Ironic that President Obama will openly violate the Constitution over Libya yet sidestep a chance to avoid a major uproar.
The president may well have constitutional authority to direct the Department of Treasury to pay its bills, He could have averted the current spectacle that seems to rival biblical proportions.
Prior to the debt-limit situation, Obama continued military operations in Libya without receiving congressional authorization after 60 days, as required by the War Powers Act in lieu of a declaration of war by Congress.
Republicans exploited the deadline to raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit to sever $2 trillion in programs that serve ordinary Americans without raising taxes on the wealthy or even eliminating corporate tax breaks.
The president may well have had the power all along to act on his own - since 1868, when the 14th Amendment was ratified.
Section 4 of the 14th Amendment is plainly written: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
Obama no doubt had other concerns on his mind with the debt-limit debate. It was a chance to bring the entire conflict to a head, or at least expose Republican stubbornness for all to see. It is obvious that he does not want to act on his own, anyway, because he would be vulnerable to sole political blame.
That aside, he might have avoided this hassle by invoking the 14th Amendment. Like other clauses in the 14th Amendment, Section 4 directly results from a Civil War issue - the large debt that grew after the North borrowed heavily to finance the Civil War, according to The Washington Post. Sponsors of the bill wanted to ensure that Southern states paid their fair share of the nation’s debt. (wp, a4, k7/711)
Yale Law School constitutional law school professor Jack Balkin told the Post, “The purpose of that clause was to prevent the political branches from using default or repudiation as a political threat. It was designed to prevent this kind of gamesmanship.”
Which presents another irony: A heavy proportion of these members of Congress represent states and districts in the South. In fact, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor represents part of Richmond, Va., the capital of the Confederacy.
Two columnists have tried to toss cold water on use of the 14th Amendment, and they make some valid points. Constitutional law professor Laurence H. Tribe points out that a unilateral increase in the debt limit differs from the existing debt limit already authorized by Congress. (nyt, a21, 7/8/11)
Maintaining the debt limit as is will affect all other expenses and any pressing needs that arise. To continue paying the debt, the White House will be forced to ignore spending in other crucial areas. It may not be social security, but it will need to be some important programs.
Tribe also reminds us that “the Constitution grants only Congress - not the president - the power ’to borrow money on the credit of the United States.’ Nothing in the 14th Amendment or in any other constitutional provision suggests tht the president may usurp legislative power to prevent a violation of the Constitution.”
True, but aren’t amendments intended to amend? It states clearly that the debt “shall not be questioned.” Not only are some members of Congress questioning the debt, but they have threatened to ignore it.
Boston Globe columnist Juliette Kayyem writes, “It will not solve the credit crisis, only delay it.” (BGlobe, 7/11/11)
I heartily concur that we should lower the deficit and pay off our debts, but not under circumstances in which one group of politicians can blackmail the president and other members of Congress.
Besides, Republicans were not worried about debts and deficits when President Bush steered us into the invasion of Iraq and initiated legislation to cut taxes for the wealthy.
Kayyem also warns that unilateral action on Obama’s part will trigger a legal challenge. Anyone has a right to resort to legal action.
They tried everything else. Maybe they figure that the majority of the Supreme Court will be on their side.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
At Stake
Even on a day when almost nothing happens, the course of American history can be set for more than two centuries.
One such day was July 17, 1787. The birth of the Connecticut Compromise is customarily dated to July 16, 1787, when the Constitutional Convention approved a fresh but flawed legislative system as part of a broader package of provisions for the budding Constitution.
Prior to 10 a.m. on the 17th, delegates from the most populous states to the Convention gathered at what is now Philadelphia’s Independence Hall to assess the convention’s vote from the day before.
The Connecticut Compromise created a split form of government: Each member of the House of Representatives would represent the same number of Americans, on a proportionate basis, and each state would be represented by the same number of senators regardless of population.
The compromise split the difference between the Virginia Plan for proportionate representation in both chambers and the response to the Virginia delegates, the New Jersey Plan. New Jersey’s delegates, afraid that the large states would overwhelm smaller states like New Jersey, demanded equal representation in both the House and the Senate.
Under Convention rules, each delegate had the right to bring up any issue whenever they wanted, even after a decisive vote was taken. That means the issue could be reopened on any given day, and that day was July 17.
The main players of this caucus - Virginians James Madison and Edmund Randolph, Pennsylvanians James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus King of Massachusetts - reopened the issue, however briefly. They met to discuss how to react to the July 16 vote on the basis of their insistence that both the House and Senate should represent the people on a proportionate basis.
As constitutional scholar Richard Beeman recounts, Madison reported that “the time was wasted in vague conversation on the subject, without any specific proposition or agreement.”
In his book “Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution,” Beeman characterizes the outcome this way: “He discovered much to his chagrin that only a handful of delegates felt as strongly about the issue as he did, and no one was willing to risk the outcome of the Convention on it.”
So in early March 1789, the newly-revamped Congress convened in New York City for the first time at Wall and Nassau streets, eight blocks southeast of the future site of the demolished World Trade Center. Less than two months later, on April 30, George Washington was inaugurated at the same site as the first president of the United States.
Madison and the other four were apprehensive about a Senate where each state is authorized to send the same number of senators to Congress. As Beeman puts it, “They held the principled view that it was wrong to give any state government, be it a large state or a small one, too much weight and authority within the national government. The only way to avoid that injustice was to represent the people according to their numbers.”
History would repeatedly prove Madison and friends to be right. For example, the senators from New Jersey, Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, and Maryland, Barbara A. Mikulski and Benjamin L. Cardin, discovered in 2010 that the wealthy would retain their tax cuts and health-care reform would be watered down. Delaware Sens. Thomas R. Carper and Christopher A. Coons advocate for most of the same concerns affecting the three states.
All because of how the Senate is composed in combination with its much-abused filibuster rule.
More than two centuries earlier, the chief opponents of proportionate representation in the Senate represented Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. Though Delaware ranks 45th in population with 844,000 residents, New Jersey now ranks 11th with 8.7 million people and Maryland is 19th, population 5.6 million. With 19.5 million people, New York is now the third most populous state.
Many of the 37.5 million Americans from these states are paying today because of the Connecticut Compromise.
________________________________________________________
A few months before the people of Egypt stood up for their rights, I spoke with an exchange student from Saudi Arabia as we waited to pick up medication at a Philadelphia pharmacy nine blocks east of Independence Hall.
He offered some brief but valuable insights about the Middle East, though not altogether unexpected. He described life in Saudi Arabia as “restrictive” and explained that Saudi citizens have no credible means of learning what occurs outside their corner of the world. The student made clear that he supports Israel’s right to exist.
As I viewed the mass demonstrations in Cairo and Alexandria, I wondered how 308 million people are lucky enough to be born in the United States or accepted as citizens here, while hundreds of millions of other human beings are murdered, sexually abused, tortured, starved, enslaved and impoverished in backward countries throughout the world.
These people would be grateful for the chance to vote and just walk down the street without being harassed. To be able to say what they think without endangering their lives. “Without democracy, there is no life,” said Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei on NBC News.
Not that America is perfect, which happens to be the underlying theme of this tome.
It is ironic that white Protestants primarily enjoyed democracy in the United States in 1789 and only men could vote. In less than two centuries, the United States has become comprised of people of almost every race, religion and nationality, and any citizen can vote and even run for every office from president down, excepting immigrants for the presidency.
Despite its weaknesses, the United States is a great country. Anyone living here should feel fortunate, especially compared to those inhabiting many other countries.
The American people still contend with severe difficulties that do not have to be. The failings here are evident - crime, poverty, substandard schools, housing shortages, unemployment, inadequate health-care coverage, the widening income gap, child abuse, prejudice, political gridlock, corruption, government mismanagement and so on.
People often complain about conditions, but little is done about them. Some Americans who may fit the label of “liberal” assail President Obama for failing to push his progressive agenda harder. Some African-Americans gripe that Obama has not done enough for issues which affect the black community. All true.
Maybe they failed to notice some slight stumbling blocks. Obama and Democrats in Congress have been unable to succeed with basic initiatives because of Republican opposition. The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation for a partly publicly financed health care system on Nov. 7, 2009, when it was controlled by the Democrats, but the Senate dislodged what was called the “public option” because Republicans threatened to exercise their filibuster power.
The same fate awaited Democratic attempts to repeal tax cuts for the wealthy.
If Democrats cannot get past these simple matters, how are they expected to do much else of a progressive nature?
The barrier that blocked Democratic legislation in Congress is one of many traps in our governance system that obstructs efforts to address some of the most basic needs in our country. Children continue to go hungry, more loyal employees in the private sector lose their jobs, students still attend overcrowded schools, prices persist in rising as wages stagnate.
Our system also maintains institutional racism. African-Americans and other racial minorities are disproportionately victimized by such policies.
None of this is likely to improve so long as we endure the policies produced by our current system.
To change policy, change the system.
The historic magnitude of the Constitution cannot be minimized, but certain of its rules limit America’s ability to serve its citizens adequately. The Constitution provides a durable foundation, but in two centuries it was necessary to place a great deal of building blocks placed atop it. What we have now is far from sufficient.
What, specifically, is wrong?
From this writer’s view, the Constitution contained in its enactment four significantly flawed provisions. The most obvious were those prolonging slavery. Fortunately, slavery was abolished with the Civil War, but the Constitution reflects the ongoing racial conflicts inherently embedded in American society.
The electoral college was widely vilified when the 2000 presidential election turned into a bizarre spectacle, which was not the first time that a presidential candidate won the electoral college while losing the popular vote. The electoral college served its purpose for selecting presidents during the nation’s early years, but the reason for it no longer exists and the electoral college remains a drag, at best, on the democratic process.
The electoral college allows the ongoing potential for the selection of a president who is elected by only a minority of the voters, not to mention other disadvantages.
Creation of the Senate permits a minority of the country’s population to control part of the legislative process and the appointment of Supreme Court justices. The majority of the people must depend on chance at the ballot box to obtain sufficient clout in the Senate.
On the surface, the amendment process can easily block any attempt to adjust these clauses to make the system more democratic. Any proposed amendment can be thwarted jby provisions requiring a two-thirds vote in each house and ratification by three quarters of the 50 states.
Under this system, interestingly, the minority of the population can block adjustments of the rules which already stifle the will of the majority.
Our system of governance also inhibits the appointment of Supreme Court justices and judges on the lower federal courts whom we can trust for fairness. It is possible for the minority of the people to select judges because of the power of the electoral college and the composition of the Senate.
Beyond the Constitution itself, our 50-state network as we know it is anachronistic. The economic strength or weakness of many states now depends on corporate decisions reached in other states and even foreign countries. Big cities or metropolitan areas can be self-sufficient if they detach themselves from their state governments. It would likewise make sense if low-population states merged, or if some small states folded into an adjacent larger state.
Many of our problems are self-inflicted. We entrust our fellow citizens with extensive powers on levels from the White House to City Council. We have elected many wonderful people for public office, yet we have voted people into office who mismanaged our government, stole from us and even contributed to frantic turmoil throughout the world.
Politicians who betray our trust are able to do so because we let them get away with it.
Few enough Americans exercise their rights. Many do not vote in any elections and others will only vote in selected elections, especially the presidential election and in big-city mayoral elections. We do not take time to learn about candidates’ backgrounds and their positions.
Once successful candidates take office, too few of us bother to keep track of what they do or communicate our concerns to them. Nor do we organize sufficiently to express dissent of their actions. The series of mass protests in Madison, Wisc., was an exception to what we have experienced in modern times.
Mayors, governors, judges and elected officials of all kinds have mismanaged their operations or abused the trust placed with them. Scandals abound, involving massive contract overruns, judges prosecuted for profiting from sentencing practices, council members benefiting from questionable procedures, a lawyer’s conflict of interest over a proposed building, sexual harassment, the appointment of a schools chief seen as indifferent and unqualified, and a state government’s longtime neglected oversight of an abortion doctor ultimately charged with murder of babies after being born alive.
The system can be changed.
This begs some legitimate questions: Why bring all this up? Are there any alternatives? If there are, how do we bring about any change?
If the system is transformed, some of the beneficiaries will likely include the unions, social-service nonprofits, secular-leaning citizens and the Democratic Party. I am a union member, a registered Democrat and a predominantly liberal person, but the goal here is to promote good government and how it can better serve us.
A series of recommendations are described in the latter portion of this book. They include a more proportionate form of congressional representation; a realignment of state governments; more regional systems of government; modified rules governing the federal courts; and electoral changes to encourage campaigns of independent candidates, among other measures. Did I mention scrapping the electoral college?
These suggestions are probably not perfect, but hopefully they will serve as starting points for consideration.
The most anticipated concern about these ideas is this likely question: How? The obstacles to these kinds of changes are daunting, to the extent that they seem downright impossible.
If the Senate refuses to adjust or eliminate the filibuster rule, what hope is there for anything else? To amend the amendment process, we obviously need to employ the amendment process. The public understood full well the consequences of the electoral college when we endured the Florida recount a decade ago, but there has been no groundswell to eliminate it.
We should be under no delusion that the system will change. Maybe conditions can improve, but at this rate the outlook is not optimistic.
We must first understand the deficiencies of the system before we can improve conditions. Making America what it should be does not seem possible under the existing way of doing business, but maybe it can happen. I do not know how to change policy without changing the system.
At stake here is not the future of unions or the power of the Democratic Party. It is about good government and how it can best serve its people.
One such day was July 17, 1787. The birth of the Connecticut Compromise is customarily dated to July 16, 1787, when the Constitutional Convention approved a fresh but flawed legislative system as part of a broader package of provisions for the budding Constitution.
Prior to 10 a.m. on the 17th, delegates from the most populous states to the Convention gathered at what is now Philadelphia’s Independence Hall to assess the convention’s vote from the day before.
The Connecticut Compromise created a split form of government: Each member of the House of Representatives would represent the same number of Americans, on a proportionate basis, and each state would be represented by the same number of senators regardless of population.
The compromise split the difference between the Virginia Plan for proportionate representation in both chambers and the response to the Virginia delegates, the New Jersey Plan. New Jersey’s delegates, afraid that the large states would overwhelm smaller states like New Jersey, demanded equal representation in both the House and the Senate.
Under Convention rules, each delegate had the right to bring up any issue whenever they wanted, even after a decisive vote was taken. That means the issue could be reopened on any given day, and that day was July 17.
The main players of this caucus - Virginians James Madison and Edmund Randolph, Pennsylvanians James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus King of Massachusetts - reopened the issue, however briefly. They met to discuss how to react to the July 16 vote on the basis of their insistence that both the House and Senate should represent the people on a proportionate basis.
As constitutional scholar Richard Beeman recounts, Madison reported that “the time was wasted in vague conversation on the subject, without any specific proposition or agreement.”
In his book “Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution,” Beeman characterizes the outcome this way: “He discovered much to his chagrin that only a handful of delegates felt as strongly about the issue as he did, and no one was willing to risk the outcome of the Convention on it.”
So in early March 1789, the newly-revamped Congress convened in New York City for the first time at Wall and Nassau streets, eight blocks southeast of the future site of the demolished World Trade Center. Less than two months later, on April 30, George Washington was inaugurated at the same site as the first president of the United States.
Madison and the other four were apprehensive about a Senate where each state is authorized to send the same number of senators to Congress. As Beeman puts it, “They held the principled view that it was wrong to give any state government, be it a large state or a small one, too much weight and authority within the national government. The only way to avoid that injustice was to represent the people according to their numbers.”
History would repeatedly prove Madison and friends to be right. For example, the senators from New Jersey, Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, and Maryland, Barbara A. Mikulski and Benjamin L. Cardin, discovered in 2010 that the wealthy would retain their tax cuts and health-care reform would be watered down. Delaware Sens. Thomas R. Carper and Christopher A. Coons advocate for most of the same concerns affecting the three states.
All because of how the Senate is composed in combination with its much-abused filibuster rule.
More than two centuries earlier, the chief opponents of proportionate representation in the Senate represented Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. Though Delaware ranks 45th in population with 844,000 residents, New Jersey now ranks 11th with 8.7 million people and Maryland is 19th, population 5.6 million. With 19.5 million people, New York is now the third most populous state.
Many of the 37.5 million Americans from these states are paying today because of the Connecticut Compromise.
________________________________________________________
A few months before the people of Egypt stood up for their rights, I spoke with an exchange student from Saudi Arabia as we waited to pick up medication at a Philadelphia pharmacy nine blocks east of Independence Hall.
He offered some brief but valuable insights about the Middle East, though not altogether unexpected. He described life in Saudi Arabia as “restrictive” and explained that Saudi citizens have no credible means of learning what occurs outside their corner of the world. The student made clear that he supports Israel’s right to exist.
As I viewed the mass demonstrations in Cairo and Alexandria, I wondered how 308 million people are lucky enough to be born in the United States or accepted as citizens here, while hundreds of millions of other human beings are murdered, sexually abused, tortured, starved, enslaved and impoverished in backward countries throughout the world.
These people would be grateful for the chance to vote and just walk down the street without being harassed. To be able to say what they think without endangering their lives. “Without democracy, there is no life,” said Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei on NBC News.
Not that America is perfect, which happens to be the underlying theme of this tome.
It is ironic that white Protestants primarily enjoyed democracy in the United States in 1789 and only men could vote. In less than two centuries, the United States has become comprised of people of almost every race, religion and nationality, and any citizen can vote and even run for every office from president down, excepting immigrants for the presidency.
Despite its weaknesses, the United States is a great country. Anyone living here should feel fortunate, especially compared to those inhabiting many other countries.
The American people still contend with severe difficulties that do not have to be. The failings here are evident - crime, poverty, substandard schools, housing shortages, unemployment, inadequate health-care coverage, the widening income gap, child abuse, prejudice, political gridlock, corruption, government mismanagement and so on.
People often complain about conditions, but little is done about them. Some Americans who may fit the label of “liberal” assail President Obama for failing to push his progressive agenda harder. Some African-Americans gripe that Obama has not done enough for issues which affect the black community. All true.
Maybe they failed to notice some slight stumbling blocks. Obama and Democrats in Congress have been unable to succeed with basic initiatives because of Republican opposition. The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation for a partly publicly financed health care system on Nov. 7, 2009, when it was controlled by the Democrats, but the Senate dislodged what was called the “public option” because Republicans threatened to exercise their filibuster power.
The same fate awaited Democratic attempts to repeal tax cuts for the wealthy.
If Democrats cannot get past these simple matters, how are they expected to do much else of a progressive nature?
The barrier that blocked Democratic legislation in Congress is one of many traps in our governance system that obstructs efforts to address some of the most basic needs in our country. Children continue to go hungry, more loyal employees in the private sector lose their jobs, students still attend overcrowded schools, prices persist in rising as wages stagnate.
Our system also maintains institutional racism. African-Americans and other racial minorities are disproportionately victimized by such policies.
None of this is likely to improve so long as we endure the policies produced by our current system.
To change policy, change the system.
The historic magnitude of the Constitution cannot be minimized, but certain of its rules limit America’s ability to serve its citizens adequately. The Constitution provides a durable foundation, but in two centuries it was necessary to place a great deal of building blocks placed atop it. What we have now is far from sufficient.
What, specifically, is wrong?
From this writer’s view, the Constitution contained in its enactment four significantly flawed provisions. The most obvious were those prolonging slavery. Fortunately, slavery was abolished with the Civil War, but the Constitution reflects the ongoing racial conflicts inherently embedded in American society.
The electoral college was widely vilified when the 2000 presidential election turned into a bizarre spectacle, which was not the first time that a presidential candidate won the electoral college while losing the popular vote. The electoral college served its purpose for selecting presidents during the nation’s early years, but the reason for it no longer exists and the electoral college remains a drag, at best, on the democratic process.
The electoral college allows the ongoing potential for the selection of a president who is elected by only a minority of the voters, not to mention other disadvantages.
Creation of the Senate permits a minority of the country’s population to control part of the legislative process and the appointment of Supreme Court justices. The majority of the people must depend on chance at the ballot box to obtain sufficient clout in the Senate.
On the surface, the amendment process can easily block any attempt to adjust these clauses to make the system more democratic. Any proposed amendment can be thwarted jby provisions requiring a two-thirds vote in each house and ratification by three quarters of the 50 states.
Under this system, interestingly, the minority of the population can block adjustments of the rules which already stifle the will of the majority.
Our system of governance also inhibits the appointment of Supreme Court justices and judges on the lower federal courts whom we can trust for fairness. It is possible for the minority of the people to select judges because of the power of the electoral college and the composition of the Senate.
Beyond the Constitution itself, our 50-state network as we know it is anachronistic. The economic strength or weakness of many states now depends on corporate decisions reached in other states and even foreign countries. Big cities or metropolitan areas can be self-sufficient if they detach themselves from their state governments. It would likewise make sense if low-population states merged, or if some small states folded into an adjacent larger state.
Many of our problems are self-inflicted. We entrust our fellow citizens with extensive powers on levels from the White House to City Council. We have elected many wonderful people for public office, yet we have voted people into office who mismanaged our government, stole from us and even contributed to frantic turmoil throughout the world.
Politicians who betray our trust are able to do so because we let them get away with it.
Few enough Americans exercise their rights. Many do not vote in any elections and others will only vote in selected elections, especially the presidential election and in big-city mayoral elections. We do not take time to learn about candidates’ backgrounds and their positions.
Once successful candidates take office, too few of us bother to keep track of what they do or communicate our concerns to them. Nor do we organize sufficiently to express dissent of their actions. The series of mass protests in Madison, Wisc., was an exception to what we have experienced in modern times.
Mayors, governors, judges and elected officials of all kinds have mismanaged their operations or abused the trust placed with them. Scandals abound, involving massive contract overruns, judges prosecuted for profiting from sentencing practices, council members benefiting from questionable procedures, a lawyer’s conflict of interest over a proposed building, sexual harassment, the appointment of a schools chief seen as indifferent and unqualified, and a state government’s longtime neglected oversight of an abortion doctor ultimately charged with murder of babies after being born alive.
The system can be changed.
This begs some legitimate questions: Why bring all this up? Are there any alternatives? If there are, how do we bring about any change?
If the system is transformed, some of the beneficiaries will likely include the unions, social-service nonprofits, secular-leaning citizens and the Democratic Party. I am a union member, a registered Democrat and a predominantly liberal person, but the goal here is to promote good government and how it can better serve us.
A series of recommendations are described in the latter portion of this book. They include a more proportionate form of congressional representation; a realignment of state governments; more regional systems of government; modified rules governing the federal courts; and electoral changes to encourage campaigns of independent candidates, among other measures. Did I mention scrapping the electoral college?
These suggestions are probably not perfect, but hopefully they will serve as starting points for consideration.
The most anticipated concern about these ideas is this likely question: How? The obstacles to these kinds of changes are daunting, to the extent that they seem downright impossible.
If the Senate refuses to adjust or eliminate the filibuster rule, what hope is there for anything else? To amend the amendment process, we obviously need to employ the amendment process. The public understood full well the consequences of the electoral college when we endured the Florida recount a decade ago, but there has been no groundswell to eliminate it.
We should be under no delusion that the system will change. Maybe conditions can improve, but at this rate the outlook is not optimistic.
We must first understand the deficiencies of the system before we can improve conditions. Making America what it should be does not seem possible under the existing way of doing business, but maybe it can happen. I do not know how to change policy without changing the system.
At stake here is not the future of unions or the power of the Democratic Party. It is about good government and how it can best serve its people.
The people's voice may prevail after all
‘Having our own police department in this day and age is a luxury we can’t afford’
- Pontiac, Mich., Mayor Leon Jukowski
Mayor John Dickert of Racine, Wisc., may well have a deeper stake in the system than his fellow mayors around the country.
His congressman is U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, who proposed the virtual end of Medicare; his governor is Scott Walker, whose anti-union policies inspired a political revolution; and one justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court accused another justice of choking her inside her office.
Dickert joined the other mayors to urge Congress to speed up the end of the Middle East wars and spend the money on urban needs. Their demand was presented in a resolution prepared by the U.S. Conference of Mayors when meeting in Baltimore in late June.
Creation of the resolution coincided with two other developments which offered hope that at last the government might finally pay adequate attention to America’s cities nnd other communities.
Soon after, President Obama announced a careful drawdown of troops in Afghanistan as even many Republicans balked about our continued involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
It is also evident that a healthy proportion of Americans want higher taxes for the wealthy and big business.
Perhaps this confluence of events inspired Obama to rebuke Republicans in Congress for attempting to dictate the economic agenda - especially, their refusal to end business tax breaks and tax cuts for the wealthy.
The most vigorous of these initiatives was launched in Baltimore when the U.S. Conference of Mayors released its resolution, which states: “The United States Conference of Mayors calls on the President and U.S. Congress to end the wars as soon as strategically possible and bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable, sustainable energy and reduce the federal debt.”
We have spent $1.3 trillion in the past decade to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which amounts to $126 billion yearly. In a sample breakdown, an MSNBC television host reported that Los Angeles would receive $1.2 billion and Philadelphia would be given nearly enough fill the $629 million gap in its school system‘s budget.
Members of Congress in both major parties are opposing or questioning our military ventures. It certainly reflects the prevalent war-weariness among Americans.
Democrats like Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland is consistent with his anti-war positions. Some Republicans may well be speaking up now because they were always sincerely concerned about these wars and are only willing to go public now since the current president is a Democrat.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky conceded as much during a breakfast session on June 21, 2011. “I think some of these views were probably held by some of my members even in the previous administration,” he said. “Party loyalty (to President Bush) tended to kind of mute them.
“A lot of our members, not having a Republican in the White House,” McConnell continued, “feel more free to kind of express their reservation, which might have been somewhat muted during the previous administration.”
No doubt many other Republicans suddenly have a problem with our wars solely because Obama is a Democrat.
It is also becoming safer for politicians to vote for ending corporate tax breaks and increasing taxes on the wealthy. I see more frequent letters to the editor and hear more phone calls on C-span condemning Republican strategy.
So far, 33 Republican senators voted in June 2011 to eliminate a 45-cent-per-gallon ethanol tax credit, joining 38 Democrats and independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, according to The New York Daily News.
The Tribune Washington Bureau reported that Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, referring to tax breaks for corporate jets, said on June 29, 2011, “I’m not sympathetic to all these jets myself, so I’d be willing to consider that.”
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, sounding much different than other Republicans in his state, said, “I’m willing to take a look at the special deals. I would love to do away with special tax breaks, but not legitimate business deductions.”
On the same day as Obama’s scolding, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Look, taxes aren’t gonna be raised.”
Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said, “Sen. McConnell’s demand is being contradicted by many in his own party. It seems he ventured out on a limb, and many in his own caucus are sawing it off.”
All these developments buttresses the drive to attend to our domestic needs, though it is a long, uphill road. Wherever Obama stands on specific issues at any given time, such situations strengthen the longterm agenda of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress.
The American public is sufficiently aroused to press for progressive change. Mayors throughout the nation are bombarded by residents outraged by the horrendous cuts in services; the public is exhausted with the wars; and Republican members of Congress no doubt hear rising complaints from their constituents and monitor controversies over Republican policies in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida and other states.
Maybe this is wishful thinking, but future candidates who represent a sensible approach to governing, including incumbents with shaky levels of popularity, will likely benefit. Candidates and incumbents who espouse extreme concepts promise to become an endangered species.
- Pontiac, Mich., Mayor Leon Jukowski
Mayor John Dickert of Racine, Wisc., may well have a deeper stake in the system than his fellow mayors around the country.
His congressman is U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, who proposed the virtual end of Medicare; his governor is Scott Walker, whose anti-union policies inspired a political revolution; and one justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court accused another justice of choking her inside her office.
Dickert joined the other mayors to urge Congress to speed up the end of the Middle East wars and spend the money on urban needs. Their demand was presented in a resolution prepared by the U.S. Conference of Mayors when meeting in Baltimore in late June.
Creation of the resolution coincided with two other developments which offered hope that at last the government might finally pay adequate attention to America’s cities nnd other communities.
Soon after, President Obama announced a careful drawdown of troops in Afghanistan as even many Republicans balked about our continued involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
It is also evident that a healthy proportion of Americans want higher taxes for the wealthy and big business.
Perhaps this confluence of events inspired Obama to rebuke Republicans in Congress for attempting to dictate the economic agenda - especially, their refusal to end business tax breaks and tax cuts for the wealthy.
The most vigorous of these initiatives was launched in Baltimore when the U.S. Conference of Mayors released its resolution, which states: “The United States Conference of Mayors calls on the President and U.S. Congress to end the wars as soon as strategically possible and bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable, sustainable energy and reduce the federal debt.”
We have spent $1.3 trillion in the past decade to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which amounts to $126 billion yearly. In a sample breakdown, an MSNBC television host reported that Los Angeles would receive $1.2 billion and Philadelphia would be given nearly enough fill the $629 million gap in its school system‘s budget.
Members of Congress in both major parties are opposing or questioning our military ventures. It certainly reflects the prevalent war-weariness among Americans.
Democrats like Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland is consistent with his anti-war positions. Some Republicans may well be speaking up now because they were always sincerely concerned about these wars and are only willing to go public now since the current president is a Democrat.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky conceded as much during a breakfast session on June 21, 2011. “I think some of these views were probably held by some of my members even in the previous administration,” he said. “Party loyalty (to President Bush) tended to kind of mute them.
“A lot of our members, not having a Republican in the White House,” McConnell continued, “feel more free to kind of express their reservation, which might have been somewhat muted during the previous administration.”
No doubt many other Republicans suddenly have a problem with our wars solely because Obama is a Democrat.
It is also becoming safer for politicians to vote for ending corporate tax breaks and increasing taxes on the wealthy. I see more frequent letters to the editor and hear more phone calls on C-span condemning Republican strategy.
So far, 33 Republican senators voted in June 2011 to eliminate a 45-cent-per-gallon ethanol tax credit, joining 38 Democrats and independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, according to The New York Daily News.
The Tribune Washington Bureau reported that Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, referring to tax breaks for corporate jets, said on June 29, 2011, “I’m not sympathetic to all these jets myself, so I’d be willing to consider that.”
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, sounding much different than other Republicans in his state, said, “I’m willing to take a look at the special deals. I would love to do away with special tax breaks, but not legitimate business deductions.”
On the same day as Obama’s scolding, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Look, taxes aren’t gonna be raised.”
Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said, “Sen. McConnell’s demand is being contradicted by many in his own party. It seems he ventured out on a limb, and many in his own caucus are sawing it off.”
All these developments buttresses the drive to attend to our domestic needs, though it is a long, uphill road. Wherever Obama stands on specific issues at any given time, such situations strengthen the longterm agenda of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress.
The American public is sufficiently aroused to press for progressive change. Mayors throughout the nation are bombarded by residents outraged by the horrendous cuts in services; the public is exhausted with the wars; and Republican members of Congress no doubt hear rising complaints from their constituents and monitor controversies over Republican policies in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida and other states.
Maybe this is wishful thinking, but future candidates who represent a sensible approach to governing, including incumbents with shaky levels of popularity, will likely benefit. Candidates and incumbents who espouse extreme concepts promise to become an endangered species.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
More court ethics, less Clarence Thomas
‘There’s no difference between a white snake and a black snake. They’ll both bite’
- the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, 1991
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s shameless, in-your-face, violation of judicial ethics cries out for a better way to choose justices and keep them accountable.
Literally, he is above the law that spells out ethics rules for federal judges who serve on the lower courts, but he should have known better than to get so cozy with Harlan Crow, a major donor to conservative causes and real-estate magnate from Dallas.
When he announced his retirement in 1991, the legendary Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall accurately predicted that President Bush (the elder one) might replace him with another African-American nominee who would betray the primary aspirations of the black community.
After Marshall called his then-generic successor a “black snake” during his retirement announcement, Thomas’s tenure openly mocked Marshall’s lifelong struggle to advocate for the concerns of the black community, not to mention concerns that affect all Americans.
Thomas is the product of a system that protects Supreme Court justices from any reasonable accountability and was selected through a literally undemocratic process.
To be clear, Thomas and his eight colleagues on the Supreme Court are not bound by the code of conduct for federal judges on grounds that a panel of judges who rank below the justices is charged with enforcing said code.
Maybe that’s why Thomas felt free to flout the code’s provision requiring that judges “should not personally participate” in raising funds for charitable initiatives. Authors of the code were concerned that contributors might feel pressured to donate or entitled to favored treatment by the judge, and judges are not supposed to be aware of who contributes to projects which honor them.
The New York Times’s Mike McIntire chronicled a series of instances which has or might have compromised Thomas’s performance on the court. (nyt, fp, 6/19/11)
Thomas violated the code for federal judges by seeking Crow’s help in financing the multi-million-dollar purchase and restoration of a former seafood cannery in Pin Point, Ga., where his mother was employed. Thomas has made it a pet project to establish a museum about the culture and history of Pin Point.
According to the Times, this venture began a few years before when Thomas encountered Algernon Varn, whose grandfather operated the cannery, during a visit to Pin Point, the justice’s birthplace near Savannah. Thomas asked about plans for the property and Varn said he wanted to preserve it. The justice then informed Varn of a friend he would “put you in touch with.” That friend is Crow, who consented to provide financial support.
Deborah L. Rhode, a Stanford University law professor, told the Times that Thomas “should not be directly involved in fund-raising activities, no matter how worthy they are whether he’s being centrally honored by the museum.”
At Common Cause, attorney Arn Pearson said, “The code of conduct is quite clear that judges are not supposed to be soliciting money for their pet projects or charities, period. If any other federal judge was doing that, he could face disciplinary action.”
The plot thickens. Thomas was the lone dissenter in 2006 when the Project on Fair Representation challenged federal voting rights laws. The project is sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, and Crow is an AEI trustee.
In 2001, AEI presented Thomas with a bust of Abraham Lincoln valued at $15,000 and praised his judicial performance at an awards gala. The suit was litigated - pro bono - by a former clerk for Thomas.
Such a cozy circle.
MSNBC TV host Rachel Maddow - expanding on the Times piece - listed eight cases in which Thomas voted in favor of positions taken by organizations tied to Crow.
According to the Times, Crow has hosted Thomas aboard his 161-foot yacht and his private jet, at his California retreat and at his 105-acre summer estate in the Adirondacks.
Crow also reportedly contributed $500,000 to the founding of Liberty Central, a tea party-affiliated group launched by Virginia Thomas, wife of the justice.
Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer testified before Congress in April 2011 that they follow the code of conduct. Is that good enough?
More than 100 law professors urged Congress last February 2011 to impose the ethics code on Supreme Court justices. Legislation to address this concern was introduced.
Deeper systemic issues fuel the potential for abuse. Two clauses in the Constitution align to allow the possibility for justices to be appointed by a minority of voters.
Because a president is not subject to the popular vote, s/he can be elected by a minority. A majority of senators must confirm judicial nominees, but such a majority vote does not necessarily represent the majority of the people because each state - no matter how low their population -- is represented by the same number of senators. A justice can be confirmed by senators representing the 26 least populous states.
President Bush did not win the popular election in 2000, but he won the majority in 2004 before nominating Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. President Clinton never won a majority in either election because of third-party candidates; he nominated Breyer and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The framers of the Constitution invited trouble by creating lifetime tenure for the justices’ positions. Of course, this provision should preclude the justices from ruling on cases in which they might later have ties to some of the parties involved.
The framers might have expected that only honorable people would reach such a lofty position after struggling through law school, practicing law for many years and earning the trust of the president and the majority of the Senate.
Thomas would hardly be the first to blow this theory apart. Justice Abe Fortas resigned in 1969 because he accepted money from a convicted financier while on the court. Justice James Clark McReynolds - a racist, sexist and anti-Semite - snubbed Justice Louis Brandeis, the first Jew to join the court.
Besides, plenty of judges retire while still in their professional prime and use their past connections to return to the practice of law or find other jobs.
The system must be reconsidered. The American people, through our political leaders, must ensure that only the best people are elevated to the court and keep them honest.
- the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, 1991
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s shameless, in-your-face, violation of judicial ethics cries out for a better way to choose justices and keep them accountable.
Literally, he is above the law that spells out ethics rules for federal judges who serve on the lower courts, but he should have known better than to get so cozy with Harlan Crow, a major donor to conservative causes and real-estate magnate from Dallas.
When he announced his retirement in 1991, the legendary Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall accurately predicted that President Bush (the elder one) might replace him with another African-American nominee who would betray the primary aspirations of the black community.
After Marshall called his then-generic successor a “black snake” during his retirement announcement, Thomas’s tenure openly mocked Marshall’s lifelong struggle to advocate for the concerns of the black community, not to mention concerns that affect all Americans.
Thomas is the product of a system that protects Supreme Court justices from any reasonable accountability and was selected through a literally undemocratic process.
To be clear, Thomas and his eight colleagues on the Supreme Court are not bound by the code of conduct for federal judges on grounds that a panel of judges who rank below the justices is charged with enforcing said code.
Maybe that’s why Thomas felt free to flout the code’s provision requiring that judges “should not personally participate” in raising funds for charitable initiatives. Authors of the code were concerned that contributors might feel pressured to donate or entitled to favored treatment by the judge, and judges are not supposed to be aware of who contributes to projects which honor them.
The New York Times’s Mike McIntire chronicled a series of instances which has or might have compromised Thomas’s performance on the court. (nyt, fp, 6/19/11)
Thomas violated the code for federal judges by seeking Crow’s help in financing the multi-million-dollar purchase and restoration of a former seafood cannery in Pin Point, Ga., where his mother was employed. Thomas has made it a pet project to establish a museum about the culture and history of Pin Point.
According to the Times, this venture began a few years before when Thomas encountered Algernon Varn, whose grandfather operated the cannery, during a visit to Pin Point, the justice’s birthplace near Savannah. Thomas asked about plans for the property and Varn said he wanted to preserve it. The justice then informed Varn of a friend he would “put you in touch with.” That friend is Crow, who consented to provide financial support.
Deborah L. Rhode, a Stanford University law professor, told the Times that Thomas “should not be directly involved in fund-raising activities, no matter how worthy they are whether he’s being centrally honored by the museum.”
At Common Cause, attorney Arn Pearson said, “The code of conduct is quite clear that judges are not supposed to be soliciting money for their pet projects or charities, period. If any other federal judge was doing that, he could face disciplinary action.”
The plot thickens. Thomas was the lone dissenter in 2006 when the Project on Fair Representation challenged federal voting rights laws. The project is sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, and Crow is an AEI trustee.
In 2001, AEI presented Thomas with a bust of Abraham Lincoln valued at $15,000 and praised his judicial performance at an awards gala. The suit was litigated - pro bono - by a former clerk for Thomas.
Such a cozy circle.
MSNBC TV host Rachel Maddow - expanding on the Times piece - listed eight cases in which Thomas voted in favor of positions taken by organizations tied to Crow.
According to the Times, Crow has hosted Thomas aboard his 161-foot yacht and his private jet, at his California retreat and at his 105-acre summer estate in the Adirondacks.
Crow also reportedly contributed $500,000 to the founding of Liberty Central, a tea party-affiliated group launched by Virginia Thomas, wife of the justice.
Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer testified before Congress in April 2011 that they follow the code of conduct. Is that good enough?
More than 100 law professors urged Congress last February 2011 to impose the ethics code on Supreme Court justices. Legislation to address this concern was introduced.
Deeper systemic issues fuel the potential for abuse. Two clauses in the Constitution align to allow the possibility for justices to be appointed by a minority of voters.
Because a president is not subject to the popular vote, s/he can be elected by a minority. A majority of senators must confirm judicial nominees, but such a majority vote does not necessarily represent the majority of the people because each state - no matter how low their population -- is represented by the same number of senators. A justice can be confirmed by senators representing the 26 least populous states.
President Bush did not win the popular election in 2000, but he won the majority in 2004 before nominating Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. President Clinton never won a majority in either election because of third-party candidates; he nominated Breyer and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The framers of the Constitution invited trouble by creating lifetime tenure for the justices’ positions. Of course, this provision should preclude the justices from ruling on cases in which they might later have ties to some of the parties involved.
The framers might have expected that only honorable people would reach such a lofty position after struggling through law school, practicing law for many years and earning the trust of the president and the majority of the Senate.
Thomas would hardly be the first to blow this theory apart. Justice Abe Fortas resigned in 1969 because he accepted money from a convicted financier while on the court. Justice James Clark McReynolds - a racist, sexist and anti-Semite - snubbed Justice Louis Brandeis, the first Jew to join the court.
Besides, plenty of judges retire while still in their professional prime and use their past connections to return to the practice of law or find other jobs.
The system must be reconsidered. The American people, through our political leaders, must ensure that only the best people are elevated to the court and keep them honest.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
The Supreme Court's English impatience
At least three U.S. Supreme Court justices are emerging as sticklers for the English language, a practice that could one day boomerang on them.
Adam Liptak, New York Times correspondent at the court, reported on June 14 2011 how justices are incorporating dictionary definitions into their legal opinions. This past May, Liptak reported, the justices cited dictionaries in eight cases to figure out what lawmakers meant in using such words as “prevent,” “delay” and “report.” He added that in the decade starting in October 2000, the justices used dictionaries to define 295 words or phrases in 225 opinions, as chronicled in a Marquette Law Review study.
Maybe the court adds injury to insult each time it overturns an inferior court’s ruling. Inferior? No typo, or rather, no error of ink. Article III, Section 1, of the Constitution reads: “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold…”
The 19th Amendment can be read a few different ways: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
As in a sporting event, does this mean a citizen’s right to vote cannot be called “on account of…?” How does Congress enforce this amendment? Perhaps the 19th Amendment can stand amending with one word: Substitute “gender” for “sex.”
Liptak focused on Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Clarence Thomas as dictionary aficionados. Breyer is recognized as a member of the court’s liberal bloc while Roberts and Thomas are considered conservatives.
Jessie Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary, told Liptak, “Dictionary definitions are written with a lot of things in mind, but rigorously circumscribing the exact meanings and connotations of terms is not usually one of them.”
Liptak reported that in 2006 J. Gordon Christy, a professor at the Mississippi College School of Law, wrote in The Mississippi Law Journal, “We are treated to the truly absurd spectacle of august justices and judges arguing over which unreliable dictionary and which unreliable dictionary definition should be deemed authoritative.”
Which brings us to the mother, no pun intended, of all legal and social issues that plagues the Supreme Court in perpetuity, so to speak. Opponents of abortion make a career of stretching semantics by dubbing themselves “pro-life” and insisting that “life” begins at “conception.” Wording employed by those who support the right to anabortion has never confused me.
One can find a range of definitions for “life” and “birth,” but none are synonymous with “conception.” One Merriam-Webster definition of life: “The period from birth to death.” Two M-W versions of birth: “The emergence of a new individual from the body of its parent,” and “the act or process of bringing young from the womb.”
If a same-sex marriage case reaches the Supreme Court, how will “marriage” be defined? One Web site maintains gender-neutral definitions and another limits marriage as an institution for a man and a woman. Merriam-Webster tries to have it both ways: “(1): The state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage.”
Sounds like grist for a split decision.
Adam Liptak, New York Times correspondent at the court, reported on June 14 2011 how justices are incorporating dictionary definitions into their legal opinions. This past May, Liptak reported, the justices cited dictionaries in eight cases to figure out what lawmakers meant in using such words as “prevent,” “delay” and “report.” He added that in the decade starting in October 2000, the justices used dictionaries to define 295 words or phrases in 225 opinions, as chronicled in a Marquette Law Review study.
Maybe the court adds injury to insult each time it overturns an inferior court’s ruling. Inferior? No typo, or rather, no error of ink. Article III, Section 1, of the Constitution reads: “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold…”
The 19th Amendment can be read a few different ways: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
As in a sporting event, does this mean a citizen’s right to vote cannot be called “on account of…?” How does Congress enforce this amendment? Perhaps the 19th Amendment can stand amending with one word: Substitute “gender” for “sex.”
Liptak focused on Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Clarence Thomas as dictionary aficionados. Breyer is recognized as a member of the court’s liberal bloc while Roberts and Thomas are considered conservatives.
Jessie Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary, told Liptak, “Dictionary definitions are written with a lot of things in mind, but rigorously circumscribing the exact meanings and connotations of terms is not usually one of them.”
Liptak reported that in 2006 J. Gordon Christy, a professor at the Mississippi College School of Law, wrote in The Mississippi Law Journal, “We are treated to the truly absurd spectacle of august justices and judges arguing over which unreliable dictionary and which unreliable dictionary definition should be deemed authoritative.”
Which brings us to the mother, no pun intended, of all legal and social issues that plagues the Supreme Court in perpetuity, so to speak. Opponents of abortion make a career of stretching semantics by dubbing themselves “pro-life” and insisting that “life” begins at “conception.” Wording employed by those who support the right to anabortion has never confused me.
One can find a range of definitions for “life” and “birth,” but none are synonymous with “conception.” One Merriam-Webster definition of life: “The period from birth to death.” Two M-W versions of birth: “The emergence of a new individual from the body of its parent,” and “the act or process of bringing young from the womb.”
If a same-sex marriage case reaches the Supreme Court, how will “marriage” be defined? One Web site maintains gender-neutral definitions and another limits marriage as an institution for a man and a woman. Merriam-Webster tries to have it both ways: “(1): The state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage.”
Sounds like grist for a split decision.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Christie's helicopter
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s helicopter ride to his son’s baseball game is perfectly justified. He could not afford the commuter rail fares charged by New Jersey Transit.
The current fares were set by the NJT board a few months after Christie took office because the new governor would not raise the money t forestall the change.
The fare schedule did not increase but moved into the stratosphere. As a daytripper to New York City, I noticed the fares creeping up over the years. I understood that fares would likely rise again, but I could not understand a near 50 percent hike. On April 30, 2010, the round-trip fare from Trenton to Penn Station in Manhattan was $21.50. The next day, the cost was $31.
Philadelphians who ride the SEPTA train to Trenton and NJT to NYC spent $37.50 round-trip from center city until April 30, 2010. That round trip spiked the next day and rose even higher the following August due to a slight SEPTA increase. It now costs $48.50.
The NJT board simultaneously eliminated the discounted round trips on all lines and raised single rail fares 25 percent. While rate increases are unpopular no matter how low, a 50 percent hike is shameful.
I generally do not have difficulty with a governor who uses a helicopter for personal use on occasion. A governor’s schedule makes it difficult to attend to both state business and family affairs. Despite his politics, Christie should be commended for being a good father.
Too bad he treats many of fellow New Jerseyans far differently than his children. He entered office with a let-them-eat-cake attitude in which he slashed programs right and left while eliminating a tax on millionaires and refusing to raise the gas tax.
In less than four months, NJT fares skyrocketed. I found myself paying much higher fares for day trips from Philadelphia to NYC.
I might not feel so ruffled if the fare increases were more reasonable, as they have been with SEPTA in Philadelphia and the MTA in New York. However, what Christie did with train fares, schools and other programs was plain nasty.
Connecticut’s state legislature voted to spread the pain evenly. They raised taxes along with making cuts and seeking union concessions.
Maybe Christie can conside taking the train at time instead of car or helicopter when it is convenient. Amtrak can take him straight to Newark and New York with few stops. Ten of NJT’s 11 rail lines run through northern New Jersey, including stations close to his home in Morris County.
A train trip to his son’s ballgame in Montvale might have been time-consuming, but the game site is located between two train stations serving different NJT lines that Christie could have accessed originating from Trenton.
Christie responded to the the helicopter flap by announcing that he and the Republican Party reimbursed the state $3,300 for his use of the helicopter, operated by the state police, to visit the Montvale game and another near his home in Mendham, The New York Times reported.
Without apologizing, Christie reacted with his usual touch of class: “I am not going to allow the media and the hacks in the Democratic Party to turn this into something that allows them to do what they always like to do, which is get away from serious issues where you have to make hard choices for things that matter, because they want to have a circus.”
He also lashed out at Bergen County Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle who said that leaving the game in the fifth inning for the political meeting “says something about the governor’s priorities.” His reply: “She should really be embarrassed at what a jerk she is.”
Huttle later told a New York Daily News reporter, “I’m not surprised given his pattern of using abusive language towards tose who disagree with him.”
The current fares were set by the NJT board a few months after Christie took office because the new governor would not raise the money t forestall the change.
The fare schedule did not increase but moved into the stratosphere. As a daytripper to New York City, I noticed the fares creeping up over the years. I understood that fares would likely rise again, but I could not understand a near 50 percent hike. On April 30, 2010, the round-trip fare from Trenton to Penn Station in Manhattan was $21.50. The next day, the cost was $31.
Philadelphians who ride the SEPTA train to Trenton and NJT to NYC spent $37.50 round-trip from center city until April 30, 2010. That round trip spiked the next day and rose even higher the following August due to a slight SEPTA increase. It now costs $48.50.
The NJT board simultaneously eliminated the discounted round trips on all lines and raised single rail fares 25 percent. While rate increases are unpopular no matter how low, a 50 percent hike is shameful.
I generally do not have difficulty with a governor who uses a helicopter for personal use on occasion. A governor’s schedule makes it difficult to attend to both state business and family affairs. Despite his politics, Christie should be commended for being a good father.
Too bad he treats many of fellow New Jerseyans far differently than his children. He entered office with a let-them-eat-cake attitude in which he slashed programs right and left while eliminating a tax on millionaires and refusing to raise the gas tax.
In less than four months, NJT fares skyrocketed. I found myself paying much higher fares for day trips from Philadelphia to NYC.
I might not feel so ruffled if the fare increases were more reasonable, as they have been with SEPTA in Philadelphia and the MTA in New York. However, what Christie did with train fares, schools and other programs was plain nasty.
Connecticut’s state legislature voted to spread the pain evenly. They raised taxes along with making cuts and seeking union concessions.
Maybe Christie can conside taking the train at time instead of car or helicopter when it is convenient. Amtrak can take him straight to Newark and New York with few stops. Ten of NJT’s 11 rail lines run through northern New Jersey, including stations close to his home in Morris County.
A train trip to his son’s ballgame in Montvale might have been time-consuming, but the game site is located between two train stations serving different NJT lines that Christie could have accessed originating from Trenton.
Christie responded to the the helicopter flap by announcing that he and the Republican Party reimbursed the state $3,300 for his use of the helicopter, operated by the state police, to visit the Montvale game and another near his home in Mendham, The New York Times reported.
Without apologizing, Christie reacted with his usual touch of class: “I am not going to allow the media and the hacks in the Democratic Party to turn this into something that allows them to do what they always like to do, which is get away from serious issues where you have to make hard choices for things that matter, because they want to have a circus.”
He also lashed out at Bergen County Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle who said that leaving the game in the fifth inning for the political meeting “says something about the governor’s priorities.” His reply: “She should really be embarrassed at what a jerk she is.”
Huttle later told a New York Daily News reporter, “I’m not surprised given his pattern of using abusive language towards tose who disagree with him.”
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Congressman Ryan's Medicare panic attack
Paul Ryan should be proud to advocate a plan that is described as a voucher.
If vouchers are good enough for children, why aren’t they good enough for the elderly? Oops! Those under 55 who will be elderly.
Ryan, who represents a congressional district in southeastern Wisconsin, insisted during a private White House meeting on Thursday, June 1, 2011, that President Obama cease and desist from distorting his Medicare plan. It is not a “voucher” system, it is “premium support,” he corrected.
Ryan should plead with Obama to distort it. The truth, as they say, could set you - a load of congressional Republicans - free…from their jobs in 2012, that is. The truth will hurt them.
What Ryan did at that meeting is as significant as Anthony Weiner’s antics. In fact, it was more important before news broke that Weiner texted a 17-year-old student in Delaware. Ryan’s initiative would drastically transform arguably the government’s most popular program.
Ryan showed us that he cannot stick to his position. What’s more, he openly injected politics into a session at a government facility.
Ryan recalled telling Obama: “It’s been misdescribed by the president and many others. I just said…that if we ‘demagogue each other at the leadership level, then we’re never going to take on our debt,’” as reported in The Washington Post.
His Medicare proposal would mainly subsidize citizens presently under 55 in private insurance plans rather than have the federal government continue to insure elderly Americans.
He maintained that this constitutes “premium support,” not the dreaded “voucher,” even though Republicans trumpet “school vouchers” so that children can avoid public schools.
Ryan’s statement won him a standing ovation from other House Republicans who joined him for the meeting.
Obama’s reply: “I’m the death panel-supporting, socialist, may-not-have-been-born-here president.” (from the Tribune Washington bureau.)
“It is a voucher plan,” added Obama spokesman Jay Carney, as quoted in the New York Times. “If you’re basically giving a subsidy of a set dollar figure that’s limited in terms of its growth and that won’t stay up with the growth in medical costs, I mean, that’s - you’re basically getting a certain amount of money to put towards buying insurance.”
Ryan proved on the first of June that he has no spine. It is a fundamental rule of life that if a person sets out on a course of action, one must stay with it and be fully willing to defend it. If you recognize that it is not working, then admit you are wrong and give it up.
I could respect Ryan if he admitted making a mistake, but he had to turn on the spin spigot when the Democrats turned the Medicare plan into a forceful campaign issue. In fact, his Medicare plan is now official House legislation, though it was subsequently rejected by the Senate.
Ryan may not believe in what he is doing. If he did, he would be grateful for the opportunity to defend it. Once attacks on his plan overwhelmed his party’s colleagues, he decided to scold the president for “misdescribing” the plan.
In the process, he openly injected campaign electioneering during the meeting inside a public facility, namely the White House. While everything in Washington is inherently political, public officials there usually do not engage in campaign tactics in any direct way during official or semi-official meetings.
Ryan’s plea was directly related to the 2012 election, when voters are expected to punish Republican incumbents in large measure because of Ryan’s Medicare plan. He plainly hoped that Democrats would lay off so that more Republicans will keep their jobs.
Obama did not lay off and we will be surprised if Democrats neglect to remind voters of Ryan’s idea of “premium supports.”
Now whose the wiener?
If vouchers are good enough for children, why aren’t they good enough for the elderly? Oops! Those under 55 who will be elderly.
Ryan, who represents a congressional district in southeastern Wisconsin, insisted during a private White House meeting on Thursday, June 1, 2011, that President Obama cease and desist from distorting his Medicare plan. It is not a “voucher” system, it is “premium support,” he corrected.
Ryan should plead with Obama to distort it. The truth, as they say, could set you - a load of congressional Republicans - free…from their jobs in 2012, that is. The truth will hurt them.
What Ryan did at that meeting is as significant as Anthony Weiner’s antics. In fact, it was more important before news broke that Weiner texted a 17-year-old student in Delaware. Ryan’s initiative would drastically transform arguably the government’s most popular program.
Ryan showed us that he cannot stick to his position. What’s more, he openly injected politics into a session at a government facility.
Ryan recalled telling Obama: “It’s been misdescribed by the president and many others. I just said…that if we ‘demagogue each other at the leadership level, then we’re never going to take on our debt,’” as reported in The Washington Post.
His Medicare proposal would mainly subsidize citizens presently under 55 in private insurance plans rather than have the federal government continue to insure elderly Americans.
He maintained that this constitutes “premium support,” not the dreaded “voucher,” even though Republicans trumpet “school vouchers” so that children can avoid public schools.
Ryan’s statement won him a standing ovation from other House Republicans who joined him for the meeting.
Obama’s reply: “I’m the death panel-supporting, socialist, may-not-have-been-born-here president.” (from the Tribune Washington bureau.)
“It is a voucher plan,” added Obama spokesman Jay Carney, as quoted in the New York Times. “If you’re basically giving a subsidy of a set dollar figure that’s limited in terms of its growth and that won’t stay up with the growth in medical costs, I mean, that’s - you’re basically getting a certain amount of money to put towards buying insurance.”
Ryan proved on the first of June that he has no spine. It is a fundamental rule of life that if a person sets out on a course of action, one must stay with it and be fully willing to defend it. If you recognize that it is not working, then admit you are wrong and give it up.
I could respect Ryan if he admitted making a mistake, but he had to turn on the spin spigot when the Democrats turned the Medicare plan into a forceful campaign issue. In fact, his Medicare plan is now official House legislation, though it was subsequently rejected by the Senate.
Ryan may not believe in what he is doing. If he did, he would be grateful for the opportunity to defend it. Once attacks on his plan overwhelmed his party’s colleagues, he decided to scold the president for “misdescribing” the plan.
In the process, he openly injected campaign electioneering during the meeting inside a public facility, namely the White House. While everything in Washington is inherently political, public officials there usually do not engage in campaign tactics in any direct way during official or semi-official meetings.
Ryan’s plea was directly related to the 2012 election, when voters are expected to punish Republican incumbents in large measure because of Ryan’s Medicare plan. He plainly hoped that Democrats would lay off so that more Republicans will keep their jobs.
Obama did not lay off and we will be surprised if Democrats neglect to remind voters of Ryan’s idea of “premium supports.”
Now whose the wiener?
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Eighth Amendment
The act of upholding the Eighth Amendment now qualifies as “perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history.”
More wisdom from Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia while dissenting from a 5-4 decision that ordered the state of California to abide by a lower court ruling to release 46,000 inmates from state prisons.
Scalia and the other three dissenting justices raise legitimate concerns that the court order could lead to increased crime, but prison conditions there are so horrid that they constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The justices can read. The Eighth Amendment is so plain and simple that no citizen needs an attorney to explain it: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the May 23, 2011, majority opinion that care “falls below the standard of decency that inheres in the Eighth Amendment.” (I, a11, 5/24/11)
Overcrowding in California’s state’s prisons has already caused “needless suffering and death,” Kennedy added, according to Bloomsberg News. For at least 11 years, the prisons operated at double its design capacity.
He pointed out that up to 54 inmates could share a single toilet and that suicidal prisoners were held in cages the size of a telephone booth due to a shortage of treatment beds.
The New York Times even sent a reporter to a state prison in Chino, California, who wrote, “The rows of bunk beds, just a few inches apart, covered almost every empty space on the floor Tuesday afternoon. The gap between most beds allowed only the thinnest of inmates to stand comfortably.
“A few prisoners wandered around, but most simply rested on their thin mattresses, reading or dozing. As a rule, they go out in the yard just two or three times a week.”
Conditions have improved since 2006 when the suit was filed. The state has already started to comply with the original court order to reduce the the inmate population by 46,000 within two years, according to Bloomberg News. Advocates for the prisoners said that 32,000 more must be cut from the rolls.
Five justices - besides Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan - recognized these conditions as violations of the Eighth Amendment, but that was not good enough for the other four justices.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the majority “is gambling with the safety” of California’s citizens. “I fear that today’s decision, like prior prisoner release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims,” Alito wrote for himself and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Scalia wrote for Justice Clarence Thomas and himself when he cited “what is perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history.”
Kennedy countered that the prison population can be reduced “in a manner calculated to avoid an undue negative effect on public safety.”
Kennedy was referring in part to plans to transfer tens of thousands of inmates to local prisons under legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last April, according to Bloomsberg News.
Alito and friends have a legitimate concern. This transformation of prisoners could well cause a spike in crime for Californians. We should be concerned about that. On a personal level, I have relatives in California.
But the Supreme Court deals with the law, not law enforcement. The dissenters were not questioning whether California prison overcrowding violates the Constitution, but how release of the inmates might affect the state’s crime rate.
Many people would conclude that the overcrowded conditions constitute “cruel and unusual punishment,” but whether or not it does, the justices should confine their opinions to the legality of the case.
Crime is the responsibility of the police and other law enforcement agencies. Of course, police departments have often been understaffed and now budget cuts are forcing extensive layoffs in police departments.
Interestingly, this is due in large measure to acts of Scalia’s ideological comrades. The president appointed by Scalia and friends in 2000 failed to avert the 9/11 attacks and led us into the disastrous Iraq war that diverted hundreds of billions of dollars from domestic needs; congressional Republicans are trying to rip apart Medicare and refuse to raise taxes for the rich; and new governors, mostly Republicans, are slashing services and reducing taxes for the wealthy.
For the record, Alito and Roberts were not on the bench when George W. Bush was elevated - not elected - to the presidency in 2000 by a 5-4 majority vote of the Supreme Court.
Scalia’s continued presence on the court may well constitute cruel and unusual punishment for the American people.
More wisdom from Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia while dissenting from a 5-4 decision that ordered the state of California to abide by a lower court ruling to release 46,000 inmates from state prisons.
Scalia and the other three dissenting justices raise legitimate concerns that the court order could lead to increased crime, but prison conditions there are so horrid that they constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The justices can read. The Eighth Amendment is so plain and simple that no citizen needs an attorney to explain it: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the May 23, 2011, majority opinion that care “falls below the standard of decency that inheres in the Eighth Amendment.” (I, a11, 5/24/11)
Overcrowding in California’s state’s prisons has already caused “needless suffering and death,” Kennedy added, according to Bloomsberg News. For at least 11 years, the prisons operated at double its design capacity.
He pointed out that up to 54 inmates could share a single toilet and that suicidal prisoners were held in cages the size of a telephone booth due to a shortage of treatment beds.
The New York Times even sent a reporter to a state prison in Chino, California, who wrote, “The rows of bunk beds, just a few inches apart, covered almost every empty space on the floor Tuesday afternoon. The gap between most beds allowed only the thinnest of inmates to stand comfortably.
“A few prisoners wandered around, but most simply rested on their thin mattresses, reading or dozing. As a rule, they go out in the yard just two or three times a week.”
Conditions have improved since 2006 when the suit was filed. The state has already started to comply with the original court order to reduce the the inmate population by 46,000 within two years, according to Bloomberg News. Advocates for the prisoners said that 32,000 more must be cut from the rolls.
Five justices - besides Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan - recognized these conditions as violations of the Eighth Amendment, but that was not good enough for the other four justices.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the majority “is gambling with the safety” of California’s citizens. “I fear that today’s decision, like prior prisoner release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims,” Alito wrote for himself and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Scalia wrote for Justice Clarence Thomas and himself when he cited “what is perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history.”
Kennedy countered that the prison population can be reduced “in a manner calculated to avoid an undue negative effect on public safety.”
Kennedy was referring in part to plans to transfer tens of thousands of inmates to local prisons under legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last April, according to Bloomsberg News.
Alito and friends have a legitimate concern. This transformation of prisoners could well cause a spike in crime for Californians. We should be concerned about that. On a personal level, I have relatives in California.
But the Supreme Court deals with the law, not law enforcement. The dissenters were not questioning whether California prison overcrowding violates the Constitution, but how release of the inmates might affect the state’s crime rate.
Many people would conclude that the overcrowded conditions constitute “cruel and unusual punishment,” but whether or not it does, the justices should confine their opinions to the legality of the case.
Crime is the responsibility of the police and other law enforcement agencies. Of course, police departments have often been understaffed and now budget cuts are forcing extensive layoffs in police departments.
Interestingly, this is due in large measure to acts of Scalia’s ideological comrades. The president appointed by Scalia and friends in 2000 failed to avert the 9/11 attacks and led us into the disastrous Iraq war that diverted hundreds of billions of dollars from domestic needs; congressional Republicans are trying to rip apart Medicare and refuse to raise taxes for the rich; and new governors, mostly Republicans, are slashing services and reducing taxes for the wealthy.
For the record, Alito and Roberts were not on the bench when George W. Bush was elevated - not elected - to the presidency in 2000 by a 5-4 majority vote of the Supreme Court.
Scalia’s continued presence on the court may well constitute cruel and unusual punishment for the American people.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Courts disrupt govs' agendas
The gavel has dropped on Chris and the two Scotts. They responded with their typical civility and graciousness.
“You don’t elect the Supreme Court; you don’t expect them to be making law,” said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. “But today, they made law. Because today, they sent an appropriations bill for $500 million that was not passed by the legislature, that was not signed by the governor. Go to the Constitution and tell me, how the hell did they get away with that?”
“There’s still a much larger separation-of-powers issue,” said Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, “whether one Madison judge can stand in the way of the other two democratically elected branches of government. The Supreme Court is going to have the ultimate ruling.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was unusually quiet.
Judges in New Jersey and Wisconsin told Christie and Walker that their respective administrations violated state law and must compensate for it.
As Christie, Walker and other new governors - mostly Republicans, but one Democrat - applied an aggressive, confrontational style of governance, I wondered if their initiatives might conflict with the law. Putting it mildly. Looks like one of those rare times that I was right.
New Jersey’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, May 24, 2011, directed the state to raise $500 million more to aid 31 poor and primarily urban school districts including Newark, Camden and Trenton, according to The New York Times. The 3-2 majority claimed the state deliberately violated past Supreme Court orders in Abbott v. Burke, the decades-old case under review.
“Like anyone else, the state is not free to walk away from judicial orders enforcing constitutional obligations,” wrote Justice Jaynee LaVecchia. She added that “the state made a conscious and calculated decision” to retract its commitment from two years earlier when the Abbott case last came before the court.
State Sen. President Stephen M. Sweeney told the Times that Christie “was well aware that his draconian cuts to education were illegal” and recounted that the governor pledged to maintain school funding during his 2009 campaign.
After taking office, Christie slashed $1 billion in aid to the state’s 591 school districts from an overall budget of $10 billion.
Christie on May 24 called on the legislature to find the money itself - without raising taxes. “All of my work is done on this,” he said.
He further castigated the court as “unelected” during a town meeting in Cherry Hill, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Christie conveniently forgets that members of the state Supreme Court are appointed by elected officials. If he does not like it, he can always initiate the process to change the system.
The New Jersey order inspired a Philadelphia city councilman, Darrell Clarke, to introduce a resolution to sue the state of Pennsylvania over the legality of funding cuts leaving the city’s schools up to $110 million in the lurch, according to The Philadelphia Daily News.
“It’s just not fair for us to have to ask the citizens to continue to pay in the city of Philadelphia, and we’re sitting on potentially a $700 million surplus from the state,” Clarke told the News. “Under the state’s statute (it is the state’s) primary responsibility to fund the school district.”
The city’s Law Department will consider City Council’s request to represent Council in such a suit, City Solicitor Shelley Smith said.
However, a spokesman for Mayor Michael Nutter cast doubt on the prospects for success because the laws and politics differ between the two neighboring states.
The News reported that past lawsuits of this nature have failed. In 1999, the city, the school district and the NAACP claimed that the legislature violated the state constitution by failing to adequately fund the schools, noting that the constitution requires the legislature to “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education.”
Clarke’s proposal prompted Kevin Harley, a spokesman for Gov. Tom Corbett, to say, “This is a political stunt by City Council. To file a frivolous and meaningless lawsuit…maybe City Council should also sue President Obama because there’s no more stimulus funding.”
In New York, law professor Michael Rebell warned Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and the state legislature will violate the state constitution if they enact $1.5 billion in proposed school aid reductions. The legislature subsequently cut aid to education, though less than originally planned.
In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott faces two lawsuits so far over his actions.
Though Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald wonders how “one Madison judge can stand in the way of the other two democratically elected branches of government,” one Madison judge in fact stood in the way.
“This case is the exemplar of values protected by the open meetings law: transparency in the government, the right of citizens to participate in their government and respect for the rule of law,” wrote Judge Maryann Sumi of Dane County Court.
The judge on Thursday, May 26, 2011, granted a permanent injunction to void a law impeding collective bargaining rights for many state and local employees, The New York Times reported. (nyt, a11, 5/27/11) She said that the March 9 Senate vote violates the open meetings law mandating at least two hours’ notice to the public.
The decision is being appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court as arguments were scheduled for Monday, June 6, 2011.
Gov. Walker proposed the law and signed it in the midst of massive protests in Madison, the state capital. With the exception of police officers and firefighters, the law prohibits public-sector unions from bargaining over health benefits and pensions. Negotiations over wages are permitted, but they must be approved in a public referendum if they exceed the inflation rate, the Times reported.
With all 14 Senate Democrats out of state, the remaining Republicans voted 18-1 to approve the measure within a half-hour sans any floor debate. Sumi cited evidence showing their failure to abide by even the two-hour notice permitted for good cause should a 24-hour notice be impossible or impractical.
While the Wisconsin case is still being adjudicated, both Walker and Christie made themselves vulnerable to legal action which finally turned around to bite them in the derriere. Their counterparts in other states could be dealt a similar blow.
We’ll find out. See you in court.
“You don’t elect the Supreme Court; you don’t expect them to be making law,” said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. “But today, they made law. Because today, they sent an appropriations bill for $500 million that was not passed by the legislature, that was not signed by the governor. Go to the Constitution and tell me, how the hell did they get away with that?”
“There’s still a much larger separation-of-powers issue,” said Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, “whether one Madison judge can stand in the way of the other two democratically elected branches of government. The Supreme Court is going to have the ultimate ruling.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was unusually quiet.
Judges in New Jersey and Wisconsin told Christie and Walker that their respective administrations violated state law and must compensate for it.
As Christie, Walker and other new governors - mostly Republicans, but one Democrat - applied an aggressive, confrontational style of governance, I wondered if their initiatives might conflict with the law. Putting it mildly. Looks like one of those rare times that I was right.
New Jersey’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, May 24, 2011, directed the state to raise $500 million more to aid 31 poor and primarily urban school districts including Newark, Camden and Trenton, according to The New York Times. The 3-2 majority claimed the state deliberately violated past Supreme Court orders in Abbott v. Burke, the decades-old case under review.
“Like anyone else, the state is not free to walk away from judicial orders enforcing constitutional obligations,” wrote Justice Jaynee LaVecchia. She added that “the state made a conscious and calculated decision” to retract its commitment from two years earlier when the Abbott case last came before the court.
State Sen. President Stephen M. Sweeney told the Times that Christie “was well aware that his draconian cuts to education were illegal” and recounted that the governor pledged to maintain school funding during his 2009 campaign.
After taking office, Christie slashed $1 billion in aid to the state’s 591 school districts from an overall budget of $10 billion.
Christie on May 24 called on the legislature to find the money itself - without raising taxes. “All of my work is done on this,” he said.
He further castigated the court as “unelected” during a town meeting in Cherry Hill, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Christie conveniently forgets that members of the state Supreme Court are appointed by elected officials. If he does not like it, he can always initiate the process to change the system.
The New Jersey order inspired a Philadelphia city councilman, Darrell Clarke, to introduce a resolution to sue the state of Pennsylvania over the legality of funding cuts leaving the city’s schools up to $110 million in the lurch, according to The Philadelphia Daily News.
“It’s just not fair for us to have to ask the citizens to continue to pay in the city of Philadelphia, and we’re sitting on potentially a $700 million surplus from the state,” Clarke told the News. “Under the state’s statute (it is the state’s) primary responsibility to fund the school district.”
The city’s Law Department will consider City Council’s request to represent Council in such a suit, City Solicitor Shelley Smith said.
However, a spokesman for Mayor Michael Nutter cast doubt on the prospects for success because the laws and politics differ between the two neighboring states.
The News reported that past lawsuits of this nature have failed. In 1999, the city, the school district and the NAACP claimed that the legislature violated the state constitution by failing to adequately fund the schools, noting that the constitution requires the legislature to “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education.”
Clarke’s proposal prompted Kevin Harley, a spokesman for Gov. Tom Corbett, to say, “This is a political stunt by City Council. To file a frivolous and meaningless lawsuit…maybe City Council should also sue President Obama because there’s no more stimulus funding.”
In New York, law professor Michael Rebell warned Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and the state legislature will violate the state constitution if they enact $1.5 billion in proposed school aid reductions. The legislature subsequently cut aid to education, though less than originally planned.
In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott faces two lawsuits so far over his actions.
Though Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald wonders how “one Madison judge can stand in the way of the other two democratically elected branches of government,” one Madison judge in fact stood in the way.
“This case is the exemplar of values protected by the open meetings law: transparency in the government, the right of citizens to participate in their government and respect for the rule of law,” wrote Judge Maryann Sumi of Dane County Court.
The judge on Thursday, May 26, 2011, granted a permanent injunction to void a law impeding collective bargaining rights for many state and local employees, The New York Times reported. (nyt, a11, 5/27/11) She said that the March 9 Senate vote violates the open meetings law mandating at least two hours’ notice to the public.
The decision is being appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court as arguments were scheduled for Monday, June 6, 2011.
Gov. Walker proposed the law and signed it in the midst of massive protests in Madison, the state capital. With the exception of police officers and firefighters, the law prohibits public-sector unions from bargaining over health benefits and pensions. Negotiations over wages are permitted, but they must be approved in a public referendum if they exceed the inflation rate, the Times reported.
With all 14 Senate Democrats out of state, the remaining Republicans voted 18-1 to approve the measure within a half-hour sans any floor debate. Sumi cited evidence showing their failure to abide by even the two-hour notice permitted for good cause should a 24-hour notice be impossible or impractical.
While the Wisconsin case is still being adjudicated, both Walker and Christie made themselves vulnerable to legal action which finally turned around to bite them in the derriere. Their counterparts in other states could be dealt a similar blow.
We’ll find out. See you in court.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
How Senate leaves masses in the lurch
Whew! The American people need not worry that U.S. Senate leaders might do their job, as in taking command of the legislative agenda.
We sure do not want to jeopardize the Democratic Senate seats in conservative-leaning states like Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota.
Under the headline “Senate Democrats’ minimalist agenda,” The Washington Post reports that the Democratic majority has intentionally restrained itself to save seats in states like these.
The May 21 Post account states: “Democrats have decided to try to shield those lawmakers from the usual weeks-long debates and instead await for compromises to be reached behind closed doors. Reid’s approach is a bet that doing nothing looks better for them, so long as their arguments resonate with voters in 2012.”
Welcome to governance in 2011. We are stuck with an immovable Senate because doing their jobs might cause some Democrats to lose their jobs in the November 2012 election. The Democratic leadership is worried that they will lose their 51-47 majority if they overplay their hand; two senators are independents who caucus with the Democrats.
What, then, is the point of having a Senate?
Senate gridlock is rooted in the Senate’s composition when delegates from smaller states at the Constitutional Convention feared that the larger states would dominate the government under a Congress with proportionate representation. They compromised by requiring equal representation for all states in the Senate while leaving the House of Representatives with proportionate representation.
The five states that opposed proportionate representation in 1787 would surely benefit by it today, either directly or indirectly. Though a small state, Delaware is part of the liberal Northeast bloc as is Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey…almost forgot, New York was the fifth dissident state. Rhode Island did not participate in the convention, but all six states are currently represented by Democrats in the Senate.
Most low-population states are conservative or conservative-leaning. Most are represented by Republicans in the Senate or alternate between the two parties. If Tom Daschle represented New Jersey or New York rather than South Dakota, where he lost in a re-election bid, he would almost certainly be serving in the Senate today.
Daschle’s fellow Democrats do not want others like him defeated, so they adjust their agenda to protect their Senate seats in swing states. Three of those states, where two incumbents are up for re-election and a third is retiring, are home to 3.5 million people - Nebraska, 1.7 million; Montana, 975,00; and North Dakota, 646,000.
So, 1 percent of the nation’s citizenry can propel the Senate leadership to ignore or minimize the needs and concerns of millions upon millions of Americans. Democrats in the 112th Senate represent 190 million Americans. America’s latest population estimate is 308 million.
The four Democratic senators from New York and California collectively represent one-sixth of America’s population, 36.9 million in California and 19.5 million in New York.
That leaves 56.4 million Americans, and millions from other moderate or liberal states, in the lurch.
If the Senate represented the populace on a more proportionate basis, then far more attention would likely be paid to issues raised by the senators from high-population states such as New York and California.
It is necessary to point out how the Constitution’s requirements for Senate representation limits responsiveness to residents of the more populous states. Clarifying the problem is the first step toward resolving it.
However, I am well aware of the obstacles under the amendment process to changing the rules. On the surface, accomplishing anything substantial appears to be impossible.
One never knows. Maybe it can be done. After nearly 10 years, who genuinely expected America to find Osama bin Laden? Perhaps the same will and determination can be applied to revising the rules.
We sure do not want to jeopardize the Democratic Senate seats in conservative-leaning states like Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota.
Under the headline “Senate Democrats’ minimalist agenda,” The Washington Post reports that the Democratic majority has intentionally restrained itself to save seats in states like these.
The May 21 Post account states: “Democrats have decided to try to shield those lawmakers from the usual weeks-long debates and instead await for compromises to be reached behind closed doors. Reid’s approach is a bet that doing nothing looks better for them, so long as their arguments resonate with voters in 2012.”
Welcome to governance in 2011. We are stuck with an immovable Senate because doing their jobs might cause some Democrats to lose their jobs in the November 2012 election. The Democratic leadership is worried that they will lose their 51-47 majority if they overplay their hand; two senators are independents who caucus with the Democrats.
What, then, is the point of having a Senate?
Senate gridlock is rooted in the Senate’s composition when delegates from smaller states at the Constitutional Convention feared that the larger states would dominate the government under a Congress with proportionate representation. They compromised by requiring equal representation for all states in the Senate while leaving the House of Representatives with proportionate representation.
The five states that opposed proportionate representation in 1787 would surely benefit by it today, either directly or indirectly. Though a small state, Delaware is part of the liberal Northeast bloc as is Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey…almost forgot, New York was the fifth dissident state. Rhode Island did not participate in the convention, but all six states are currently represented by Democrats in the Senate.
Most low-population states are conservative or conservative-leaning. Most are represented by Republicans in the Senate or alternate between the two parties. If Tom Daschle represented New Jersey or New York rather than South Dakota, where he lost in a re-election bid, he would almost certainly be serving in the Senate today.
Daschle’s fellow Democrats do not want others like him defeated, so they adjust their agenda to protect their Senate seats in swing states. Three of those states, where two incumbents are up for re-election and a third is retiring, are home to 3.5 million people - Nebraska, 1.7 million; Montana, 975,00; and North Dakota, 646,000.
So, 1 percent of the nation’s citizenry can propel the Senate leadership to ignore or minimize the needs and concerns of millions upon millions of Americans. Democrats in the 112th Senate represent 190 million Americans. America’s latest population estimate is 308 million.
The four Democratic senators from New York and California collectively represent one-sixth of America’s population, 36.9 million in California and 19.5 million in New York.
That leaves 56.4 million Americans, and millions from other moderate or liberal states, in the lurch.
If the Senate represented the populace on a more proportionate basis, then far more attention would likely be paid to issues raised by the senators from high-population states such as New York and California.
It is necessary to point out how the Constitution’s requirements for Senate representation limits responsiveness to residents of the more populous states. Clarifying the problem is the first step toward resolving it.
However, I am well aware of the obstacles under the amendment process to changing the rules. On the surface, accomplishing anything substantial appears to be impossible.
One never knows. Maybe it can be done. After nearly 10 years, who genuinely expected America to find Osama bin Laden? Perhaps the same will and determination can be applied to revising the rules.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
A chance for Snowe, Brown to escape GOP
U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Scott Brown’s political hassles of late present a powerful argument for more independents in Congress, which could mean even them.
If Maine political history repeats itself, Snowe will win with ease in the 2012 general election - if she is not ousted in the Republican primary because saner Republicans have been departing the party. That leaves the GOP with a concentration of yahoos.
Brown may face the same challenge in the Massachusetts Republican primary and, if he survives that, he will be vulnerable to defeat in the general election.
The more conservative Republicans have characterized Brown and Snowe as “rino’s,” or “Republicans in name only,” because their voting records are perceived as too liberal. They try to portray themselves as moderates. Someone described their concept of “moderate” as a person who tries to save a drowning victim 30 feet out to sea by tossing him a lifeline…of 15 feet.
What brings this to mind is Brown’s declaration to graduates of Lasell College on Sunday, May 16, as reported in The Boston Globe: “I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican - just as one party can’t be right 100 percent of the time, it shouldn’t have 100 percent of the power. Unchallenged power grows arrogant over time. It is what has given us one case of graft after another.”
One-party rule is unhealthy in a democracy, but Republican policies compel many of us to vote for Democrats in most elections. After all, if we are repulsed by GOP positions, we usually have one alternative - the Democrats. Ditto for voters displeased with the Democrats. The system discourages independent and third-party candidates because of the winner-take-all outcome permitted in elections.
Brown obviously designed his statement to accommodate his 2012 re-election campaign. As the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation, Brown’s re-election would preclude one-party rule among members of Congress from Massachusetts and throughout state government.
If Brown is this worried about one-party rule, he can address this concern just as well by running as an independent. He would probably have a better chance to win as an independent and, if he wins, can focus on the needs of Massachusetts residents rather than demands of his party. An advantage to campaigning in Massachusetts lies in geographic convenience. Massachusetts has a large population, but more than half its citizens live within 25 miles of Boston.
Republican or independent, Brown is vulnerable in 2012, especially if the Democratic nominee runs a savvy campaign. He just flipped-flopped on Medicare. On Friday, May 14, 2011, Brown pledged to vote for the House budget plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system, and then promised on Monday, May 23, to vote against it.
Neither Snowe nor Maine’s other GOP senator, Susan Collins, need do much campaigning for re-election. Each has won re-election with high margins in past general elections, but they cannot be so optimistic about future Republican primaries. A number of prominent Republican office-holders elsewhere were defeated in their primaries because the party has become more conservative.
In early May, GOP primary rival Scott D’Amboise of Lisbon Falls accused Snowe’s husband of “stealing and misappropriating taxpayer funding” following a U.S. Department of Justice court motion to intervene in a lawsuit against Pittsburgh-based Education Management Corp. which alleges that the company improperly compensated employees who recruit students to the for-profit college company’s institutions, The Portland Press Herald reported. Snowe’s husband, former Maine Gov. John McKernan, is chairman of the company and has held other high-ranking positions there since 1998.
Note that nothing has been proven that her husband did anything wrong. Of course, this issue could come back to haunt Snowe if there really is something to it.
Snowe responded by calling D’Amboise’s comment “libelous,” adding, “You have a potential opponent here who suggests that he already has a verdict.”
Why should Snowe bother to haggle with this guy in the primary? After three terms in the Senate, Snowe is positioned to win as an independent. Certainly, running as an independent is hard. A candidate needs an organization and money which best comes from an established party. Also, independents siphon votes away from one or both of the other rivals.
Yet Snowe could win handily. Independents who have won statewide elections elsewhere had usually established themselves first as people of stature - in Maine, former Gov. Angus King; Vermont, current Sen. Bernie Sanders; Rhode Island, current Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee; and Connecticut, current Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman and former Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr.
As independent senators, neither Snowe nor Brown would be saddled with pressures from any political party. They would be free to vote for what is best for their constituents only. That is hardly the case now.
If Maine political history repeats itself, Snowe will win with ease in the 2012 general election - if she is not ousted in the Republican primary because saner Republicans have been departing the party. That leaves the GOP with a concentration of yahoos.
Brown may face the same challenge in the Massachusetts Republican primary and, if he survives that, he will be vulnerable to defeat in the general election.
The more conservative Republicans have characterized Brown and Snowe as “rino’s,” or “Republicans in name only,” because their voting records are perceived as too liberal. They try to portray themselves as moderates. Someone described their concept of “moderate” as a person who tries to save a drowning victim 30 feet out to sea by tossing him a lifeline…of 15 feet.
What brings this to mind is Brown’s declaration to graduates of Lasell College on Sunday, May 16, as reported in The Boston Globe: “I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican - just as one party can’t be right 100 percent of the time, it shouldn’t have 100 percent of the power. Unchallenged power grows arrogant over time. It is what has given us one case of graft after another.”
One-party rule is unhealthy in a democracy, but Republican policies compel many of us to vote for Democrats in most elections. After all, if we are repulsed by GOP positions, we usually have one alternative - the Democrats. Ditto for voters displeased with the Democrats. The system discourages independent and third-party candidates because of the winner-take-all outcome permitted in elections.
Brown obviously designed his statement to accommodate his 2012 re-election campaign. As the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation, Brown’s re-election would preclude one-party rule among members of Congress from Massachusetts and throughout state government.
If Brown is this worried about one-party rule, he can address this concern just as well by running as an independent. He would probably have a better chance to win as an independent and, if he wins, can focus on the needs of Massachusetts residents rather than demands of his party. An advantage to campaigning in Massachusetts lies in geographic convenience. Massachusetts has a large population, but more than half its citizens live within 25 miles of Boston.
Republican or independent, Brown is vulnerable in 2012, especially if the Democratic nominee runs a savvy campaign. He just flipped-flopped on Medicare. On Friday, May 14, 2011, Brown pledged to vote for the House budget plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system, and then promised on Monday, May 23, to vote against it.
Neither Snowe nor Maine’s other GOP senator, Susan Collins, need do much campaigning for re-election. Each has won re-election with high margins in past general elections, but they cannot be so optimistic about future Republican primaries. A number of prominent Republican office-holders elsewhere were defeated in their primaries because the party has become more conservative.
In early May, GOP primary rival Scott D’Amboise of Lisbon Falls accused Snowe’s husband of “stealing and misappropriating taxpayer funding” following a U.S. Department of Justice court motion to intervene in a lawsuit against Pittsburgh-based Education Management Corp. which alleges that the company improperly compensated employees who recruit students to the for-profit college company’s institutions, The Portland Press Herald reported. Snowe’s husband, former Maine Gov. John McKernan, is chairman of the company and has held other high-ranking positions there since 1998.
Note that nothing has been proven that her husband did anything wrong. Of course, this issue could come back to haunt Snowe if there really is something to it.
Snowe responded by calling D’Amboise’s comment “libelous,” adding, “You have a potential opponent here who suggests that he already has a verdict.”
Why should Snowe bother to haggle with this guy in the primary? After three terms in the Senate, Snowe is positioned to win as an independent. Certainly, running as an independent is hard. A candidate needs an organization and money which best comes from an established party. Also, independents siphon votes away from one or both of the other rivals.
Yet Snowe could win handily. Independents who have won statewide elections elsewhere had usually established themselves first as people of stature - in Maine, former Gov. Angus King; Vermont, current Sen. Bernie Sanders; Rhode Island, current Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee; and Connecticut, current Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman and former Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr.
As independent senators, neither Snowe nor Brown would be saddled with pressures from any political party. They would be free to vote for what is best for their constituents only. That is hardly the case now.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Filibustering in Bizarro Washington World
Harry Reid negotiates the George Costanza way in Seinfeld’s Bizarro World.
Reid, the Senate majority leader, reached an accord last Jan. 27, 2011, with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to retain the filibuster power that Republicans employed to block any kind of government-run health-care system and persist with tax cuts for the wealthy.
Reid and Mitchell’s pact allows Republican senators to submit nearly all the amendments they want to a given measure, and Republicans will limit their use of the filibuster.
Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, quoted in The Oregonian at the time, said, “There is nothing that touches the impact of the filibuster on amendments and nothing that touches the impact on bills, so we still may see the same obstruction we’ve seen before.”
Merkley’s fears were realized on Tuesday, May 17, when Democrats proposed ending tax breaks for five major oil companies accused of unfairly padding industry profits, according to The New York Times. The measure would have passed if a majority vote was sufficient, but the 52-48 vote fell short of the 60 votes required to end debate.
In a fundraising e-mail distributed for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee the next day, Reid whined: “It’s a no-brainer: Big Oil doesn’t need taxpayer subsidies. After all, the five largest oil companies raked in profits of $32 billion in the first quarter of 2011 - while Americans are paying four bucks a gallon at the pump. And yet, they continue to collect billions in tax dollar handouts at a time when we need to cut spending.
“It’s unfair, and MUST stop. But last night, Republicans derailed a Democratic bill that would end this double-fisted cash grab and save $21 billion.”
Another “no-brainer”: Big Senate doesn’t need a filibuster. Four months ago, Reid “derailed a Democratic bill that would end this double-fisted” power grab and save us all lots of aggravation.
Merkley was joined in January by Tom Harkin of Iowa and Tom Udall of New Mexico in a bid to “to end this double-fisted” filibuster power
Any senator can filibuster, or threaten to filibuster, proposed legislation without taking to the floor to make their case, as James Stewart did in the film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” The Senate needs 60 votes to end a filibuster, not a plain majority of 51 votes. The process is called cloture.
The trio pressed for a resolution to require that all senators who
invoke the filibuster must address the legislation on the floor.
Most Democrats voted for the measure, but it could neither get past
the 67-vote barrier nor even a majority vote.
You can compare just about any antics in the Senate to Jerry Seinfeld’s Bizarro World. Seinfeld fans should recall that George spoiled their talks with NBC to produce a show about “nothing” because he was aggrieved that their $13,000 offer was way short of Ted Danson’s package.
Once the magnitude of his blunder dawned on him, George begged for reconsideration. NBC offered $8,000 this time.
Jerry explained to George that the idea of negotiations “is to get you’re price up, not down. This is how they negotiate in the Bizarro World.”
Or how Harry Reid negotiates in the Senate.
The Senate is plagued with structural problems because the Constitution requires that each state has equal clout, potentially allowing the 26 least populous states to gang up on the larger states. Practically speaking, more small states are conservative and more large states are moderate to liberal.
With their slight majority, the 51 Democrats and two independents represent 190 million Americans out of 308 million, and they represented 200 million before Republicans whittled down the majority last November. The four Democrats elected in New York and California collectively represent one-sixth of the nation’s population.
Reid has worked hard for various causes to benefit the public, but how does it help anyone to hand the Republicans a decisive weapon like the filibuster?
Reid in the past defended the filibuster when Republicans controlled the Senate, and Democratic senators feared losing this device if they return to the minority. Democrats also might have feared that they might be demonized if they curbed or ended the filibuster.
They might have sustained some political damage in the short term, but they would have ensured themselves a level playing field if they took decisive action against the filibuster.
Reid’s negotiating style extends the operational patterns in the Senate, which should also be known as Bizarro Washington World. You cannot pass a measure with a majority vote, but 41 votes - or 41 percent - can obstruct legislation?
Seinfeld’s writers could well have been inspired by the Senate to create Bizarro World.
Reid, the Senate majority leader, reached an accord last Jan. 27, 2011, with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to retain the filibuster power that Republicans employed to block any kind of government-run health-care system and persist with tax cuts for the wealthy.
Reid and Mitchell’s pact allows Republican senators to submit nearly all the amendments they want to a given measure, and Republicans will limit their use of the filibuster.
Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, quoted in The Oregonian at the time, said, “There is nothing that touches the impact of the filibuster on amendments and nothing that touches the impact on bills, so we still may see the same obstruction we’ve seen before.”
Merkley’s fears were realized on Tuesday, May 17, when Democrats proposed ending tax breaks for five major oil companies accused of unfairly padding industry profits, according to The New York Times. The measure would have passed if a majority vote was sufficient, but the 52-48 vote fell short of the 60 votes required to end debate.
In a fundraising e-mail distributed for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee the next day, Reid whined: “It’s a no-brainer: Big Oil doesn’t need taxpayer subsidies. After all, the five largest oil companies raked in profits of $32 billion in the first quarter of 2011 - while Americans are paying four bucks a gallon at the pump. And yet, they continue to collect billions in tax dollar handouts at a time when we need to cut spending.
“It’s unfair, and MUST stop. But last night, Republicans derailed a Democratic bill that would end this double-fisted cash grab and save $21 billion.”
Another “no-brainer”: Big Senate doesn’t need a filibuster. Four months ago, Reid “derailed a Democratic bill that would end this double-fisted” power grab and save us all lots of aggravation.
Merkley was joined in January by Tom Harkin of Iowa and Tom Udall of New Mexico in a bid to “to end this double-fisted” filibuster power
Any senator can filibuster, or threaten to filibuster, proposed legislation without taking to the floor to make their case, as James Stewart did in the film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” The Senate needs 60 votes to end a filibuster, not a plain majority of 51 votes. The process is called cloture.
The trio pressed for a resolution to require that all senators who
invoke the filibuster must address the legislation on the floor.
Most Democrats voted for the measure, but it could neither get past
the 67-vote barrier nor even a majority vote.
You can compare just about any antics in the Senate to Jerry Seinfeld’s Bizarro World. Seinfeld fans should recall that George spoiled their talks with NBC to produce a show about “nothing” because he was aggrieved that their $13,000 offer was way short of Ted Danson’s package.
Once the magnitude of his blunder dawned on him, George begged for reconsideration. NBC offered $8,000 this time.
Jerry explained to George that the idea of negotiations “is to get you’re price up, not down. This is how they negotiate in the Bizarro World.”
Or how Harry Reid negotiates in the Senate.
The Senate is plagued with structural problems because the Constitution requires that each state has equal clout, potentially allowing the 26 least populous states to gang up on the larger states. Practically speaking, more small states are conservative and more large states are moderate to liberal.
With their slight majority, the 51 Democrats and two independents represent 190 million Americans out of 308 million, and they represented 200 million before Republicans whittled down the majority last November. The four Democrats elected in New York and California collectively represent one-sixth of the nation’s population.
Reid has worked hard for various causes to benefit the public, but how does it help anyone to hand the Republicans a decisive weapon like the filibuster?
Reid in the past defended the filibuster when Republicans controlled the Senate, and Democratic senators feared losing this device if they return to the minority. Democrats also might have feared that they might be demonized if they curbed or ended the filibuster.
They might have sustained some political damage in the short term, but they would have ensured themselves a level playing field if they took decisive action against the filibuster.
Reid’s negotiating style extends the operational patterns in the Senate, which should also be known as Bizarro Washington World. You cannot pass a measure with a majority vote, but 41 votes - or 41 percent - can obstruct legislation?
Seinfeld’s writers could well have been inspired by the Senate to create Bizarro World.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Scalia, no class act(ion) for justice
Maybe Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer was thinking of two or more of his Supreme Court colleagues when he wrote, “Only a lunatic or a fanatic sues for $30.”
The associate justice regarded by court critics as leading court fanatic, Antonin Scalia, wrote the majority opinion on Wednesday, April 27, 2011, depriving ordinary consumers of another avenue to contest possible injustice. Scalia’s opinion was supported by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Breyer’s disdainful retort was part of his dissent that was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. It was the usual 5-4 line-up for a contentious issue.
The court ruled that businesses may use standard-form contracts to prohibit consumers who claim fraud from joining together in a single arbitration, according to The New York Times.
Vanderbilt University Law Professor Brian T. Fitzpatrick explained, “The decision basically lets companies escape class actions, so long as they do so by means of arbitration agreements…It’s one of the most important and favorable cases for businesses in a very long time.”
Vincent and Liza Concepcion of California filed the lawsuit against ATT&T Mobility seeking class-action treatment after objecting to a $30 fee for what was said to be a free cellphone, the Times reported.
AT&T responded by relying on the contract requiring the couple to settle disputes through arbitration and prohibited them from joining with others to seek class-action treatment, whether in arbitration or in traditional litigation in court.
The company argued that the case could neither move forward in court nor as a class action in any forum, but lower federal courts would not enforce the arbitration agreement and permitted the case to proceed. The courts followed a 2005 California Supreme Court decision that prohibited class waivers as unconscionable, according to the Times.
Scalia wrote in the majority opinion that the lower courts did not properly apply the Federal Arbitration Act which overrides some state court rulings against arbitration. The California Supreme Court’s ruling prohibited class waivers in all standard-form contracts, whether applicable to arbitrations or court proceedings, as unconscionable if they gave rise to claims that the companies issuing them had set out “to deliberately cheat large numbers of consumers out of individually small amounts of money,” the Times reported.
Scalia wrote, “Requiring the availability of class wide arbitration interferes with fundamental attributes of arbitration.”
Breyer stated, “Where does the majority get its contrary idea - that individual, rather than class, arbitration is a fundamental attribute of arbitration?
He pointed out that class arbitrations are more efficient and, primarily important, minor frauds such as that claimed by the California couple will not be resolved.
He wrote, “What rational lawyer would have signed on to represent the Conceptions in litigation for the possibility of fees stemming from a $30.22 claim?” Quoting from another case, he added, “Only a lunatic or a fanatic sues for $30.”
Vulnerable people in this society have limited avenues to obtain justice. Wealthy people sometime file lawsuits over the most petty affronts. Attorneys turn down claims from people if they cannot see a cost-effective case in it or they cannot afford the legal fees.
Scalia and other conservatives embrace the “original intent” of the framers of the Constitution. Was it their “original intent” to leave ordinary people without legal recourse?
The associate justice regarded by court critics as leading court fanatic, Antonin Scalia, wrote the majority opinion on Wednesday, April 27, 2011, depriving ordinary consumers of another avenue to contest possible injustice. Scalia’s opinion was supported by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Breyer’s disdainful retort was part of his dissent that was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. It was the usual 5-4 line-up for a contentious issue.
The court ruled that businesses may use standard-form contracts to prohibit consumers who claim fraud from joining together in a single arbitration, according to The New York Times.
Vanderbilt University Law Professor Brian T. Fitzpatrick explained, “The decision basically lets companies escape class actions, so long as they do so by means of arbitration agreements…It’s one of the most important and favorable cases for businesses in a very long time.”
Vincent and Liza Concepcion of California filed the lawsuit against ATT&T Mobility seeking class-action treatment after objecting to a $30 fee for what was said to be a free cellphone, the Times reported.
AT&T responded by relying on the contract requiring the couple to settle disputes through arbitration and prohibited them from joining with others to seek class-action treatment, whether in arbitration or in traditional litigation in court.
The company argued that the case could neither move forward in court nor as a class action in any forum, but lower federal courts would not enforce the arbitration agreement and permitted the case to proceed. The courts followed a 2005 California Supreme Court decision that prohibited class waivers as unconscionable, according to the Times.
Scalia wrote in the majority opinion that the lower courts did not properly apply the Federal Arbitration Act which overrides some state court rulings against arbitration. The California Supreme Court’s ruling prohibited class waivers in all standard-form contracts, whether applicable to arbitrations or court proceedings, as unconscionable if they gave rise to claims that the companies issuing them had set out “to deliberately cheat large numbers of consumers out of individually small amounts of money,” the Times reported.
Scalia wrote, “Requiring the availability of class wide arbitration interferes with fundamental attributes of arbitration.”
Breyer stated, “Where does the majority get its contrary idea - that individual, rather than class, arbitration is a fundamental attribute of arbitration?
He pointed out that class arbitrations are more efficient and, primarily important, minor frauds such as that claimed by the California couple will not be resolved.
He wrote, “What rational lawyer would have signed on to represent the Conceptions in litigation for the possibility of fees stemming from a $30.22 claim?” Quoting from another case, he added, “Only a lunatic or a fanatic sues for $30.”
Vulnerable people in this society have limited avenues to obtain justice. Wealthy people sometime file lawsuits over the most petty affronts. Attorneys turn down claims from people if they cannot see a cost-effective case in it or they cannot afford the legal fees.
Scalia and other conservatives embrace the “original intent” of the framers of the Constitution. Was it their “original intent” to leave ordinary people without legal recourse?
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Red states don't gripe about gov't storm aid
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina: “It should have some spending cuts as a down payment on controlling the size of our federal government.”
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Richmond, Va.: “We’ve had to bring this president kicking and screaming to the table to cut spending.”
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio: “It’s time for us to get serious about how we’re spending the nation’s money.”
These Republicans, along with others in Congress and statehouses like Trenton and Madison, demand smaller government and lower spending, yet they have not complained about the federal government’s aid to the Republican-dominated Southern states ravaged by storms and tornadoes that left 350 people dead.
“They have been very proactive and very reactive to our requests,” Rep. Robert B. Aderholt, a northern Alabama Republican, told The New York Times.
Aderholt was praising the Obama administration’s response to the storms, mainly through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. When the president visited Tuscaloosa, Ala., the hardest hit area in the region, Obama said, “We’re going to make sure that you’re not forgotten and that we do everything we can make sure that we rebuild.”
Obama signed a disaster declaration for Alabama on Thursday, April 28, 2011, and subsequently signed disaster declarations for Georgia and Mississippi.
FEMA administrator W. Craig Fugate explained that the declarations sought by these states mean that the federal government will pay 75 percent of the uninsured costs to repair public buildings; that residents can qualify for modest recovery grants; and that businesses can apply for low-interest loans.
FEMA also assigned liaison officers to Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee, a spokesman said.
Aderholt, a veteran House member who seems more reasonable than extremist Republicans, is not resisting the government’s aid to Alabama and the other southern states. Most of them are represented by Republicans in the Senate, the House and their respective governor’s offices.
Probably some people wish that Obama had rejected these disaster declarations in the spirit of shrinking government. If Republicans want less government, why would they accept federal aid for storm relief?
Back in Washington, the GOP House and Senate members from these states have been plotting to eliminate programs that help all Americans generally and big cities specifically.
Never did they express such urgent concern when they voted to invade two fragmented countries one after the other and cut taxes for the wealthy.
The hypocrisy is glaring, but the disasters plaguing the South show that even southern states need government. The only effective means of resolving America’s many problems is to involve government, directly or indirectly.
We all certainly recognize that there are many problems with government.
Ronald Reagan’s proclamation that “Government is the problem” distorts the situation. Government is “a” problem when it does not carry out its responsibilities properly. Did Reagan do his job or was he “the problem” for eight years?
The same question can be posed to Boehner, Cantor and Graham.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Richmond, Va.: “We’ve had to bring this president kicking and screaming to the table to cut spending.”
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio: “It’s time for us to get serious about how we’re spending the nation’s money.”
These Republicans, along with others in Congress and statehouses like Trenton and Madison, demand smaller government and lower spending, yet they have not complained about the federal government’s aid to the Republican-dominated Southern states ravaged by storms and tornadoes that left 350 people dead.
“They have been very proactive and very reactive to our requests,” Rep. Robert B. Aderholt, a northern Alabama Republican, told The New York Times.
Aderholt was praising the Obama administration’s response to the storms, mainly through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. When the president visited Tuscaloosa, Ala., the hardest hit area in the region, Obama said, “We’re going to make sure that you’re not forgotten and that we do everything we can make sure that we rebuild.”
Obama signed a disaster declaration for Alabama on Thursday, April 28, 2011, and subsequently signed disaster declarations for Georgia and Mississippi.
FEMA administrator W. Craig Fugate explained that the declarations sought by these states mean that the federal government will pay 75 percent of the uninsured costs to repair public buildings; that residents can qualify for modest recovery grants; and that businesses can apply for low-interest loans.
FEMA also assigned liaison officers to Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee, a spokesman said.
Aderholt, a veteran House member who seems more reasonable than extremist Republicans, is not resisting the government’s aid to Alabama and the other southern states. Most of them are represented by Republicans in the Senate, the House and their respective governor’s offices.
Probably some people wish that Obama had rejected these disaster declarations in the spirit of shrinking government. If Republicans want less government, why would they accept federal aid for storm relief?
Back in Washington, the GOP House and Senate members from these states have been plotting to eliminate programs that help all Americans generally and big cities specifically.
Never did they express such urgent concern when they voted to invade two fragmented countries one after the other and cut taxes for the wealthy.
The hypocrisy is glaring, but the disasters plaguing the South show that even southern states need government. The only effective means of resolving America’s many problems is to involve government, directly or indirectly.
We all certainly recognize that there are many problems with government.
Ronald Reagan’s proclamation that “Government is the problem” distorts the situation. Government is “a” problem when it does not carry out its responsibilities properly. Did Reagan do his job or was he “the problem” for eight years?
The same question can be posed to Boehner, Cantor and Graham.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Chimp flap in California
Marilyn Davenport of Fullerton, Calif., must have been shocked to learn that her comparison of a black man to a chimpanzee is considered racist.
I joke with African-American friends about racial differences to the point that it gets silly. One friend at work was offended that I passed up a chocolate bar, and I responded that my doctor warned that chocolate was bad for me. I think I know where to draw the line. I would not distribute an e-mail that superimposes President Obama’s face on the figure of a chimp accompanied by the words: “Now you know why - No birth certificate.”
Perhaps they think differently in Orange County. Try this explanation on for size. According to The Los Angeles Times, Davenport wrote these words for members of the central committee of the Orange County Republican Party:
“I’m sorry if my e-mail offended anyone. I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth. In no way did I even consider the fact he’s half black when I sent out the e-mail. In fact, the thought never entered my mind until one or two other people tried to make this about race.
“We all know a double standard applies regarding this president. I received plenty of e-mails about George Bush that I didn’t particularly like, yet there was no ’cry’ in the media about them.”
Comparing African-Americans with chimps, monkeys and what have you has long been a common racial slur.
County Republican Chairman Scott Baugh called on her to resign, stating in an e-mail to her that her message is “dripping with racism and is in very poor taste.”
“I looked at it, my jaw dropped,” sid Michael Schroeder of Orange County, who formerly chaired the California Republican Party.
Schroeder told The Orange County Register she “doesn’t represent the party - but how we respond to it does.”
We can wonder what really moves Baugh and Schroeder to condemn her. There has been bad blood between Davenport and Baugh, and the GOP has long taken positions harmful to vulnerable people of all races and religions. They are probably also concerned about the party’s image.
Baugh and Schroeder still did the right thing, and their response merits our appreciation.
Committee member Tim Whitacre called Davenport’s e-mail “motivational, fun” having no ties to Republican affairs. Maybe so, but now we know their personal attitudes toward African-Americans as a group, which adds to our distrust of Republicans.
Davenport dubbed the leak of her e-mail “cowardly” and wrote, “Anyone brave enough to come forward?”
If Davenport did nothing wrong, why is she so worried about leaks?
Top honors for bizarre statements must go to Deborah Pauly, first vice president of the county GOP, who told the Register: “It’s an ethical violation to embarrass the Republican Party. If you’re going to address ethics violations, you need to look at all the people who have brought dishonor to the Republican Party.”
There are sure plenty of governors and members of Congress who are competing “to embarrass the Republican Party.”
I joke with African-American friends about racial differences to the point that it gets silly. One friend at work was offended that I passed up a chocolate bar, and I responded that my doctor warned that chocolate was bad for me. I think I know where to draw the line. I would not distribute an e-mail that superimposes President Obama’s face on the figure of a chimp accompanied by the words: “Now you know why - No birth certificate.”
Perhaps they think differently in Orange County. Try this explanation on for size. According to The Los Angeles Times, Davenport wrote these words for members of the central committee of the Orange County Republican Party:
“I’m sorry if my e-mail offended anyone. I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth. In no way did I even consider the fact he’s half black when I sent out the e-mail. In fact, the thought never entered my mind until one or two other people tried to make this about race.
“We all know a double standard applies regarding this president. I received plenty of e-mails about George Bush that I didn’t particularly like, yet there was no ’cry’ in the media about them.”
Comparing African-Americans with chimps, monkeys and what have you has long been a common racial slur.
County Republican Chairman Scott Baugh called on her to resign, stating in an e-mail to her that her message is “dripping with racism and is in very poor taste.”
“I looked at it, my jaw dropped,” sid Michael Schroeder of Orange County, who formerly chaired the California Republican Party.
Schroeder told The Orange County Register she “doesn’t represent the party - but how we respond to it does.”
We can wonder what really moves Baugh and Schroeder to condemn her. There has been bad blood between Davenport and Baugh, and the GOP has long taken positions harmful to vulnerable people of all races and religions. They are probably also concerned about the party’s image.
Baugh and Schroeder still did the right thing, and their response merits our appreciation.
Committee member Tim Whitacre called Davenport’s e-mail “motivational, fun” having no ties to Republican affairs. Maybe so, but now we know their personal attitudes toward African-Americans as a group, which adds to our distrust of Republicans.
Davenport dubbed the leak of her e-mail “cowardly” and wrote, “Anyone brave enough to come forward?”
If Davenport did nothing wrong, why is she so worried about leaks?
Top honors for bizarre statements must go to Deborah Pauly, first vice president of the county GOP, who told the Register: “It’s an ethical violation to embarrass the Republican Party. If you’re going to address ethics violations, you need to look at all the people who have brought dishonor to the Republican Party.”
There are sure plenty of governors and members of Congress who are competing “to embarrass the Republican Party.”
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Senate structure may cost NYC terror funds
The composition of the U.S. Senate could soon partly claim another urban victim - homeland security funds for New York City.
The city that bears the starkest terrorist target on its back must compete with 64 cities for shrinking funds, from $887 million to $725 million in the current budget that runs to Sept. 30. The 20 percent cut was part of the Republican-imposed budget deal reached between President Obama and members of Congress.
New York House members attempted to pare down the number of eligible cities from 64 to 25 or less, but Senate members vetoed the idea, according to The New York Daily News.
U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, a Westchester Democrat, told the News that the city will lose $27 million because of the large number of competitors.
“It is appalling that a united House position - and common sense - weren’t enough to convince the Senate that the most at-risk areas need this security funding,” she said.
Rep. Pete King, a Long Island Republican, added, “I guess Nashville has the Grand Ole Opry, but in terms of landmarks at risk and assets being targeted, nothing comes close to New York City.”
Besides Nashville, other cities eligible to compete for anti-terror funds are Anaheim, Calif., Bridgeport, Conn., Baton Rouge, La., Omaha, Neb., Toledo, Ohio, and Richmond, Va., according to the News.
It is a common practice for lawmakers to respond to a situation which mainly affects one or a few communities by spreading funds to other towns which do not need it for this purpose. That’s why state money is often allotted to wealthy as well as poor school districts.
On the federal level, we are stuck with a dual system of tradeoffs. All House members represent the same number of people, but senators can demand more because each state is represented by the same number of senators no matter what the population.
As a result, senators from a large state must concede even more than they would if the Senate was based on proportionate representation.
James Madison was among five framers of the Constitution who saw this coming. So did some critics during the ratification process in 1787 and 1788.
Madison nonetheless fought for ratification because the smaller states demanded equal representation in the Senate or there would be no Constitution.
New Jersey and Maryland, then small states, are now large, liberal northeastern states, and Delaware’s Democratic senators typically side with the Democratic bloc.
The decision made more than two centuries ago is expected to cost NYC $27 million today. Ground Zero is located eight blocks from the downtown Manhattan site where George Washington was inaugurated as our first president on April 30, 1789.
The city that bears the starkest terrorist target on its back must compete with 64 cities for shrinking funds, from $887 million to $725 million in the current budget that runs to Sept. 30. The 20 percent cut was part of the Republican-imposed budget deal reached between President Obama and members of Congress.
New York House members attempted to pare down the number of eligible cities from 64 to 25 or less, but Senate members vetoed the idea, according to The New York Daily News.
U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, a Westchester Democrat, told the News that the city will lose $27 million because of the large number of competitors.
“It is appalling that a united House position - and common sense - weren’t enough to convince the Senate that the most at-risk areas need this security funding,” she said.
Rep. Pete King, a Long Island Republican, added, “I guess Nashville has the Grand Ole Opry, but in terms of landmarks at risk and assets being targeted, nothing comes close to New York City.”
Besides Nashville, other cities eligible to compete for anti-terror funds are Anaheim, Calif., Bridgeport, Conn., Baton Rouge, La., Omaha, Neb., Toledo, Ohio, and Richmond, Va., according to the News.
It is a common practice for lawmakers to respond to a situation which mainly affects one or a few communities by spreading funds to other towns which do not need it for this purpose. That’s why state money is often allotted to wealthy as well as poor school districts.
On the federal level, we are stuck with a dual system of tradeoffs. All House members represent the same number of people, but senators can demand more because each state is represented by the same number of senators no matter what the population.
As a result, senators from a large state must concede even more than they would if the Senate was based on proportionate representation.
James Madison was among five framers of the Constitution who saw this coming. So did some critics during the ratification process in 1787 and 1788.
Madison nonetheless fought for ratification because the smaller states demanded equal representation in the Senate or there would be no Constitution.
New Jersey and Maryland, then small states, are now large, liberal northeastern states, and Delaware’s Democratic senators typically side with the Democratic bloc.
The decision made more than two centuries ago is expected to cost NYC $27 million today. Ground Zero is located eight blocks from the downtown Manhattan site where George Washington was inaugurated as our first president on April 30, 1789.
Monday, April 25, 2011
NY state political deal for tuition grants?
While Albany’s leaders performed New York’s version of the chainsaw massacre on public services, they scrounged up $18 million to allot tuition aid to students attending some private religious schools.
Most of the beneficiaries are likely to be 5,000 men who apply to attend Orthodox rabbinical schools.
One can argue that this measure breaches the separation wall of church and state, but the larger concern is whether rabbinical students should be cut a break while public schools and public colleges and universities are being hammered by state funding reductions.
We would never conclude that tuition aid was a political deal. We cannot bring ourselves to suggest that Gov. Andrew Cuomo along with Democratic and Republican lawmakers are trying to cement election help from the large, active bloc of Orthodox Jewish voters in Brooklyn and suburbs like Monsey in Rockland County and the Five Towns area on Long Island.
The New York Times explains that the money “would be available to any theological student who met a new set of criteria for the state’s so-called Tuition Assistance Program grants.” Brooklyn Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose district in Boro Park is home to a large Orthodox population, has for 10 years sought to amend the TAP laws by gutting a ban on state tuition aid for undergraduate students who attend yeshivas and other religious schools that the state Board of Regents has not chartered.
This time, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was praised by Orthodox figures for pressing for inclusion of the new rules in the 2011-12 budget. Skelos, a Republican, represents Cedarhurst, Lawrence and other Orthodox communities in what is known as the Five Towns in Nassau County.
New York Jewish Week cited a report in City Hall News that Skelos reportedly discussed with Orthodox Jewish leaders a potential special Senate election in Brooklyn where the district has been represented by a Democrat. Orthodox leaders denied this, and Hikind said Skelos supported the rule change in the past.
Last October, Cuomo told an Orthodox leader during his campaign for governor that he favors the grants.
Most galling about this funding is that state leaders cry poverty and yet have money for a program that carries political dividends.
The Times specifies that the new budget slashes 10 percent of aid to public colleges and universities.
Fortunately, a legal challenge is being considered by Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C., on church-state grounds, according to Jewish Week.
Advocates for the grants point out that the money is allocated to the students, not the schools. However, their money will be spent on the schools once they are accepted and attend the schools.
Of course, certain Supreme Court justices may not see it that way.
Only Orthodox schools will benefit because seminaries for Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist students are graduate schools.
The grants also have gender and political implications. The Forward, a weekly Jewish newspaper, correctly notes in an April 15 editorial that this program comprises “a built-in gender bias.” It is traditionally men who train to become rabbis at Orthodox schools.
Many members of the cloth tend to become involved in political issues. Rabbis of all Jewish denominations regularly take positions on Israel. While almost all rabbis are supportive of Israel, Orthodox rabbis are more likely to take extreme positions opposed by many non-Orthodox Jews.
In other words, New York taxpayers will fund the education of rabbis who will probably stake out positions in conflict with American foreign policy interests, such as settlements.
Most Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis take positions that support both Israeli needs and American foreign policy interests. True, some rabbis and other Jews may go as far as to side with Israel’s detractors. None of this precludes legitimate criticism of Israel.
These grants also provide ammunition for anti-Semitism. Critics of the state’s budget cuts might accuse Jews of receiving special treatment. It is hard evidence to them that the Jews run the state of New York.
A segment of Jews is receiving special treatment and a segment of the Jewish community is flexing its political muscles.
Unfortunately, some people might think this way of all Jews.
Most of the beneficiaries are likely to be 5,000 men who apply to attend Orthodox rabbinical schools.
One can argue that this measure breaches the separation wall of church and state, but the larger concern is whether rabbinical students should be cut a break while public schools and public colleges and universities are being hammered by state funding reductions.
We would never conclude that tuition aid was a political deal. We cannot bring ourselves to suggest that Gov. Andrew Cuomo along with Democratic and Republican lawmakers are trying to cement election help from the large, active bloc of Orthodox Jewish voters in Brooklyn and suburbs like Monsey in Rockland County and the Five Towns area on Long Island.
The New York Times explains that the money “would be available to any theological student who met a new set of criteria for the state’s so-called Tuition Assistance Program grants.” Brooklyn Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose district in Boro Park is home to a large Orthodox population, has for 10 years sought to amend the TAP laws by gutting a ban on state tuition aid for undergraduate students who attend yeshivas and other religious schools that the state Board of Regents has not chartered.
This time, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was praised by Orthodox figures for pressing for inclusion of the new rules in the 2011-12 budget. Skelos, a Republican, represents Cedarhurst, Lawrence and other Orthodox communities in what is known as the Five Towns in Nassau County.
New York Jewish Week cited a report in City Hall News that Skelos reportedly discussed with Orthodox Jewish leaders a potential special Senate election in Brooklyn where the district has been represented by a Democrat. Orthodox leaders denied this, and Hikind said Skelos supported the rule change in the past.
Last October, Cuomo told an Orthodox leader during his campaign for governor that he favors the grants.
Most galling about this funding is that state leaders cry poverty and yet have money for a program that carries political dividends.
The Times specifies that the new budget slashes 10 percent of aid to public colleges and universities.
Fortunately, a legal challenge is being considered by Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C., on church-state grounds, according to Jewish Week.
Advocates for the grants point out that the money is allocated to the students, not the schools. However, their money will be spent on the schools once they are accepted and attend the schools.
Of course, certain Supreme Court justices may not see it that way.
Only Orthodox schools will benefit because seminaries for Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist students are graduate schools.
The grants also have gender and political implications. The Forward, a weekly Jewish newspaper, correctly notes in an April 15 editorial that this program comprises “a built-in gender bias.” It is traditionally men who train to become rabbis at Orthodox schools.
Many members of the cloth tend to become involved in political issues. Rabbis of all Jewish denominations regularly take positions on Israel. While almost all rabbis are supportive of Israel, Orthodox rabbis are more likely to take extreme positions opposed by many non-Orthodox Jews.
In other words, New York taxpayers will fund the education of rabbis who will probably stake out positions in conflict with American foreign policy interests, such as settlements.
Most Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis take positions that support both Israeli needs and American foreign policy interests. True, some rabbis and other Jews may go as far as to side with Israel’s detractors. None of this precludes legitimate criticism of Israel.
These grants also provide ammunition for anti-Semitism. Critics of the state’s budget cuts might accuse Jews of receiving special treatment. It is hard evidence to them that the Jews run the state of New York.
A segment of Jews is receiving special treatment and a segment of the Jewish community is flexing its political muscles.
Unfortunately, some people might think this way of all Jews.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Gov. Christie's marble rye
No wonder Newman was disgusted with Jerry Seinfeld’s shenanigans. It was Seinfeld who set the precedent for a successful professional to mug an elderly Jewish woman.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, must have viewed the television segment when Seinfeld mugged an old Jewish lady to snatch her marble rye. What else could have inspired Christie to endorse an assault on Democratic state Sen. Loretta Weinberg? She is female, elderly and Jewish?
Certainly, Christie went too far when he proclaimed that the press might wish to “take the bat out” on Weinberg because of her alleged hypocrisy over pensions. In all seriousness, Christie might have gone so far as to violate the New Jersey Criminal Code.
Christie’s words were threatening, and no matter what he meant his comment could at least encourage some nut to harm or harass the senator. Perhaps Christie’s remark might constitute the crime listed as “terroristic threats.”
This chapter in the Christie saga dates to an April 3 report in The Star-Ledger of Newark when Weinberg suggested that Christie neglected to criticize a political ally’s pension arrangement in the same spirited manner that he attacks others with questionable pension arrangements.
Weinberg referred to Essex County executive Joseph DiVincenzo, who retired in 2010, started collecting a pension and then returned to the county executive job, according to The Bergen Record of Hackensack. He makes $222,000 yearly between his pension and salary.
Though he is allied with Christie, DiVincenzo is a Democrat. Weinberg also collects a pension based on her time in a full-time Bergen County position and in other government jobs. Her annual take is $85,000 between the pension and legislative salary.
During a news conference on April 13, 2011, Christie said Weinberg might be eligible for a “hypocrisy award.”
“I mean, can you guys please take the bat out on her for once?” the governor said. “Here’s a woman who knows she did it, yet she comes to you and is pining…’Oh! My goodness! How awful this is! What a double standard!’ But she’s the queen of double standard.”
The wording of the “terroristic threats” definition makes one wonder if Christie indeed committed a crime.
The law reads: “A person is guilty of a crime of the third degree if he threatens to commit any crime of violence with the purpose to terrorize another or to cause evacuation of a building, place of assembly, or facility of public transportation, or otherwise to cause serious public inconvenience, or in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience.”
I have no doubt that Christie was speaking metaphorically, but that is my personal opinion, and probably that of most people. However, the governor still used literal words of an action that could “terrorize another” or “cause serious public inconvenience.”
In practical terms, the governor uttered these words “in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience.”
Christie did not consider that someone out there might get it in their head to “take the bat out on” the senator.
Your average prosecutor would conclude that the governor did not intend physical harm, but should they ignore his “reckless disregard” for what could follow?
Even if his remark does not rise to a criminal standard, Christie was plainly irresponsible. He should have known better. He is an attorney and he spoke in a forum that is now being watched nationwide.
Christie might wish to recall the outcome of Seinfeld’s crime: It cost his father the presidency…of his condominium board, that is.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, must have viewed the television segment when Seinfeld mugged an old Jewish lady to snatch her marble rye. What else could have inspired Christie to endorse an assault on Democratic state Sen. Loretta Weinberg? She is female, elderly and Jewish?
Certainly, Christie went too far when he proclaimed that the press might wish to “take the bat out” on Weinberg because of her alleged hypocrisy over pensions. In all seriousness, Christie might have gone so far as to violate the New Jersey Criminal Code.
Christie’s words were threatening, and no matter what he meant his comment could at least encourage some nut to harm or harass the senator. Perhaps Christie’s remark might constitute the crime listed as “terroristic threats.”
This chapter in the Christie saga dates to an April 3 report in The Star-Ledger of Newark when Weinberg suggested that Christie neglected to criticize a political ally’s pension arrangement in the same spirited manner that he attacks others with questionable pension arrangements.
Weinberg referred to Essex County executive Joseph DiVincenzo, who retired in 2010, started collecting a pension and then returned to the county executive job, according to The Bergen Record of Hackensack. He makes $222,000 yearly between his pension and salary.
Though he is allied with Christie, DiVincenzo is a Democrat. Weinberg also collects a pension based on her time in a full-time Bergen County position and in other government jobs. Her annual take is $85,000 between the pension and legislative salary.
During a news conference on April 13, 2011, Christie said Weinberg might be eligible for a “hypocrisy award.”
“I mean, can you guys please take the bat out on her for once?” the governor said. “Here’s a woman who knows she did it, yet she comes to you and is pining…’Oh! My goodness! How awful this is! What a double standard!’ But she’s the queen of double standard.”
The wording of the “terroristic threats” definition makes one wonder if Christie indeed committed a crime.
The law reads: “A person is guilty of a crime of the third degree if he threatens to commit any crime of violence with the purpose to terrorize another or to cause evacuation of a building, place of assembly, or facility of public transportation, or otherwise to cause serious public inconvenience, or in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience.”
I have no doubt that Christie was speaking metaphorically, but that is my personal opinion, and probably that of most people. However, the governor still used literal words of an action that could “terrorize another” or “cause serious public inconvenience.”
In practical terms, the governor uttered these words “in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience.”
Christie did not consider that someone out there might get it in their head to “take the bat out on” the senator.
Your average prosecutor would conclude that the governor did not intend physical harm, but should they ignore his “reckless disregard” for what could follow?
Even if his remark does not rise to a criminal standard, Christie was plainly irresponsible. He should have known better. He is an attorney and he spoke in a forum that is now being watched nationwide.
Christie might wish to recall the outcome of Seinfeld’s crime: It cost his father the presidency…of his condominium board, that is.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
How 20% of Americans drive agenda
When the government shutdown might have happened, a hotel in my neighborhood - downtown Philadelphia - lost $86,000 in business.
An annual event to recall a historic pre-Revolutionary War battle in Concord, Mass., was canceled; Washingtonians were force-fed an abortion ban by Congress; and New York City members of Congress fretted as to how federal budget plans will ravage the Big Apple.
That makes it official. Of 305 million or so Americans, 60 million of our fellow citizens are running this country. Mostly because the Speaker of the House of Representatives believes party unity trumps public duty.
The most ultra-conservative Republicans in the House dictated the agenda which ended with a pact to slash $38.5 billion from the 2011 budget on April 8, no matter how the remainder of Republicans regarded this action.
That is primarily because Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republican leaders wants the GOP to stick together.
Members of Congress are elected to represent the will of their constituents, yet almost since our nation was established they must frequently choose between loyalty to their party, and responsibility to their constituents and the good of their country.
The political party system is a necessary evil. Few candidates can get elected to office without a strong organization behind them, certainly in presidential contests and large-state elections (in terms of population) for the Senate and governor.
There is no question that the president and Congress should make their best efforts to reduce the debt. They should always be careful when spending our money. However, Republicans exploited the budget mess while a Democrat occupies the White House. They never advocated fiscal restraint when a Republican president bulldozed his way into two tangled wars and tax cuts for the wealthy.
How can we take Boehner and his gang seriously?
There is a point when responsible political figures will know when to hold off on political advantages and simply do what is best for their country.
Boehner probably could have formed a coalition of Democrats and Republicans at any point before the agreement was reached, but he had to attain approval from House members aligned with the tea party.
If not, Republican House members could be challenged by hard-right candidates in the primaries. Or, one day the party can just fracture and split apart.
It is doubtful that the majority of Americans support most Tea Party positions, nor do they support all Democratic endeavors. Most people want sensible policies that will end the economic chaos and provide stability.
There are people out there who share the rigid attitudes of Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachman, both Republican House members, but I have always estimated their support to be 20 percent. Consider that many prevail in Republican primaries because the moderate Republicans have either become independents or registered as Democrats. This leaves the Republican Party with voters who are far more conservative than their senators and representatives.
There are other factors that feed into this mess. President Obama made some ill-advised moves that upset enough voters to elect more Republicans to Congress. Plus, Obama tempers his policies to attract independent votes in swing states for his re-election bid next year, and Democrats generally are trying to protect other Democratic members of Congress who appear to be vulnerable.
Damage was done when Boehner simply threatened a shutdown to begin on April 9. An unidentified hotel in center city Philadelphia was denied $86,000 in business because a government conference planned then was canceled by organizers the week before, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Ed Grose, director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association, told the Inquirer that three hotels reported cancellations.
A confused Joanne Rogers said her family flew from Australia in hopes of visiting Independence Hall, the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon. “We thought it was quite strange that something like this could happen,” she said while visiting Philadelphia.
Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Mass., was to be the site on April 9 of the annual commemoration of the battle between the Brits and the colonials at Meriam’s Corner that helped ignite the Revolutionary War, but that was canceled because of fear of the threatened government shutdown, according to The Boston Globe.
“It’s really a shame that so many visitors won’t be able to experience this,” said Nancy Nelson, superintendent of the park. “It’s disappointing and a great loss for the visitors around the country and the globe who come here to get a full understanding of the events that set our nation’s struggle for liberty in motion.”
Washington Mayor Vincent C. Gray was among 41 people arrested at a rally on Capitol Hill on Monday, April 11, 2011, to protest pending congressional action that would impose new rules on the city. Republicans took advantage of a constitutional provision which gives Congress “exclusive legislative authority” over Washington. The budget deal revives a ban against the city spending its own money on abortions for low-income women and mandates a program to provide school vouchers.
According to The Washington Post, Gray said, “I’m tired of being a pawn in a political game. D.C. deserves to be free. All we want is to be able to spend our own money.”
Protesters were especially incensed by a Post report that Obama told Boehner, “John, I will give you D.C. abortion.” The president made this offer partly as a trade to drop a demand to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
DC Vote head Ilir Zherka asked the demonstrators, “Is D.C. the president’s to give?” The crowd shouted “No!”
Members of New York City’s congressional delegation decried both the pending 2011 budget and the subsequent 2012 budget for their disproportionate effects on their constituents.
“Many of the things hurt like mass transit and public housing funds are particularly New York oriented,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler of Manhattan told The New York Daily News.
Rep. Anthony Weiner of Queens projected that the proposed 2012 budget would eliminate $94 billion from the city over 10 years. “Republicans want to permanently extend tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires without paying for it,” he said.
Before Congress held any votes on the budget pact, four of America’s most prominent cities were shafted just by the threat of a government shutdown.
John Boehner could have prevented this turmoil.
An annual event to recall a historic pre-Revolutionary War battle in Concord, Mass., was canceled; Washingtonians were force-fed an abortion ban by Congress; and New York City members of Congress fretted as to how federal budget plans will ravage the Big Apple.
That makes it official. Of 305 million or so Americans, 60 million of our fellow citizens are running this country. Mostly because the Speaker of the House of Representatives believes party unity trumps public duty.
The most ultra-conservative Republicans in the House dictated the agenda which ended with a pact to slash $38.5 billion from the 2011 budget on April 8, no matter how the remainder of Republicans regarded this action.
That is primarily because Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republican leaders wants the GOP to stick together.
Members of Congress are elected to represent the will of their constituents, yet almost since our nation was established they must frequently choose between loyalty to their party, and responsibility to their constituents and the good of their country.
The political party system is a necessary evil. Few candidates can get elected to office without a strong organization behind them, certainly in presidential contests and large-state elections (in terms of population) for the Senate and governor.
There is no question that the president and Congress should make their best efforts to reduce the debt. They should always be careful when spending our money. However, Republicans exploited the budget mess while a Democrat occupies the White House. They never advocated fiscal restraint when a Republican president bulldozed his way into two tangled wars and tax cuts for the wealthy.
How can we take Boehner and his gang seriously?
There is a point when responsible political figures will know when to hold off on political advantages and simply do what is best for their country.
Boehner probably could have formed a coalition of Democrats and Republicans at any point before the agreement was reached, but he had to attain approval from House members aligned with the tea party.
If not, Republican House members could be challenged by hard-right candidates in the primaries. Or, one day the party can just fracture and split apart.
It is doubtful that the majority of Americans support most Tea Party positions, nor do they support all Democratic endeavors. Most people want sensible policies that will end the economic chaos and provide stability.
There are people out there who share the rigid attitudes of Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachman, both Republican House members, but I have always estimated their support to be 20 percent. Consider that many prevail in Republican primaries because the moderate Republicans have either become independents or registered as Democrats. This leaves the Republican Party with voters who are far more conservative than their senators and representatives.
There are other factors that feed into this mess. President Obama made some ill-advised moves that upset enough voters to elect more Republicans to Congress. Plus, Obama tempers his policies to attract independent votes in swing states for his re-election bid next year, and Democrats generally are trying to protect other Democratic members of Congress who appear to be vulnerable.
Damage was done when Boehner simply threatened a shutdown to begin on April 9. An unidentified hotel in center city Philadelphia was denied $86,000 in business because a government conference planned then was canceled by organizers the week before, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Ed Grose, director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association, told the Inquirer that three hotels reported cancellations.
A confused Joanne Rogers said her family flew from Australia in hopes of visiting Independence Hall, the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon. “We thought it was quite strange that something like this could happen,” she said while visiting Philadelphia.
Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Mass., was to be the site on April 9 of the annual commemoration of the battle between the Brits and the colonials at Meriam’s Corner that helped ignite the Revolutionary War, but that was canceled because of fear of the threatened government shutdown, according to The Boston Globe.
“It’s really a shame that so many visitors won’t be able to experience this,” said Nancy Nelson, superintendent of the park. “It’s disappointing and a great loss for the visitors around the country and the globe who come here to get a full understanding of the events that set our nation’s struggle for liberty in motion.”
Washington Mayor Vincent C. Gray was among 41 people arrested at a rally on Capitol Hill on Monday, April 11, 2011, to protest pending congressional action that would impose new rules on the city. Republicans took advantage of a constitutional provision which gives Congress “exclusive legislative authority” over Washington. The budget deal revives a ban against the city spending its own money on abortions for low-income women and mandates a program to provide school vouchers.
According to The Washington Post, Gray said, “I’m tired of being a pawn in a political game. D.C. deserves to be free. All we want is to be able to spend our own money.”
Protesters were especially incensed by a Post report that Obama told Boehner, “John, I will give you D.C. abortion.” The president made this offer partly as a trade to drop a demand to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
DC Vote head Ilir Zherka asked the demonstrators, “Is D.C. the president’s to give?” The crowd shouted “No!”
Members of New York City’s congressional delegation decried both the pending 2011 budget and the subsequent 2012 budget for their disproportionate effects on their constituents.
“Many of the things hurt like mass transit and public housing funds are particularly New York oriented,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler of Manhattan told The New York Daily News.
Rep. Anthony Weiner of Queens projected that the proposed 2012 budget would eliminate $94 billion from the city over 10 years. “Republicans want to permanently extend tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires without paying for it,” he said.
Before Congress held any votes on the budget pact, four of America’s most prominent cities were shafted just by the threat of a government shutdown.
John Boehner could have prevented this turmoil.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Cheapening the Constitution
When the Constitution was recited at the U.S. House of Representatives last January, 2011, 221 members must have been snoozing when one of their colleagues recited Article 1, Section 7.
Or maybe they were being advised by Antonin “the-Federalist-Papers-are-sacred” Scalia.
Whatever moved them, a majority of the House voted for a bill on April 1 that is blatantly unconstitutional.
All of its supporters are Republicans, the very ones who insisted that the Constitution and its 27 amendments be recited when Congress opened its current legislative action.
To their credit, 15 Republicans voted against H.R. 1255 as did all Democrats. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, said that the provision in question “violates my conscience and the Constitution, and I cannot vote for it.”
Every American citizen should be offended, and so should the millions of foreigners who envy our society and look up to the United States as a model of democracy.
Our system is not perfect, but the 221 representatives who voted for the bill cheapened our way of doing the people’s business.
H.R. 1255 calls for a fiscal year 2011 spending bill, already passed by the House, to become law if the Senate would not pass a spending law by April 6.
There is a reason that the bill failed to become law after April 6 - the Constitution, which the Republican majority recited last January. The Constitution requires that a bill can only become law after both houses pass a law and the president signs it, or the president refuses to sign and both houses override his veto by a two-thirds vote.
The provision reads, “Every bill which shall have passed The House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.
“If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law.”
Scalia, the Supreme Court justice who calls himself an “originalist,” has recommended that Americans read the Federalist Papers to understand the Constitution’s meaning. Three constitutional scholars warn against reliance on the Federalist Papers. Even a layperson can recognize why they consider the Papers to be a sales pitch, in so many words, to convince New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution.
In the less than genteel debates over the April 1 budget bill, The Hill newspaper quoted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor saying, “Funding the government at the levels passed by House Republicans might be what Senator Reid wants, but surely even he would agree that it’s a better alternative than shutting down the government.” (The Hill, 4/1/11)
Cantor, a Republican from the Richmond, Va., area, was referring to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Some Democratic representatives recommended that Cantor and his flock read children’s books on the Constitution such as “House Mouse, Senate Mouse,” according to The Hill. The ever-snarky Anthony Weiner of Queens said, “It’s a much thinner book and it rhymes.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco interjected the most mature comment when she declared, “What you see on the floor today is no example of democracy in action. It’s silly. The Republican leadership is asking its members to make a silly vote.”
I beg to differ with her assessment. This was democracy in action. Not for your average mouse, but moreso for 221 horse’s asses.
Or maybe they were being advised by Antonin “the-Federalist-Papers-are-sacred” Scalia.
Whatever moved them, a majority of the House voted for a bill on April 1 that is blatantly unconstitutional.
All of its supporters are Republicans, the very ones who insisted that the Constitution and its 27 amendments be recited when Congress opened its current legislative action.
To their credit, 15 Republicans voted against H.R. 1255 as did all Democrats. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, said that the provision in question “violates my conscience and the Constitution, and I cannot vote for it.”
Every American citizen should be offended, and so should the millions of foreigners who envy our society and look up to the United States as a model of democracy.
Our system is not perfect, but the 221 representatives who voted for the bill cheapened our way of doing the people’s business.
H.R. 1255 calls for a fiscal year 2011 spending bill, already passed by the House, to become law if the Senate would not pass a spending law by April 6.
There is a reason that the bill failed to become law after April 6 - the Constitution, which the Republican majority recited last January. The Constitution requires that a bill can only become law after both houses pass a law and the president signs it, or the president refuses to sign and both houses override his veto by a two-thirds vote.
The provision reads, “Every bill which shall have passed The House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.
“If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law.”
Scalia, the Supreme Court justice who calls himself an “originalist,” has recommended that Americans read the Federalist Papers to understand the Constitution’s meaning. Three constitutional scholars warn against reliance on the Federalist Papers. Even a layperson can recognize why they consider the Papers to be a sales pitch, in so many words, to convince New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution.
In the less than genteel debates over the April 1 budget bill, The Hill newspaper quoted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor saying, “Funding the government at the levels passed by House Republicans might be what Senator Reid wants, but surely even he would agree that it’s a better alternative than shutting down the government.” (The Hill, 4/1/11)
Cantor, a Republican from the Richmond, Va., area, was referring to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Some Democratic representatives recommended that Cantor and his flock read children’s books on the Constitution such as “House Mouse, Senate Mouse,” according to The Hill. The ever-snarky Anthony Weiner of Queens said, “It’s a much thinner book and it rhymes.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco interjected the most mature comment when she declared, “What you see on the floor today is no example of democracy in action. It’s silly. The Republican leadership is asking its members to make a silly vote.”
I beg to differ with her assessment. This was democracy in action. Not for your average mouse, but moreso for 221 horse’s asses.
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