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Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Sunday, April 16, 2023

04-16-2023 - Results of Civil War, Declaration of Independence, Gerrymandering, State Legislatures, Abortion and the Supreme Court, and Christianity

 

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A Reminder to the Good Citizens and the State Governments of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia:


These are the words of the Declaration of Independence all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed’ 

These are the words that resulted in thirteen British colonies declaring themselves an independent nation in 1776.  Eighty-five years later, you, the Confederate States of America, attempted to deny these words and rebelled against the nation’s government.  A terrible war was fought and you lost.  Let me repeat that:  YOU LOST!  As difficult as it might seem, get that through your heads!  You started it and YOU LOST! 

That should never be forgotten.  It is tragic enough that your secession has been mostly forgiven.  It should be taught in your schools that ‘all men are created equal’ and that governments derive their just powers ‘from the consent of the governed.’  And that means all of the governed.  It is time to stop attempting to deny and rewrite the spirit of those words through political chicanery of which the prime example is gerrymandering.  Never forget that you tried to do that a century and a half ago with guns and YOU LOSTDo not attempt to do it now in State legislatures.

JL

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Gerrymandering

Like it or not, we have a ‘two party’ system.  The party in power can draw district borders in the State legislatures it controls to give to one party majorities in those State legislatures as well as in the House of Representatives in numbers significantly beyond the percentage of a State’s voters that supported that party.  That is undemocratic.  That is Gerrymandering’ and is a way of tearing fair representation apart.

It is done by squeezing the ‘other’ party’s voters into one or more illogically laid-out districts so their influence in the districts where they would normally belong is diminished.  That’s what gerrymandering does:  fixing the district borders so that the resulting composition of a legislative body is unrepresentative of the population.  It is wrong regardless of which Party does it when they have the opportunity.  (The process is named after Founding Father Elbridge Gerry and the resemblance of the shape of the  district involved ending up looking like a salamander.)

District borders must be drawn in a non-partisan manner.  And when they are, as is the case in some States, that State’s legislature, governor, or courts should not have the power to invalidate them.

JL

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State Legislatures as Foes of Democracy

Read more about how State legislatures are turning out to be foes of democracy, gerrymandering being only one of their tools.  See the New York Times article on this by clicking here or visiting https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/us/tennessee-house-republicans.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230413&instance_id=90088&nl=the-morning&regi_id=78918068&segment_id=130299&te=1&user_id=02fa158150d34dc186b01b1b8ec7a224

Tennessee is not the only place this is happening and it is very dangerous.  In many States, the legislatures are about to flush democracy down the tube.  In some, like Florida, they already have.

JL

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The Supreme Court, Abortion Drugs and Senator Feinstein

Contradictory lower court decisions regarding availability of the drugs necessary for non-surgical abortions will bring the matter before the same Supreme Court that invalidated Roe vs. Wade last year, leaving abortion legislation to the States.  From the above articles about State legislatures, we know about the dangerous directions where that can lead. 

I do not anticipate any radical change in the Supreme Court’s position on abortion, other than a short postponement of making a decision on these drugs. Therefore, it is crucial that the President expand the Court so that it is more representative of the people’s views on this issue by appointing several additional Justices.   Quickly.

They must be approved by the Senate, where the Democrats have a slim majority.  Right now that majority is not always available due to the illness of the Senate’s oldest member, California’s Diane Feinstein.  She will not run for re-election in 2024 but her presence is needed now to expand the Court.  Even now, many of the President’s judgeship appointments are on hold in the Judiciary Committee because of her absence.  I believe that she should immediately resign and be replaced by an appointee to be made by California’s Democratic governor Newsom to fill her seat until 2024. 

Expansion of the Supreme Court is the key to preserving abortion rights for women.  (And passing gun control legislation as well!)  But that can cause problems too, for Democrats.  Those two issues, if wedded to SCOTUS expansion, might jeopardize the Democratic Party’s chances in 2024, risking the votes of those who might feel Court expansion is a step too far.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt threatened SCOTUS expansion during the 1930’s but never went through with it.  This is an area where compromises should be made, but one must trust anyone with whom a deal is made … and few Republicans are sufficiently trustworthy in my opinion.

It is conceivable, once Feinstein is replaced, that the threat of expansion of the Supreme Court might suffice to soften its position, and possibly that of some State legislatures.  But that is a gamble on which I do not think the nation should hang its hopes. 

If that doesn't happen, and rapidly, I believe that Supreme Court expansion is the only way to go while it still is possible.  

It may not be after November, 2024, when many Democratic Senators in otherwise Republican States are up for re-election.

JL

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A Difficult, but Necessary, Word to Eliminate

One word that should be eliminated from all political dialogue is ‘Christian.’  

The First Amendment prevents Congress from making any law ‘respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise.’  That’s great!

But Christianity keeps getting involved in today’s politics. 

Too many Americans believe that because most of the Founding Fathers were Christian, that Christianity has a priority over other religions in this country.  It does not.  We are not a 'Christian country.'  Celebrating Christmas and Easter does not make us one.  And the mention of 'Nature's God,' a 'Creator,' or 'Divine Providence' in the Declaration of Independence does not!  The existence of a 'National Cathedral' in Washington, D.C. doesn't either.  It is totally privately funded.

It is an insult to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and those believing in other faiths, and of course to Atheists and Agnostics, to include 'Christian' in political dialogue as an adjective.   

Nominally, more Americans claim to have some degree of faith in some variety of Christianity than in any other religion, but that does not make this a Christian nation.  In Europe, this is not the case where ‘Christian’ is often tacked on to the name of political parties to give them greater support.  This is not so in the United States and never should be.  

The catering of Republicans to Evangelical Christians, the basing of one’s stand on abortion rights on a theological position, and efforts to support religious schools with taxpayers’ money are all un-American.  Legislation in these areas flirts with the ‘establishment’ of a religion as prohibited by the First Amendment.  They have no place on our political spectrum.

I would go so far, if I had my way, to ban, or even remove, quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament in public buildings.  And that includes the Capitol.  They belong in houses of worship but not in houses of government.

 JL

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Housekeeping

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 doAnd 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: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.   I think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though!   Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible.  If you click on the envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, (it looks like this:  ), you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses, along with a comment from you, each of which will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the ‘sidebar’ features such as access to the blog’s archives.

Either way will work, sending them that link, https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I recommend sending them the link. 

Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. 

                       

        Have a nice day.

 

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