Category Archives: History

How Obama Could Protect the Economy and Get Rid of Boehner at the Same Time

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The 14th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War. It deals with issues resulting from that conflict. Its most famous language is the so-called “equal protection” clause: no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”.

The rebellious Southern states were required to ratify the 14th Amendment in order to regain representation in Congress. Of course, since they were traitors (a.k.a. “rebels”), Southern politicians bitterly opposed the 14th Amendment. How dare the Federal government require that all persons, including former slaves, receive “equal protection of the laws”!

Now, 152 years after the Southern rebellion, we are facing a new crisis, primarily instigated by politicians from the same Southern states. This time it would be a financial and economic crisis, brought about by America’s failure to pay its debts. Nobody knows how the crisis would play out, but since bonds issued by the Treasury Department are the foundation of our nation’s banking system and play a vital role in the banking systems of other countries, it’s likely that America’s failure to honor its debts would do more damage to the global economy than the horrendous financial crisis of 2008.

The Constitution makes no mention of a debt ceiling. That limitation on the Treasury Department’s ability to take on new debt (i.e. to borrow money by selling government bonds) was foolishly imposed by Congress in the Liberty Bond Act of 1917. With that law, Congress gave itself the authority to set a maximum dollar amount for the federal debt, despite the fact that it’s Congress that tells the President how much money to spend when it approves the Federal budget.

Since the members of Congress are relatively sensible for the most part, they periodically raise the debt limit so the Federal government has enough money to do the various things the law requires it to do (make Medicare payments, buy cruise missiles, etc.).

If Congress refuses to raise the debt limit, therefore, the President is caught in a dilemma. He either has to borrow more money without Congressional approval or not pay what the government owes to bondholders, employees, government contractors, retirees and so on — thereby doing untold damage to the world’s economy and our own national security.

Fortunately, the 14th Amendment includes a clause devoted to the national debt. Section 4 of the amendment states:

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Legal scholars are now arguing about which law the President should obey. I’m not a legal scholar, but I have no doubt that the appropriate thing for the President (any President) to do if Congress fails to raise the debt limit, thereby “questioning the validity” of the public debt, is to obey the Constitution and borrow whatever funds are necessary to pay the government’s bills.

The Constitution, after all, is the “supreme law of the land”. Even crazy Tea Party people claim to honor the Constitution. The Constitution, which requires the President to “preserve, protect and defend” it, should take precedence over the Liberty Bond Act of 1917.

The last time there was a Republican-generated debt ceiling crisis, the President ruled out the 14th Amendment as a solution. At yesterday’s press conference, however, he mentioned the 14th Amendment but didn’t rule it out. He did say it isn’t a “magic bullet” and made the valid point that bonds issued without clear Congressional approval might be of questionable value. For example, buyers would probably demand higher interest rates before purchasing such government securities.

Nevertheless, it still seems that the most prudent course would be for the President to ignore the debt ceiling and continue to issue government bonds. In fact, it might be a wonderful strategy.

One likely outcome is that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives would impeach the President, just like they impeached President Clinton. But the Democrats in the Senate would never convict Obama of “high crimes and misdemeanors” for using his emergency powers to protect our national security. In fact, it’s very likely that the House Republicans would become even less popular than they are now, leading to gains for Democrats in the 2014 mid-term election.

Some recent polling suggests the Democrats might pick up as many as 30 seats in the House if the election were held today. Since they only need 18 more seats to become the majority party in the House, Obama needs to do whatever he can to maintain the Republicans’ unpopularity. Goading them into a misguided impeachment vote could do the trick, giving the Democrats control of both houses of Congress for the last two years of his Presidency. No more Speaker of the House John Boehner!

The Republicans would still have the filibuster in the Senate, of course, but that’s a topic for another day.

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

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If you enjoy a good crime movie, you might consider watching The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. It’s in German and was directed by Fritz Lang, who made Metropolis and M and later emigrated to the U.S. It’s old-fashioned in some ways, which is understandable, since it was completed in 1933. 

But there are many aspects of it that feel current. A criminal mastermind, Dr. Mabuse (in German, that’s pronounced “Mah-boo-zeh”) has lost his mind and is locked up in an insane aslyum. He spends his days and nights writing perfectly conceived plans for various crimes.

Unfortunately, Dr. Mabuse is being cared for by a physician, Professor Baum, who is almost as crazy as he is. Professor Baum collects the plans Dr. Mabuse tosses on the floor and uses them to build a criminal empire.

Professor Baum eventually directs his criminal minions to launch a crime wave like no other. He orders them to blow up a chemical plant, destroy food supplies, poison the water, create epidemics and debase the currency, all with the intention of terrorizing the population:

When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror, and when chaos has become supreme law, then the time will have come for the empire of crime.

There is a quirky but clever police inspector leading the investigation and a disgraced detective who tries to redeem himself. A suspect is interrogated. Ballistic evidence is considered. A strange message is decoded. An early version of a SWAT team is summoned to deal with barricaded criminals. A couple is locked in a room and told they only have three hours to live. There are explosions and a car chase. There are jokes and special effects.

Aside from the crisp black and white photography, the dated decor and the subtitles, this movie could be playing at a multiplex near you!

On top of that, the movie has political overtones. Fritz Lang was seriously concerned about the Nazis taking power. When the crazy Professor Baum issues his commands, he sounds like a dictator giving threatening orders to his subordinates. It’s said that Lang used actual quotations from the Nazis in the movie’s script.

Before The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was released, the German minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, ordered it banned. He claimed that it would incite public disorder and decrease the public’s confidence in the government. He may have had a point, considering that the film is about an extraordinary criminal organization and the government in question was run by Adolph Hitler.

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The Cold Civil War and the South Rising Again

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It’s tragic that we have to keep fighting the Civil War, even though it’s been a cold war for the last 150 years. Witness Reconstruction’s failure, white Southern insurgency, lynchings, Jim Crow laws, “separate but equal”, the Ku Klux Klan, chain gangs, filibusters, Lester Maddox, “right to work” laws, the Tea Party, voter suppression, and so on.

But that’s the situation we’ll be in until the biological and cultural descendants of those 19th century Southern traitors (also known as “rebels”) lose their ability to screw up America.

That blessed day will begin to dawn when there are enough African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans in Texas and Florida to make those state consistently blue. When that eventually happens, the rest of us should finally be protected from the South ever rising again.

It’s the Civil War Minus the Armed Rebellion Part

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Michael Lind grew up in Texas, which apparently gives him an advantage in understanding Tea Party-ish people.

Lind argues that there are a number of common misconceptions about Tea Party supporters. First, they aren’t merely a group of ideological extremists. Second, they aren’t populists – the average Tea Party supporter is more affluent than the national average. Third, despite their silly costumes and bizarre beliefs, they aren’t stupid or uneducated – they’re actually better educated than the average voter.

If the Tea Party isn’t best understood as a case of “abstract ideological extremism”, “working-class populism” or “ignorance and stupidity”, how should it be understood?

According to Lind, the Tea Party is simply the latest example of white right-wingers, mostly Southern, doing whatever they can to maintain their privileged position. He prefers referring to this movement as the “Newest Right”. They are merely the traditional right wing “adopting new strategies in response to changed circumstances”. The social base of the Newest Right consists of “local notables”, i.e.: “provincial elites whose power and privileges are threatened from above by a stronger central government they do not control and from below by the local poor and the local working class”.

Basically, it’s a continuation of the Civil War carried on by mostly Southern county supervisors and car dealers, “second-tier people on a national level but first-tier people in their states and counties and cities”, without the armed rebellion part.

Before describing their current strategies, Lind outlines some history:

For nearly a century, from the end of Reconstruction, when white Southern terrorism drove federal troops out of the conquered South, until the Civil Rights Revolution, the South’s local notables maintained their control over a region of the U.S. larger than Western Europe by means of segregation, disenfranchisement, and bloc voting and the filibuster at the federal level. Segregation created a powerless black workforce and helped the South’s notables pit poor whites against poor blacks. The local notables also used literacy tests and other tricks to disenfranchise lower-income whites as well as blacks in the South, creating a distinctly upscale electorate. Finally, by voting as a unit in Congress and presidential elections, the “Solid South” sought to thwart any federal reforms that could undermine the power of Southern notables at the state, county and city level. When the Solid South failed, Southern senators made a specialty of the filibuster, the last defense of the embattled former Confederacy.

It shouldn’t be surprising, therefore, to see Republicans using similar methods now in order to maintain their economic position and insure a supply of cheap, compliant labor. Lind highlights these four strategies (although there are others, such as providing limited funding for public education):

Use partisan and racial gerrymandering to maintain a Solid South;
Employ the filibuster and the “Hastert” rule to sabotage Congress;
Disenfranchise politically unreliable voters; and
Localize and privatize federal programs.

It’s an excellent article if you want to understand today’s political environment:

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/06/tea_party_radicalism_is_misunderstood_meet_the_newest_right/

At the Globalist, Stephan Richter places the government shutdown and debt ceiling mess in the same historical context:

One of the biggest hoaxes of American history is that the Civil War ended back in 1865. Unfortunately, it has not ended yet. What was achieved back then was an armistice, similar to the situation between the two Koreas.

As the current logjam in the U.S. Congress makes plain, the Civil War is still very present in today’s America – and with virulence that most other civilized nations find as breathtaking as it is irresponsible.

The reason why the Civil War was declared finished, according to the history books, is the military defeat of the South and its secessionist forces. But can anyone seriously doubt that the same anti-Union spirit is still to be heard loud and clear in the halls of the U.S. Congress today?

http://www.theglobalist.com/u-s-civil-war-continues/

Karl Marx: His Life and Environment by Isaiah Berlin

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Karl Marx was a monumental figure. I knew that he spent years doing research in the library of the British Museum and wrote several dense volumes, as well as the Communist Manifesto. I didn’t realize that he was personally involved in left-wing politics. He was the leading revolutionary of his time, moving from country to country, attending meetings, writing letters, advising other communists and socialists throughout Europe, Russia and even the United States (he was even a regular contributor to a New York newspaper).

This is the 4th edition of Isaiah Berlin’s well-written biography of Marx, first published in 1939. Berlin, the famous British philosopher and historian of ideas, presents Marx as a brilliant thinker but a difficult person who devoted his life to bringing about the downfall of capitalism.

What is especially striking is that Marx strongly believed in gathering mountains of evidence in support of his political and economic theories. In that regard, he was a social scientist and an empiricist. Yet he labored in support of an idealistic vision of a future after capitalism that seems terribly unrealistic.

It was conceivable that the proletariat would rise up against the capitalists and the bourgeoisie, especially if a group of revolutionaries could seize power, as they surprisingly did in Russia (of all places). But it was a tremendous leap to think that the state would eventually wither away and the workers would create a functioning communist society. “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need” is an ideal that sounds rational and even practical, but Marx doesn’t seem to have given enough thought to how such an ideal would be implemented. At least, Berlin never gives the impression that Marx spent much time thinking about the communist future. He was much too busy trying to overcome the capitalist present.