Tag: American Government

The U.S. Is Broken

After just a few months of Donny’s boot heel we can say that the US political system and the country is broken.

Will the midterms be a fix for what is happening?

Personally I think NOT!

But if we get rid of Donny and the Kakistocracy what will be next…..we need to make the nation healthy again….

The United States is broken, and it’s time to think about what comes next.

Images of the White House East Wing demolition that have filled our eyes in recent days are a visual expression of a broader reality. The constitutional order of the U.S. is shattered. A lawless president backed by a feckless Congress and a Supreme Court tipped far to the right has upset what balance of powers remained under the constitutional system. That he could order the destruction of a national landmark with no public notice or review to build his ballroom signals his dictatorial intent.

But the roots of this run far deeper, to the Constitution itself. The U.S. started as a loose alliance of states under the Articles of Confederation. They had significant autonomy. But the financial classes centered in the large Northeast cities had a big problem with that. They were owed war debts and demanded payment in gold and silver. But states, where a measure of democracy existed, wanted to use paper money. When farmers in western Massachusetts staged Shay’s Rebellion against taxes needed to pay the debts, the ruling classes were alarmed. Led by Alexander Hamilton, they convened the Constitutional Convention to create a powerful federal government that could control the states and further expansion on the western frontier.

Over the century to come, the federal government mounted military campaigns to conquer the natives, and subsidized railroad construction. These were crucial to build a continental empire. Once that was filled out, the U.S. moved out into the world to build the greatest global empire in history, sustained by the centralized federal power created by the Constitution.

Power has been centralizing in the U.S. for its entire history, to the point we have reached today where a president has seemingly breached all limits, as exhibited by the East Wing demolition in violation of law and custom. What is going to pull us back from this?

https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-u-s-is-broken-time-to-think-about-what-comes-next/

What do you think we will need to do to pull us back to sanity in the political system?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Those Past Constitutional Amendments

Let’s have some fun and learn something.

You got it!  The Old Professor is going to drop some history that most have no idea about.

How well do you know your history of this country?  (Purely rhetorical because most know little to nothing)

There has been numerous amendments considered to the Constitutional but we shot down….but what would this country look like if they had passed?

The United States Constitution had been in effect for little more than a year when Congress first moved to amend it. On September 25, 1789, the legislature sent a dozen proposed amendments to the then-13 states (soon to be 14) for ratification, as the law required. By December 15, 1791, the necessary three-fourths of states had ratified 10 of the 12 amendments, which collectively became known as the Bill of Rights.

Another 17 amendments have been ratified in the 234 years since, for a total of 27. But these measures represent just a tiny fraction of the amendments that have been proposed in Congress over the years—nearly 12,000 to date.

“The U.S. Constitution was intended to be amended,” writes historian Jill Lepore in her new book, We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution. However, “almost all efforts to amend the Constitution fail. Success often takes decades. And for long stretches of American history, amending the Constitution has been effectively impossible.”

Most proposed amendments die quietly in congressional committees (if they even get that far), with only a few sent on to the states for ratification. At present, there are six proposed amendments awaiting possible state ratification—one of them dating back to 1789.

Many failed amendments have involved fairly minor administrative matters. But others would have changed the American government in substantial ways and possibly altered the course of history.

Here are a dozen of those failed amendments and what they set out to accomplish.

In 1866, Missouri Representative George Washington Anderson proposed dropping “United States” from the country’s name and simply calling it “America.” The current name was “not sufficiently comprehensive and significant to indicate the real unity and destiny of the American people as the eventual, paramount power of this hemisphere,” he argued, albeit unsuccessfully.

Weighing in from across the Atlantic, the Illustrated London News mocked the proposal as the “verbal appropriation of a hemisphere.”

Just one hemisphere wasn’t enough for Lucas Miller, a first-term representative from Wisconsin. On a single February day in 1893, he introduced 46 bills, one of which would have changed the country’s name to the “United States of the Earth.”

Miller’s rationale, in his own words, was that “it is possible for the republic to grow through the admission of new states into the union, until every nation on earth has become part of it.” Another source suggests that he might also have settled for the “United States of the World.” Miller’s proposal was widely ridiculed at the time, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the congressman didn’t return for a second term.

(Read On)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/twelve-failed-constitutional-amendments-that-could-have-reshaped-american-history-180987425/

There are a couple that would apply to the situation today….

Abolishing the Senate….not bad should be considered because the Senate is where good bills go to die.

Numbers 8 and 9 deserve consideration…

Numbers 10 -12 should already be part of the Constitution….

If you read the article then I would like to hear your thoughts on these past proposed amendments to our Constitution.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

Class Dismissed

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The ‘Exclusion’ Of Immigrants

This is right time for the Old Professor to drop a bit of history on you that tries to enlighten the reader to the history that is all too forgotten.

Little Donny is deporting people at an alarming right all in an effort to keep the loyal in line with his brand of ignorance…..so far this year…Within the span of 100 days, the results of this sweeping and sustained set of actions, touching nearly every corner of the U.S. immigration system, have yielded some quick results. U.S. Border Patrol encounters of irregularly arriving migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border plunged to 7,000 in March—the fewest since at least 2000, when the government started publishing monthly apprehension numbers—after the administration declared an “invasion,” sent 10,000 troops to the border, and effectively barred access to asylum there.

All these deportations is a first for a president, right?

Not even close.

Just another misguided attempt to appear as if he truly cares about this country.

Before I go on maybe it would be a good spot to drop some history about the ‘law’ that the Trumpites are using to justify these deportation….even though the justification for these deportations is the ancient act from the 18th century….about here would be a good time to explain the “Act” for the history impaired….

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is a wartime authority that allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation. The law permits the president to target these immigrants without a hearing and based only on their country of birth or citizenship. Although the law was enacted to prevent foreign espionage and sabotage in wartime, it can be — and has been — wielded against immigrants who have done nothing wrong, have evinced no signs of disloyalty, and are lawfully present in the United States. It is an overbroad authority that may violate constitutional rights in wartime and is subject to abuse in peacetime.

… but the mass deportations occurred in the beginning of the middle 19th century and the Chinese immigrants.

The United States’ current deportation process traces its roots to the late 19th century as the nation moved to exercise federal control of immigration.

The impetus for this shift was anti-Chinese racism, which reached a fever pitch during this period, culminating in the passage of laws that restricted Chinese immigration.

The influx of Chinese immigrants to the West Coast during the mid-to-late 19th century, initially fueled by the California Gold Rush, spurred the rise of an influential nativist movement that accused Chinese immigrants of stealing jobs. It also claimed that they posed a cultural threat to American society due to their racial otherness.

The Geary Act of 1892 required Chinese living in the U.S to register with the federal government or face deportation.

The Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of these statutes in 1893 in the case of Fong Yue Ting v. United States. Three plaintiffs claimed that anti-Chinese legislation was discriminatory, violated constitutional protections prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure, and contravened due process and equal protection guarantees.

The Supreme Court affirmed the Geary Act’s deportation procedures, formulating a novel legal precept known as the plenary power doctrine that remains a key tenet of U.S. immigration law today.

https://theconversation.com/from-the-chinese-exclusion-act-to-pro-palestinian-activists-the-evolution-of-politically-motivated-deportations-254683

Is Donny’s use of ‘Act’ legal by Executive Order?  Damn good question!

… no court has expressly interpreted “invasion” in the context of the AEA, the definition of “invasion” in the constitutional sense has received recent judicial and scholarly attention. Early last year, Texas tried to make the immigration-as-invasion argument in two cases, United States v. Texas and United States v. Abbott, the former of which dealt most directly with the claim. There, a district court—after providing one of the most comprehensive analyses of “invasion” in the State War Clause—enjoined the enforcement of Texas law that established state criminal liability for immigration law violations. Although the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ultimately stayed the injunction, it was “not persuaded” by Texas’s immigration-as-invasion argument. The case is still pending. In light of interpretative uncertainty, recourse might also be had to interpretations of the president’s unilateral authority to use force to repel attacks or invasions.

(there is more legal wrangling going on)

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/can-trump-invoke-the-alien-enemies-act

This will be a sticky situation for only recently a Trump appointed judge rules against Donny’s move on Venezuelans.

A federal judge on Thursday barred the Trump administration from deporting any Venezuelans from South Texas under an 18th-century wartime law and said President Trump’s invocation of it was “unlawful.” US District Court Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. is the first judge to rule that the Alien Enemies Act cannot be used against people the administration claims are gang members invading the United States, the AP reports.

  • “Neither the Court nor the parties question that the Executive Branch can direct the detention and removal of aliens who engage in criminal activity in the United States,” wrote Rodriguez, who was nominated by Trump in 2018. But, the judge said, “the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation … is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.”
  • Rodriguez’s ruling is significant because it is the first formal permanent injunction against the administration using the AEA and contends the president is misusing the law, the AP reports. “Congress never meant for this law to be used in this manner,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer who argued the case, in response to the ruling.
  • If the administration appeals, it would go first to the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the nation’s most conservative appeals courts. The Supreme Court has already weighed in once on the issue of deportations under the AEA. The justices held that migrants alleged to be gang members must be given “reasonable time” to contest their removal from the country. The court has not specified the length of time

This whole debacle will be interesting to watch….and I will watch.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Will The US Collapse?

Yes I know this is mostly unthinkable for most of us….but with all the division, hatred and confusion is it possible the US could collapse like the Soviet Union?

A little background for my younger readers….

The once ‘powerful’ USSR, Soviet Union, was in place from 1917 and then at the closing years of the 20th century upheaval and political tension the broke apart sending there sphere of influence into chaos….this break-up began in 1991….

There is a website, The Conversation, that has asked this same question and did a deep dive into the implications…

“You’re next,” said a Russian historian I interviewed in 1993 about the Soviet Union’s collapse in late 1991. I was an American student in St. Petersburg, and he was referring to the United States.

His argument was informed by a pseudo-scientific demographic theory that would eventually find favour in the Kremlin, but more remarkable to me then was the hopefulness with which he spoke.

If this man is still alive, he must be feeling vindicated. America’s current retreat from its engagements around the world — from gutting USAid to abandoning European allies — constitutes a surrender of power comparable in living memory only to Mikhail Gorbachev’s unilateral withdrawals from Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and elsewhere between 1988 and 1991 — right before the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Accompanying both foreign policy about-faces, we can’t miss profound shifts in the two states’ ideological foundations.

As long as his sacredness remained unquestioned, referring to Lenin could legitimize a range of policies and actions. Viewing Lenin through a historical lens, however, called his sacredness into question. It consequently became impossible for Soviet citizens to agree on what policies and actions were legitimate. This crisis of meaning allowed chronic political, economic and social problems to suddenly to become devastating.

America’s master signifier is its Constitution, reverentially enshrined in Washington, D.C., rather like Lenin’s body is in Moscow. Under President Donald Trump, however, violations of the Constitution have become routine, and the federal government’s legislative branch has shown little will to guard its powers from executive encroachment. Like Lenin under Gorbachev, it seems that the sacred centre of America’s political system has become destabilized.

https://theconversation.com/will-the-u-s-collapse-like-the-soviet-union-did-250212

This is a fascinating piece and should be read if one is truly looking for answer to the current situation in the US.

As usual….I am not endorsing anything at all….I just think that all aspects of the happenings in the US and any possible ideas about the future, if one is interested in the future, should be looked and understood.

Please if you have anything constructive or in opposition keep it simple and civil.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”