nuclear weapons over the next 10 years, for questionable added security. The
former US Strategic Command Chief Gen. James Cartwright has called for a drastic cut in nuclear
weapons, saying the US has a stockpile that is:

Conclusion:

Congress needs the political resolve to kill unnecessary
and expensive projects. Mr. Obama could use a shot of courage too.

In
2008, a
National Intelligence Estimate declared the economic crisis, not terrorism,
was the greatest threat to national security. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullin, along
with other senior military leaders, have endorsed that assessment.

As
retired Gens. Robert G. Gard and John Johns told CNN:

In
the last decade, we have fought two expensive wars that Congress never paid for.
That has been a large contributor to our precarious economic position.

As
Congress attempts to clean up its own mess and prevent sequestration, the Pentagon budget must be on the
table.

Instead of buying
new toys that we keep in the garage, let’s spend some of that dough to provide education and job training
to veterans. Recent congressional refusal to approve such a jobs program is a
disgrace.

(Full disclosure: The Wrongologist holds a
significant investment [for him] in a major defense contractor)

For those who may have questioned yesterday’s statement that it will take 5 years to
get to a 6+% unemployment rate, try it yourself with the Federal Reserve Bank
in Atlanta’s handy calculator.

You enter
your target unemployment rate (say, 6.25%) and how many months until you expect
your target unemployment rate to be achieved (60) and the calculator tells you
the average monthly change in payroll employment needed to achieve that target
rate.

You can
also change the Labor force participation rate and average monthly population
growth rate. I used 6.25% target rate achieved in 60 months at a labor force
participation rate of 63.8%. The result was 143.5k jobs/month, very close to
the average of 150k jobs/month we have averaged for the past 24 months.

Try it at: http://www.frbatlanta.org/chcs/calculator/