How did the “Original Reagan Democrat” make the intellectual leap from his 1948 Truman stump speech here to the President who destroyed organized labor in America? Here’s part one of a radio interview he gave on the program “Insight” in 1958 that may help to connect the dots.
In it Ronnie makes mention of his “unique” setup with General Electric — the good guys — who have “laid down the challenge to organized labor”. And before you jump to the conclusion that labor are the bad guys here, Ronnie is “speaking from the standpoint of labor” as former President of the Screen Actors Guild. He continues:
Organized labor had better look around and review their own attitudes in the face of this very enlightened policy toward the people who work for them. And it’s as simple as this: that the man who works for you in a company is also the customer. You can’t wear two hats. You can’t browbeat him one stage of the day and then when he’s out shopping adopt the policy of “the customer is always right”.
If that were only true.
More on the “farsighted and benevolent” policies of the corporations “from the standpoint of labor” via G.E.’s mouthpiece:
Aside from the sheer pleasure derived from hearing right-winger’s heads exploding all over America, this archived radio broadcast of a liberal Democrat by the name of Ronald Reagan campaigning for President Truman, as well as soon-to-be liberal lion Hubert H. Humphrey, presents an important lesson to Democrats everywhere.
In the radio address, the Gipper is:
- For wage growth
- For Social Security
- For union and fair employment practices
- For school lunch programs
- Against tax cuts for the wealthy
- Against excessive corporate profits
And the money quote? “High prices have not been caused by higher wages.”
Wow, there you go again, Ronnie.
So what’s the take-away here?
Okay, Ronald Reagan was a turncoat, hypocritical SOB who abandoned his core values for political expediency and sold this country to the rich and powerful. We all know that.
But what’s more important is to see how the Democrats have allowed the conservatives to systematically dismantle most of the progressive gains we’ve made by forcing their obstructionist, anti-working family, pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda on our country. And how one of the people most responsible is better at articulating those progressive values than the current Democratic brain trust (such as it is).
So we might do well to ask ourselves this Labor Day weekend, is the country better off now than it was 62 years ago?
- SF
Check out our Donkey Edge Manifesto – a declaration of independence from right-wing frames and conservative dogma.
LABOR DAY UPDATE: How did Reagan get from 1948 to the President who destroyed organized labor in this country? Part one of a 1958 radio interview.
With the 2010 baseball season heading down the home stretch sportswriters and fans are arguing about who the M.V.P. of the league is. In the National League there are two players fighting it out for both the Central Division crown and M.V.P. honors: the Cincinnati Reds’ Joey Votto and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Albert Pujols.
On Saturday, we at TheDonkeyEdge figured out who won the coveted award and are excited to break the news. The M.V.P. of not just the National League but all of baseball for 2010 is… Albert Pujols.
And by M.V.P. I of course mean Most Valuable Prop.
Pujols clinched the trophy with his appearance as a trophy for Glenn Beck Saturday at the “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial.
For those of you who aren’t baseball fans let me catch you up on who Albert Pujols is. He’s the greatest baseball player of our generation. He’s Babe Ruth. He’s Mickey Mantle. Hell, if he were white, people would actually know his name.
Pujols is Latino which from Glenn Beck’s perspective made him an even more valuable prop to trot out to his angry white masses. He’s a real American success story — imported from the Dominican Republic.
I can only imagine the back-room brainstorm from the manager of Team Crazy: “We need a real American. A real old-time hero. A baseball player! That’s it. Who’s the best player in baseball? Oh, he’s a latin sounding-looking guy? That means he’s brown! It makes us look multi-cultural! And he’s a bible-thumper that plays in America’s heartland? Let’s give this man an award so he has to show up!”
And that is how something like this comes to pass:
Typically Pujols would be a tough “get” but the slugger’s coach, Tony La Russa, was aboard the Beck bandwagon a while back because he is simply an ass hole. LaRussa converted the unassisted triple play of ass hole-ishness by vocally backing SB 1070, speaking at “The Beckoning” himself and convincing baseball’s best player to demean his intelligence, soil his reputation, and sell his soul to the man who has already sold his soul to Goldline.
But LaRussa said their appearance wasn’t political:
“I made it clear when we were approached: I said, ‘If it’s political, I wouldn’t even approach Albert with it.’ I don’t want to be there if it’s political.”
LaRussa actually tried to convince himself us of that. It’s not political. It’s only a Glenn Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial. What could possibly be political about that? Does this man live in a mayonnaise jar?
Pujols and LaRussa are not the first to embarrass America’s pastime, there have been some other real winners in baseball history. In fact Roger Clemens was indicted last week on charges of lying to Congress about his steroid use. But my favorite – it’s an oldie but a goodie — is Marge Schott (former owner of the Reds) who had an awesome Nazi armband which she, naturally, showed off to guests to her home accompanied by a littany of asides about Hitler being “good in the beginning”, the “sneaky goddamn Jews” being “all alike” and her “million dollar niggers”. She did this a few too many times and was summarily drummed out of baseball.
But Albert Pujols did something unique. He lent his credibility to an active right-wing political propaganda rally held by the ultimate huckster at the same spot 47 years to the day that MLK gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. A rally that Glenn Beck created to “reclaim the civil rights movement” — whatever that could possibly mean.
Let me explain it to Albert in a way that a ball player can understand: the Glenn Beck rally was a blistering fastball aimed squarely at your head which you didn’t duck in time and now half of your fan base has a concussion.
Your career should be called on account of stupidity.
What you have done to your legacy may not appear to be worse than what pine tar, steroids or perjuring yourself in front of congress have done to other great players. But your action, like theirs, was an act of selfish stupidity which in the end hurts the game we all love by making you (and baseball) an object of ridicule and scorn.
Karoli of Crooks and Liars has a good post up this morning about the frightening policies the Republicans are openly boasting about implementing should they take control of Congress after the 2010 elections.
But these policies are not new. They have just become “mainstreamed” within the Republican ranks. And since they have been getting away with more and more reactionary and regressive policies over the past 30 years, they don’t feel they have to hide the true nature of them as much: they have already created a base that believes that these draconian policies are best for the country – even though they are not in the voters’ economic best interests.
So how did we get here?
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker has penned an excellent expose on the powerful forces behind both movement conservatism and the so-called Tea Party phenomenon. In the article, she pulls the mask off of billionaires David H. Koch and his brother, Charles, who are some of the most prominent behind-the-scenes sponsors of far-right doctrine – no taxes (on the wealthy), no government regulations, climate change denial, among many others.
In reading the article, it is clear that the Koch brothers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to accomplish just one thing – protect their multi-billion dollar empire. But like most conservatives, they are at least smart enough to realize that these policies cannot be sold to the American public as is. They need to put lipstick on these pigs.
How else could they successfully sell the notion that global climate change is a farce or that smog was beneficial because it would help prevent more cases of skin cancer or that lower taxes on the wealthy and corporations will create jobs, among countless other canards?
They accomplish their selfish ends by whipping the masses into a frenzy about the evil government and its fascistcommunistsocialistClintonHillaryObamaHitler Democratic leaders who want to steal your money in order to give it to your lazy neighbor down the street while forcing you to marry the gay man around the corner and throwing you out of work because the multi-billion corporations can’t possibly survive with any regulations.
The Republicans love to scream about “class warfare” in this country whenever anyone suggests leveling the economic playing field, raising taxes on the wealthy (so that they pay their fair share), or providing a social safety net for the unemployed, the elderly, or the infirm, but they are dead wrong about who is being laid siege.
It’s all of us, folks.
It is a war on the bottom 99-percent who have seen their standard of living continue to deteriorate over the last 30 years due to tax cuts for the wealthy that have drained the treasury; deregulation that has led to boom-bust laissez-faire capitalism; laws that have made it easier to ship jobs overseas; and a steady drumbeat of anti-government rhetoric solely designed to shred the social safety net and put that money back into the pockets of the richest 1%. Here is a handy chart (h/t to Paul Rosenberg of Open Left). Pay particular attention to the pale yellow line. It shows that the bottom 99 percent of all wage earners have seen almost no real growth in wages since 1973.
All three tycoons [David Koch, Charles Koch, and Rupert Murdoch] are the latest incarnation of what the historian Kim Phillips-Fein labeled “Invisible Hands” in her prescient 2009 book of that title: those corporate players who have financed the far right ever since the du Pont brothers spawned the American Liberty League in 1934 to bring down F.D.R. You can draw a straight line from the Liberty League’s crusade against the New Deal “socialism” of Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and child labor laws to the John Birch Society-Barry Goldwater assault on J.F.K. and Medicare to the Koch-Murdoch-backed juggernaut against our “socialist” president.
Only the fat cats change — not their methods and not their pet bugaboos (taxes, corporate regulation, organized labor, and government “handouts” to the poor, unemployed, ill and elderly). Even the sources of their fortunes remain fairly constant. Koch Industries began with oil in the 1930s and now also spews an array of industrial products, from Dixie cups to Lycra, not unlike DuPont’s portfolio of paint and plastics. Sometimes the biological DNA persists as well. The Koch brothers’ father, Fred, was among the select group chosen to serve on the Birch Society’s top governing body. In a recorded 1963 speech that survives in a University of Michigan archive, he can be heard warning of “a takeover” of America in which Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.” That rant could be delivered as is at any Tea Party rally today.
So how do we combat this? Unfortunately, it will take a sustained effort over decades (and without end) from progressive think-tanks, academia, and grassroots pressure to force our side of the aisle to toughen up and fight back against these powerful interests. And it won’t be easy due to the massive amounts of money and corporate infrastructure at their disposal. But the very future of our country is at stake. Do we give back all of the progressive gains we have made over the past century, or do we stop the forces of evil in their tracks, no matter what the cost?
But more important, we need an entirely new way of engaging with voters. It isn’t enough to point to the Republicans and say how evil and wrong-headed they are. We need to convince voters that our policies and ideas aren’t just right for the country but will benefit them personally.
One way to start is to say loudly and often that the corporations, bankers, Wall Street denizens, crony capitalists, and the wealthy billionaires who finance these right-wing think tanks and Astroturf movements are stealing from us.
They steal our jobs when they ship them overseas.
They steal our wages when they hoard profits and give huge bonuses to their CEOs.
They steal our money when they gamble with it at the Wall Street casinos.
They steal our power when they constantly foster deregulation and cater to corporate interests.
They steal our standard of living when they cut benefits (health care insurance, retirement plans, et al) and promise to slash Medicare, Medicaid, and privatize Social Security.
They steal our health and sometimes our lives when they gut government regulations on food, water, drugs, and workplace safety.
They steal the future of our planet when they deny global climate change and kill environmental policies – all in the name of more profits.
And they steal our dignity when they whip up xenophobic, racist, or homophobic sentiment in an effort to distract from their real agenda by dividing and marginalizing us.
Of course, not all corporations or wealthy individuals are evil, but those billionaires who manipulate the masses to force their selfish agenda on America are no better than thieves and robber barons. It’s not about what’s good for the country with them: it’s about what’s good for their corporate profits and their ability to amass wealth. Noted economist Dean Baker says it best in his recent article on The Huffington Post.
No progressive movement will make any progress until we understand the battle we are fighting. Our income is a cost to the rich. They will look to cut it wherever they can, whether this is wages for private sector workers, pensions for public employees, or Social Security for retirees. That is their target.
We have to fight back using the same logic. Their income is our cost — the multimillion dollar bonuses for the Wall Street wizards is a direct drain on the economy. So are the bloated paychecks of top executives and their lackey boards. Progressives must be prepared to use all the same tactics to bring down the income of the rich and powerful that they have used to reduce the income of everyone else.
If it’s a class war they want, then let’s storm the gates and eat the rich for a change.
-SF
UPDATE (09/02): I received an email today from progressive hero, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), that openly attacks David Koch for his crackpot views and his insidious attempts to use his outrageous fortune and dirty political tricks to fool the electorate into supporting candidates who do not have their best interests at heart. Thank goodness for The New Yorker expose: it has put a face on the right-wing movement, making it easier for people to understand the villainy behind their wealthy, corporate, elitist agenda. It’s heartening to see our side using it to their advantage for a change. More of this, please!
Here is the text from Rep. Grayson’s email:
A couple of weeks ago, we suggested that Republican Dan Webster isn’t the real opponent in this campaign. He hasn’t been on the ballot in a quarter of a century. Dan Webster couldn’t beat a pair of fives with a full house.
I said that someone else would be the real opponent. Now we know who that is.
His name is David Koch. He has $17 billion. And he is spending $250,000 of that in attack ads against me this week.
David Koch is the owner of the second largest private company in America. He made his money the old-fashioned way: he inherited it. Incredibly, his father got rich helping to industrialize and arm the Soviet Union.
Koch lives in New York. He often attends the theater. As far as we know, he has never been to Orlando. But he wants to choose who represents Orlando in Congress. And it isn’t Alan Grayson.
For many years, David Koch was a member of the Libertarian Party. He serves on the board of directors of the right-wing Cato Institute. He is a reclusive billionaire whose political dirty tricks are exposed in the current issue of the New Yorker Magazine. The title of that New Yorker article is “Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging war against Obama.”
What it comes down to is this: who is going to choose our leaders? Us, or a crackpot billionaire like David Koch?
More on this tomorrow. In the meantime, if you can help, please do. Because if we don’t, then David Koch will buy the House, the Senate and, in 2012, the White House.
“No incumbent out there last night suffered a more decisive defeat than Senator John McCain, who last evening was rejected by voters for his anti-tax cut, anti-border fence views. Instead they voted for a candidate who took the exact opposite position of John McCain, dark horse candidate John McCain.”
- Stephen Colbert on McCain’s republican primary victory over J.D. Hayworth on Tuesday
I’m a gadget guy. So you think I’d be into the new toy the LA Sheriff’s department picked up this month. It’s called the “Pain Ray” and it shoots an invisible laser beam of white-hot microwaves that makes your skin feel like it’s being seared. It’s official name is the “Active Denial System” (ADS) and it’s made by Raytheon. It was to go into use in Afghanistan this summer primarily for “crowd dispersal” but the US Military thought the Pain Ray was too controversial for the war.
That from the folks who brought you Abu Ghraib. Here’s more:
For a while now, the United States military have been playing around with a fun little weapon that is, in essence, a pain raygun. The idea is this: you want to take out an insurgent, but you don’t want to kill him, so you aim this Raytheon-design, seven and a half foot tall millimeter wave weapon at him when he’s 100 feet away and turn it on. What sensation will he feel? The unbearable agony of being burned alive… without any of the actual immolation.
Obviously, this sort of weapon is contentious, and pretty obviously at odds with our attempts at garnering the good will of the native Afghanis, so it was quickly pulled out of service.
Cooler heads prevailed in the military but the LA Sheriff’s department pounced:
According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, there is one group of insurgents inhuman and evil enough to use the pain ray on: Pitchess Detention Center prisoners. Calling it the “Holy Grail of Crowd Control,” the LASD hopes to use the pain ray to reduce the 257 inmate-on-inmate assaults of this year alone, as well as the nineteen assaults on deputies. The idea is to break up incidents like riots before they get out of hand.
There’s a lot of problems with this. One big problem is that in a riot, a pain ray can’t really be aimed any better than a flamethrower, meaning you’re also going to hit the victim with unbearable agony. Furthermore, we’re already locking up way too many people for way too frivolous offenses: it’s no wonder our prisons are a pressure cooker waiting to explode. Randomly zapping people with a ray gun that essentially tortures them isn’t a good way to improve that situation.
Turns out the LASD is really into these Marquis de Sade-esque devices. They were on the forefront of using the sonic pain ray, the LRAD (which we posted on here), as early as 2005. Since we don’t have an NFL team, I guess it’s good to be first in something. But why would the LASD need such a “crowd dispersal” device in a prison? That got me into looking into the swelling inmate population in America. Here’s a chart which shows the precipitous rise in the number of incarcerated Americans from 1920 to 2006.
What the hell has happened since 1980? Here’s a closer look:
As a percentage of the population it has nearly quadrupled:
We’re locking up nearly four times the number of citizens we were 30 years ago. And when it comes to the demographics of who makes up this population, it’s sickening. More than 1 in 10 African American males between the ages of 25 and 40 are currently in prison or jail. Right now. (This is all from the 2009 US Department of Justice. Here’s a PDF with more detailed statistics.)
We have nearly 2.3 million Americans in our prison/jail system and the number keeps growing at an increasing rate which is why there’s never been a better time to be in the prison business in America. Here’s how one of the top 4 US prison companies, Correctional Corporation of America, is growing and reinvesting in its physical plants during the great recession as it anticipates continued growth:
CCA isn’t pouring nearly a third of it’s annual revenue into new property/plant investments without a reason. I’d expect that in the coming quarters, this amount of investment will begin to yield tangible returns for the Company.
Because state and federal budgets are tightening there is an incentive from some quarters for governments to privatize our prison system and get them “off the books”. But by privatizing our prison system, the offenders who would at one point and time would have been in line for rehabilitation and release (as they cost the taxpayers money and rehabilitation into society is a worthy goal) today’s “privatized” prisoners become a valuable asset to the privately-held corporations who run the prison system.
These companies are paid per head. So the more heads, the more revenue. Plus, it’s critical that this system keep creating new assets (citizen/prisoners) to keep the system profitable and growing for the shareholders. (You can read more on the “Prison-Industrial Complex” in the seminal article by Eric Schlosser here.)
Given this new paradigm, we will need more prisoners to continue to feed the private prisons that are being built in this country and all we’ll hear about is how “good” this is for our economy because it’s creating jobs and keeping America safe. Which is why, with a swelling prison population, we’re coming up with even more extreme ways of keeping the prison population under control with gadgets like the Pain Ray.
Okay, you’ve waited patiently for it. Here’s the video from Rachel showing people being shot with the Pain Ray:
My favorite part is the faux protesters with the signs “Peace Not War” being dispersed. Obviously, they need to be punished. They’re not profitable.
Meg Whitman: "My voting record is abysmal. My registration record is abysmal."
We at TheDonkeyEdge are thrilled and honored to have created this new ad for California Nurses Association and Courage Campaign which launches today. It skewers Meg Whitman by contrasting her pathetic voting record with the struggles of the courageous women who fought for the right to vote and achieved groundbreaking success 90 years ago this month. Here’s the e-mail from Courage Campaign:
Dear Friend –
Honestly, I’m offended by Meg Whitman.
Ninety years ago this August, women won the right to vote when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was finally ratified in 1920.
I take that right seriously. Meg Whitman doesn’t.
Whitman wants to be governor of California. But she has rarely voted in three decades. Shouldn’t our next governor show more respect for our right to vote — and for the struggles that earned women the right to vote?On Thursday, August 26, nurses and activists from across California will travel to Sacramento for a rally celebrating women’s right to vote. Many will take a train to Sacramento, honoring the suffragist movement and their success, and dressing in costumes from the suffragist era.
Even if you can’t join the rally, you can still help us send a message to Meg. Click here to watch our video about how Meg Whitman has taken the 19th Amendment for granted. Then sign up to Vote-By-Mail — the most reliable method of voting in every election. Show that you’ll stand up for voting rights, even if Meg Whitman won’t:
Suffragists fought for decades to win the right to vote. They faced sexism, violence, and other obstacles in their effort to secure equal rights.
Ninety years later, full equality still eludes us. Many women are denied the right to marry the person they love. Others lack health care services, education, and jobs.
Meg Whitman supports Prop 8. She pledges to cut public funding for health care and education. She’s already promised mass layoffs if she becomes governor, just as she did at eBay. And she can’t even be bothered to exercise that most basic of rights — the right to vote.
That’s why the Courage Campaign and the California Nurses Association created this video to hold Meg Whitman accountable for her deplorable voting record. Please watch our video and then apply to Vote-By-Mail — it’s the most effective way to stand up for voting rights today:
“There is a difference between what you can do and what you should do. For instance, you can build a Catholic church next to a playground. Should you?”
These resources include the planet’s ability to filter all the CO2 emissions and its ability to produce the raw materials needed for food. According to GFN:
From that point [Earth Overshoot Day] until the end of the year, we meet our ecological demand by liquidating resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Until about thirty years ago, the rate of human consumption was below what the planet could generate in terms of raw materials and carbon absorption. But every year, Earth Overshoot Day arrives earlier and earlier. This year alone, the GFN estimates that human beings will consume about half again more resources than what the planet can naturally produce. Talk about running up the debt.
They also estimate that, if current population and consumption trends continue, we will need the equivalent of two planets to sustain ourselves by mid-century.
So what are the causes? Again, the GFN:
Climate change – a result of carbon being emitted faster than it can be reabsorbed by the forests and seas – is the most obvious and arguably pressing result. But there are others as well: shrinking forests, species loss, fisheries collapse and freshwater stress to name a few.
And this is to say nothing about the man-made disasters such as the Gulf Oil Spill (and the dead zone created in the decades before it); chemical spills in both the water and the air; toxic waste dumping; the floating garbage patches in our oceans; and the human and ecological devastation of wars around the globe.
Here is an explanation of how GFN calculates Earth Overshoot Day and the planet’s ecological debt:
Put simply, Earth Overshoot Day shows the day on which our total Ecological Footprint (measured in global hectares) is equal to the biocapacity (also measured in global hectares) that nature can regenerate in that year. For the rest of the year, we are accumulating debt by depleting our natural capital and letting waste accumulate.
[ world biocapacity / world Ecological Footprint ] x 365 = Earth Overshoot Day
The day of the year on which humanity enters into overshoot and begins adding to our ecological debt is calculated by calculating the ratio of global available biocapacity to global Ecological Footprint and multiplying by 365. From this, we find the number of days of demand that the biosphere could supply, and the number of days we operate in overshoot.
Here’s a graphic on the elements they include in their calculations.
Perhaps one could argue that these calculations are symbolic only. But they raise a larger and more important point: we are slowly killing our planet and ourselves. And the ecological deficit we are creating has even more dire consequences than the budget deficit Washington argues about incessantly.
Of course, all of us are responsible for this phenomenon – the industrialized countries more than most. And North America and Western Europe lead the way. As the following video points out, GFN estimates that if everyone on the planet consumed as much as North America, we would need five planets to sustain ourselves, and if we lived like Western Europeans, we would need three planets.
But it is nice to see that there are organizations out there that are taking climate change and its disastrous effects seriously, even while we dither in the United States by allowing climate legislation to be killed by the flat-Earth Republicans; by debate to be stymied by climate change deniers whose unscientific and half-baked theories are given legitimacy by the media’s penchant for false equivalencies; and by a general lethargy in terms of environmental issues.
I vowed to drop out of Beck University. The weekly “lessons” caused my migraines to flare up. They threatened me with expulsion (apparently talking back in class is a real Bozo No-No). And I had run out of bullshit repellant. But like John McCain to “Jersey Shore,” I couldn’t turn away from watching the train wreck of human ignorance.
So I girded my loins and braced for the most painful and frightening double feature I had ever endured. No, not “The Creeping Terror” and “Troll 2”, but Beck University “professors” James Stoner and David Barton. On second thought, perhaps it’s the same thing.
As with any double bill, the evening began with the “B” movie – still scary enough to give you a few chills but merely whetting your appetite for the hair-raising, spine-tingling, bladder-emptying feature attraction.
In the first “lesson,” James Stoner proceeded to give an 8th grade civics lesson on the Constitution, specifically the Separation of Powers and the system of checks and balances it created. Stoner is the most accomplished “faculty” member at Beck U (he is an actual professor at LSU), and he delivered his lecture in the same manner in which he would an ordinary lesson – boring, verbose, and repetitive.
And like all “B” movies, I kept wondering when the story would start.
Separation of powers creates a divided government… blah, blah, blah… Should I get up and get a soda? Hmmmm… Checks and balances “checks” the powers of each individual branch against the other… Zzzzzzz… I think I still have a package of the Orville Redenbacher Ultimate Butter Microwave Popcorn… Yumm!
Finally… at end of the 2nd Act the monster comes out. Here’s what Stoner snarled about the Necessary and Proper Clause:
Since the New Deal, there has been a presumption on the part of Congress and the president that, if there is a problem, the federal government is the first entity to look for a solution.
Damn right, Skippy. I’d say the government did a good job of bailing us out of the Great Depression, winning World War Two, creating a vibrant middle class, enabling millions to attend college, expanding civil rights… I could go on.
But the monster really popped out of the closet when Stoner wrapped up his lecture on judicial review. Boy, nothing gets a right-winger more worked up than Marbury v. Madison. The horns came out as Stoner spat out the following:
Judicial review was not understood at that time to be power given to the courts to roam through the statute books and strike down whatever injustice they saw.
But I guess in a monster’s world, slavery would still be legal, separate but “equal” would still apply, women and minorities would not have the right to vote, and single people wouldn’t be allowed to use contraception (see Beck U3: It’s Not A Tumor). But I digress.
Our analysis looked at 13 cases in the period since John Roberts became Chief Justice and found a consistent pattern of the Court taking cases it does not need to hear, answering legal questions not squarely before it, making up new law out of thin air, and settling questions best left to fact finders in lower courts.
As retiring Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissent in the notorious Citizens United case, “Essentially, five Justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.”
Now that’s the true horror show.
Enjoy Intermission. Be sure to visit the snack bar.
As we all know, the feature attraction is where we get all the pant-soiling goodness, with even bigger creatures lurking around the bend. And “Faith 103” did not disappoint.
But this sequel on limited government was more of a Tingler.
Apparently, limited government = good government = God’s will. And this was just the teaser. I munched my Hot Tamales with renewed fervor. I wanted to hear more about how our Founding Fathers really wanted to create a theocracy based on Biblical Law – with none other than Thomas Jefferson leading the way.
But Barton rode Jefferson like Mothra into Tokyo to “prove” his case. Here now is the…
Sum of Good Government (According to Jefferson via Barton):
1. Acknowledge and Adore God
As we learned in Beck U. 4, we apply the Transitive Property of Christian Fundamentalism and anytime anyone mentions God, Providence, Deity, etc., they are automatically talking about Christ, which means that they are in fact jonesing for a Christian Fundamentalist Theocracy. According to Barton:
[We aren’t] like France where the rights come from groups of people who decide what the rights are and they can change them whenever they want. [But] that’s what we see across Europe and other countries as well.
Holy Freedom Fries. In Barton’s scary world, rights come from God only, and the government cannot intrude on them or regulate them. I wonder if he realizes this sounds an awful lot like what the Islamic Fundamentalists want – an undying fealty to strict Sharia law.
Be it enacted by the General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
2. Exercise Frugality
Again, Barton quotes Jefferson as saying that “public debt is the greatest of dangers to be feared.” True. Jefferson did say this, but if Barton is so frightened of the public debt, why was he a hired as a shill for the RNC and other Republican candidates when they were running up the deficit like strippers in the VIP room during the Smirking Monkey’s administration?
Here’s a visual aid about public debt and the frugality of Republicans:
3. Restrain Infliction Of Injury
Basically, Barton wants to abolish all those icky federal laws and replace them with these ten, which is all anyone really needs because I’ve been known to covet my neighbor’s ass donkey on occasion.
After all, Barton thinks you shouldn’t regulate the good people, just the perverts.
He then cites obstructionist speed limit laws that vary from state to state and how on earth is he to be expected to know the law from state to state and ignorance isn’t a defense and we’re all just screwed. Of course, his argument screams for federal regulations so that the law is consistent from state to state, but I’m expecting too much from the plot here.
4. Encourage Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise
According to Barton, “the free market system came from the religious leaders in Europe and America” but he admitted that he didn’t have time to prove all that now.
After all, the recent taxpayer bailouts “happened to all the most regulated industries” because when the government gets involved in economics, it destroys economies. You know, industries as horribly regulated as banking, real estate, insurance, etc.
5. Protect Property and Earnings of Citizens
For the climax, Barton suggested that:
- God wants us to own property
- Property taxes are evil
- There are no homeowners in Europe because the government owns all the property
And then Barton ended with a quote from his true God:
The Right's Great God Reagan
And that’s when I soiled my pants and let out a bloodcurdling scream.
