Americans have always been fans of the power of free enterprise -- and rightly so. But they used to make a distinction between free enterprise, monopolies and financial power. This wasn't always so. In the previous century folks could more easily see the distinction between ownership as a property of effort and possession and ownership as a legal or financial title; and between investment as a property of effort and improvement and investment as a property of loaning money or buying ownership. For Henry George (as an example):
"It is obvious that all taxes come from the product of land and labor. There is no source of wealth other than the union of human exertion with the materials and forces of nature."
But in our recent period people were befuddled about this subject. We are sold confused monopoly and paper investments as if these were the "human exertion to harness the forces of nature" and create "production" that folks like Henry George and economists of yore were talking about. This has been a deliberate confusion. Since Ayn Rand first cast her main Character "John Galt" as an extraordinary individual there has been a deliberate effort to confuse financial entrepeneurship and actual entrepeneurship on the part of many of her self-styled disciples. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged/http://www.truthout.org/110608J) She was a prophet in a way, bad taxation and investment policies led to financial resources from our country being exported -- but this had more to do with the financial folks being pirates than them "going on strike". They could still make money here, they just decided they could make more money in China or other Communist Countries. They still seem to feel this way (http://seekingalpha.com/article/101917-who-is-john-galt-we-ll-soon-find-out :-)
This occurred because we were befuddled by all the paper wealth created by wall street into thinking that this is our real source of wealth. But it isn't. Folks like Henry George were right.
Economists have also always suggested regulation and tax policy. Lloyd George made these points more than a 100 years ago:
But equal taxes may have very different effects on production, depending on how they are imposed.
Taxes that reduce the rewards of producers lessen the incentive to produce. Taxes based on the use of any of the three factors of production -- land, labor, or capital -- inevitably discourage production. Such taxes introduce artificial obstacles to the creation of wealth.
Modern understanding of tax policy simply restates what has been obvous for more than 120 years.
The method of taxation is, in fact, just as important as the amount. A small burden poorly placed may hinder a horse that could easily carry a much larger load properly adjusted. Similarly, taxes may impoverish people and destroy their power to produce wealth. Yet the same amount of taxes, if levied another way, could be borne with ease. A tax on date trees caused Egyptian farmers to cut down their trees; but twice the tax, imposed on land, had no such result.
The point is that taxes have to be imposed intelligently or they "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs." Or in this case cause farmers to cut down date trees. Had they taxed a percentage of the dates produced, or even given credits for planting such trees, the effect might have been opposite.
More than 120 years ago, Lloyd George stated the key principle of wise taxation:
Now, taxes on labor as it is exerted, on wealth as it is used as capital, or on land as it is developed will clearly discourage production -- much more than taxes levied on laborers whether they work or play, on wealth whether used productively or fruitlessly, or on land whether cultivated or left idle.
The key is "on wealth as it is used as capital." I don't follow Henry George verbatum. I'm just pointing out that some of his points are still factual. Now what are capital investments? Certainly not derivative instruments -- though these did free up money that could have been used for capital investment if we had sane tax policy. No you aren't going to get much agreement on much, but basic definitions are basic definitions. Capital is:
We need to avoid taxing money that is actually invested in capital goods. Taxing the rest, is another matter. Henry George notes:
These include all taxes on manufacturing, all taxes on commerce, all taxes on capital, and all taxes on improvements. All such taxes tend to reduce the production of wealth. Their tendency is the same as the Egyptian tax on date trees, though their effect may not be seen as clearly. They should never be used when it is possible to use means that do not check production.
The key here is that he's not saying all taxes on financial investment, but that portion of taxes that goes to capital, to public and commercial improvements, to manufacturing and to commercial efforts. We need, as a society, to be encouraging, not discouraging those things.
The great class of taxes that do not interfere with production are taxes on monopolies. The profit of monopoly is in itself a tax on production. Taxing it would simply divert into public coffers what producers must pay anyway.
The principle here is that when a monopoly forms, one is no longer talking about simple ownership, but about Government. A person who owns a market (like the Queen of England) governs that market (unless the people in that market have democratic rights to limit his behavior). Better to break up monopolies.
There are various sorts of monopolies. Some businesses are, in their nature, monopolies. These are generally the proper function of government. Delivering the mail, for example. For the same reason, railroads should belong to the public, as roads do.
Henry George makes two important points here. He next tries to make the case that copyrights are good and patents are bad, but to me his arguments aren't convincing on either side, so I'll skip to the one here that I think stand the test of time:
Finally, there are also onerous monopolies resulting from the aggregation of capital in certain businesses. (See Chapter 20.) It would be much better to abolish such monopolies than to try to tax the returns of their monopoly.
Theodore Roosevelt was influenced by these ideas when he tried to engage in trust busting. He found that it was almost impossible to break trusts once they formed. Power, once arrogated is difficult to break. The powerful tend to turn to violence, to law, or even criminal behavior when threatened. In the case of our country that usually takes the form of bribery and bribe written laws. The Railroads owned the country during Henry George's time, and continued to run some states until they drove themselves in the ground and were supplanted by other oligopolies.
For more on Henry George's ideas:
I was listening to a lecture on the issues surrounding "Intelligent Design" and it occurred to me that rational theology versus authoritarian theology is not just an issue within the West. Theology and religious belief can be built around empiricism, but often is not. The obstacle to that is whether one believes that science, religion, life, should be tied to causality.
There are some who believe that science, religion, life, draw their authority from books, from teachings, from scientists or sages. And there are some, such as myself (and I believe Shakyamuni), who believe that books, teachings, science and religion; draws its authority from reality. If a teaching denies empirical evidence, then either that teaching is false, or the interpretation of that teaching is bogus. This is applying the methodology of science to life, and those who don't do this, are philosophically denying the principles of causality and substituting supernatural explanations. These supernatural explanations are advanced because they also give power to authority.
The question is does one believe in a causal view of life, or in a supernatural view of life? If the former stories, allegories, and visions are firmly located within the minds and collective conscience, and natural explanations of phenomena are accepted. If the later, myths and legends are treated as if they actually literally happened. This issue is an issue in Buddhism as well as in Christianity and other religions.
"Intelligent Design" is being promoted as a "wedge" issue, quite explicitly, because its target isn't evolution per se. The target of intelligent design advocates is science itself. (Further reading http://www.intelligentdesign.net/, and http://www.discovery.org/a/3600 where the Discovery people openly admit they are using "Intelligent Design" as a wedge against science). They admit that Phillip Johnson intended his project as a wedge project from the beginning, long before he wrote the article where he used the terminology. The religious politics dimension of this discussion is explicitly acknowledged in the cited article:
"Many Darwinists gloat over having supposedly exposed the allegedly secretive “Wedge project.” What they never acknowledge (or realize) is that Phillip Johnson openly discussed the full meaning of the “Wedge” in this book years before the widespread internet circulation of the supposedly super secret “Wedge document,” which summarized many of the points in this book in order to clarify for our supporters the important cultural implications of the battle over intelligent design, and explain the importance of forging ahead by calling attention to the growing body of scientific evidence for design in nature."
The "wedge" is "evidence for design." Design, however, is not proof that there is no evolution. Its obvious that there is design built into the structure of DNA/RNA, amino acids, and other living chemicals. That is not proof of creationism as advanced by these people. They would use a truth that has nothing to do with evolution itself to justify a theological position that has no empirical backing.
In this book, Johnson, also Program Advisor for Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, explains that naturalism, materialism, and modernism aim to remove any support for belief in a personal God who acted with free will to create and sustain the universe. This philosophical assumption forms the bedrock for the belief that plants and animals arose through undirected and purposeless evolutionary processes, and that humans are therefore just another animal, not created in the image of God.
However, there are alternative approaches to reconciling the theological issues presented by the empirical evidence for evolution. Simply acknowledging that the "creation" envisioned in Genesis included the creation of time would put the whole thing in a perspective. Simply looking at the notion that creation is present in each moment of time (as Hasidim do) would put this issue to rest. Each moment of evolution is a moment of re-creation; be-reshit.
Their real issue isn't with science, but with their straw view of scientists. They believe that the scientists are launching an attack on theology -- and so attack scientists. Aside from this being a logically inconsistent argument. "Science" isn't attacking theology even if individual scientists are. Science is attacking empirical truth, and if theological truths are going to contend in the realm of science, they have to be able to demonstrate causal connection and empiricism. If they can't do that then that is a failure of theology. Obviously there is something wrong with a conception of God that has no relevance to material reality. The attack on science is not a result of scientists waging war on theology, but of sectarians waging war on empiricism. Which very much represents waging war on reality. This is a very deluded course of action.
If there is science to 'intelligent design' then that science will be able to contend with scientists, because that is how they work. Many scientists, and even more teachers of science, are religious folks themselves.
Anyway this came up in the context of persons who were asserting a "rain test" of the validity of their Nichiren views, coupled with me listening to a lecture on the issues of the Science versus Creationism theology in the news. I didn't see much difference in the absurdity of the arguments. I'm still thinking about this subject so I'll probably come back to it later.
When Galveston was destroyed by a hurricane, at that time, the USA had a "can do" attitude. When they said "never again" it wasn't a corrupt lip service to popular discontent. The Fathers of Galveston took action to defend the city. They built a sea wall (which is also a highway) along the shore, levies to protect against flooding from the bayside, and made people raise the level of their homes and streets 15 feet.
When Katrina struck, Mayor Ray Nagin used it as an excuse to shut down projects and make money. See new Orleans Picayune Editorial: http://blog.nola.com/editorials/2008/11/stop_stonewalling.htmlNew Orleans, nearly 6 years later has not recovered. Where is our "can do" attitude?
Galveston was a monumental disaster. Thousands of people were killed. But the steps that were taken to deal with it were permanent and successful (more or less). It's not that they eliminated risk. On the contrary, recently Galveston experienced a major hurricane and a few people were killed, and there was a lot of economic loss. But there was no 10,000 (Galveston 1) or 1000 (Katrina) person death toll. They defended the city.
The ancients used to build in flood plains. They built on "tells" -- natural hills. People once thought those tells were used to protect against Armies, but it should be obvious that they were defending as much against nature. Cities need to be defended.
Nature can't be stopped, but it can be channeled. Risk can't be eliminated, but it can be mitigated. The methods for doing this are tried and true. They represent investments in future sustainable prosperity because risky behavior is a predicate for failure.
There are two parallel issues in the Union movement. One is Union membership, which has been in decline for years now and is actively opposed by the Chambers of Commerce and business interests world wide. The second is the issue of workplace representation and the tyranny of the workplace. They are related issues, and for years Unions have tried to fight them in tandem; first organizing workers and then demanding workplace rights. The result is that business interests have found that the way to fight workplace representation is to fight Unions. The Taft Hartley act is only the latest of a series of laws that abridged worker rights and gave absolute power to property owners, especially in the south. One of our current goals is to repeal Taft Hartley, but I don't think that would be enough to remedy the problem.
I believe the Union movement needs to change, so that laws like Taft Hartley will in the future be of no effect on them. To do this recalls decoupling two parallel efforts to seek workplace democracy/rights, from Union membership. If employers can mandate that Union Membership be decoupled from Union representation, then the Unions should embrace that concept.
I can use my case as an example. I would have loved nothing more than to join the Teamsters years ago when I was working as an Inventory Specialist in a Warehouse. I never had a choice. By the company I worked for was a "right to work" company that would rather close it's doors and pay fines to the DoL than even let an organizer in the door. I wondered that I never saw an organizer, and that the only time a single branch of my company ever saw an organizer was when there was a battle between it and union companies in a heavily Unionized town. People like me would have jumped at Union membership, but we were afraid we'd be fired if we joined the Union, and there is no way the Union would have gotten a majority of our workers -- because they were legitimately afraid of management. Law or no law, there are no effective rights to union representation in most of this country. And indeed that is still the case in my current line of work -- which is more professional-- but also driven by the "race to the bottom" of American Style Corporatist capitalism.
Decoupling union membership from company shops means giving workers the opportunity to join the Union, perhaps as auxilliary members, or in some new category, independent of whether the Union represents them to the company or not. It also means that Unions should behave more like the ancient "guilds" and focus on training, education, and information services. In this day workers need alternative sources of information. In the old days, when managment dominated the major media, workers opened their own newspapers. We need to support our own radio, internet, and online resources. We also need to organize white collar workers and professionals, and that can't be successful with the traditional approach.
The other side of this is decoupling the issue of representation from workplace representation. Workers, whether they are organized in a local or not, should have the right to meet, and to select officers/deputies to represent them to management. Such representation predates the Revolution. Militia non-commissioned officers were universally selected by the rank and file in the early period of the Country. It should be a right to "petition the Government" for people working in artificial communities where the Government is local management. This is a democratic principle and not an exclusively union one. If workers want to vote in a Union, that should be independent of their right to organize themselves. The principle of democracy pretty much demands that people running a local government do so with the consent of the Governed, in this case workers in those "temporary commons" that constitute most work places. The union movement needs to push for laws that enable "workplace representation" as a constitutional right. This will enable union membership by decoupling the fight for representation from the fight against Unions, and paradoxically make it easier for Unions to spread.
If people could join Unions, or become "friends of the Unions" or "non-localized union members" prior to the management signing a Union Contract, then getting a Union shop would be simply a matter of workplace democracy. We have to find a way to address the local tyranny that dominates us in communities nationwide.
Chris Holte
When wall street confidence men were scamming IRA and pension plans to the tune of millions in fees and bonuses and trillions in leveraged instruments, Congressmen, pandits, and administration officials were lauding them as geniuses and captains of industry. If a CEO paid himself 100 million, not only no problem, but Congress actually passed laws with incentives to pay stock options and taking away stock-holder rights to limit the salaries of the men who supposedly worked for them.
Executive stock options tied to higher fraud rates
But for the rest of us the policy is and has been, "the race to the bottom.
The White House announced its terms for a bridge loan to the automakers. It wasn't as bad as it could have been but these are the terms:
These policies are the ones that killed negotiations in the Senate and House with Republicans. The fight was specifically over the effort to force workers in Unionized factories to accept wages that are "competitive with those of transplant auto manufacturers." What self respecting union would go along (permanently) with taking wage cuts to the level where their workers are being paid the same as non-union workers?
This represents a policy of "race to the bottom" similar to that that kept worker wages in the 19th century and early 20th century so low that they had to live in slums and tenements (often owned by the factories they worked in and with artificially high rents), and buy (on credit) at company owned stores.
Reversing those policies takes local democracy and local organizing. We need a repeal of Taft Hartley and other laws aimed at preserving "A [Democratic] Republican form of Government" to the States at the National, State and local level. The principle of democracy is privileged by the creation and maintenance of a middle class through the individual and collective efforts of people like ourselves.
We need to be unionizing Toyota and Honda, not destroying the UAW, or at least giving the people who work there the right to bargain for wages and conditions with Company Government.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/local.html
The last thing Bush is doing is to hurl a big loogie at all of us working people.
**http%3a//www.youtube.com/watch%3fv=LY0usSqxIm4
This gives me an opportunity to talk about workplace democracy, and the principle of separation of powers. Corporations, the US Executive, etceteras.... are all good at getting things done. But they are not democracies without democracy. When the founders modeled the Federal Government, their idea was separation of powers. And from the way they modeled the States on the Federal Government (and vice versa) they obviously embraced (in nascent form) the idea of replication. People should have the right to representation. That is they should be able to chuse their own deputies to represent them and have their own elected officers to do so when dealing with management. This should be a right prior to unionization.
Unions are in trouble because we are still using a 19th and early 20th century organization method to deal with complicated 21st century matrixed organizations. Stakeholders in any system should be represented in drawing up the requirements, rules and laws of that system. The problem with the way we do it now is not that we shouldn't involve stakeholders, but that we only involve some of them. Consumers, Workers and management need to be involved.
The old model of unionism should be changed. Folks should be able to join a Union independently of whether that union represents them, and they should have the right to representation by officers of their choice independently of whether they are in a Union.... Now that is radical -- and it is based on the principles in the Constitution
The fourth amendment to the Constitution States:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The fourth and fifth amendment has been under attack for most of the 20th century. The "war on drugs" and the "war on terror" have been primary justifications, but these are excuses. The war on drugs is not served by making it a real war. The use of prohibition and police state tactics to fight drugs is not working. And that has been obvious since the end of prohibition of alcohol in 1930. The result millions in jail, and a police state that could be rapidly turned to the use of political authorities at any point in the future.
The latest assault on the fifth amendment [no person...shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation...] is coming from our tyrannical outgoing administration in the form of their "war on terrorism." Barrack Obama has promised to close Guantanamo. Arguments are coming from all over that he has to keep a 'figurative' Guantanamo open in order to ensure that the 'dangerous people' locked up there don't get loose. Why? Because the Government wholesale ignored the fourth amendment, tortured these people, drove them crazy with Communist interrogation tactics, and now is afraid to release them because they are "dangerous terrorists." I don't buy it.
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/08/05/flip-flop-gitmo-detainees-not-most-dangerous-after-all/
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/11/16/fighting-terrorism-fairly-and-effectively?print
Here are the reasons they outline:
"Some defenders of the military commissions argue that terrorism prosecutions do not effectively protect national security evidence, are too resource-intensive, and are insufficient to prevent future acts of terrorism because they are limited to punishing past crimes."
These criticisms are unconvincing for the following reasons:
* The Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) is effective in preventing the dissemination of classified evidence. CIPA gives the government wide latitude to provide the defendant and the jury substitute forms of evidence to protect against the disclosure of evidence and sources it needs to protect. It has been used in countless terrorism cases, allowing the government to introduce evidence obtained by foreign law enforcement and intelligence sources without compromising the integrity of those sources.
* Criminal prosecutions in federal court may be resource-intensive, but so are military commission proceedings.
* It is not true that criminal prosecutions are exclusively backward-looking, responding only to terrorist acts that have already been committed. To the contrary, prosecutions are often used to prevent the commission of terrorist crimes. The Department of Justice cites with pride its reliance on federal statutes that allow prosecutors "to intervene at the early stages of terrorist planning, before a terrorist act occurs."
[1] The crime of conspiracy, for example, is committed when two or more people plan to pursue an illegal act, and take at least one step to advance it, even if a terrorist act is nowhere near fruition. The same intelligence that allows investigators to identity and prevent terrorist plots should allow them to prosecute the participants for conspiracy.
* Under the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution, a suspect facing criminal charges is entitled to a lawyer, who will generally tell his or her client not to talk to interrogators outside of the lawyer's presence. But many criminal suspects with lawyers end up willingly cooperating with interrogators-providing evidence that exposes criminal plots and implicates other lawbreakers-because by doing so they can shorten the prison time they face.
* Some have suggested that it would be difficult to prosecute terrorism suspects in US federal courts because much of the evidence against them is tainted by coercion, abuse, or torture, and would not be admissible in court. However, the solution cannot be to try terrorism suspects using procedures where such evidence would be admitted, particularly given the unreliability of such tainted evidence. There is ample evidence against many terrorism suspects at Guantanamo to build cases that do not rely on statements that were coerced. Indeed, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and some of his co-defendants charged with planning and organizing the 9/11 terrorist attacks freely admit their roles in the attacks.
* Finally, using the civilian criminal justice system serves the additional value of treating terrorists as the common criminals they are. Terrorists, having political motivations, enjoy the heightened status associated with being an "enemy combatant." When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed appeared before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, he wore the label of combatant proudly, comparing himself to George Washington and saying that had Washington been captured by the British, he, too, would have been deemed an "enemy combatant."[2] Treating terrorists as criminals strips them of that badge of honor.
I agree with their conclusions:
"President Obama should put an end to the military commissions' failed experiment in flawed justice, and move all terrorist prosecutions to US federal courts, which have a demonstrated track record in handling terrorism cases in a manner that comports with fundamental due process and fair trial standards."
We need to bring to justice the originators of this illegal policy of Communist style terror. And we need to ensure that the fourth and fifth amendment are enforced if we want to keep our freedoms.
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/11/16/fighting-terrorism-fairly-and-effectively?print
The purpose of law and Government is to carry forth the "best practices" of a society. The purpose is to establish justice. Justice is an abstract subject, the achievement of justice is a goal. The attributes of justice achieved are relatively equal satisfaction with the outcome of a decision for the general public and the litigants. They are expressed as general principles:
But today I want to talk about Officers.
Senator Grassley is pushing for a new law for an Inspector General for the TARP program. Here is an example of a "best practices" at work. People not interested in good government can go to sleep now.
IG's are just "best practices." When an IG was appointed to the Iraq effort, our money spent overseas started being spent a little more responsibility. An Inspector General must have "inquisitorial powers" to look at contracts, to look at contract execution, budgetary execution and spending. The point of this article is to emphasize that every agency should have an inspector General. It is my belief that Congress needs a law establishing an IG for every department in the Federal Government. Each of these should have independent budget authority and the authority to hire and fire deputies and assistants. Each of these officers and their chief deputies should take an oath similar to the one that military officers and the President takes.
I've been thinking a lot about "positive rights." Many of your average conservative will claim that the constitution only gives negative rights, no positive rights. I've spent the past 4 years arguing in circles with such people, but when it comes to it, the concentration on "negative rights" allows them to focus in on all sorts of injustices and claim that the injustice is actually in attempts to remedy them. Wikipedia simplifies the meaning of these terms this way;
"According to this view, positive rights are those rights which permit or oblige action, whereas negative rights are those which permit or oblige inaction." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
The reason this distinction is important is that satisfying negative and positive rights requires two different policy approaches. A negative right seems relatively easy to enforce. Most laws that set boundaries between what one person can do when he "bumps up" against someone elses rights express negative rights. It's easy to say "No person who is not a citizen." Or "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." But positive goals such as "in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" are harder to achieve. I believe the distinction is artificial.
However, all this sturm and drang misses some central points. First, the notion that there are no positive rights in the Constitution (or in human life) is usually a rationalization for maintaining the status quo, or for failure to achieve these goals. Positive rights have to be enabled, but so do negative rights. Positive rights have to be converted from words to requirements, and from requirements to reality via sustained activity.
Prior to the founding of enlightenment concepts "rights" were the privileges of groups who had fought for them; the "bourgeoisie," the middle class yoeman, the small land holder, petty nobles. The rights to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, didn't exist. These were privileged by revolution and vigilence after revolution. Jefferson knew exactly what his vision was for "liberty, justice, and "pursuit of happiness." He understood liberty out of his experience with slavery. Even negative rights are hard to achieve. To achieve positive rights takes a sustained human project.
Which brings me to the second reason that some conservatives oppose even the concept of positive rights. It allows them to oppose the public good while appearing to be all about human rights. That is why to a non-libertarian, listening to libertarians is so painfully irritating. That certain something that bothers one is that they can talk about freedom, and be referring to darwinian matters such as people starving, or dying of disease. But the larger issue is that to achieve either negative or positive rights as a reality, requires projects of the communities where people live. Whether that community action takes the form of volunteer groups or the Federal Government, it still reflects an administrative, creative, and building activity done by the people in charge of a subset of the commons. In other words, a governing function.
These Conservatives don't like positive requirements/ rights because they mandate most of what Government does. For example the most classic (and largest) positive requirement is expressed in Article 4, Section 4:
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence."
This clause mandates that the Federal Government be involved in preserving the (presumably democratic) republican structure of states. To privilege that the Government is supposed to support them with the help of the National Guard, and this justifies our entire Defense structure. There are whole thousands of requirements, laws, and regulations that flow from this one positive requirement. How else do you guarantee "Republican government?"
Positive rights are about the projects and requirements of the Government. To achieve them requires that we approach these subjects constitutionally. There was a reason most rights were reserved to the States. That doesn't mean that the Federal Government can't be involved. There is nothing wrong with the Department of Education. The fault doesn't come from the simple name on an organization chart. The problem comes from the Federal Government dictating to States. But this is also a problem with the States. The States too should be "guaranteeing to their community a Republican form of Government." I don't know if this is written into their constitutions, but it is written into the vision of the Constitution. There are just some rights that can only be guaranteed by active participation of citizens. At the same time, we've seen that active participation of citizens can sometimes deny rights. That is why we have the independent function of the Judiciary. The executive, legislative, and judicial functions each need to be separate and equal, and distributed nationwide down to the community level.
Enabling positive rights is about achieving social and economic goals. There is no human happiness without achieving positive goals to privilege rights to medical treatment, to food, to clothing, to shelter. The threshold is the right to pursue human happiness. The objective is a society that can actually enable people to be happy with a little effort. These rights have to be privileged to be real. To guarantee an action; it has to be paid for, people have to be trained, enterprises established to reach people, research has to be supported to improve knowledge of how to meet that goal, etceteras. These become projects of the entire society whether they are dumped on the private markets, or accomplished in concert with local and Federal Government. This goes against the conservative distrust of common folks, but is essential to forming an ever more improved Union.
Chris
ps, I picked this strawman not to criticize conservatives so much as to introduce broader concepts I'm working on.
I really feel that the source of corruption is the illusion that "we" individuals as we are, are truly individuals; separate and against everyone else. The illusion of self is born into us, but it doesn't have to dominate our lives. Excellence, enlightenment, and ultimate enlightenment, all require that we break this illusion and let go of all the heavy shell clinging to our inner life. When we do that a "true self" emerges, who is nearly identical to the deluded self, except having dumped all that excess baggage.
That is another reason I talk about politics. I'm not wedded to any one party, or any view not wedded to validated principles. But we live in political times. We don't have mountains to retreat to and the luxury of years of meditation. Not on this world. We have to find a quiet place in ourselves and go there. That quiet place is achieved when we realize that this body is temporarily real, but the self inhabiting it is an artifact.
Quiet, shhhh... Someone is smiling.