Levellers

Faith & Social Justice: In the spirit of Richard Overton and the 17th C. Levellers

Olbermann Takes Down Perry on Secession

Gov. Rick  “Goodhair” Perry (R-TX) of Texas is once more talking about Texas seceding from the United States (only a few weeks after requesting all that Tamiflu from the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT in the form of the Centers for Disease Control).  If the Obama administration were really the “oppressive” dictatorship that Perry claims, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents would already be visiting Perry about this since talk of secession meets dictionary definitions of “inciting to sedition,” carrying a 20 year sentence. 

Keith Olbermann let’s Perry have it about the stupidity of secession. If it DIDN’T cause a civil war and the other 49 states let Texas go, it would cost TEXAS billions–Keith lost track after $500 billion.  The transcript should be highlighted in the op-eds of every Texas newspaper to put a stop to all this talk of secession.

Think, Texans, and then write your newspapers, state legislators, and governor–and talk to GOP family members and friends.  I have family in Texas. I know the idea of Texas as an independent country (as it was for about 5 years) is highly romantic and appeals to Texans’ sense of independence and uniqueness.  But it is stupid.  These days, it costs MUCH to start up a modern republic.

Texans’ taxes would AT LEAST triple overnight as they had to get their own postal service, health services, army, navy, equivalent of the FBI, DEA, ATF (unless Perry plans to expand the Texas Rangers to handle it all).

The 1 billion in Pell Grants to educate people at Texas universities last year–gone.

Ft. Hood: Gone.  Maybe relocated to Arizona.

NASA: which employs over 200,000 in Houston DIRECTLY–gone. I’m sure Michigan would love those high tech jobs rebuilding Detroit.

The National Parks in Texas: Would have to be purchased from the U.S. at a fair-market price (we could pay some bills with that!) and the tourist $ for those parks (including the Alamo) would drop because of the Americans who would now need to get VISAs and passports to visit Texas.

All the revenue from the Dallas Cowboys as “America’s team:” Gone when the national networks no longer broadcast their games and they need passports to play anyone else in the NFL. 

No more hurricane relief from FEMA.  No more federal help with border security.

There would be no federal education dollars for Texas public schools.

Also, all demographics indicate that by 2020 Latinos will outnumber Anglos in TX. With the complete disaster of the years prior to that as the new “Republic of Texas,” maybe the new Latino majority will vote to join back to Mexico as the state of Tejas. (Of course, Tejas could be so messed up by then that Mejico would be reluctant to take  it back!)

Please Texans, we love your barbecue and Tex-Mex food. We love your music and rodeos.  We love Texans.  But no more talk of secession, okay? And no more polls showing that a majority of Texas Republicans think this is a good idea.  And shut Perry up!

May 16, 2009 Posted by | U.S. politics | 12 Comments

Verdict: Obama is Weak on Human Rights and Civil Liberties

I have really been trying to give this administration a break. It is facing unprecedented challenges.  And we are only 5 months along.  But I have been around long enough to see progressive sold down the river by Democrats many times. So, the night of the election, even as I was celebrating and crying, a voice in the back of my head kept whispering, “So, do you think he will last longer than Bill Clinton before selling us out to the corporations and the military industrial complex?”

I want a well-functioning economy with economic justice.  I want a balanced ecology.  I want much. But I voted for Obama as someone who taught Constitutinal Law at the University of Chicago. I voted for “Change I Could Believe In” from the Bush era of shredding the constitution, ignoring international law, denying civil liberties and trashing human rights.  Obama began well:  Appointing good attorneys to the DoJ (the most progressive of which,  Dawn Johnsen, is still being held up by the Senate because she is supposedly a “radical”); ordering the closing of Gitmo (too slowly); cancelling the military commissions; cancelling torture; ended the “black sites”–i.e., secret CIA prisons overseas.

But since then, things have been more muddled.  There is far too much continuity between the Bush era and the Obama era on human rights and civil liberties.

  • The “state secrets” defense is still used by the Obama admin. to try to get lawsuits dismissed.  Obama says this needs to be “modified.” I think Congress needs to modify it BY LAW.
  • While we are no longer doing “extraordinary rendition” (kidnapping) and sending terrorist SUSPECTS to secret prisons in nations which torture, we are still practicing a form of “rendition,” the standards and legality of which are unclear because this is not transparent.
  • While Gitmo is being closed, the Obama administration is using Bush claims about the legality of “indefinite detention without trial” for detainees held at the prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
  • I give high marks to the Obama administration for its continued declassification of the torture paper trail of the Bush era. We need to know just how bad things have been.  But his reversal on disclosure of the latest batch of photos of torture (which will probably leak anyway) is hugely wrongheaded. Now the photos will come out not as a nation trying to do the right thing and break with the policies of the past, but as a leak in a cover up.
  • Obama is restarting the military commissions with some modifcations. That’s really BAD.  The modifications are designed to make the commissions less like star chambers (no evidence derived from torture, restrictions on hearsay evidence, prisoners get to choose their attorneys), but they still fall far short of international standards of justice.  Obama voted against the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and he campaigned on getting rid of them–not modifying them. This is a major flip-flop on a campaign promise.
  • The Obama administration, through its attorney general, continues to be opposed to any trials for torturers or for those who authorized them.
  • Obama still supports the warrantless wiretapping of Americans instituted by the Bushies (and retroactively legalized by Congress) even though tons of new evidence shows that it targetted journalists, peace activists, eavesdropped on the pillow talk between soldiers and their stateside sweeties, etc.–NOT just limited to intercepting calls to and from al Qaeda.
  • Obama has kept Bush’s “faith based” outreach programs and other violations of church-state separation.

The struggle for justice, human rights, and civil liberties will continue.  But we now know that we do not have a reliable ally in Obama–just an untrustworthy on-again/off-again ally.

Here’s hoping and praying that by the end of 4 years, my complaint here looks very premature and overblown–but I’m not holding my breath.

May 16, 2009 Posted by | civil liberties, human rights. | 16 Comments

   

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