 |
| Lincoln and Douglas in 1858 |
A House Divided Cannot Stand
The Civil War ostensibly remedied that ‘split,’ but really, did
it resolve deeper ideological differences between the contending sides? Nope.
The issue today is not one single thing, as it was in 1858,
but whether the views of a minority of Americans should prevail over the views
of a majority as to the role of government. That boils down to how well our
government's structure enables the preservation of American democracy, the enabling
of the people to make decisions in the best interest of the majority of them,
one of the reasons the original thirteen colonies broke away from England in
the first place.
Should that structure (which includes an unbalanced electoral
college, two senators for every state regardless of population, legal
gerrymandering, all powers not in Constitution being left to the States, etc.)
be revised in a more democratic direction or left as it is? Until this is resolved by legislation or
Constitutional amendment, we remain a ‘house divided.’
JL
* *
* *
Catering to the Right-Wing - Echoing South Pacific
A Federal judge recently ruled that that Florida’s Governor DeSantis violated the Constitution, stepping on the elected Hillsborough County (Tampa) prosecutor’s First Amendment rights, by firing him for saying that he wasn’t going to chase after violators of Florida’s abortion restrictions. But the judge went on to say that he was not in a position to reinstate that fired Democratic prosecutor, enabling DeSantis to claim the decision as a victory for himself. DeSantis manages to get away with many such violations, stepping on long-standing Constitutional rights. What he does is never in the interest of the people, but always to lock in the votes of right-wing conservatives.
So it is with the Republican majorities in the
House of Representatives and many State legislatures. Whatever appeals to those on the far right is
what gets done. Their votes are crucial
to such politicians.
No matter how damning the clear
evidence that is revealed in courtrooms and in the media every day may be, it
does not change the convictions of right-wing supporters of Republicans in
Congress and in State Houses, like DeSantis.
Why? They remain motivated by fears and hatreds fed to them by those whose
aims do not include serving the best interests of the citizens of this great
country.
Even FoxNews' 'mea culpa' and
Alex Jones' being destroyed in Court doesn't matter to them. If those fears and hatreds make them comfortable, they
will believe anything.
These lyrics, written by
Oscar Hammerstein II, from the ground-breaking musical ‘South Pacific,’ say it
all. And that is why control over what
is ‘taught’ in schools is becoming a political issue in many parts
of this country.
“You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!”
JL
* * * *
Two More Shootings and a Daytona Tragedy
This time in California. We never learn. The number of
weapons in circulation and available in this country makes these tragedies
possible. Mental issues, vengeance, gang warfare … whatever
… the availability of guns makes such killings possible.
And I just read of the woman who walked into her
terminally ill husband’s room in a Daytona Beach hospital and shot him dead. They had earlier agreed to do this when the
death of one of them became imminent, the family’s gun being more readily
accessible to them than a less bloody fatal poison to carry out an agreed-upon
murder and suicide pact. She was also supposed to take her own life as well but
couldn’t quite bring herself to squeeze the trigger a second time. This tragedy, and it is a tragedy, goes back
to these retirees having a gun in the house to use in carrying out their
agreement, like a common piece of household equipment. Washers, dryers, stoves,
TVs, aspirin in the medicine chest, etc., guns … all ‘normal’ to all too many
Americans. That is wrong! (She was arrested after an hours-long
standoff in the hospital, where other patients had been endangered by this lady
pointing her pistol at anyone trying to enter her dead husband’s room.)
No one wants to take away weapons from hunters,
target shooters or even for personal protection at homes or businesses, and
those rights must be preserved, but as a starter, the Second Amendment must be either repealed, replaced, or at
least significantly modified by Supreme Court decision, and not in the evil and misguided direction
of the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s 2008 misinterpretation of that Amendment.
Poor Justice Scalia, it turns out, was unaware
that he was Satan’s unwitting representative on the Supreme Court of the United
States back then. That decision has caused hundreds, if not thousands, of
unnecessary deaths in this country. Blood is on the hands of the Justices who
voted to make them possible, but especially on those of the late Justice Scalia
who wrote the opinion in D.C. vs Heller that, in effect, erased the first
thirteen words of the Second Amendment.
(We are the only nation in the world where there
are more guns than people!)
JL
* *
* *
Great Wealth and What to Do About It –
Redistribution via Taxation?
The January 23 issue of the New Yorker
magazine includes an article about a wealth manager and her relationship with a
particular client. Forgetting the
details of the particular situation written about, the article points up the truly
unbelievable wealth which has been accumulated by some families and individuals
in this country, and the steps, some entirely legal, some illegal, and some ‘on
the fence,’ their wealth managers take to preserve this wealth for succeeding
generations.
I am not a communist, but no person should be able
to acquire that much wealth in our country and pass it on to their heirs
untouched. That supposedly went out with
the ‘Middle Ages.’ We no longer have
royalty and aristocracy in our country. Families should not get away with
having many billions of dollars of assets, and palatial dwellings all over the
world. Taxes are supposed to have some leveling effect on the distribution of
wealth in this country. The jaw-dropping
extent of such wealth may be the reason that in this, the richest nation in the
world, poverty still exists and there are homeless people sleeping on the
streets.
From the unbelievably great wealth described in
article, I get the feeling that such homelessness and poverty might easily be eliminated
if a family’s accumulation of wealth were limited to something ‘reasonable’
like a measly five hundred million dollars or so, and the excess paid in
taxes. (Many corporate CEOs make close
to that each year in their annual compensation, including bonuses and stock
options, while many of their employees earn a minimum wage, or not much more
than it.)
Wealth redistribution, via taxes paying for
government benefits for those who need them, is the logical solution. Estate taxes were supposed to solve this
problem but wealth managers easily find ways to avoid them so that money never
finds its way into the pockets of the rest of the population. It is just rolled into the family’s next
generation, minimally taxed if taxed at all.
I feel this ‘leveling’ is something the government should be doing by
its tax policy … and possibly why the Republicans in the House are united against
properly funding the Internal Revenue Service.
The wealthy donors who finance the candidacy of many
in Congress (and that includes some
Democrats as well as Republicans) want it to stay the way it is, keeping the
government (and that means the IRS) as far away as possible from their wealth
and without the tools to get closer to it.
And don’t tell me that is communism
JL
*
* * *
I Keep Writing Letters
Content of a Letter I sent to the Palm Beach Post on Jan.
24
The article in
Tuesday's Post about Governor DeSantis' administration rejecting the
new Advanced Placement course on African American Studies for use in
Florida schools mentioned only one long-time Republican person of color
switching to 'independent' because of that. Every Republican Black
official in Florida, either elected or appointed, should follow suit and switch
their registration to either 'No Party Affiliation,' or Democratic. At a
minimum, they should not be supporting Governor DeSantis. Those that continue
to do so have a serious problem with their priorities and should open their eyes.
I will let you know if they publish it.
JL
* *
* *
Two ‘Not to Be Missed’ Opinions
Find Time to Read Them
And speaking of the Palm Beach Post, two columns appeared in its January 25 edition. One reproduced Heather Cox Richardson’s recent ‘Letters from an American’ blog posting explaining how abortion first became an issue during Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign, a year before Roe vs Wade. Find it at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-21-2023 or CLICK HERE.
The other, originally an opinion piece in the New
York Times by former Senator Gary Hart, a failed seeker of the Democratic
presidential nomination almost half a century ago, severely criticizes House Speaker
McCarthy’s vengeful efforts to investigate the ‘weaponization’ of government
against conservatives. Check it out at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/opinion/church-committee-republicans.html or CLICK HERE.
JL
* *
* *
Two Items of Interest:
·
Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting
you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email
address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to
someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly
alerted.
You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com
Forwarding
Postings: And of course, please
forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. Google
Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, now makes that very
easy. If you click on the envelope with the arrow at the conclusion of
every posting, (it looks like this: 
) ,you
will have the opportunity to list a number of
email addresses, along with a comment from you, each of which will
receive a link to the full blog that you now are reading, with all of its bells
and whistles. Or you can just tell folks to check out the blog by
visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com
or by providing a link to that address in your email
to them.
Either way will work, sending them the link above or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.
No comments:
Post a Comment