If Trump were Mexican

I was trying to get into Mexico. Somehow I was trying to get over the wall into Mexico, but there were police and military Guarding the boarder to keep the Gringo's out. I couldn't do it. But then you know how it is...

I was suddenly in Mexico. But it was too late. The People's paradise of Mexico had just elected Donaldo el Trompetista and the Gazpacho were everywhere in their red Vans blowing their Trumpets. We ran til they stopped along the road and took out their red bowls, ate Gazpacho soup and took a siesta. We stopped at the Tavern and the La Resistencia started drinking Sangría azul. Our fight was between the red and the blue here too!

His cry "Make Mexico Great Again!" And "Throw the Gringos out was very popular. But today the fighting was done. Mañana! I needed a break anyway.

I wandered around the country, and all the common folks were out wearing traditional garb and saying "how did we elect such a maleducado our president?" And I heard him on the TV in the Cafe:

Trump: "I really respect my country! I want to make it great again!"

Trump: "I think you need a strong leader, and I'm here to lead you!"

And the Announcer said:

"We've already had too many Caudillos. We don't need another."

Trump: "Get him out of here!"

That is when I remembered, Trump is our Caudillo, and woke up sweating. The Mexicans have already had their share of cheesy Caudillos. This one is our mess.

That is what I get for eating Gazpacho soup late at night.

Please Vote. We don't need a Caudillo!

Voter Turnaway not Low Turnout

Normalizing Voter Suppression

First published 11/16/2017, draft dates to 12/2016, updated 1/4/2018

Snopes initially told us that there was no evidence that three hundred thousand voters were turned away at the polls due to voter ID requirements. I published this post rage-posting after seeing that. Politifact rated it as false based on the lack of evidence that all 300,000 of the people barred from voting due to insufficient voting were actually turned away. Snopes changed their rating to unproven based on the following:

"ruling gauged that roughly 300,000 registered voters in Wisconsin did not possess sufficient identification to vote at the time that the ruling was issued in April 2014, but it did not suggest that all 300,000 had tried and failed to vote"

Given that turnout in the USA is often abysmal, it is likely that the suppression was more or less 300,000 as people who were in doubt over whether they had sufficient ID stayed home. Of course some people may have gotten the ID they needed. The claim of 300,000 was exaggerated, but given that 27,000 votes made the difference in the count, there is no doubt that it played a major role in the election.

Politifact

Snopes

The Nation Article

I was right

I wrote at the time:

We will never know how many were turned away, so the honest answer is "unverifiable." Blame the voter critics count people discouraged due to improper ID or caged, as "no-shows", most just don't show up. There is no doubt that approximately 16,800 in Milwaukee County and Madison’s Dane County. Extrapolated to the rest of the state the numbers probably come out to nearly 300,000.

Adding Voter ID, to closing polling places, removing people from the rolls arbitrarly by "caging," sending postcards to 100,000 voters. Anyone who didn't answer the post card was removed from the roles. This is a tried and true method to remove valid voters, as many people only vote in Presidential races and may not see a post card sent to them as anything important to respond to. They also remove people convicted of Felonies. [http://elections.wi.gov/node/3656], and there are claims of people with similar names to felons being removed as well. Add this to targeted ads it is easy to see how voter suppression played a major role in Republican dominance of the State.

As I noted back in November:

When people know they'll be turned away when they show up to vote, many will simply not show up. Election dates and times are designed to suppress the votes of working people. Republicans don't like attributes of democracy, because they claim that most of us are too stupid to act like anything but a mob when we are allowed to assemble. Since that attitude also justifies manipulating voters, they wind up the ones stoking fear, anger and bigotry in mobs. We Democrats believe in participation. Republicans used to. Voter suppression is designed to intimidate people not to show up and vote. They want to turn away voters, but they don't want to appear to be so.

But what they are doing is voter turn away. The problem in states like this is this not so much low voter turnout. We combat it by turnout. They combat turnout by voter suppression:

It's not just Wisconsin. And these are only the overt acts. As we see in places like Virginia, with the parody of a recount that just occurred there, there is official election official misconduct going on. Difficult to prove, but obvious. We need uniform rules for election judging; ballots, protected rolls, process protections, bi(multi) partisan judging, audits and permanent record paper trails.

Further Reading and Sources

More on Voting Issues

Brennan Center: https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/separating-fact-fiction-voter-id-statistics

American Progress: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2016/11/11/292322/voter-suppression-laws-cost-americans-their-voices-at-the-polls/

Brookings: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/11/08/voter-suppression-in-u-s-elections/

ACLU: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/11/08/voter-suppression-in-u-s-elections/

Wisconsin:

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/10/wisconsin-shows-how-to-do-voter-suppression-right/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social

http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/26/wisconsin-voter-id-law-deterred-nearly-17-000-voting-uw-study-says/702026001/

Trump's Practice of the Big Lie

The Big lie is an old technique. I've written about it so many times in blog posts and similar I hardly need my references anymore: Orwell, Hannah Arendt, and of course the practitioners; Hitler, Stalin, Orwell, etc... The practitioners of the big lie are cagey about what they are doing. They will talk about it, but always in the context of defaming opponents. But Hannah Arendt:

Trump isn't that different from those who came before him. He calls his version of the Big Lie "Truthful Hyperbole". To him if it is supposed to be true one day, or he thinks he might be able to make it true. Then it is "Truthful Hypberbole." He calls it "truthful" because he can carry off the affectation of "truthiness" while telling his abusive lie. Lies are lies, not hyperbole. But to Trump...

...well who knows?

Mnuchin Subverts These United States

Steve Mnuchin stated;

"We can't have the Federal Government keep subsidizing the states."

Which is a very unconstitutional thing to say for two reasons:

1. The States fund the Federal Government.

   The Federal Government is a Federation of "The several states" and it has always been the regulatory arm of "them." So this is a very anti "states rights" statement... and abusive.

2. The States ceded the power to coin money in the Constitution and the power to issue notes as money. This was a delegation for the sake of efficiency and common-wealth.

Therefore the money power rests with the Federal Government, which in the Constitutional Government scheme is in service to These, not their tyrannical overseer. The Federal Government under the 14th amendment has some oversight rights as the collective will of the whole body of the people of the United States, but because states don't have the independent power to issue notes to pay their debts it should be the role of the Treasury through a well constituted Federal Reserve to front the money. Then taxes can collect any unmerited or unearned incomes from their spending on infrastructure and other citizens needs. Mnuchin's schema would treat them like Greece, allowing taxes and Wall Street to siphon off wealth and then punishing them for the vanishing tax receipts from a vanishing tax base. It would push all the costs of government onto States while continuing to let Wall Street eat the revenues.

Mnuchin's plan treats States as Colonies. He and Trump seem to be testing it on Puerto Rico. The combination of centralization and wealth siphoning by loan is toxic. We need to stop him. Mnuchin's idea is poisonous.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/12/treasury-secretary-mnuchin-says-state-and-local-tax-breaks-a-major-loophole-that-were-trying-to-close.html

I've got a lot more to say so I may update this post later with more information.

Still Wrong the Day it was Decided

Updated Commentary on Wrong the Day it was decided

The trouble with divining "original intent" is that it can lead to anachronistic interpretations and faulty reasoning beyond simply anachronism fallacy! The trouble with the terms "cannonical" and "anti-cannonical", is that they try to apply religious terminology to what is essentially a human endeavor. Legal systems are designed to bind society to the wisdom and prescriptions of accepted law. But human interpretation is still necessary and so, just as the Plessy Versus Fergussen or Dredd Scott decision were later overturned; our understanding of law can and must change as society evolves. The constitution is a dead document unless we who live apply its principles as well as its dictates rationally and are able to use legal process to change those that must change. In some cases that might mean the amendment process, in others it is a matter of definition. The author of "Wrong the Day it was Decided" sought in the concept of "Constitutional Historicism" to bring principles of textual analysis to judicial decision making.

A right to Vote but not to have your vote counted

It goes back to Bush V Gore

In 2000 and 2001 the Supreme Court affirmed the corrupt process of Florida and other states in Bush Versus Gore. In Bush Versus Gore, they conceded that they could stop a recount despite it being obvious that votes were not being counted:

“there could be no question that there were uncounted "legal votes"” [Bush V Gore]

Nevertheless they held that actually counting those "uncounted legal votes" violated the "equal protection clause of the constitution. Part of their justification was lack of time, due to SCOTUS stopping the recounts earlier. But the real corrupt heart of Bush Versus Gore, is something that is itself eitter unconstitutional or poorly constituted because they held that:

“ The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the electoral college. U. S. Const., Art. II, § 1 ” [Bush V Gore]

So while the constitution states that no one can be denied a right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, or sex;" there is no requirement for that vote to be counted in electing the President per Bush Versus Gore. The decision was so badly decided that all subsequent examples of corrupt election process are all predicated on it. The same corrupt Justices who decided it would decide that bribery is speech.

SCOTUS could over-rule the State Supreme Court on the grounds that their SCOTUS ordering a recount violated "the equal protection clause" despite the reality that the Constitution does give those powers and responsibilities to the States and they didn't have standing in the first place. They could over-rule our own Constitution and the State Constitution to disestablish existing laws while inventing new theories of bribery=speech. They'd go on to over-rule 100+ year old corruption laws on equally specious grounds. Sandra Day O'Connor ruled with the majority on this case, she later regretted it. But it gave us 8 years of Bush and that gave us a Court even more corrupt than the one she was on. It also gave us a fraudulent war, massive economic fraud and speculation and an economic collapse.

This decision started me on being alarmed about our politics. The alarm has only grown as the GOP has become more and more authoritarian and the Corrupt Court ratified their actions.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/531/98/case.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/11/just-how-bad-was-bush-v-gore/343247/

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1213-raskin-bush-v-gore-anniversary-20151213-story.html

To Govern utilities well local government must be involved

Governing Utilities well has requirements

To Govern utilities well:

1. Local Government must be involved in their management.
2. Utilities need to be part of Emergency Management.
3. We need republican forms to ensure they are well governed.
4. Republican Government is not "Socialism

Local Government is application of Principles of Subsidiarity

The Principle of Democratic Subsidiarity is based on the notion that:

“Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority.”

In Application in democratic societies, it is why the Constitution guarantees a "Republican form of Government to the States" and why the states should guarantee republican forms to local government. In application to public utility it why large monopolies and centralized utilities fail to deliver well. Utilities should be organized on republican forms with local governance. Central Governance is good for general, universal principles, but not for their specific application. One of the drawbacks of centralization is the converse of subsidiarity principles, that central government is often incompetent to handle local matters.