By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
“We pledge ourselves to use all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its implementation.
-The Southern Manifesto, Cong. Rec., 84th Cong. 2d Session, Vol. 102, part 4 (March 12, 1956)
‘This was an activist court that you saw today. Anytime the Supreme Court renders something constitutional that is clearly unconstitutional, that undermines the credibility of the Supreme Court. I do believe the court’s credibility was undermined severely today.”
-Michele Bachmann (R. Minn.), June 26 2012
Most people are familiar with the opinion in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al., 349 U.S. 483 (1954), in which a unanimous Supreme Court summarily outlawed public school segregation by tersely declaring, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” 349 U.S. at 495. But many people do not know that Brown involved a consolidation of cases from four states. The “et al.” in the style refers to decisions on similar facts in Delaware, South Carolina and Virginia. And the response of Virginia to the ruling in Brown provides an interesting comparison with the actions leading to the current government shutdown.
In 1951 the population of Prince Edward County, Virginia was approximately 15,000, more than half of whom were African-American. The county maintained two high schools to accommodate 386 black students and 346 white students. Robert R. Moton High School lacked adequate science facilities and offered a more restricted curriculum than the high school reserved for white students. It had no gym, showers or dressing rooms, no cafeteria and no restrooms for teachers. Students at Moton High were even required to ride in older school buses.
Suit was filed in federal district court challenging the Virginia constitutional and statutory provisions mandating segregated public schools. Although the trial court agreed that the school board had failed to provide a substantially equal education for African-American students, it declined to invalidate the Virginia laws, concluding that segregation was not based “upon prejudice, on caprice, nor upon any other measureless foundation,” but reflected “ways of life in Virginia” which “has for generations been a part of the mores of the people.” Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, 103 F. Supp. 337, 339 (E.D. Va. 1952). Instead, the court ordered the school board to proceed with the completion of existing plans to upgrade the curriculum, physical plant and buses at Moton High School. When the plaintiffs took an appeal from the decision, the Democratic machine that had for many years controlled Virginia politics under the firm hand of Sen. Harry Byrd had little reason to believe that “ways of life” that had prevailed since the end of the Reconstruction era would soon be declared illegal.
When the Brown decision was announced, the reaction in Virginia was shock, disbelief and anger. Reflecting the prevailing attitudes, the Richmond News Leader railed against “the encroachment of the Federal government, through judicial legislation, upon the reserved powers of the States.” The Virginia legislature adopted a resolution of “interposition” asserting its right to “interpose” between unconstitutional federal mandates and local authorities under principles of state sovereignty. And Sen. Byrd organized a campaign of opposition that came to be known as “Massive Resistance.”
In August of 1954 a commission was appointed to formulate a plan to preserve segregated schools. Late in 1955, it presented its recommendations, including eliminating mandatory school attendance, empowering local school boards to assign students to schools and creating special tuition grants to enable white students to attend private schools. Enabling legislation was quickly adopted and “segregation academies” began forming around the state. Subsequent legislation went even further by prohibiting state funding of schools that chose to integrate.
In March of 1956, 19 senators and 77 house members from 11 southern states signed what is popularly known as “The Southern Manifesto,” in which they declared, “Even though we constitute a minority in the present Congress, we have full faith that a majority of the American people believe in the dual system of government which has enabled us to achieve our greatness and will in time demand that the reserved rights of the States and of the people be made secure against judicial usurpation.”
Throughout this period the Prince Edward County schools remained segregated, but when various court rulings invalidated Virginia’s various attempts to avoid integration, the school board took its final stand. It refused to authorize funds to operate any schools in the district, and all public schools in the county were simply closed, and remained closed from 1959 to 1964.
There are striking similarities between Sen. Byrd’s failed plan of Massive Resistance and Republican efforts to prevent implementation of the Affordable Care Act. There was widespread confidence among conservatives that the Supreme Court would declare the Act unconstitutional. When that did not occur, legislators such as Michele Bachmann, quoted above, attempted to deny the legitimacy of the Court’s ruling. Brent Bozell went further, denouncing Chief Justice Roberts as “a traitor to his own philosophy,” hearkening back to the days when southern roadsides were replete with billboards demanding the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren.
The House of Representatives has taken over 40 votes to repeal the ACA, quixotic efforts pursued for reasons known only to John Boehner and his colleagues. And in accordance with the Virginia legislative model, the House has attempted to starve the ACA by eliminating it from funding bills. Following the failure of these efforts, Republicans have elected to pursue the path ultimately taken by the school board of Prince Edward County and have shut down the government.
Even the strategy followed by Republicans is largely a southern effort. Approximately 60% of the Tea Party Caucus is from the South. Nineteen of the 32 Republican members of the House who have been instrumental in orchestrating the shutdown are from southern states. It is hardly surprising therefore, that the current impasse is characterized by the time-honored southern belief in nullification theory as a proper antidote to disfavored decisions by a congressional majority.
In reflecting upon the experience of Virginia many years later, former Gov. Linwood Holton noted, “Massive resistance … served mostly to exacerbate emotions arrayed in a lost cause.” Republicans would do well to ponder the wisdom in that observation.
“Folks in the South understandably have never liked the idea of any president turning the guns of the United States military on his own citizens in order to assert the supremacy of the Washington bureaucracy over local city halls.” — Marc
I can remember as a youth in the 1960s watching on television as the state and local police from several southern states turned their snarling dogs, water canon, and riot stcks on peacefully protesting black civil-righs marchers — in order to assert the supremacy of the “local city halls” and state bureaucracies owned and operated by a tiny minority of wealthy southern elitists. So please do not weary my eyes and ears with more plantation-owner drivel about how much those putative white “folks” in the south value “human liberty.” Please have the honesty to specify precisely which wealthy white oligarch’s “liberty” you truly treasure and which poor white, poor black, poor hispanic — meaning poor working person’s — freedom you couldn’t give a damn about. “Local city halls,” my aching ass.
Our Declaration of Independence specifically pronounces the equality of all mankind. Our Constitution codifies those inalienable rights into universal law. And that universal equality (pardon the redundancy) transcends race, class, gender, means of earning a livlihood, or geographic locale of residence. Every American has the same rights as every other American, no matter where they reside. The elite-serving dog-whistlers can try and proclaim with a straight face that “State Sovereignty” does not really mean “Elite Oligarch Supremacy” and that “Right to Work” doesn’t really mean “No Right to Unionize,” or that “Americans for a Clean Environment” doesn’t really stand for “Cabal of Corporate Industrial Polluters,” but the ugly reality of what those time-dishonored, cynical euphemisms seek to mask has become too glaringly obvious to hide using only cheap abstract rhetoric. No “local city hall” has the right to deny any American his or her American rights. And any “local city hall” that tries to disenfranchize an American citizen can and should expect the State National Guard — not the U.S. military (currently spread all over the globe “helping” something or other) — to enforce the American rights of the American citizen, just as state militias did in integrating public schools back in the 1960s.
And as for the sanctity of “local city halls,” I have read of Republican state governors who simply appoint “economic managers” or their equivalents to run local affairs, simply dismissing the locally elected governments without a moment’s hesitation. So, again, please do not make a further fool of yourself shilling for the Republican party and its laughable pretensions to give a damn about “local city halls.” Just follow the money to the top and you’ll find what passes for “sovereignty,” not just in the neo-confederate south, but in many other downwardly dropping locales throughout the United States. As Sheldon Wolin writes in Democracy Inc., Managed Democracy and Inverted Totalitarianism:
“The Republican Party is not, as advertised, conservative but radically oligarchical. Programmatically it exists to advance corporate economic and political interests, and to protect and promote inequalities of opportunity and wealth.”
And in all fairness to evangelical fascists and neo-feudalists in “the South,” the contemporary Democratic Party, as Chris Hedges and others have truly noted, pretty much exists to discourage, discredit, and dismember (see the late Occupy Movement) genuine populist movements of reform so that the Republican Party will not have to worry about any genuinely “leftist” movements for equality gaining the slightest traction in the United States. The Real Money Oligarchy knows it can always Buy a Republican or Rent a Democrat — or both at the same time.
And I’ll beleive the U.S. military “turning its guns” on a “local city hall” in America — unlike the ones in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq or Afghanistan — when and if I ever see such a thing. The “local city halls” in America would have to demand universal suffrage, a living minimum wage, the right to collective bargaining by unions, universal public education, a single payer national health care system, minimal retirement income, and dismantling of the Military/Industrial State for anything like that to happen. As long as the “local city hall” does what the Local Elite Oligarchy demands, then the local thug cops will probably suffice for mob-control of les miserables.
smallguvguy:
The issue is not whether bad laws should be changed. No one has made that argument. The point is that the Constitution provides methods for amending or repealing laws. Neo-secessionist temper tantrums are not mentioned among those methods.
So the ACA is settled, immutable, law. Just like DOMA? All bad laws must be removed or changed. the ACA forces me to purchase more insurance coverage than I want from corporations that I do not like at a higher cost to me. Bad laws must be ended or changed. Sorry fanbois
Elaine,
I watched that video showing that the Republicans changed the rules to prevent a vote being taken to reopen the government. Very predictable and very sad.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/10/14/ugly-rebel-yell-in-front-of-the-white-house/ If you want to curdle the blood of an African American and send a message of menace without resorting to burning a cross on the lawn or marching around in white sheets all one need do is wave the Confederate flag. So imagine my revulsion at the sight of one outside the front gates of the White House.
Michael Ashmore of Hooks, Tex., was among the many who converged on Washington for the “Million Vet March on the Memorials” to protest the government shutdown. This was the event where former half-term governor reality television star and best-selling author turned conservative gadfly Sarah Palin said, “Our vets have proven that they have not been timid, so we will not be timid in calling out any who would use our military, our vets, as pawns in a political game.” Applauding her self-awareness would be the height of irony — and sarcasm.
The protest and some of the barricades placed at the World War II Memorial then moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. And it was there that Ashmore waved his Confederate flag. A symbol of Southern resistance and white supremacy unfurled in front of the home of the first black president of the United States. As Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg View and the Atlantic correctly said on Twitter yesterday, “In many parts of America, waving a Confederate flag outside the home of a black family would be considered a very hostile act.”
Can’t get my post published. I didn’t put a link in it because that seemed to be a problem before.
I am submitting an alternative to good cop/bad cop. You know, the financial industry has been gambling even more since 2008. I’m guessing they are in the mix here, big time. If all you can see is good cop/bad cop, you may be missing something really big and important.
Wall Street Bets a Quadrillion of Everybody Else’s Money
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“Even if the whole planet were offered as collateral, it could not cover Wall Street’s bets.”
The clock is ticking, we are told, on the “good faith and credit” of the United States government, which might technically be unable to pay its bills after October 17 if the two corporate parties don’t make a deal on the debt limit. Congressional Republicans and the White House are “playing Russian roulette with the global economy,” says an editorial in the Dallas Morning News, warning of impending “economic Armageddon” as financial markets “crater,” the economy stalls and interest on future federal borrowing skyrockets.
Given that capitalism has entered a terminal stage of acute and escalating crises, the Dallas editorialists may be right; anything could set off another spasm of financial mayhem in a system that is ever more unstable. However, it is the “markets” – a euphemism for the financial capitalist class – that are the ultimate source of instability, the folks who play Russian roulette 24-7 and have dragged humanity to a place where an actual Armageddon is only a twirl of the chamber away. In this game, everybody’s head is in play.
It is proper that the corporate press speak of the impending fiscal threat – a minor one, in the maelstrom of crises that beset the system – in gambling terms. An increase of interest rates by a few basis points (fractions of a percent) on trillions of borrowed dollars amounts to quite a chunk of public money, to be paid directly into the accounts of these very same private “markets” that are supposedly biting their nails with anxiety over the budget. The Dallas Morning News and its fellow corporate propaganda spores spread the myth that the “markets” (bankers, hedge funds, etc.) crave stability, when the vital statistics of the real world of finance capitalism scream the opposite.
The Lords of Capital (the “markets”) are pure gamblers who have transformed the global financial marketplace into a machinery of perpetual uncertainty, in which all the wealth of the world is bet many times over by people who don’t actually own it, in a casino whose operators scheme against each other as well as their patrons, most of whom are not even aware that they are in the game – much less, that it is Russian roulette.
“Derivatives are valued at six times more than the total accumulated wealth of the world.”
The notional value of derivative financial instruments is now estimated at $1.2 quadrillion – that is, one thousand two hundred trillion dollars. This statistic is fantastic in every sense of the word, amounting to 16.7 times the Gross World Product, which is the value of all the goods and services produced per year by every man, woman and child on the planet: $71.83 trillion. Derivatives are valued at six times more than the total accumulated wealth of the world, including all global stock markets, insurance funds, and family wealth: $200 trillion.
The great bulk of known derivative deals are held by banks that are considered too big to be allowed to fail, with the top four banks accounting for more than 90 percent of the exposure: J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs.
We are told that derivatives are simply bets between knowledgeable partners – hedges against loss – and that every time one of these financial institutions loses, another gains, so that there is no net loss or threat of global collapse. But that’s a lie. Never in the history of the world has finance capital so dominated the real economy, and only in the past two decades have derivatives been so central to finance capitalism. The players do not know what they are doing, nor do they care. The meltdown of 2008 was caused primarily by derivatives, requiring a bailout in the tens of trillions of dollars that is still ongoing, with the Federal Reserve buying up securities that no one would purchase – that is, bet on – otherwise. Yet, the universe of derivatives deals has grown much larger than in 2008, effectively untouched by President Obama’s so-called financial reforms.
The casino has swallowed the system. The sums the players are betting are not only far larger than the value of the rest of their portfolios, but six times larger than the combined assets of every human institution and family on Earth, and almost 17 times bigger than the worth of humankind’s yearly output. Even if the whole planet were offered as collateral, it could not cover Wall Street’s bets.
“Detroit has been rendered a failed city by the full range of derivatives and securitization.”
The events of 2008 demonstrated that derivatives collapses, like other speculative financial events, behave as cascades of consequences, rather than orderly “resolutions.” Derivatives deals infest or overhang every nook and cranny of the U.S. and other “mature” economies, poisoning pension systems and municipal finance structures. Detroit has been rendered a failed city by the full range of derivatives and securitization. When the casino is the economy, everyone is forced to play, and the poor go broke first….(from Black Agenda Report)
BarkinDog,
The four words that are forbidden:
b-word (female dog)
b-word (child of unmarried parents)
f-word
a-word (everyone has one, not an opinion)
Your Southern Strategy comment contained one of these words. Please edit and resubmit.
I really enjoyed reading the legal background on these cases and several issues came to mind. First, we must point to the “often times” unlawfully instituted and enforced tax, the Federal Personal Income Tax used as a pretense of funding the ACA, as another poorly opinioned decision. How can a law be enacted, based on a tax that only applies to a very small segment of society, yet used to enforce mandatory participation by the majority of Citizens of the several States. Prosecutorial and Judicial corruption is the only thing continuing the enforcement of the Federal Individual Income Tax, when applied to most Citizens of the States. See https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!topic/harrietrobbins/4OTvGSWkYU4
Second, integration does not appear to have solved the problems of the lack of resources provided to schools whose participants are from the lower socio-economic strata’s within our society and race does not appear to have much relevance. Even though poverty levels in Blacks and Latinos are high, poor predominately white schools also lack equal resources to their wealthier counterparts. If you’re poor, the public school you go to will most often times have less resources available, than those schools where the participants are from a higher socio-economic strata. It is easily proven, to contend that much of what public education has attempted to do has not succeeded. Truancy, education quality, drop out and poverty rates surely have not been improved.
I know I write things that are quite unpopular for many and I do so to attempt to destabilize the belief systems of those perhaps unfamiliar with alternative ideology as main stream media does not generally relay them. I also do it to advance/destabilize my own belief system with contrary or supportive information. The internet is allowing us this opportunity and we must take advantage.
I also find it interesting that there are those that appear to ignore the Constitution and/or the numerous abrogations by the Legislature and Courts over our history, when it fits their agenda, and latch onto it’s founding principles with zeal, when it does not and/or vice versa.
It is easy to conclude, once we created public education under the guise of the general welfare clause, it has opened the door for the total central planning of our society by government, in almost all facets of our lives, under the same doctrine. There is an old saying in economics, that you generally get more government than you pay for, and the annual and total debt is an affirmation of this principle. With government we must be very careful what you ask for.
Elaine, Thanks for the Huff Post article on the new rule passed by the House on the eve of the shutdown. I had no idea that Kantor (or his designee) is the only one allowed to bring a bill up for a vote.
Doesn’t sound much like democracy to me. How do these people manage to look themselves in the mirror each morning?
OS,
Thanks for the history behind the term, “Democrat Party”. I didn’t know it went back that far. I know that contemporary “Publicans” are trying to change the Democratic label, but I’m not sure why. I find it troubling when respectable news outlets, like NPR, use the term.
Paul whined: “Isn’t in interesting that the “enlightened” people keep using the term “Tea Bagger”? Why do you have to use that term? Does it make you feel better?”
————————————
Just calling it like we see it, Paul. It’s pretty tame compared with the vile, hateful, and ignorant rhetoric Tea Baggers are spitting out of their mouths.
Larry Klayman Tells Obama ‘To Put The Quran Down’ At Veterans Rally
The Huffington Post
By Ashley Alman
Posted: 10/13/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/13/larry-klayman-obama-quran_n_4094589.html
Excerpt:
At a veteran-led rally that hit the World War II Memorial, the National Mall and the White House on Sunday, one tea party rallier had choice words for President Barack Obama, blaming him for the government shutdown and calling on him to step down.
Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, a conservative political advocacy group, said the country is “ruled by a president who bows down to Allah,” and “is not a president of ‘we the people.'”
“I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come up with his hands out,” he said.
Klayman was joined by a group of veterans protesting the memorial closures that followed the government shutdown earlier this month. The demonstrators, who were met by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and former Alaska Gov Sarah Palin, pushed through the barriers at war memorials and carried the barricades back to the White House, Confederate flags in tow.
House Republicans Changed The Rules So A Majority Vote Couldn’t Stop The Government Shutdown
By Ashley Alman
Posted: 10/13/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/13/house-republicans-rules-change_n_4095129.html
Excerpt:
In its effort to extract concessions from Democrats in exchange for opening the government, the GOP has faced a fundamental strategic obstacle: They don’t have the votes. A majority of the members of the House have gone on record saying that if they were given the opportunity to vote, they would support what’s known as a “clean” continuing resolution to fund the government.
So House Republican leaders made sure no such vote could happen.
In the hours working up to the government shutdown on Sept. 30, Republican members of the House Rules Committee were developing a strategy to keep a clean CR off the floor, guaranteeing the government would remain shut down.
Though at least 28 House Republicans have publicly said they would support a clean CR if it were brought to the floor — enough votes for the government to reopen when combined with Democratic support — a House rule passed just before the shutdown essentially prevents that vote from taking place.
Paul,
Gotta understand your own party’s history to understand the term teabagger.
On Dec. 16, 2007 Ron Paul’s supporters, calling themselves Tea Partyers threw a one day event to commemorate the Original Tea Party in Boston Harbor on Dec. 16, 1776. It was called the Moneybomb:
“On December 16th, 1773, American colonists dumped tea into the Boston Harbor to protest an
oppressive tax. This December 16th, American citizens will dump millions of dollars into the Ron Paul presidential campaign to protest the oppressive and unconstitutional inflation tax – which has enabled a flawed foreign policy, a costly war and the sacrificing
of our liberties here at home.
Please join us this December 16th 2007 for the largest one-day political donation event in history. Our goal is to bring together 100,000 people to donate $100 each, creating a one day donation total of $10,000,000.”
I remember it well as my neighbor proudly took part and walked the neighborhood, door-to-door with a box of tea bags giving each person with whom he talked about Ron Paul, a tea bag and a web address to click on and contribute to the Moneybomb.
He proudly calls himself Libertarian and a teabagger and holds great resentment for the Republicans who hijacked his Tea Party. I don’t agree with his reasons for supporting Ron Paul but I respect his dedication to the beliefs he holds.
And I understand his resentment of the takeover because who in the he!! can respect this?
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQvtg0Q-e6jTcK0x1b-H-b_0eb2Opd6pSjlZEyO7ZKk12kLnrtzJA
Marc, I hear a lot of “talk ” in the South about individual liberty but it rarely applies to women or minorities. It is often raised in the context of gun ownership and the desire to have the government pay for their kids to go to religious or exclusionary charter schools. The great “personal responsibility” zealots in the South often scream about welfare fraud but are amazingly silent about the rapacious bankers that have destroyed our economy and the corporations that have exported our jobs.
As to the “slavery wasn’t all that bad”. I have heard it many times.
That is interesting. One can say Fart on the blog but not itchBay.
Is the Coast Guard shut down? I wanna go out on the boat here at the marina that the Old Fart Squad owns. However, the Coast Guard stops them often and inspects the toilet and otherwise harasses them. They made the dogs on board wear life vests.
The government shutdown shows how far left the Republicans have come. In May 1971 the May Day Tribe went to Washington to shut down the government until they shut down the Vietnam War. Now the RepubliCons are doing their best to shut down our government, ruin the credit and force Obama to bring home all the troops from around the world. Nixon is rolling over in his grave.
Someone above objected to the use of the term Tea Bagger. I agree. It is more relevant to call the folks in that tribe: Pee Party.
Pee Party hot!
Pee Party cold!
Pee Party smoking pot
Nine days old.